Aligning MTSS to the Science of Reading: Five critical elements of a research-based system

How science and data can help us deliver the instruction and interventions that help all kids read

Watching kids learn to read? Magic. Learning how kids learn to read? Science. 

As you likely know, the Science of Reading encompasses the pedagogy and practices proven by extensive research to effectively teach children how to read. The growing body of evidence around the Science of Reading tells us that with explicit, systematic instruction, all students can learn to read at or near grade level. 

So as educators, we can think of it as the science of teaching reading. 

In this post, we’ll look closer at that science in the classroom and explore how it delivers literacy skills in a way that meets the needs of all students. We’ll describe the critical elements of a complete Science of Reading system—including, but not limited to, a Science of Reading curriculum—and explore how it aligns with a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) framework. 

We’ll also underscore the importance of data in informing instructional decisions—but in a way that might surprise you. 

The five critical elements of a Science of Reading system

Strong core instruction grounded in Science of Reading principles is crucial. But in isolation, even that’s not enough. To be powerful and effective, a literacy system needs to bring together assessment, curriculum, intervention, personalized learning, and ongoing professional development.

An effective early literacy system aligns the following five key components with the principles of the Science of Reading. This way, each component shares a research-based foundation and works to meet the needs of all students. 

  1. Universal and dyslexia screening. Assessment should include universal screening, dyslexia screening, and progress monitoring to identify at-risk students with actionable data and align instruction to areas of greatest need.
  2. Core instruction. A high-quality core program includes explicit, systematic instruction in foundational skills and a coherent approach to building background knowledge and vocabulary.
  3. Personalized learning. Effective personalized learning programs support both remediation and acceleration. They can reinforce core instruction or serve as a supplement to provide teachers with a taste of what research-based instructional tools can do. 
  4. Intervention. Intervention should be staff-led and data-driven, with students’ needs clearly identified and frequently monitored. 
  5. Science of Reading professional development. Districts across the country are making the shift to the Science of Reading. As you evaluate where to start, begin by sharing and cultivating a learning community among colleagues. The more knowledge you gain, the easier it will be to identify which areas to prioritize. 

How MTSS aligns with the Science of Reading

The approach described above can integrate powerfully with MTSS.

For a thoughtful discussion of this kind of integration with examples from real classrooms, listen to this recent episode of Amplify’s Science of Reading: The Podcast, with guest Dr. Brittney Bills, curriculum coordinator at Grand Island Public Schools. 

In this episode, Dr. Bills described the difference between reading interventions grounded in a MTSS framework, and Response to Intervention (RTI). By definition, RTI reading is a response and solution to an identified problem. Though RTI is necessary and effective, MTSS can help prevent struggles in the first place. 

Dr. Bills also shared one core idea that might surprise you: When it comes to differentiating instruction, small groups are not always the most effective approach. Instead, she introduces the concept (included in the MTSS model) of a class-wide intervention. 

In Dr. Bills’s experience, grouping can take time away from instruction. “You might have a group of kids getting this five-minute intervention three times a week, and that group of kids getting that ten-minute intervention two times a week … we piecemeal that out,” she says. 

But data can lead us to different decisions: “If 60% or more of your students are demonstrating a need for, say, oral reading fluency, then you would implement a class-wide intervention,” says Dr. Bills. “The reality is that we have more kids than not who have the same difficulties.” 

Paraphrasing reading expert Dr. Steven Dykstra, Bills says, “We don’t need more individualized instruction. We need better cookie cutters.”

Of course, we still need data to guide us, Bills notes. “We want to leverage data to make decisions that are going to help us arrive at our outcomes or our goals in the most efficient and effective means possible.”

How Amplify can help 

Amplify’s been turning that science into great literacy instruction for two decades. And through our Science of Reading podcast and free professional development events, we’re constantly working with the best experts in the field to make our programs even better—and to share the latest insights with teachers, because we believe the Science of Reading is for everyone. 

Amplify’s early literacy suite is based on 20 years of experience with the Science of Reading. The assessment and intervention power of mCLASS®, the core instruction of Amplify CKLA®, and the personalized learning of Amplify Reading come together in a complete system that saves you time and aligns your literacy practices.

The suite comprises a family of programs that are all built on the Science of Reading and connect with one another. What makes it powerful?

  • It’s a cohesive literacy solution to support MTSS and RTI. 
  • Aligned resources do away with the need for piecemealing.
  • Data drives next steps for whole-group, small-group, and individual student instruction.

Dyslexia toolkit for teachers

What do students at risk for dyslexia struggle with?

  • Delay in learning tasks such as tying shoes, telling time
  • Difficulty expressing self
  • Inattentiveness, distractibility
  • Inability to follow directions
  • Left-right confusion
  • Difficulty learning alphabet, times tables, words of songs
  • Difficulty learning rhymes
  • Poor playground skills
  • Difficulty learning to read
  • Mixing order of letters or numbers when writing
  • Reversing letters or numbers

Supporting students with dyslexia: What can you do?

According to the International Dyslexia Association official publication of Perspectives on Language and Literacy, Vol. 44, 2018, here are six steps to help your struggling students:

1. Screen for dyslexia

  • Become involved in implementing or improving universal screening programs for dyslexia by reminding administrators about specific laws.
  • If you suspect your student has dyslexia, request that common reading and writing skills associated with dyslexia are assessed (e.g., basic reading skills [phonics and sight word identification], spelling, reading rate).

2. Dyslexia training for teachers and reading specialists

  • Advocate for the appointment of a specific person in charge of dyslexia training.
  • Request specific teacher training that includes structured literacy programs (e.g., explicit, systematic reading instruction, phonics instruction, etc.). Request dyslexia awareness training for all K–12 teachers.

3. Eligibility for accommodations and services for students with dyslexia

  • Become involved in the Response to Intervention, Multi-tiered system of support, or a similar system at your school. Ensure that the accommodations and services that are provided are appropriate for students with dyslexia.
  • Collaborate with colleagues to evaluate the effectiveness of accommodations and services being provided to students with dyslexia.

4. Classroom instruction for students with dyslexia

  • Become familiar with differentiated instruction strategies (e.g., use of centers during instruction).
  • Learn and help colleagues learn about specific reading programs designed to help students with dyslexia (e.g., structured literacy programs).

5. Dyslexia handbook

  • Request that your state or district develop a dyslexia handbook to guide teachers and offer other states’ handbooks as a reference.

6. Dyslexia awareness

  • Consult with fellow educational professionals in your school(s) to hold events and encourage discussions about dyslexia during October (National Dyslexia Month).

