If you are a teacher or parent that keeps up with the latest trends in education, you have heard everyone talking about the science of reading. Researchers and educators are buzzing about the research that shows the importance of a systematic and structured approach to teach reading. Is this new research? Is this something new? The short answer is not really!
The best training, I ever had as a reading teacher, was my Orton Gillingham training. After I completed my master’s degree and became a reading specialist, I still felt like something was missing. I was teaching and tutoring and working with so many students who were still struggling with their reading. I fell in love with the approach because Orton Gillingham was already using direct, explicit phonics instruction. The approach is based on research on how the brain works and using different modalities to instruct children because not everyone learns the same way. For a great explanation of how the different parts of the brain work, click here. Let’s take a look at some of the research. You may be surprised at when this research was done!
The Science of Reading and Past Reading Research
Early 1900s – Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham conducted their research in the early 1920s-30s. The Gillingham manual known as the Orton-Gillingham manual was first called the Remedial Training for Children with Specific Disability in Reading, Spelling and Penmanship, was first published in 1935. The pair first developed the approach for children with dyslexia but, emphasized that the multi-sensory approach can be used for explicit instruction for all students. The Orton-Gillingham approach teaches the structure of language and uses multiple modalities for learning; visual, auditory and kinesthetic and emphasizes the sound/symbol relationship.
In 1967, after a great amount of research of reading methodologies, Dr. Jeanne Chall wrote her book, Learning to Read: The Great Debate. Dr. Chall concluded, “Beginning reading programs that emphasized decoding or phonics, the direct and systematic focus on the system that maps print to speech, and the opportunity to practice learning that system in the context of reading, were much more effective than those that only used meaning- based approaches.” Sound familiar? Isn’t that what we are hearing now in the context of the science of reading?
In 1996, the report, Excerpts from the Guide to the California Reading Initiative, concluded that direct instruction in phonemic awareness skills, systematic and explicit phonics instruction, and an organized approach to spelling should all be included in the teaching of reading. The report also states that, “Effective direct instruction does not focus on rote learning. The primary goal of effective direct instruction is to teach important independent strategies.” The report concludes that phonemic awareness is the most important determinant of learning to read. Sound familiar? Isn’t that what we are hearing now in the context of the science of reading?
In 1997, The Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read found that children must be explicitly taught; phonemic awareness, phonics skills, fluency skills and application of reading comprehension strategies.
All the above research is just a sample of the research done in the area of reading instruction and the results agree that simple rote learning and drill work does not help students when learning to read and is not effective with students with dyslexia and that a multi sensory and direct instruction approach is more valuable to any student learning to read.
Science of Reading, What Does It All Mean ?
Below are some of the terms that are important to know when trying to understand the research and explicitly teaching your students the important skills they need to be successful learners and readers using a multi sensory approach. My next few posts will give you ideas and resources to teach each of these important and life changing skills. I am so excited to share with you because I have seen so many struggling readers learn new skills, gain confidence and become stronger readers with a multi-sensory approach and explicit instruction!
Science of Reading Terms and Definitions
Phonological Awareness– is the ability to recognize and manipulate the spoken parts of sentences and words. Examples include being able to identify words that rhyme, recognizing alliteration, segmenting a sentence into words, identifying the syllables in a word, and blending and segmenting onset-rimes. The most sophisticated — and last to develop — is called phonemic awareness. (Reading Rockets)
Phonemic Awareness– Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. We know that a student’s skill in phonological awareness is a good predictor of later reading success or difficulty. (Reading Rockets) A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound.
Phonemic awareness skills include:
- individual phoneme isolation
- individual phoneme blending
- individual phoneme segmenting
- syllable manipulation
- syllable (onset and rime) deletion
- syllable (onset and rime) substitution
- Phoneme manipulation
- phoneme deletion
- phoneme addition
- phoneme substitution
When explicitly teaching phonological awareness and phonemic awareness it is super important to teach the student the difference between letters and the sounds (phonemes) that they represent. It is not enough to teach the students to recite the alphabet or recognize each letter. The student must know the sound or sounds that the letter represents. This is HUGE ! I still review daily with my Kindergartners what sound or sounds does the letter…… make? They laugh at me when I face palm when I ask them to sound something out and they say …. B I G. NO sound it out – what sounds do you hear? /b/ /i/ /g/ ! Now you’ve got it !
Phonics– Phonics is a way of teaching children how to read and write. It helps children hear, identify and use different sounds that distinguish one word from another in the English language. Phonics involves matching the sounds of spoken English with individual letters or groups of letters.-National Literacy Trust
Example : Once a student is taught the sounds for the letters c, a, t they can now put the sounds together to build the word cat. Phonics gives the student the ability to apply what they know to “sound out” or decode unfamiliar words. Phonics refers to the printed word.
Does your head hurt yet ? Imagine the brain of a little one trying to figure this all out ! Phonological awareness, including phoneme awareness is crucial for reading success as well as spelling and writing! It is so important to explicitly teach these skills at an early age and the early stages of development. These skills should be taught as early as preschool and continue through first grade to ensure mastery and hopefully remove later learning problems for our students.
How do we teach these crucial skills so that all of our students will grasp these concepts and become confident and proficient readers? In my opinion through a multi sensory approach like the Orton Gillingham approach. I have seen so much success with this approach and cannot wait to share activities and resources to help you teach your young readers ! Stay tuned and check back soon for my next post!
– Jeanne
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