The Science of Reading - Pre-K and Kindergarten Standards Based Phonics and Literacy Instruction

You may have heard about the research behind the science of reading.

How do children actually learn to read? As educators, how can we help them become successful, confident readers?

Although there has been a lot of debate about this topic, the science is clear in that children become fluent readers when they are explicitly taught phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.

Where I am from, the science of reading has never been a debated topic.

I obtained my reading specialist endorsement in 2008, and this is exactly what I studied in college and in my practicum.

I have been incredibly surprised to hear the debate behind how to teach reading lately in the news, because this is how I have always taught my students to read…. and it works!

My personal struggle has always been to find engaging, standards based material to teach the BIG 5, not just reading the research behind it.

Big box curricula often do not work.

I’ve tried many of these curricula, and my students were not making the gains that I knew they were capable of.