DIBELS® 8th Edition is validated for the following measures:

DIBELS 8th Edition Subtest Alignment with Dyslexia Screening Areas

Rapid Naming AbilityPhonological AwarenessAlphabetic PrincipleWord Reading
Letter Naming Fluency
Phonemic Segmentation Fluency
Nonsense Word Fluency
Word Reading Fluency
Oral Reading Fluency

How mCLASS can help you identify and support at-risk students

mCLASS® with DIBELS® 8th Edition’s free dyslexia screening measures provide additional screening for risk of dyslexia in students in grades K–3 through subtests that help identify early warning signs of reading difficulty. Measures include:

  • Vocabulary
  • Encoding
  • Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN)
  • Word Reading Fluency (WRF)
  • Letter Naming Fluency (LNF)
  • Phonemic Segmentation Fluency (PSF)

Science of Reading dos and don’ts

For classrooms and districts making the shift, understanding what a true Science of Reading curriculum looks like can be challenging. How do you know which instructional practices to adopt, which to avoid, and which ones are the real deal?

We’ve outlined five practices to start implementing today.

1. Use decodable readers.

Early readers need regular practice with grade-level text . Learning to read is not innate and must be taught through explicit, systemic instruction. Early readers need regular practice with grade-level text, especially text that’s connected to each day’s phonics instruction to helps students apply what they’ve learned.

Move away from level readers and curricula that have:

  • A focus on predictable text or below-grade-level text.
  • Decodable readers that don’t follow a clear phonics scope and sequence aligned to instruction.

2. Provide all students with dedicated phonics instruction.

Learning to read is not an innate skill. It must be taught through explicit, systematic instruction. An effective approach to phonics instruction provides enough time for teaching, application, and practice.

Shift from mini-lessons and curricula that have: 

  • Phonics instruction given only on an as-needed basis. When phonics is on an as-needed basis, students don’t get what they need to prevent reading difficulty.
  • Students alternating between limited phonics, guided reading, writing, and vocabulary practice in a mini-lesson.

3. Help students with phonics-based scaffolds.

Learning to decode builds neural pathways that are critical to automatic reading. Students need practice sounding out words, not doing guesswork.

Transition away from three-cueing or word guessing and curricula that have:

  • Prompts that encourage students to guess through three-cueing (e.g., “What word would make sense,” “what’s in this picture”).
  • Predictable books that enable pattern memorization.

4. Teach content.

Language comprehension is as important as decoding. The more background knowledge students receive, the more prior knowledge and vocabulary they can bring to texts.

Limit use of isolated comprehension strategies and curricula that have:

  • Limited time spent on each topic, or isolated topics introduced without connection to each other.
  • Comprehension skill practice without a strong content foundation (e.g., asking students to “find the main idea” or “determine the author’s purpose” in disconnected texts).

5. Follow a clear instructional path.

Clear instructional paths offer explicit guidance and cohesive structure, the most beneficial—yet overlooked—elements of teaching reading effectively. A definitive instructional path (rather than a patchwork) enables components to build upon each other. This gets students the support they need right away, so they don’t have to wait for intervention.

Withdraw from “choose your own adventure” models and curricula that have:

  • A model that provides multiple instructional pathways, which often lead to inconsistencies.
  • So many pieces to their programs that it’s unclear how to implement each effectively.

Why knowledge matters in early literacy

Part of the magic of reading is that it opens up endless knowledge.

This seems to suggest a logic of first learning to read, then reading to learn.

But experts in education and the Science of Reading have actually turned that logic on its head. They say that knowledge matters first.

That’s why our elementary literacy curriculum Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) delivers literacy skills grounded in knowledge. In fact, it’s one of only a few such programs recently recognized by the Knowledge Matters Campaign for excelling at building knowledge.

Background knowledge is essential to literacy

Reading depends on both decoding and comprehension. Many years of classroom observation and received wisdom have supported the supposition that comprehension must be taught as a discrete set of skills, while decoding arises more naturally.

But an established body of cognitive science research now shows that early literacy skills are best built deliberately, on a foundation of knowledge. In fact, knowledge-building is not a result of reading and comprehension; it’s a vital prerequisite and a fundamental part of the process. In other words: The more you know, the faster you learn.

But typically, literacy instruction focuses on decontextualized skills—finding the main idea, making inferences—rather than the content of texts and resources that students engage with.

Teachers often put the skills and strategies in the foreground, like a skill of the week, then they bring in texts that they find well suited for demonstrating the skill or strategy. So instead of harnessing skills and strategies to content, they’ve got the cart before the horse,

Natalie Wexler, author of The Knowledge Gap told host Susan Lambert on Amplify’s Science of Reading: The Podcast. “What we’re doing in elementary school can plant the seeds of failure in high school.”

When students lack access to the same sources of knowledge, they also lack equal access to reading success. That’s what experts call the knowledge gap, and it needs to be narrowed, or even eliminated, in order to achieve equality.

Wexler adds that a skills-first approach may also—despite educators’ best intentions—challenge kids’ self-esteem. “We are telling kids, ‘Just do this and you’ll become a better reader and better student.’ They do it diligently, but then if it doesn’t seem to work, they may blame themselves.”

A closer look at the knowledge gap theory

Let’s say you’re handed a passage of text describing part of a baseball game. You read the text, and then you’re asked to reenact that part of the game. Which is most likely to help you do so?

  1. Your ability to read
  2. Your knowledge of baseball
  3. It makes no difference

If you answered “2,” you’re batting 1,000. This example summarizes an influential 1988 study that concluded that the strongest predictor of comprehension was knowledge of baseball. Even the weak readers did as well as strong readers—as long as they had knowledge of baseball.

Not all students arrive at school with the same prior knowledge.

If a student who’s never heard the word “yacht” is asked to read and analyze a text passage about the Henley Royal Regatta, it’s a good bet that they won’t do as well as a student who has. Not all students visit museums, have a library of books at home, or travel outside the country or even city where they live.

Wexler cites cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham in her powerful Atlantic article “Why American Students Haven’t Gotten Better at Reading in 20 Years.” He says,

“The failure to build children’s knowledge in elementary school helps explain the gap between the reading scores of students from wealthier families and those of their lower-income peers…a gap that has been expanding—[w]ealthy children are far more likely to acquire knowledge outside of school. Poorer kids with less-educated parents tend to rely on school to acquire the kind of knowledge that is needed to succeed academically—and because their schools often focus exclusively on reading and math, in an effort to raise low test scores, they’re less likely to acquire it there.” 

How we can support teachers

Change can be challenging, says Wexler: “When you’ve been doing something for years in the belief that you’re helping kids, it can be difficult when somebody comes along and says, actually, you may be holding them back.”

We can support educators by increasing awareness of the Science of Reading, the role of knowledge in literacy, and access to tools that support educators in delivering knowledge with literacy. We can also show them what learning looks like in classrooms where all students acquire knowledge and literacy regardless of background.

