Camryn Williams

EDU 210
Dr Reinard

Science of Reading

Reading is such an important part of our lives. Reading isn’t like calculus where

we don’t actually use it in everyday life, but reading we do. Motivation in today’s

classrooms is hard, but literacy motivation is even harder. There are so many

distractions, including electronics, learning disabilities, and even eating habits.

Literacy is so important that “Politicians and journalists often claim prison

planners use third-grade reading scores to predict the number of future prison beds

needed. While it has been found that this claim is mostly a myth, there is in fact a strong

connection between early low literacy skills and our country’s exploding incarceration

rates.” By the end of third grade, it is the most crucial milestone in education that you

are reading on level. Children who are not grade-level reading by third grade, have a

higher chance of struggling in further grades to come. This will affect the child’s

likelihood of graduating high school, which turns out to be a butterfly effect. Not

graduating high school, means you most likely go to college, meaning you have to find a

job, most high paying jobs with good benefits need at least a high school diploma, even

better ones need a college degree. Without a good paying job with good benefits, you

could potentially find yourself in trouble. This is why it is so crucial to find those children

at the root. Catching them in elementary school will potentially help their futures.

Teaching is based on five main ideas: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency,

vocabulary, and comprehension. The National Center on Improving Literacy defines

these words. “Phonemic awareness - the ability to identify and play with individual

sounds in spoken words. Phonics - Reading instruction on understanding how letters

Camryn Williams
EDU 210
Dr Reinard
and groups of letters link to sounds to form letters - sound relationships and spelling

patterns. Fluency - the ability to read words, phrases, sentences, and stories correctly,

with enough speed, and expression. Vocabulary - knowing what words mean and how

to say and use them correctly. Comprehension - the ability to understand what you are

reading.” These basics are truly the science and foundation of reading. Without these

main ideas, students have a hard time, not only reading, but truly grasping the idea of

reading. Each child/student is different, with different cultural backgrounds and home

lives, but what all comes together is the science of it all. There is no “one size fits all”

category, each of these main ideas are just as important as the other. Also keeping in

mind that just as society is evolving, so are our brains and the science of it all. What

worked 100 years ago in schools, might not work the same in modern day schools.

A podcast by Emily Handford gives insight to the science of reading. Reading isn’t just

the way people talk. More than half of American kids aren’t readers. Science says every

kid can learn to read. Students come up to words and not only do they not know them,

but they don’t know how to break apart the word to understand it. This issue is not just

in impoverished areas. Somewhere between ⅙ kids have learning disabilities that will

halt them from being great readers, but the rest of the student population should be able

to read, with the right tools. ⅓ of poor readers are from college graduating parents. Kids

who struggle to read are more likely to drop out of school and live in poverty. A study

was conducted in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania by the Chief Academic Officer, Jack Silva.

Less than 60 percent of 3rd graders were struggling with reading. Jack used the help of

a high school English teacher, Kim harper. They toured 16 elementary schools in the
Camryn Williams
EDU 210
Dr Reinard
district. What they found was, when a child came to a word he didn’t know, the teacher

told him to look at the picture and guess. If the child said “pony” instead of “horse” they

were right, even though they have different meanings. What would happen when they

would read books without pictures? It was always, give the students good books and

they will become good readers, instead Jack and Kim looked into the science of brains.

Learning to read is not a natural process. Humans are not born wired to read, but are

born wired to talk. Kids learn to talk by being talked to/being surrounded by spoken

language. To be able to read, structures in human brains have to be rewired. While

humans use their eyes to read, they need to use their ears first. Words made up of

different speech sounds are called phonemic awareness. Once children learn how to

identify and manipulate the individual sounds, they can begin to understand the different

letters and combinations of letters. Kids need good phonemic awareness to be able to

read. Studies that show the difference between good readers and poor readers, shows

poor readers “guess” using context clues, like pictures or what word they think fits best,

skilled readers, can rapidly identify the sounds and letters in the word. Good readers

may guess at the meaning of the word, but they do not guess at the print on the page.

Over the course of the school year, the principals at Bethlehem schools will take

lessons on teaching children how to decode words. The training was a curriculum by

Louisa Motes called “Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling” short

for LETRS. The Principals went through this training in 2015, then the kindergarten

teachers went through it the following year, then the first and second grade teachers.

For students to be able to use LETRS they need to be able to actually hear the sounds

of the word. Once kids can isolate the sounds in a word, the next step is to understand
Camryn Williams
EDU 210
Dr Reinard
how letters represent those sounds. In English we have 44 different letter sounds, called

Phonemes. These Phonemes represent a letter or combination of letters. Phonics isn’t

enough. Kids can decode words, but still not know what the words mean. Kids need a

good vocabulary too. Scientists came up with a model to explain the relationship

between decoding words and actually understanding/comprehending the words, this

model is called “the simple view of reading.” Reading comprehension equals decoding

skills times language comprehension. Language comprehension is what develops

naturally when humans talk to children. Decoding is what kids have to be taught. A child

who cannot decode, will never be a good reader. After the Science of Reading Training,

these teachers are seeing progress and confidence in their students with reading. The

year before this training, 65% of kindergarteners scored below the benchmark, after the

training, 0% of children scored below the benchmark and the following year had 0% as

well! This truly shows that the science of reading is more important than whole language

learning.

How the brain looks while reading:

Camryn Williams
EDU 210
Dr Reinard

Sources:

Limbrick, L. (2011). Motivating literacy learners in today's World/Teaching reading

Vocabulary/Teaching early reading and phonics: Creative approaches to early literacy.

New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, 46(1), 84-88. Retrieved from

http://ccproxy.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/motiva

ting-literacy-learners-todays-world/docview/920751048/se-2

Jv. (2022, July 6). The relationship between incarceration and low literacy - literacy mid.

South.

https://www.literacymidsouth.org/news/the-relationship-between-incarceration-and-low-li
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EDU 210
Dr Reinard
teracy#:~:text=Politicians%20and%20journalists%20often%20claim,our%20country’s%

20exploding%20incarceration%20rates.

The science of reading: The basics. National Center on Improving Literacy. (2022,

December 2). https://improvingliteracy.org/brief/science-reading-basics/index.html

YouTube. (2021, March 31). Can we afford to ignore the science of reading? | Melissa

Hostetter | tedxuofispringfield. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WJcgxyuATU

Hanford, E. (2024, January 5). Why aren’t kids being taught to read? Why aren’t kids

being taught to read? | Hard Words | APM Reports.

https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2018/09/10/hard-words-why-american-kids-arent-b

eing-taught-to-read