As the research on the SoR continues, pedagogical recommendations will be applied from the evidence gathered from instructional studies. Much of the educational community agrees that phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension should be taught and learned using grade-level text.
Few would argue that teaching language comprehension (background, vocabulary, and literacy knowledge, including language structures and verbal reason) needs to become increasingly strategic. Word recognition skills (phonemic awareness, decoding and spelling) need to become increasingly automatic, and the combination of language comprehension and word recognition leads to skilled reading.
These conclusions form the foundation of the Science of Reading, and the application of this knowledge in the classroom is the key to ensuring all students learn to read. Hopefully, the background knowledge and overview of SoR is a good starting point for developing a deeper understanding of how we as teachers can apply the research to lesson design and instruction, including explicitness, differentiation and intensity.
If you are interested in teaching reading, learn more about the reading specialist degree program through Grand Canyon University's College of Education. Check back each week for more Teaching Tuesday articles.
Retrieved from:
1Academia, The Reading Wars in August 2022
2 NIH, Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read: Reports of the Subgroups in August 2022
3 RGR, What is Scarborough's Reading Rope in August 2022
4Reading Matters, Connecting Science and Education in August 2022
5APM Reports, Hard Words in August 2022