We can, for example:

  • Challenge the assumption (which predates Google) that when kids encounter an unfamiliar word or topic, they can just look it up. Doing so can impose a cognitive load that can actually interfere with learning.
  • Seek out high-quality products and programs that intertwine literacy and knowledge.
  • Remind educators and decision-makers that—as Wexler puts it—”the students who blossom the most with a knowledge-building curriculum are the students who, in a skills-focused system, would be the kids in the lowest reading group. They are able to offer valuable insights and feel like full members of a classroom community.”

About Science of Reading: The Podcast

Science of Reading: The Podcast delivers insights from researchers and practitioners in early reading. Each episode takes a conversational approach and explores a timely topic related to the Science of Reading.

Linguistic variation and dialects: difference, not error

Teachers need to know about the language variety that their students are speaking.

—Dr. Julie Washington

In this episode, Susan Lambert is joined by Dr. Julie Washington to discuss linguistic variety and dialects as difference, not error, and how to best support all students as they learn to read.

Dr. Washington—professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine (UCI)and a speech-language pathologist—offers practical advice for educators teaching reading to children who don’t use general American English, and discusses how to do so in a way that respects students’ community languages and dialects. She reminds educators that students rise or fall to the expectations set for them, and encourages educators to remember that if they embrace language variety as something that needs to be understood and incorporated into developing successful readers, they will develop successful readers.

MTSS vs. RTI in literacy instruction: What’s the difference?

MTSS, RTI, SoR—it seems that teaching students to read requires educators to be literate in an ever-growing number of frameworks, approaches, systems, and types of developmental reading assessment and educational intervention.

It’s understandable, then, that not all educators know the differences and nuances among these terms, or that they may use them interchangeably or to mean one thing, when they actually mean another.

So, what is MTSS? What is RTI? What is MTSS vs. RTI? That is: What is the difference between an MTSS framework and RTI? What roles do they play in structured literacy? How are they informed by the Science of Reading (SoR)?

We’re here to help you sort it all out.

First, the core definitions

Science of Reading: As we described in an earlier post, the Science of Reading refers to the pedagogy and practices that extensive research has found to be most effective for teaching children to read.

And it’s not just optimism—it’s science. With explicit, systematic instruction, all students can learn to read at or near grade level.

When implemented in a classroom, the Science of Reading is part of a system—one that aligns with a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS).

MTSS (Multi-Tiered System of Supports): The Center on Multi-Tiered System of Supports offers this go-to definition: “A multi-tiered system of supports is a proactive and preventative framework that integrates data and instruction to maximize student achievement and support students’ social, emotional, and behavior needs from a strengths-based perspective.”

Its four defining components are as follows:

  1. Screening
  2. Progress monitoring
  3. Establishing a multi-level prevention system
  4. Making data-based decisions

RTI (Response to Intervention): The very name of RTI shows that it’s a response to an identified problem. Actually, it’s a process and series of academic responses that use data to pinpoint and address the specific challenges of struggling students.

MTSS and RTI are similar in that “they are both problem-solving models,” notes Dr. Brittney Bills, curriculum coordinator at Grand Island Public Schools, speaking with host Susan Lambert on a recent episode of Amplify’s Science of Reading: The Podcast.

Now, the fundamental differences

MTSS and RTI are similar, and can be related—even intertwined. But they are not interchangeable.

  1. RTI is part of an MTSS framework—not the other way around. “MTSS is that broader umbrella,” says Nancy Nelson, assistant professor of special education at Boston University, in our webinar Data-driven Instruction Within an MTSS Framework: The key to implementing the Science of Reading.
  2. MTSS starts with all students. “With the MTSS model, the thought is that the universal tier is the first intervention for all students,” says Dr. Bills, referring to the curriculum, instruction, and assessments provided to all students at a given grade level. We can ask: “What does our data demonstrate that our students need within that universal tier? And how can we apply evidence-based practices, as they relate to the Science of Reading, to beef up opportunities for our students there first? Then it’s a layering-on of supports and problem-solving at those other layers, the targeted and intensive tiers, after that.”
  3. MTSS supports prevention. This distinction goes hand in hand with those already mentioned. We start universal, then identify issues. Though RTI is necessary and effective, MTSS has the aim, and the capacity, to both get at-risk readers back on track and prevent the need for intervention down the line. “It’s proactive and preventative,” says Dr. Bills.

Putting it all together

Amplify’s early literacy suite aligns instruction using the Science of Reading. Blending instruction and knowledge-building (Amplify CKLA and Boost Reading, formerly Amplify Reading) with assessment and intervention as needed (mCLASS®), the system works with both MTSS and RTI models.

Where you can learn more

Amplify’s Science of Reading: The Podcast’s MTSS playlist

Webinars:

Meet Amplifying Your District Award Winner Brittney Bills

Brittney’s passion for reading development shines through her commitment to early literacy. Under a four-year plan she devised, Brittney’s district adopted a new curriculum and system of professional development that embraced the Science of Reading and celebrated its impact on their students.

What does the Science of Reading mean to you?

I believe the Science of Reading is about hope. Knowing 95% of students are cognitively able to read at grade level with the right explicit instruction was empowering for me and the teachers I support. Every child should know the joy and success of reading.

What tools/curriculum do you use to implement the Science of Reading? How did Amplify help?

We are an Amplify district and super proud to be an Amplify district. Last year, we started with Amplify CKLA Skills adoption because that’s where we had the biggest gap in terms of our instructional resources and supporting our students. Then we added on Knowledge for K–2 this year, integrated it for grades 3–5, and started using Amplify Reading.

We started using mCLASS® with DIBELS® 8th Edition with all of our K–3 students. After last year, fourth- and fifth-grade teachers caught wind of these awesome things that the lower elementary teachers had access to that they didn’t, so we expanded mCLASS with DIBELS 8th Edition to K–5 this year. We love the high-quality resources and programs that Amplify has to offer and we have seen some tremendous results early on and had some wonderful success. They’re supporting us in our vision, which is wonderful.

What advice do you have for teachers starting with the Science of Reading?

Just get started. Don’t feel overwhelmed by what you don’t know. We have seen tremendous success and tremendous results, but there’s still a lot of work left for us to do. I would say decide the thing that you want to focus on, pick something that you want to understand better, that you want to learn more about, and commit yourself. In the education world, we are almost paralyzed by the sheer amount of things that need to be done. There’s this sense of immediacy and urgency, that you have to balance with your reality.

Make sure that teachers feel supported because teachers go through a grieving process once they learn more. They feel guilt and sadness about some of the students they have taught in the past. Stay committed to growing and developing because science is going to change and you have to evolve and move with the science.

Watch the Science of Reading Star Awards!

The Science of Reading Star Awards are back!

