This article explains what the science of reading is, how it works, and how Lincoln Learning Solutions approaches the science of reading in its K-5 English Language Arts curriculum.
What is the Science of Reading?
According to the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), a nonprofit committed to assisting schools improve learning for all students, the science of reading is a collection of thousands of literary studies whose evidence converges on “what matters and what works in literacy instruction, organized around models that describe how and why (Jiban, 2024).”
The research tells us what matters and what works when it comes to teaching early literacy instruction.
- Phonological awareness: Instruct students to recognize and manipulate sounds, or phonemes, within words.
- Phonics and word recognition: Teach systematically and explicitly letter sounds and sound-spelling patterns.
- Fluency: Allow frequent opportunities for students to read and re-read orally from connected text.
- Vocabulary and oral language comprehension: Include meaningful interactions in instruction, focusing on building student recognition of shared morphemes across words in both oral and written language.
- Text comprehension: Instruct from rich texts via scaffolded reading and read-alouds.
Lincoln Learning Solutions’ K-2 Approach
Building Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness begins in kindergarten where the morpheme/grapheme connection is stressed to establish a sound foundation to build a solid understanding of the language of reading. It starts by emphasizing single sounds correlating with a single letter. Phonological awareness then progresses to multiple letters representing a morpheme.
NOTE: A morpheme is the smallest unit of language that cannot be further divided (e.g. in). A grapheme is a written symbol representing a sound.
The curriculum also fosters the skills required for hearing the appropriate morpheme represented by the grapheme and the inverse relationship. The concept of “word” is taught through blending and segmenting these basic relationships into meaningful units.
Onset rimes are directly taught by hearing the rhyming parts in words through nursery rhymes and groups of related words, followed by lessons about how onsets change the word.
NOTE: For example, B-at, C-at, S-at, etc.
This instruction continues in lessons about word families. These lessons work in tandem with the understanding of how sounds are blended into words.
Initial, medial, and final sounds are systematically taught in one-syllable words. The word syllable is introduced as a part of a word. Listening to, clapping, touching, and verbalizing words in parts provides a multisensory approach to identifying parts of a word. Beginning in first grade and continuing through second, students are systematically and directly introduced to the six types of syllables. They are instructed and given multiple practice opportunities for manipulating how these syllables are blended into words and segmented to decode them correctly.
Morphology of Words Within Spelling
The morphology of words is central to the spelling word lists provided within grades K-2. Since the basic premise of the curriculum is the acquisition of phonological skills, memorization is not the focus of the spelling lists. Students are given the necessary framework for spelling which fosters fluency.
Spelling lists in grades 1 and 2 are structured to correlate with the specific phonics skills taught directly before the spelling lesson; the introduction to the spelling lesson itself mirrors the phonics lessons. Instruction logically progresses into corresponding spelling lists, reflecting word structure: using affixes, inflectional endings, plurals, etc. By the end of second grade, students will be expected to decode and/or spell multisyllabic words independently.
Fluency as Related to Decoding and Language Comprehension
Students who have achieved automaticity in their acquisition of phonics skills are more fluent readers. Fluent readers develop better comprehension skills. The curriculum focuses on targeted areas of comprehension, such as making predictions, drawing conclusions, making inferences, and summarizing. Comprehension and critical thinking skills are specifically taught throughout the grades K-2 while promoting fluency levels. To become fluent readers, students must understand how language works. Thus, students who do not encounter obstacles in fluency are far more likely to understand and engage with the text.
Achieving Fluency
Fluency is achieved through letter and word recognition, sentence reading, and the acquisition of phonics skills. Fluency Assessments are in place to monitor progress toward incremental and ultimate fluency goals. Students can record themselves reading letters, sight words, short sentences, and paragraphs. Teachers can listen to submissions and provide students with useful feedback which will help students build their literacy and comprehension skills.
Emphasizing Phonics and Phonological Awareness
Students begin associating sounds with written letters in kindergarten. In grades K-2, phonics is emphasized as students learn short and long vowel sounds. Students also begin to understand the use of consonant blends, digraphs, diphthongs, and syllables. Students begin to understand individual phonemes first and then practice phoneme blending and word segmenting. They practice identifying and manipulating individual sounds to read words in chunks.
Building Vocabulary
Students will encounter new vocabulary in weekly spelling lessons. Students can also engage in interactive learning games and reading passages to build their vocabulary.
Achieving Reading Comprehension
Students begin their reading comprehension journey as they learn to identify the sounds making up each word. Once students have a basic understanding of word composition, they can work on comprehending what they are reading. In kindergarten, students begin reading Dolch and Fry sight words, vocabulary, and pictures. Kindergarteners build comprehension through repetitive reading. After grade 2, students transition from learning to read to reading to learn. Students then learn to summarize main ideas and locate supportive details in a text. Students will also be exposed to event sequencing and retelling stories.
Lincoln Learning Solutions’ 3-5 Approach
Phonological Awareness
Students will master phonological awareness through spelling lessons by learning words with a set of sounds. Students will notice the sound structure of the spoken words and then identify, isolate, and manipulate language at the individual sound level. Spelling lists also include phoneme blending and segmentation. Through grammar and writing lessons, students will master phonological awareness by revising errors in writing. By the end of third grade, all 44 phonemes will have been introduced and manipulation of related graphemes have taken place. In this grade band, spelling lists correspond with phonics skills; grammar relates to both morphology and syntax. Spelling, phonics, and grammar naturally lead to more exposure to word and sentence structure, as well as affixes. These integral parts work together to support students’ journey toward mastery.
Enhancing Phonics Skills
Students will master phonics skills by first learning phonetics and sounds through spelling lessons. Then, students will apply phonetic decoding skills to reading passages. These skills are learned through lessons on syllables, graphemes, and morphemes. Students will continue to develop sight word recognition. Students analyze complex structures of familiar and unfamiliar words. In addition, course sequences support the morphologic review. Prior knowledge is activated by the enhanced use of skills in context. Syntactical elements become a learning focus, building upon prior knowledge and understanding morphology. These strategies stimulate fluency and support comprehension.
Addressing Morphology and Etymology
Students address morphology by studying how words are formed, as well as word relationships, and analyzing the structures and parts of words, such as stems, root words, prefixes, and suffixes. Spelling and grammar lessons present etymology at a surface level. In this grade band, students become familiar with Greek and Latin roots and how they can use roots to determine meaning.
Phonics and Phonological Awareness
Students will master phonological awareness through lessons on spelling and grammar. Students continue to practice segmenting words into syllables and learning about commonly confused words.
Students will master phonics competencies through spelling lessons that address vowel-sound spellings and syllable types.
Achieving Fluency
Students will achieve fluency by completing a daily Reading Log that increases:
- Reading stamina.
- Reading levels.
- Reading accuracy.
- Reading comprehension.
- The ability to decode words.
Students will also complete lessons that explicitly practice fluency, including listening to audio recordings modeling what reading fluency sounds like.
Building Vocabulary
Students will build vocabulary through exposure to multiple text types and levels. The curriculum includes a variety of informational texts so students can learn and practice new vocabulary. For content-specific words, students apply word-learning strategies. For added reinforcement, definitions are provided for challenging words.
Achieving Reading Comprehension
Students will achieve reading comprehension through the support of graphic organizers which are frequently used to assist students in recognizing story structure. Students will encounter various text structures and perform text analyses, applying summarization skills.
References
Jiban, C. (2024, February 15). The science of reading explained. NWEA. April 5, 2024,
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