The Reading Wars are on...again!
Here's the question: Does everything have to change? Are we inadvertently harming our students by clinging to outdated methods? If you've scrolled through those Science of Learning Facebook pages, you'll know the struggle. I've Laughed, cried, and even pulled some hair out after some Facebook sessions. There's real confusion out there. Do we throw the baby out with the bathwater or what?
Here’s my take:
The Science of Reading isn't about scrapping everything we know. It's about rethinking what we know. It's about recalibrating our approach. Teaching that aligns with the Science of Reading isn’t the same old, same old. Think of reading as a Venn Diagram. One circle is reading instruction, the other is reading research. For a LONG time, that little area where the two overlap was empty. Research stayed in the “lab”, teaching went on without it. That’s finally changed. It needed to change.
That overlap in the Venn Diagram is finally being filled in. We don’t have to spin our wheels anymore. There ARE strategies that align with how the brain works as it struggles to learn how to read. We CAN use the reading brain to make reading easier for kids.
At this point, I see teaching reading that is aligned with the Science of Reading for 3rd, 4th and 5th grades as falling into three main categories. Think of them as a three-legged stool.
• Fluency- It's about reading smoothly and accurately. Reading itself isn't a struggle, it's effortless. One way to increase fluency is through re-reading. Students read a short text a number of times in different ways to increase fluency. Choral reading, echo reading and partner reading all lend themselves to increasing fluency.
•Word-Work- Dive into affixes, homophones, phonemic awareness and vocabulary – you name it. Some kids missed the boat on basic phonics; they might need a little extra TLC in small group settings.
• Comprehension- Building background knowledge is key. How can a kid grasp a text about an elephant if they've never laid eyes on one? Summarizing, asking questions, visualizing, these are the holy grails of comprehension.There’s still a place for teaching isolated comprehension skills, in my opinion, but they need to be secondary to research based strategies. This is especially true until end of the year tests catch up to research. That’s another issue.
And here's the best part – most of this can be done with whole-class direct instruction. No more dividing students into 'can' and 'can't.' That's a bonus in any classroom!
There’s LOTS more to the Science of Reading than one post can address. but, this is a good starting point. We can’t upend the apple cart all at once, and keep our sanity. But, focusing on the “three-legged stool” gives us all achievable goals that are proven by science to help kids read better. So, keep the baby when you throw out that bathwater, but when research speaks, we all need to listen.
Keep your eye out for upcoming posts focusing on:
Fluency
Word work
Comprehension