If you’re reading this, someone taught you to read! You might remember learning your letters with a standout teacher, or simply curling up with a loved one to point out pictures and sound out words.

No matter who stands out to you, it takes a constellation of people to help children learn to read—both inside classrooms and beyond, and from district leadership to student families.

It also takes science: specifically, the science of teaching reading.

And we want to celebrate Science of Reading stars!

That’s why we created the Science of Reading Star Awards. Read on for more information about them, including how to nominate someone for the  2023 Awards. (If you’re already ready to nominate a star in your community, go right ahead!)

Reading educator awards for teachers who shine.

We launched this awards program in 2021—a year when schools, educators, and students were still working to bounce back from pandemic challenges and into a new normal. Even then, educators drove change, leading their school communities on a journey to the Science of Reading.

Our inaugural award program honored educators who championed and advocated for the Science of Reading in their classrooms, schools, or districts.

They generated buy-in. They inspired their peers and students. They successfully brought research-based instruction, phonics instruction, and foundational literacy skills into their approaches—and had remarkable gains to show for it.

Our 2021 awards, both finalists and winners, celebrated:

  • Teachers who directly impacted their students and served as role models for their colleagues by applying the Science of Reading.

Winner: Anila Nayak, instructional coach and reading intervention teacher, Los Angeles Unified School District, California.

She says: “The Science of Reading is becoming my North Star because it’s guiding me to give the best that research has shown for my students.”

  • Principals who have supervised the successful shift to the Science of Reading in many classrooms across several grades.

Winner: Cathy Dorbish, principal, Austintown Elementary School, Ohio

She says: “We know our kids come from all different backgrounds, different opportunities, and parents who read or don’t. By teaching them in this manner, we’re leveling the playing field. Those kids who may be economically disadvantaged, [but] they’re going to be readers just like the kids whose parents bought them 100,000 books.”

  • District leaders who have driven or are driving change using the Science of Reading.

Winner: Alli Rice, elementary ELA lead, Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools

She says: “Teachers are saying things like ‘I never really thought my kids could have a discussion about the Renaissance during language arts class, but they are doing it.’”

Winner: Brittney Bills, curriculum coordinator, Grand Island Public Schools, Nebraska

She says: “I believe the Science of Reading is about hope. Knowing 95% of students are cognitively able to read at grade level with the right explicit instruction was empowering for me and the teachers I support.”

Nominate a Science of Reading star!

Inspired? Now think of the educators in your world—especially those devoted to literacy. Do you know someone who has transformed their classroom and empowered their students with the Science of Reading? What about someone who’s gone above and beyond core instruction based in the Science of Reading to apply these evidence-based practices in less traditional ways in areas like assessment, intervention, biliteracy, and beyond? (And yes, this person might be you!) We also have new categories this year, to honor both the traditional, and less traditional, Science of Reading champions!

Submit your nomination for the 2023 Science of Reading Star Awards by February 28!

All award winners will receive:

  • A free professional development session with Susan Lambert, host of Science of Reading: The Podcast.
  • A library of Science of Reading books to guide their journey.
  • A subscription to The Reading League Journal.
  • A spotlight on an episode of Science of Reading: The Podcast.

The Grand Prize winner will receive full conference registration and associated travel costs to Big Sky Literacy Summit in Big Sky, Montana, Sept. 2023 (dates forthcoming).

Learn more

To hear more from the 2021 winners, you can watch our Amplify Science of Reading Star Award Winners panel, now available as an on-demand webinar, or tune into Science of Reading: The Podcast to hear their conversations with host Susan Lambert.

Their stories and perspectives may help you discover how you can drive change in your classroom, school, and district with the Science of Reading!

Found in translation–the power of cross-linguistic transfer

¿Verdadero o falso? You must be bilingual to support emergent bilingual students in their literacy development.

¡Falso!

An essential component of supporting emergent bilinguals in developing literacy is understanding cross-linguistic transfer (CLT): when emergent bilinguals use knowledge of one language to support learning another.

Educators do not need to be fluent in both languages to identify—and teach—which elements of one transfer to the other.

“Teachers should not feel discouraged in supporting their students who are Spanish-speaking, because there are ways that they can still support cross-linguistic transfer without actually speaking the language,” says Amplify senior PD strategist in biliteracy Lauren Birner.

But CLT doesn’t just happen—it requires explicit instruction. So we do need to ensure that this takes place if we want to support equity in education, especially in early childhood education.

How can educators bring the power of CLT into instruction? And support equity and excellence in education?

Making connections: The impact of CLT

Our recent webinar Making Connections: The Importance of Cross-Linguistic Transfer in Biliteracy Instruction—led by Lauren Birner and Amplify’s Kajal Patel Below—explored answers to these questions.

In the webinar, Birner and Patel Below describe similarities and differences between English and Spanish, discuss how those similarities and differences can impact instruction, and explain why CLT helps English learners leverage skills from both languages to build their biliteracy.

They also underscore why it matters—namely, that it’s about supporting equity in early childhood education and beyond.

More than 15% of our K–3 students in this country are emergent bilinguals, and we have a responsibility to help them cultivate and expand that superpower.

—Kajal Patel

The Simple View of Reading and biliteracy

The idea behind the Simple View of Reading is that the combination of language comprehension and word recognition is what leads students to gain meaning from text. If either language comprehension skills or word recognition skills are lacking, students cannot become skilled readers, and this is true in both English and Spanish.

“Research shows that when teachers explicitly teach students what transfers from one language to the other,” says Patel Below, “students are able to devote more cognitive processing time toward the more complex orthography and morphology systems of English that require more time than the more transparent systems of Spanish.”

Birner had this to add: “While components of these domains might overlap, it can be helpful to think of them individually, and how they’ll impact language and literacy development.”

So let’s take a look at the areas of language where we can leverage cross-linguistic transfer.

