As educators, we all know that reading is the cornerstone to students’ academic success. However, when it comes to developing students’ reading fluency and comprehension, one thing has become very evident: what we’re doing is not working.
This is underscored by the recent NAEP scores, which provide dismal numbers around students’ reading proficiency, as well as by sentiments from teachers themselves.
To reverse course and help students reach their reading potential, the time is now for the educational community—from administrators to literacy coaches and teachers—to come together to rethink reading instruction and implement systematic practices that have been proven to help students succeed.
Understanding educators’ challenges
According to NAEP, only 31 percent of all 4th grade students are performing at or above proficiency levels on reading assessments. This includes only 17 percent of Black students and only 20 percent of Hispanic students performing at or above proficiency levels.
Additionally, more than 33 percent of students in 5th through 8th grade are struggling with the foundations of reading, according to findings from NAEP and research led by Cirino and Hock.
These statistics are not representative of just certain districts or pockets of our country. Almost all school systems—regardless of their location, enrollment numbers, or student populations—are facing similar challenges. Despite professional learning, science of reading materials, and evidence-based assessments, teachers everywhere are struggling to help some students achieve reading fluency and comprehension.
Recently, my colleagues and I had conversations on this topic with a number of educators. They shared their own struggles, challenges, and issues in helping all their students successfully read at grade level. Key takeaways from these discussions include:
● Many students are struggling, with less than 50 percent of students reading proficiently.
● Many of the middle school students who are reading below grade level have “shaky” foundational skills.
● Many educators are using explicit instruction, intervention, and evidence-based reading products, but they don’t work for all students, especially those in Tier 2 and Tier 3.
● Some educators are searching for more effective ways to help struggling readers, especially English language learners and students with dyslexia.
● Some students perform well on early benchmark tests, but then decline sharply in 3rd and 4th grade.
● Even with science of reading-based materials and approaches, some students continue to have difficulty generalizing their knowledge and applying it in new contexts. They aren’t becoming fluent.
Educators in grades 3-8 are feeling the weight of this the most. A large population of students in these grades continue to have trouble decoding multisyllabic words, reading words quickly and effortlessly, and understanding what they are reading, especially as the content becomes more complex. On top of this, educators in these upper grades typically are not trained specifically on foundational reading skills.
This context helps us identify struggling readers but, to solve the literacy problem, we must have a better understanding of students’ underlying learning processes.
Findings from the science of reading clearly demonstrate that learning phonics through explicit instruction is an essential starting point for early readers, however, this is not enough to get many students to automatic word recognition in connected text, which is essential for the transition to fluency. Only by rethinking reading instruction and intervention—and expanding the current iteration of the “science of reading” approach—can educators start to enact real and positive change.
Integrating the science of learning with the science of reading
While the science of reading and structured literacy provide support for building foundational elements, many students require additional practice to integrate, generalize, and automatically apply their skills. A science of learning-based approach focuses on the appropriate kind of practice to help them retain and apply knowledge and develop automatic skills. To make progress, we need a new approach that connects learning science to the development of the complex skills involved in fluency.
Discussions with science of reading experts, as well as science of learning experts, lead to the conclusion that the science of reading must be expanded to reach many students who struggle to use basic reading skills. This gap between knowledge and use is most evident in students in grades 3-8 who seem to know sound symbol relationships but lack the automaticity needed to apply this knowledge in comprehending even simple text. They cannot apply their knowledge to read fluently.
Simply put, the robust findings from 60 years of research in complex skill learning must be embraced by the science of reading. While explicit, mastery instruction may be essential for some students, they must also be provided with learning strategies that are known to enhance automaticity in complex skills.
The Decoding Reading Fluency eBook details how foundational skills and structured student practice work together to close the gap between phonics and reading fluency. It also shares how educators can easily apply these principles into their instruction.
As explained in the eBook, effective and research-backed structured practice for automatic word recognition provides students with multiple, varied exposures and opportunities to apply their skills. This structured practice highlights similarities and differences between words; presents words in multiple settings; mixes different types of practice; and gradually increases difficulty. It also involves educators providing quick corrections and reinforcement to help students generalize patterns, develop flexibility, and prevent ongoing error patterns.
This type of practice can be incorporated into everyday instruction in a number of ways, including through:
● Technology-assisted practice: Adaptive software provides targeted practice based on individual student needs.
● Varied practice reading methods: Oral reading practice in varied texts is effective in improving the rate of oral reading fluency and increasing generalization to new texts.
● Word recognition games: Short, focused activities make recognizing words fun and engaging.
● Timed reading exercises: Short, timed reading tasks encourage quick word recognition.
By leaning into the science of how students learn, and implementing practices designed to promote generalization, flexibility, and instantaneous retrieval, educators will help students build automatic word recognition and fluency of connected text—both of which are needed for reading success.
Time for change
While there are many contributing factors impacting the state of reading literacy in today’s classrooms, an underlying issue is that reading instruction across our country is not tapping into learning principles from cognitive science that facilitate the development of essential components of literacy development. Integration of these principles can build on and enhance the important beginning role of phonics instruction, but this requires a change in mindset and practice. Access to instruction and practice driven by these principles is also particularly important and timely for those students who come with more needs and less opportunities and experiences.
It is important to remember that all students can learn to read with tools, instruction, and support that are based on the sciences of learning and reading. And now is the time to provide those practices and tools to both teachers and students.
By building a learning culture that values reading and providing ample and systematic opportunities for students to practice their skills, we can—and will—start to see a positive change in reading trends. And, most importantly, we will see students become more confident and motivated in reading and beyond.
About the author
Dr. Carolyn Brown is the co-founder and chief academic officer of Foundations in Learning, creator of WordFlight and the Fluency for All movement. Dr. Brown has devoted her career to developing tools and testing solutions that optimize language and literacy development for all students.
