What is the Science of Reading?

The science of reading refers to research that is examining what leads to skilled reading, and how to assess and effectively teach reading to early learners. The study is constantly being added to by a host of experts from multiple disciplines including literacy, cognitive neuroscience, education, linguistics, and others.

The goal of the collective focus of this research is to develop evidence-based best practices for teaching and learning foundational literacy skills.

According to the science of reading, for students to succeed, they need explicit instruction with a systematic way of teaching, focusing on the following main components of reading:

·       Phonics

·       Phonemic Awareness

·       Fluency

·       Vocabulary

·       Reading comprehension

From the perspective of neuroscience, the science of reading helps us understand the cognitive processes early readers need for skilled reading, such as attention, auditory and visual processing, working memory, and others.

A few key points of the science of reading that parents need to know:

1. Reading skills may not be natural but can be acquired.
2. Reading aloud to your child prepares them for learning to read.
3. Background knowledge is vital to a child’s understanding of what they read.
4. Instruction in reading needs to be explicit.
5. Reading problems will not correct themselves without support.
6. Ensuring that your child reads every day for at least 20 minutes is the best thing you can do to help them succeed in school and life.
7. The Simple View of Reading can be seen though the following equation: Decoding (D) x Language Comprehension (LC) = Reading Comprehension (RC). This equation shows that a student's reading comprehension (RC) score can be predicted if we know their decoding skills (D) and language comprehension abilities (LC). Successful decoding and comprehension of written text results in true reading comprehension results.
8. Phonemic and Phonological Awareness- Phonemic awareness is a pre-reading skill, which focuses on understanding how sounds work in spoken language and syllable segmentation.

Mrs Sue Zweck, Head of Learning K-5