  1. Phonetics and phonology: 92% of all of the sounds in English and Spanish have a direct correlation. That means that teachers can focus explicit instruction only on the remaining 8% of sounds—such as the rolled r in Spanish. Meanwhile, we can also encourage them to be language detectives and recognize where the languages do connect and how they can use their skills in one to understand the other. That approach, says Birner, “will not only save valuable time and energy, but it’ll also help [educators] recognize bilingualism as an asset for all of our students.”
  2. Morphology: Students can explore cognates like hospital/hospital and celebration/celebración, while also exploring similarities and differences in pronunciation. “Whether or not they are Spanish-speaking, teachers can look to cross-linguistic transfer guidance and start to recognize things, the prefixes and suffixes that are similar across the two languages,” says Birner.
  3. Syntax and grammar: Spanish and English do have rules and structures that differ from each other, in the areas of word order, gender, conjugation, and possession. As students progress in learning these distinctions, teachers can seize opportunities for explicit instruction. For example, let’s say a student constructs the sentence: “The flower of Ana is pretty.” This is not an error, but an approximation “to be celebrated.” Birner says. “It’s a comprehensible sentence in English that just needs a minor adjustment. We can use this type of sentence as an opportunity to provide explicit instruction on possessives.”
  4. Semantics: Semantics is the study of word meaning and is critical for language learners. Exploring idioms, homonyms and homophones, and other nuances of usage across language can give students the chance to build from similarities and identify differences. “You might do something like hang a chart of idiomatic phrases in each language,” says Birner. “Looking at both languages side by side is a really great way to support your students in learning a second language.”
  5. Pragmatics: Pragmatics encompass the ways people communicate that are nuanced or unsaid. They’re often rooted in cultural norms, which include both physical norms (looking someone in the eye when speaking) and social norms (using euphemisms). “Providing students with explicit instruction on how communicating may differ from culture to culture and situation to situation can help avoid misunderstandings,” says Birner. “It’s also a great way to allow students to see the world in perspective.”

More to explore

Amplify’s biliteracy programs, rooted in the Science of Reading, can help all educators engage with multilingual learners and make the most of cross-linguistic transfer and dual language education. Here are some additional resources for you:

Biliteracy principles, as shared by biliteracy experts (students!)

Our biliteracy video playlist

”The Importance of Dual Language Assessment in Early Literacy” (white paper)

The Importance of Dual Language Assessment in Early Literacy (infographic)

Principles of Biliteracy + the Science of Reading

The Science of Reading

National Reading Month: Making reading in elementary schools fun

Happy National Reading Month!

Of course, every month is reading month—and every day is reading day!

But March makes National Reading Month official, and we’d like to help you celebrate.

  • “Brain Builders” is an animated video series you can share with your students to help them understand what the brain does in order to read—placing reading science in the hands (and brains!) of students.

Your kids will join Minh on his journey as his babysitter, Tamara, helps him cultivate a love for reading—while also learning a bit of cognitive science. The series includes 13 episodes that you won’t want to miss!

  • ”Reading Buddies” makes learning to read fun (with the help of a talking dog, of course). Created by a pair of performers during the COVID-19 quarantine, the show became a smash hit when The Reading League came on to help it grow.

The series is based on the Science of Reading—but that’s not why students like it! They get to follow and practice along with Dusty the Dog as his person, Dott, teaches him to read. All the while, the kids are learning the underlying components of skillful word reading such as phonological awareness, letter names/sounds, and blending sounds.

And for a little good old-fashioned coloring, we’ve also created this literary reference sheet for your students to bring alive with their own imaginations.

We hope you enjoy celebrating your kids’ brains and creativity!

More to read and learn

From Amplify’s Science of Reading: The Podcast:

Find out how “Reading Buddies” came to be (and managed to outpace “Sesame Street”)!

Meet Margaret Goldberg, co-founder of The Right to Read Project, to get her take on Brain Builders and the importance of the comprehension strand of the Science of Reading.

Request a free sample of CKLA.

Celebrating three years of Science of Reading: The Podcast

And three million downloads, too!

If there’s one thing we’ve all needed the past few years, it’s been each other. That’s why we’re so grateful for everyone who’s come together since we launched Science of Reading: The Podcast.

Our guests—educators, advocates, lawmakers, psychologists, and more—have shared their time and expertise on all things Science of Reading. Some led us deep into data, others into education policy and classroom culture. Together we’ve built and evolved our understanding of quality Science of Reading curriculum; strategies for reading comprehension, fluency, and intervention; and so much more.

Now more than ever, we believe all educators should have access to the essential conversations happening around research, legislation, and resources affecting how students become skilled readers.

We extend our thanks to our three years of guests on Science of Reading: The Podcast—not to mention our Facebook community of more than 90,000 committed and passionate educators. All of you helped make sure those conversations happened, and continue to happen.

How Science of Reading: The Podcast is transforming education

We care about this podcast because we care about the Science of Reading. And we care about the Science of Reading because we care about kids and their future. We know you do, too, so we’d like to talk a bit more about our shared vision and values for reading educators. These include the following:

  • It’s important to bridge the gap between research and practice. That’s how educators get the tools and resources they need to make informed choices about how best to teach reading.
  • Educators should be up to speed—with information from leading experts—on topics such as phonemic awareness, fluency, comprehension, and more.
  • Connection and community are crucial. Educators truly benefit from insight into the challenges and successes of their peers. They use this knowledge to inform their own teaching practices.

With Science of Reading: The Podcast, we strive to provide that forum and platform for educators. Our hope is to not only deliver the latest expert knowledge, but also to provide a community in which educators can connect and learn from each other. With these three million downloads (and the next three million!), we know we can revolutionize the future of reading.

Listen to the podcast now

More to read and learn

Check out all our podcasts.

Learn more about the Science of Reading.

5 ways to shift from balanced literacy to the Science of Reading

The Science of Reading is a big deal. We’re serious when we say that literacy instruction based on the Science of Reading can change lives, and we’re not the only ones.

Our friends at the Reading League say that instruction based on the Science of Reading “will elevate and transform every community, every nation, through the power of literacy.”

So it stands to reason that shifting to a Science of Reading curriculum is a pretty big deal, too. It’s not a light lift or a quick fix, and that makes total sense.

That’s why we want to help you make the shift. And actually, shifts.

Any big change is best done gradually. That’s why we’ve identified five key shifts in reading instruction that will set you on the path to transforming your classroom(s)—and your students’ futures.

The science of teaching reading

But first, a quick refresher.

As you likely know, the Science of Reading refers to the pedagogy and practices proven by extensive research to effectively teach children how to read. Learning to read is not innate and must be taught—and evidence from numerous studies tells us how.

This is where a Science of Reading-based approach differs fundamentally from a balanced literacy approach.

Balanced literacy can have several meanings, but generally it refers to instruction that focuses on a combination of shared reading, guided reading, and independent reading, with foundational skills typically not emphasized and rarely taught systematically.

While researchers are always learning new things and updating their understanding about literacy instruction, we do now know more than ever about how the brain learns to read and what methods are most effective in teaching reading. The conclusion? With explicit, systematic instruction, the vast majority of students can learn to read at or near grade level. That instruction must include phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, with an emphasis on background knowledge. There is a lot of information to learn. What’s the best way to funnel it into daily classroom instruction? The answer is gradually.

Five incremental shifts from balanced literacy to the Science of Reading

Let’s explore the changes you can make today as you explore and implement true Science of Reading instruction.

