Forty-three million US adults possess low literacy skills.
This staggering number reflects a concerning reality: One in 5 US adults struggle with reading or writing.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reported that long-term reading trends are decreasing, with only 33% of 4th graders performing at a proficient reading level in 2022 — a 2% decline compared to 2019.
To say this statistic is worrying would be an understatement. As an educator, you know reading and writing are essential 21st-century skills students need in all walks of life.
So what can we do to equip our students with fundamental reading skills in 2024? Understanding the Science of Reading and how the brain depicts words is a great start.
This article will explore how the Science of Reading impacts education, and we’ll highlight the reciprocal nature of reading development, writing instruction, and parental involvement.
The Science of Reading is an approach that examines how the human brain learns to read. The Science of Reading is based on thousands of studies from different scientific fields across the globe, including:
It’s important to understand that the Science of Reading is a fluid body of research, not an unchanging ideology with a ‘one-size-fits-all approach.’
Reading isn’t a skill that just ‘comes naturally’ to humans, like speaking. It’s something we all learn and develop from a young age.
Speech sounds (phonemes) surround us from the moment we're born, from caregivers singing to us to sleep to people conversing on the street. We hear the spoken word within its relevant context simply by existing.
These theories mean that any child (excluding those with neurological differences) will inevitability learn to talk even without assistance.
Comparatively, reading is a learned ability influenced by brain maturation and experience.
Science tells us that the act of learning to read is a protracted developmental process supported by multiple cognitive and linguistic skills, such as:
The only way to train the brain to translate the squiggly lines on a page into actual words is through explicit reading instruction.
Although the term ‘Science of Reading’ is present in studies from the 18th century, it’s often viewed as a reaction to the ‘reading wars.’
Arguably, American writer Rudolf Flesch ignited the reading wars by releasing his controversial book, ‘Why Johnny Can’t Read’ in 1955.
Flesch criticized the ‘look, say’ reading method, where teachers point to an image, say the associated word, and then ask students to repeat the whole phrase.
Instead, he suggested that phonics — a system of decoding words — was a better solution.
However, not everyone agreed.
In the 1970s, the ‘whole language’ pedagogy emerged as an alternative to the strict discipline of phonics.
The ‘whole language’ proposed that predetermined teaching structures and rigid systems, like standardized testing, should replace ‘reading and writing assignments meaningful to each dynamic individual.’
The ‘reading wars’ and the confusion around which teaching method produces the best results led most schools to adopt a ‘balanced literacy’ approach.
Balanced literacy combines the best ideas and practices from the ‘whole-language’ and ‘structured learning’ models.
The idea is to balance the skills-driven approach of structured phonics with the holistic approach of literacy-based instruction to make reading more approachable (and enjoyable) for students.
Given the theoretical promise of balanced literacy, it’s no wonder that nearly three-quarters of elementary teachers implement it.
However, in practice, balanced literacy is causing problems.
While balanced literacy helps students develop a love of literature, it underestimates the importance of repetition and structure in developing word recognition.
For instance, balanced literacy only includes some phonics. It undermines the fact that most studies prove phonic instruction needs to be explicitly taught intentionally and logically to remain effective.
The steady decline in students’ reading and writing skills caused by the limitations of balanced literacy has resulted in many turning to the Science of Reading as a solution.
Rather than looking at reading from a purely pedagogical perspective, the Science of Reading accounts for how different brain parts impact the reading process.
The Science of Reading treats reading as a puzzle, using insights from four elements to create a comprehensive picture.
For example, the Science of Reading considers how psychological aspects like problem-solving, memory, and attention contribute to automatic word recognition.
The Science of Reading helps educators understand reading comprehension through two main theoretical frameworks: the simple view of reading and orthographic mapping.
This theory was developed by Gough and Tummer in 1986. It suggests reading comprehension is achieved by combining decoding skills and linguistic comprehension.
While the ‘simple view of reading’ has been expanded upon over the years, notably by Scarborough’s theory of the ‘reading rope,’ researchers agree that reading comprehension is based on:
The simple view of reading is often depicted as a maths formula, where 1 (decoding) x 1 (linguistic comprehension) leads to reading comprehension.
These skills must be used together to work effectively — without learning to decode a word, it’s merely symbols on a page, and without linguistic comprehension, a word has no meaning.
Humans aren’t programmed to recognize a word as a ‘whole.’
Instead, we rely on storing words that we’ve been exposed to in our brains to quickly process their breakdown in the future.
Researchers have identified this recognition system as ‘orthographic mapping’ — the cognitive process that occurs when we ‘map out’ the breakdown of words and store them in our mental lexicon (the ‘word storage house.’)
This process is achieved through:
By repeatedly exposing students to the orthography and phonology of a word, it becomes mapped into their memory as a word they instantly recognize without needing to decode it.
The Science of Reading outlines five ideas for proper reading comprehension:
Phonemic awareness identifies and manipulates the smallest speech sounds within a word (phonemes) and how the mouth moves when it produces each word.
For instance, both the words ‘chip’ and ‘weight’ are made up of three phonemes: ‘ch-i-p’ and ‘w-eigh-t.’
The process of developing phonemic awareness can be broken into four stages:
Practicing the skill of breaking down a word into its sounds helps prepare students to make links between letters and sounds when learning to read.
‘Phonics’ focuses on the regular relationships found in the English language.
Phonic instruction teaches students to decode a new word by deciphering the relationship between its phonemes and its ‘graphemes’ — the letters representing those sounds in written language.
There’s an emphasis on discerning the sound patterns of individual letters and explaining how different letter combinations, including vowels and syllables, ultimately form a whole word.
