According to the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, only about a third of elementary school students in the United States are reading at the level of their grade level. In response, many schools are rethinking the way they teach reading.
In a first-grade class in New York City, Melissa Jones-Diaz teaches the specific rules that make up the English language, letter by letter. For decades, most schools felt it was unnecessary to explicitly teach children these rules, preferring to give students time with books, assuming they would most likely figure it out on their own.
Now the specific, detailed instruction takes over.
“It was a big shift in my teaching and my understanding of how students learn to read,” Jones-Diaz said.
The Science of Reading is less a curriculum than a grassroots movement, best known for its thesis that phonics, the relationship between letters and their sounds, is the key to learning to read.
The power behind it comes from parents who feel their children have been let down by the old system. And this movement is rapidly changing the way reading is taught.
Thirty-nine states and Washington, DC have passed laws or regulations requiring schools to follow the Science of Reading approach.
This generally means new books and new teacher training courses with a focus on phonetics.
Jason Borges oversees New York City’s new reading program, which began a partial rollout last year and will roll out to all classrooms this fall.
“What we were doing wasn’t working,” Borges said. “51 percent of students are not at the required level or are not even close to that level.”
As new methods become more widespread, old approaches such as queuing, where children look at pictures in a book to guess the word, are being replaced.
Instead, students today are taught to ignore the pictures when flipping through picture books and instead focus on the groups of letters.
Research shows that the new method helps, but only to a modest extent. A recent study from Stanford University found that two years of this method is equivalent to an additional quarter of a year of learning time.
Implementing the changes can also be difficult and work is still underway to figure out how far these changes can be pushed.
“It’s not just about phonics, is it? There’s so much more to learning to read that I worry that not only are things too reductionist and limited to just phonics, but that you go a little too far,” Borges said.
The nation’s largest school system is trying to find that balance, and the test results are eagerly awaited.
Idaho camp supports children with cancer
Schools try new approach to teach students to read
LULAC calls for investigation after raids in Texas