  1. Use decodable readers, not leveled readers. Decodable readers—simple books that focus on the letter-sound correspondences that students have learned—support students in developing their phonics knowledge, rather than guessing or using picture cues. They support the systematic approach to instruction aligned with the Science of Reading, and they can even replace a workshop model with guided reading and leveled readers or predictable text.
  2. Provide all students with dedicated, systematic phonics instruction, not mini-lessons or isolated phonics instruction. Effective phonics instruction—for every student—takes time and is deliberately sequenced. (At least 60 minutes a day is required for solid, systematic foundational skills development.) Phonics instruction should also be part of a comprehensive Science of Reading approach to literacy instruction (as part of your core curriculum) versus taught as part of a disconnected program.
  3. Help students with phonics-based scaffolds, not three-cueing or word guessing. This is the part where learning to decode actually rewires students’ brains for reading. It requires that you provide scaffolds and ask students to practice sounding it out rather than responding to context clues. Spend your time on this approach, rather than on reading predictable books that make it easy for kids to spot and memorize patterns.
  4. To build comprehension skills, develop students’ knowledge. The Science of Reading shows that literacy skills grow best on a foundation of knowledge. In other words, the more you know, the easier and faster you can understand texts you encounter in the world. Spend two or three weeks on focused literary, social studies, and science topics. The topics should build on each other and deepen understanding and vocabulary. This approach can replace studying disconnected topics and practicing comprehension skills (exercises where students find the main idea or determine the author’s purpose) without attention to background knowledge.
  5. Follow a clear instructional path, not a choose-your-own-adventure model. The Science of Reading supports a path over patchwork approach. A cohesive curriculum with explicit guidance is the most beneficial—yet overlooked—element of teaching reading effectively. It can replace an approach with multiple instructional pathways and moving parts, and it gives every student the support they need now without waiting for intervention.
Listen to the podcast now

Learn more

Landing page for ebook

Science of Reading webinars 

Science of Reading microsite

Science of Reading: The Podcast

Is this literacy program true to the Science of Reading?

We’ll show you how to tell.

We know how children learn to read. We know how to teach children to read. That’s all thanks to the Science of Reading.

As you likely know, the Science of Reading refers to the pedagogy and practices proven by extensive research to effectively teach children how to read. Learning to read is not innate, but it can be taught—and science tells us how.

That’s why it’s so important to use literacy programs that are truly grounded in the Science of Reading.

But how can you tell which ones are and which ones are not? It can be confusing. Some programs may be partially aligned with the Science of Reading, or use bits and pieces of pedagogy based on it.

But true Science of Reading programs have it in their DNA. And we can show you how to find them.

Explicit and systematic structure

One of the research-based frameworks used in the Science of Reading is the Simple View of Reading.

According to the Simple View, two cognitive capacities are needed for proficient reading: (1) understanding the language (comprehension) and (2) recognizing words in print (decoding).

A true Science of Reading program is built from the start for students to develop these skills. And it’s built to do so in a developmentally appropriate way. That is, program structure matters, too.

Some programs may add supplemental Science of Reading activities to address these needs. Some have been modified to do the same. But that’s not the same as a comprehensive program designed to develop them, explicitly and systematically. That kind of program is truly rooted in the Science of Reading.

The importance of knowledge building

Again, reading depends on both decoding and comprehension. For many years, classroom observation and received wisdom suggested that comprehension should be taught as its own set of skills, while allowing decoding to develop more naturally.

But cognitive science research now shows that early literacy skills are best built deliberately—on a foundation of knowledge. In fact, knowledge-building is not a result of reading and comprehension, but a prerequisite for it. The more you know, the faster you learn.

Some programs rely on the strategy of activating students’ prior knowledge. But not all kids have the same prior knowledge. Diverse backgrounds and experiences mean that not all kids will come to school with the same information about, let’s say, baseball, or the beach.

So a true Science of Reading program will expose students to a diverse array of new topics spanning history, science, and literature. Those topics will be organized in an intentional sequence that builds knowledge coherently within and across grades. And they will make reading accessible to all students.

The foundational skills readers need

Some programs focus on phonemic awareness and phonics. Those are foundational skills, but they’re not all of the foundational skills. The Science of Reading shows that five components are fundamental to reading: phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.

Students require instruction in all five in order to learn to recognize words and use that knowledge for reading and writing.

As students develop these foundational skills, they develop automaticity. With practice, they are able to recognize words more and more quickly and move from decoding to comprehension.

A true Science of Reading program will include all foundational skills and will deliver the regular practice students need to become automatic decoders.

How Amplify CKLA is built on the Science of Reading

The Science of Reading is in Amplify CKLA‘s DNA. The program was built from the ground up:

  • On the Simple View of Reading.
  • To deliver knowledge on an even playing field for all students.
  • With texts that develop all five foundational literacy skills.

With CKLA, students build knowledge through diverse and enriching content domains. They refine foundational skills through explicit, systematic, phonics-focused instruction. And they do it all in one program, with a detailed road map that guides teachers on every step of the reading journey.

Listen to the podcast now

Additional resources

5 ways to shift from balanced literacy to the Science of Reading

MTSS vs. RTI in literacy instruction: What’s the difference?

Introducing our 2023 Science of Reading Star Award finalists!

Roll out the red carpet and shine those spotlights—it’s time to meet the 25 finalists for our 2023 Science of Reading Star Awards!

These educators and leaders help light the way for the next generation. They’ve implemented Science of Reading principles and guided their students toward lifelong literacy. They’ve demonstrated expert change management and professional development. Get ready to meet some of the brightest minds in education as we celebrate their achievements and see what makes them truly stellar!

Join our virtual event and awards program on May 23.

But first…meet our 2023 finalists! Below, you’ll hear from the nominees themselves, as well as the colleagues who nominated them, about what makes them stars.

The Changemaker Award

For exemplary leadership in guiding a district through a shift to the Science of Reading.