The Science of Reading proposes that successful phonics employs a ‘part to whole’ system rather than ‘... expecting students to infer spelling/sound patterns by seeing them in words that they read in the context.’
For instance, The National Right to Read Foundation suggests teaching the 44 sounds in the English language by:
Phonics teaches students to recognize recurring principles of language and sound patterns. This allows them to apply their knowledge of letter-sound relationships to decoding words they’ve never encountered.
Fluency refers to our ability to recognize words rapidly. Neuroscience studies suggest that our brains combine words within a sentence to form meaningful phrases.
For instance, fluent readers comprehend the phrase: ‘The sun is shining’ as a complete sentence with equal cadence rather than a fragmented sentence, like ‘the — sun is — shining.’
The Science of Reading suggests that fluency is built by:
As students’ fluency improves, so does their enjoyment of reading — their brain begins to build imagery around words rather than focusing on the ‘mechanics of reading.’
Vocabulary refers to our recognition of different words and the meaning behind them.
It’s widely acknowledged that vocabulary develops through exposure to various texts. This can be through reading core texts at school and listening to a TV program incorporating diverse language.
Through this process, students encounter approximately 150,000 words throughout their school experience. However, exposure to new words once isn’t enough to make them part of their core vocabulary.
One way to accomplish this is by using specific word instruction — highlighting new words that students will discover in a body of text so they can familiarize themselves with words for improved long-term memory.
This process can occur before, during, and after reading a text by:
For instance, the word ‘bright’ can describe the light intensity and a person’s intelligence, but the word ‘dull’ can’t be used in both contexts.
Similarly to the simple view of reading, the Science of Reading outlines that to understand text, we need to master phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, and fluency.
However, the Science of Reading also adds that comprehension processing isn’t only influenced by neuroscience and linguistics but also psychology.
Cognitive behavioral studies prove that our brain activity changes depending on which genre we read. Therefore, we’re more likely to understand writing related to our experiences.
By applying critical thinking skills, context, and knowledge of word structure, students can extract meaning from texts beyond surface-level understanding.
Once this foundation is established, teachers can introduce text structures as they apply in the real world to help students reach higher levels of understanding, such as:
To properly incorporate a structured learning system in schools, we need to view the ‘big five’ as fundamental pillars of reading instruction.
One of the biggest challenges facing the Science of Reading right now is that it’s widely misunderstood as only being about phonics.
While phonics is an important aspect of reading comprehension, it’s only one part of the whole picture. Only focusing on phonics and neglecting factors like fluency still leaves gaps in students’ learning.
For instance, although California incorporated the Science of Reading into its reading guidance, only 46.66% of grades three–eight and 11 met the standard level of reading in 2023.
A solution to this problem is incorporating writing instruction into a Science of Reading-based curriculum.
Educators have focused on reading alone, missing how vital writing is in learning to read. The reciprocal nature of writing and reading can be a tool to cement the foundations of language in students’ minds.
First, reading provides students with clear, practical language models, and writing helps them internalize these conventions and apply them in their compositions.
Therefore, incorporating a writing instruction platform, such as Pressto, into reading instruction is a great way to turn the core teachings of the Science of Reading into practical exercises.
As students grapple with the best way to express their thoughts and ideas, they encounter new words and phrases. For instance, they realize that they can replace the adjective ‘happy’ with ‘ecstatic’ to evoke a stronger emotional response from a reader.
Pressto supports vocabulary instruction through the inclusion of important and signal words.
As students write, suggestions for various connecting words appear next to their text and important words associated with a topic.
With Pressto, students can experiment with using different phrases in their writing. This helps students develop a stronger fluency and comprehension level when reading and with their writing style. They’ll also understand what combination of words expresses what they’re trying to convey.
Writing provides a hands-on platform for students to practice their decoding skills.
Instead of practicing each word separately, writing allows students to engage in the process of putting their thoughts and ideas into words, which naturally reinforces their understanding of letter-sound relationships.
Writing helps students understand how to communicate their thoughts in a logical order.
Through reading various texts, students identify how different genres and subjects use organizational patterns to express ideas. They can then use writing activities to understand how the underlying structure of a text supports the relationship between ideas and helps us anticipate what’s to come.
With Pressto, students form a deeper understanding of text structures through graphic organizers and writing scaffolds across subjects.
For instance, teachers can type a prompt and specify which subject and grade they want to address, such as a ‘short story about superheroes for a K-2 class.’
Pressto automatically provides students with the ‘writing blocks’ corresponding to that specific text structure.
Pressto encourages students to engage with texts critically and question how language structure impacts the tone and message of texts.
Developing reading comprehension requires practice and repetition — both inside and outside the classroom.
However, for children to learn effectively, especially at the early development stages like K1-2, they need to be taught similarly to avoid confusion.
Sometimes, the best way to convey this message to parents is by hosting a parent-teacher workshop, discussing the principles behind the Science of Reading and its importance.
Some tips for creating a strong relationship between parents and educators:
Additionally, the homework teachers assign should be fun and interactive, serving as a tool for effective communication between students and parents.
This approach helps keep homework exciting so students don’t start associating it as tedious work but rather as a fun activity they can share with their guardians.
The Science of Reading has become a dominant force within the education sector — and for good reason.
The ‘big five’ ideas behind the Science of Reading are well-researched and evidence-based.
‘Structured learning’ could improve reading scores nationwide — as long as we integrate it effectively.
However, we must ensure we’re looking at the Science of Reading as a whole picture, not just a phonics-based model.
This process starts by recognizing the reciprocal nature of reading, writing instruction, and parental involvement and using a writing tool like Pressto that links all three.
To learn more about how Pressto can support literacy development, take a tour of our platform today.
