Help Students Become Skilled Readers

“How can I help my students become skilled readers?” A question asked repeatedly by many teachers and parents. The explanation is both simple and incredibly complex.

“Human brains are naturally wired to speak; they are not naturally wired to read and write.”

– Dr. Louisa Moats

So, what does that mean? Reading and writing, unlike speaking, cannot be learned simply by exposure.

In this post, I’ll first discuss what we’re doing wrong and then what we can do better to help our students to become better readers, especially our beginning, struggling, and dyslexic readers!

How Are We Preventing Students from Becoming Skilled Readers?

Teaching children to become skilled readers and writers is not a simple task. In an article from the American Federation of Teachers, Dr. Louisa C. Moats compares teaching reading to rocket science. It’s not as easy as repeated exposure. There are subtle nuances that skilled reading teachers must know to teach students to become skilled readers.

So, what are we doing wrong? Current teacher preparation programs are introducing future teachers to the Whole Language Approach, or Balanced Literacy. This practice expects that students will become skilled readers by being repeatedly exposed to words, guessing words based on pictures, and skipping words they can’t read (yikes!). It seems pretty obvious that this is NOT how kids can (or should) learn how to read.

What Reading Practices Must We Stop Right Now?

These widely used practices are preventing many students from becoming skilled readers.

First, stop memorizing sight word! The intent of memorizing sight words is to create ideograms of words. However, this is only successful for a small population of students.

Next, forget the saying, “Sight words can’t be sounded out!” Yes, with direct and systematic phonics instruction, they can. Check out my previous blog post on Decoding Sight Words to read more about why this phrase needs to go away forever.

Finally, drop the “three cueing” system! Skipping words, looking at the picture, and asking what makes sense is does not promote literacy. Once a student takes their eyes off the word, they are no longer reading.

These practices are not teaching students how to read. They’re teaching them how to guess or, even worse, simply skip over challenging parts. This is NOT reading and certainly not setting our students up for success.

How Can We Help Students To Develop Into Skilled Readers?

To help students become skilled readers and writers, they must receive direct and systematic instruction! This means they need tools to not only read and write new words, but to understand what they are reading and writing.

Systematic instruction focuses on the eight key strands of skilled reading broken up into two clusters: Word Recognition and Language Comprehension.

Word Recognition

Word recognition instruction provides readers the tools they need to read the words. This includes instruction and practice with:

1. Phonological Awareness, including syllables and phonemes
2. Decoding, including the alphabetic principle and spelling-sound correspondences (Check out these Letter Reversals task cards for FREE!)
3. Sight Recognition, including the most familiar words that have been taught and practiced explicitly (not simply memorized)

Language Comprehension

Language comprehension instruction teaches readers to understand what they have read. This includes instruction and practice with:

1. Literacy Knowledge, including print concepts
2. Verbal Reasoning, including inferences and metaphors
3. Language Structures, including sentence building and meaning
4. Vocabulary, including academic and nonfiction vocabulary
5. Background Knowledge

Dr. Hollis Scarborough created the Scarborough Reading Rope to provide a visual of how each of these individual components are intertwined to lead to fluent reading. To see a visual of the Reading Rope and learn more about each of the components, click this link to visit Really Great Reading.

The first step you can take is to swap out your guided reading books that focus on sight words and vocabulary from pictures and replace them with decodable readers with CVC words that students can easily decode. Click here to find Decodable Readers in my shop to help you get started.

What Does This Mean For Reading Teachers?

To help students become better readers, educators will need to make a dramatic shift away from using the whole language approach to a more explicit and systematic approach.

Is it scary? Yes. Will it be a lot to unlearn to relearn? You betcha! But, with numerous studies showing the insufficiencies of whole language instruction, it is vital that we follow the science of reading.

Have you been following the Science of Reading approach to literacy instruction? I’d love to hear about your experiences!

End Notes

Moats, L., 2020. Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers. 3rd ed. Baltimore: Brookes Publishing Company, p.15.

Moats, L., 2020. Teaching Reading Is Rocket Science. [online] American Federation of Teachers. Available at: <https://www.aft.org/ae/summer2020/moats>.

VanHekken, A., 2021. The Reading Rope. [online] Heggerty. Available at: <https://heggerty.org/blog/the-reading-rope/>.