And the finalists are…

Heather Campbell
Learning Coach, Sunset Elementary, Washington County District, UT
Why she’s a star: “Heather’s philosophy that all students can learn to read if given proper instruction has changed the data. Our school made the change and the data is showing our students are thriving.” —Shelli Campbell, Learning Coach

Javonna Mack
Lead Content Teacher, Caddo Parish School, LA
Why she’s a star: “Whether working with students or teachers, Mrs. Mack keeps best practices grounded in the Science of Reading at the forefront. She constantly strives to build teachers’ expertise in teaching students to read through content-rich professional learning communities, often on Saturdays or after the workday has ended.” —Shannon Southwell, Lead Content Teacher

Aaron Jura
Reading Interventionist, Bloomingdale, IL School District
Why he’s a star: “Aaron has been the catalyst for our entire district embracing this shift to the Science of Reading, and we are just at the beginning of this amazing journey.” —Nicole Gabany, Reading Interventionist

Nicole Peterson
Director of PreK–8 Education, Sampson County Schools, NC
Why she’s a star: “She has created, initiated, implemented, monitored, evaluated, and adjusted processes and systems to ensure that teachers have access to resources, training, materials, and professional development to ensure that all students gain equitable access to high-quality, evidence-based instruction.” —Matthew McLean, Director, PreK–8th Grade Education

Virginia Quinn-Mooney
Teacher, Northville Elementary School, CT
Why she’s a star: “Virginia has gone from one person with a personal commitment to advancing her literacy knowledge. She has now impacted countless educators, parents, etc., with her tenacity and learning journey.” —Nicole Gregory, Teacher

The Data Dynamo Award

For commendable use of data to align a literacy system and maximize student achievement

Shennoy Barnett
Kindergarten Teacher, South Smithfield Elementary, NC
Why she’s a star: “My objective is to help as many children as I can become fluent readers and critical thinkers. As a literacy specialist here for just four months, I made great strides with literacy with my students.” —Shennoy Barnett, Kindergarten Teacher

Anne Elizabeth Carter
Kindergarten Teacher, Wake County District, NC
Why she’s a star: “Through systematic and explicit phonics instruction as well as targeted language comprehension instruction—using texts that incorporate science and social studies content as well as build knowledge systematically—my kiddos were TRULY learning how to read accurately and fluently.” —David Gaudet, Principal

Bethani Ploegstra
Kindergarten Teacher, Union Colony Elementary, CO
Why she’s a star: “She takes data from mCLASS® DIBELS®, Lexia, and SchoolPace (part of our reading curriculum), as well as formative feedback from what she hears and sees students doing daily in the classroom, to immediately adjust what she presents next to students, whether individually, in small groups, or whole class.” —Mandy Bailey, Assistant Principal

The Knowledge Builder Award

For showing the world that the Science of Reading is more than just phonics, and empowers students with knowledge from elementary to middle school

Corey Beil
Instructional Interventionist, Quakertown Community School District, PA
Why he’s a star: “He incorporated literacy into his daily math instruction by providing our students with opportunities to understand and connect with the content more deeply. Our students were exposed to practicing literacy concepts while expanding their mathematical knowledge and foundational understanding.” —Julianne Pennabaker, Teacher

Kim Smaw
Principal, Rosalyn Yalow Charter School, NY
Why she’s a star: “She was able to persuade the learning community to adopt the Science of Reading, firmly convincing them that this curriculum could empower students to gain rich learning experiences.” —Deirdre Frost, Reading Intervention Specialist

Angie Dutton
Instructional Coach, Onslow County Schools, NC
Why she’s a star: “Her positive attitude about the Science of Reading is contagious and is most likely why other educators feel comfortable reaching out to her for questions and guidance.” —Stacey Horne, Instructional Coach

Nicole Brodie
ELA Grade 7 Teacher, Long Middle School, GA
Why she’s a star: “She encourages her students to use their [voices] for change and impact and supports them in their learning process academically, [socially, and emotionally].”
—Renee Dawson, Grade 7 English Language Arts Teacher

The Intervention Innovator Award

For admirable use of intervention strategies to get at-risk readers back on track

Suzanne Maddox
RTI Teacher, Robertson County Schools, TN
Why she’s a star: “Mrs. Maddox reviewed individual student data, worked with teachers, and began using CKLA Skills and the intervention materials provided with this curriculum to continue a sounds-first approach to meeting the individual needs of students.” —Brooke Callis, RTI Teacher

Sara Thornton
Reading Interventionist, Senior Team Lead, Schmitt Elementary, CO
Why she’s a star: “Sara’s enthusiasm for and dedication to her work has been an inspiration to all involved and has resulted in a successful transition to the Science of Reading—as evidenced by our students’ amazing academic growth!” —Hayley Gunter, Reading Interventionist, Senior Team Lead

Markaya Aga
Reading Interventionist, Merit Academy, CO
Why she’s a star: “Since she has come on board at our school, the mindset around literacy and the growth of our programming [has improved] ten-fold. We need more educators like Markaya!” —Allison Hanson, Reading Interventionist

The Language Luminary Award

For outstanding success in developing the skills and strengths of emergent bilingual students

Wanda Ramirez
Grade 2 Teacher, El Sol Science and Arts Academy, CA
Why she’s a star: “We used to emphasize to students that what they know in one language cannot be used in the other language. Now, as a dual-immersion educator, I have the opportunity to change that mindset, teach my students to embrace their native [language], and empower them to use their entire linguistic ability. It’s a very powerful thing to be able to do.” —Wanda Ramirez, Grade 2 Teacher

Esmeralda Martinez
Kindergarten Teacher, Compass Community Schools, TN
Why she’s a star: “She has consistently worked on improving her teaching methods, tried new ways to engage the class, and worked diligently to support all of our students.” —Rachel, Marinari, Teacher

Christine Black
ESL Teacher, North Dover Elementary School, NJ
Why she’s a star: “We have a rapidly expanding ESL population, and Mrs. Black works tirelessly to ensure that her students are expanding their ELA skills in accordance with the major tenets of the Science of Reading.” —Dawn Gawalis, ESL Teacher

Rookie of the Year Award

For showing the world that the Science of Reading is more than just phonics, and empowers students with knowledge from elementary to middle school

Caitlyn Cockram
Teacher, Patrick County Schools, VA
Why she’s a star: “We have offered professional development in vocabulary and implementing SOR strategies, and Caitlyn is always one of the first teachers to sign up. She is dedicated to improving student achievement through research and evidence-based practices.” —Callie Wheeler, Teacher

Andrea Mason
Academic Interventionist, County Line Elementary School, GA
Why she’s a star: “Making the shift from balanced literacy to the Science of Reading hasn’t always been easy. But I continue to research and implement these best practices with my students because I can see that they are now on a path to becoming strong readers.” —Jennifer Ezell, Academic Interventionist

Mallory Pendergast
Phonics Teacher, Literacy Interventionist, Circle City Prep, IN
Why she’s a star: “As a kindergarten teacher, she led 100% of her scholars to be reading on grade level in the first quarter and maintained that momentum through the first semester.” —Sami Hyde, Senior Instructional Coach

ESSER Ace Award

For notable and innovative use of stimulus funds to help kids rediscover the joy of reading

Stephanie Hurst
District Literacy Specialist, Maple Avenue Elementary, NH
Why she’s a star: “She is also a voice on the utilization of [the] ESSER Fund—using the distribution of funds per federal protocol to ensure that the district’s lowest-performing schools have access to quality instructional materials and professional development all grounded in the Science of Reading.” —Mark Blount, K–12 Literacy Specialist

Callie Wheeler and Sara Vernon
Instructional Coaches, Patrick County Schools, VA
Why Callie’s a star: “Mrs. Wheeler played a key role in creating a culture of literacy within our schools, where the Science of Reading is central to the education of our students.” —Sara Vernon, Instructional Coach
Why Sara’s a star: “Sara has worked tirelessly to make the shift from the vision that was grounded in balanced literacy to one that is now making waves in Southwest Virginia with its Know Better, Do Better, Be Better approach to reading instruction.” —Callie Wheeler, Instructional Coach

Edie Bostic
Literacy Coach, Gallia Local, OH
“As a teacher, district Title I coordinator, elementary principal, and now district literacy coach, she continually champions the students under her care and is passionate about those students receiving the highest levels of instruction.” —Leslie Henry, Principal

Inspired? We are! Register to join our May 23 Science of Reading Star Awards virtual ceremony!

