2019 —Houston Cofield for Education Week—Houston Education for Cofield Ashley Palmer, a kindergarten teacher in Matthews, Mo., works with students on letter names using flashcards. LITERACY INSTRUCTION EDITOR’s NOTE CONS NTE T Commentary The state of literacy and early reading 15 There Are Four How Do Kids Learn to Data: How Reading Is instruction is changing. In this Spotlight, 2 10 Foundational Reading Read? What the Really Being Taught explore the science behind how children learn Skills. Why Do We Science Says to read, consider why it’s challenging to alter 12 More Than Phonics: Only Talk About Phonics? established reading practices, and learn how Improving Reading Isn’t How to Boost 6 16 How to Make Reading to make reading instruction more efficient. Just a Teaching Shift. It’s Comprehension For Early Instruction Much, a Culture Shift Readers Much More Efficient 17 ‘Writing Directly Benefits Students’ Reading Skills’ Literacy Instruction / edweek.org 2 Published on October 2, 2019, in Education Week ken words whose meanings they know. This differs from Chinese, for example. It uses a tonal spoken language, conveying meaning with small differences in stress How Do Kids Learn to Read? or pitch. Its writing system is partially logographic—in which written symbols correspond directly to a word or concept— What the Science Says and also includes words that couple sym- bols for meaning and symbols for sound. By Sarah Schwartz and Sarah D. Sparks Someone reading Chinese hanzi char- acters could not “sound out” unfamiliar ow do children learn to read? patterns, and what we don’t know for words character by character. For almost a century, sure yet. It touches on what else should researchers have argued be part of early reading programs. And over the question. Most of it explains why we know that most chil- What is systematic, explicit phonics the disagreement has cen- dren can’t learn to read through osmosis instruction, and why is it important? Htered on the very beginning stages of the or guessing. Connecting printed letters on a page to reading process, when young children are Here’s what the evidence shows. written sounds isn’t intuitive. While some first starting to figure out how to decipher young children may make those connec- words on a page. tions themselves, most do not. One set of Don’t children learn to read the way they One theory is that reading is a natural studies from 1989-90 illustrates this phe- learn to speak? process, like learning to speak. If teachers nomenon well. and parents surround children with good Infants learn to speak by listening to In these studies, conducted by Brian books, this theory goes, kids will pick up and repeating sounds made by adults and Byrne and Ruth Fielding-Barnsley, re- reading on their own. Another idea sug- connecting them to meanings. They don’t searchers taught young children between gests that reading is a series of strategic consciously distinguish individual sound ages 3 and 5 to read whole words aloud, guesses based on context, and that kids units (called phonemes) when hearing like “fat” and “bat.” These children didn’t should be taught these guessing strategies. spoken language. Some research sug- already know their letter names. But research has shown that read- gests infants learn probabilistically— Then, the researchers tested whether ing is not a natural process, and it’s not for example, hearing the sound “ball” the children could transfer their knowl- a guessing game. Written language is a at the same time as the sight of edge to reading a new word. They code. Certain combinations of letters pre- a round, bouncy object over gave them the word “fun,” dictably represent certain sounds. And time makes the child as- and asked whether the for the last few decades, the research has sociate the two—while word was “fun” or “bun.” been clear: Teaching young kids how to other studies suggest Very few of the students crack the code—teaching systematic pho- children map meaning could do this success- nics—is the most reliable way to make to a word after experi- fully. They couldn’t sure that they learn how to read words. encing it just once or break down the origi- Of course, there is more to reading than twice. Within the first nal word into pho- seeing a word on a page and pronouncing two years, typically nemes and then trans- it out loud. As such, there is more to teach- developing toddlers’ fer their knowledge of ing reading than just teaching phonics. brains focus on the most those phonemes to a Reading requires children to make mean- common sounds in their new word. ing out of print. They need to know the native languages and con- But children could suc- different sounds in spoken language and nect those sounds to meaning. ceed on this task if they were be able to connect those sounds to written A child develops understanding of —Getty first given some explicit instruc- letters in order to decipher words. They speech through exposure to language and tions. When children were taught how need deep background and vocabulary opportunities to practice the “serve and to recognize that certain letters repre- knowledge so that they understand the return” patterns of conversation, even sented certain sounds, and taught how words they read. Eventually, they need to without explicit instruction. to segment words to identify those indi- be able to recognize most words automati- By contrast, children do not naturally vidual letters and sounds, they had much cally and read connected text fluently, develop reading skill through exposure to greater success on the original transfer attending to grammar, punctuation, and text. The way they learn to connect oral test. Neuroscience research has since sentence structure. and written language depends on what confirmed and helped explain these find- But knowing how to decode is an essen- kind of language they are learning to ings. When learning how to read new tial step in becoming a reader. If children read. words in an unfamiliar made-up lan- can’t decipher the precise words on the Alphabetic languages, like English or guage, participants had more long-term page, they’ll never become fluent readers or French, use letters to stand for sounds success if they were first taught which understand the passages they’re reading. that make up spoken words. To read symbols correspond to which sounds, That’s why we’ve put together this an alphabetic language, children must than if they tried to remember words as overview of the research on early read- learn how written letters represent spo- wholes. Brain imaging of these readers ing, in grades K-2. It covers what’s known ken sounds, recognize patterns of letter finds that the two teaching strategies about how we should teach letter-sound sounds as words, and match those to spo- tap into different neural pathways in the Literacy Instruction / edweek.org 3 brain. Readers taught to connect print to explicitly tell students what sounds corre- ventions included in the study was about meaning directly could recall words ini- spond to what letter patterns, rather than 40 hours, and the follow-up assessments tially more quickly, but less accurately; asking students to figure it out on their were conducted about a year after the in- readers taught to connect print to sound own or make guesses. terventions were complete, on average. and then to meaning read aloud more In one series of experiments, Stanford quickly and correctly, better recalled the University neuroscientist Bruce McCan- Some of my students didn’t need phonics correct meanings of words, and trans- dliss and his colleagues made up a new instruction to learn to read. Why are you ferred their knowledge to new words. written language and taught three-letter saying that all kids benefit? Decades of research has shown that words to students either by asking them to explicit phonics instruction benefits early focus on letter sounds or on whole words. Depending on the estimate, anywhere readers, but particularly those who strug- Later, the students took a reading test of from 1 percent to 7 percent of children fig- gle to read. both the words they were taught and new ure out how to decode words on their own, That’s because small strengths or words in the made-up language, while an without explicit instruction. They may deficits at the start of reading compound electroencephalograph monitored their spot the patterns in books read to them over time. It’s what reading expert Keith brain activity. Those who had focused on or print they see in their environment, Stanovich in 1986 dubbed the “Matthew letter sounds had more neural activity on and then they apply these patterns. These Effect in Reading,” after the Bible verse the left side of the brain, which includes include children with a neurotypical form in which the rich get richer and the poor visual and language regions and is asso- of “hyperlexia”—a condition in which get poorer: “The combination of deficient ciated with more skilled reading. Those children may begin decoding as early as decoding skills, lack of practice, and dif- who had been taught to focus on whole 3—but this is more frequently associated ficult materials results in unrewarding words had more activity on the right side with children who have autism-spectrum early reading experiences that lead to less of the brain, which has been characteris- disorders and often have separate prob- involvement in reading-related tically associated with adults and lems with reading comprehension.