Science of Reading Essentials
Explore a hub focused on the science of reading offering curated resources, instructional support, and expert insights for improved literacy outcomes.
The Science of Reading: Evidence-Based Reading Instruction
Want to be successful in school, work, and life? Literacy comes first. Literacy skills are essential for academic, career, and economic success and for social, emotional, and physical health. For students, the process of learning to read constructs the foundation for everything that comes after it, opening up new worlds of limitless potential, from learning to discerning, achieving, and innovating. Early reading instruction is the single most urgent task in the field of education. For many reasons, there’s almost nothing more important than teaching young people to read.
Educators can find support for this crucial mission in the science of reading (SOR). This vast body of gold-standard scientific research, replicable studies, and validated evidence on reading acquisition provides a wealth of insight to guide educational best practices, enabling teachers to deliver explicit, systematic reading instruction that helps even striving readers learn to read effectively, confidently, fluently, successfully.
What’s the Science of Reading?
The science of reading (SOR) is a massive collection of thousands of scientific studies on how people learn to read, conducted in many languages, over many decades. This complex set of studies in many fields ranging from linguistics to neuroscience addresses a vast array of questions, including the specific elements required for children to learn to read, and how educators can best help them become skilled readers. A Structured Literacy approach turns out to be the most effective instructional technique for successful reading development.
How do educators use the Science of Reading
Educators apply SOR principles with explicit, systematic instruction focused
on these 5 components:
- phonemic awareness
- phonics
- fluency
- vocabulary
- reading comprehension
(National Reading Panel Report, 2000)
Is Structured Literacy related to the Science of Reading?
A body of research on the best ways to learn to read, SOR isn’t a program or method, but it’s the science behind Structured Literacy, which is an approach to teaching oral and written language. Structured Literacy refers to teacher-led instruction that applies SOR by delivering explicit, systematic literacy education, including important components of literacy from phonics to reading comprehension. SOR enables the Structured Literacy approach and empowers educators to teach phonic decoding, phonemic awareness, and other crucial literacy skills.
Is the Science of Reading only for striving readers?
While SOR and Structured Literacy are especially useful for striving readers or students with dyslexia or learning disabilities, these tools improve literacy skills in all students. It’s not uncommon for reading proficiency scores to rise dramatically across the board after implementing SOR-based instructional approaches. Structured Literacy is the ideal way to help anyone become a stronger reader, but its powerful benefits are essential for striving readers.
Ready to get started with the science of reading?
Try a Structured Literacy program like SPIRE
And apply powerful SOR principles with programs like these:
SPIRE Foundations: Sounds Sensible, Primary Phonics, Explode The Code, and Megawords.