More to explore

Learn with and from other top-notch educators like you through our family of podcasts.

Listen to Science of Reading: The Podcast now

The importance of decoding in effective phonics instruction

Early readers are like CIA analysts, using what they know about symbols and patterns to decipher unfamiliar texts and messages. And one of their most important code-cracking tools? Phonics.

In reading, phonics and decoding are closely intertwined. And the Science of Reading confirms that strong decoding skills help students sound out and decipher unfamiliar words, opening up new levels of reading and learning. 

What’s the definition of “phonics”?

Phonics is a method for understanding the relationship between letters (graphemes) and the sounds (phonemes) they represent in words. It’s a crucial skill that helps students decode and read words accurately. The Science of Reading recognizes phonics as one of the five foundational reading skills—along with phonological awareness, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension—that contribute to reading proficiency. 

Phonics instruction focuses on teaching students the systematic and explicit rules and patterns of letter-sound correspondences. It typically begins with teaching the basic letter-sound correspondences, such as the sounds associated with individual letters or letter combinations (e.g., “a” as in apple, “sh” as in shell). 

As students progress, they learn more complex patterns and rules, such as vowel digraphs (two vowels together producing a single sound, like “ea” in beach) and consonant blends (two or more consonants together, like “bl” in black).

Decoding in reading

Decoding is a key part of phonics instruction—and a vital skill that helps students unlock meaning. It’s what students are doing when they use phonics skills to sound out words, breaking them down into individual phonemes or letter sounds. 

By understanding the relationship between letters and sounds, students can apply their knowledge to decode new words. For example, knowing that the letter “s” represents the /s/ sound allows students to decode words like sit or sun based on their knowledge of phonics.

(A note on encoding vs. decoding: While decoding focuses on translating written words into spoken language, encoding refers to the ability to convert spoken language into written words.)

Why is decoding important—especially when combined with phonics?

Decoding skills are fundamental because they bridge the gap between recognizing individual letters and understanding the meaning of words. Phonics instruction is most important when it teaches and reinforces decoding skills. 

Together, the two accomplish a lot:

  • Building word recognition: Decoding skills enable students to recognize words accurately and independently. By applying phonics knowledge, students can decode unfamiliar words, expanding their word-recognition abilities.
  • Enhancing reading comprehension: Decoding is an essential component of reading comprehension. When students can decode words effectively, they can focus on understanding the text, making connections, and engaging in critical thinking. 
  • Boosting independence: Decoding skills help students tackle unfamiliar words on their own without having to rely as much on context or memorization. 

Phonics and decoding activities 

To reinforce decoding skills, educators can incorporate various phonics and decoding activities. These might include word blending exercises, word family practice, phonics games, or guided reading sessions. 

Phonics instruction gives students the tools to recognize and understand the relationship between letters and sounds. Decoding skills allow them to apply this knowledge to reading words accurately and independently. When educators explicitly teach phonics and reinforce decoding skills, they set students up to engage with the unfamiliar, expand their vocabularies, and become confident and curious readers. 

More Amplify and Science of Reading resources

Science of Reading, A Primer: Part One
Science of Reading: Your guide to making the shift
Science of Reading: The Podcast “Deconstructing the Rope: Decoding with Louisa Moats”
Foundational skills instruction in Boost Reading

How comprehension fits into effective literacy instruction

Many of us grew up doing a classroom activity called “reading comprehension,” in which we would read a short text about, let’s say, sea turtles, then answer multiple-choice questions designed to demonstrate how much of that reading we comprehended. The next time, the reading might’ve been about the history of jazz.

Nothing against sea turtles or Dizzy Gillespie, but our approach to reading comprehension has evolved—and that’s thanks to the Science of Reading.

Let’s take a look at what we know now about how comprehension works and how to make it part of the best possible literacy instruction.

The role of comprehension in literacy instruction

Comprehension is one of the five foundational skills in reading and one of the two key components of the Simple View of Reading.

This framework lays out the two fundamental skills required for reading with comprehension:

  1. Decoding—the ability to recognize written words
  2. Language comprehension—understanding what words mean

In other words, reading proficiency is a product of word recognition and language comprehension.

The Reading Rope layers complexity onto this view, providing a visual metaphor of reading as a complex skill combining decoding skills, language comprehension, background knowledge, vocabulary, and more.

In this context, comprehension refers to the ability to understand and make meaning from written text. It involves not only accurately decoding and recognizing words, but also grasping the deeper meaning, intent, and implications of the text.

Product vs. process: The missing link in comprehension

Historically, comprehension instruction focused on the products of comprehension, rather than on the process. Students could demonstrate that they understood what they just read about sea turtles, but how did students understand it? What were their brains actually doing at the time? Answering those questions can help us better support students.

To do that, let’s look at the students who are not the best comprehenders—even though they have solid word recognition, vocabulary, and background knowledge. What’s missing?

After you read a piece of text, you’ll probably not recall its precise wording, but generally, you’ll remember the general idea. Doing so requires building a structure in your mind that researchers now call a “mental model.” The process of building a mental model is a sort of micro-comprehension.

Weak comprehenders build weak models. So when asked to analyze a character or make a prediction, their answers are not as strong as those of more advanced comprehenders.

We now know that students need four critical skills to improve their mental modeling/micro-comprehension—and thus their overall comprehension.

  1. Interpreting the usage of anaphoras (like she, him, them).
  2. Understanding the use of markers to signal ways that the text fits together — connectives (like so, though, whenever), structure cues, and directions.
  3. Supplying gap-filling inferences. (Writers often make assumptions about what can be left unstated, and weaker readers who fail to make these gap-filling inferences wind up with gaps in their mental models.)
  4. Monitoring comprehension as they read. (When something doesn’t make sense, strong readers stop, re-read, and try to figure it out, while weaker readers just keep going, failing to notice that they don’t understand.)

How background knowledge helps language comprehension

The Science of Reading demonstrates the importance of systematic and explicit phonics instruction.

But students do not have to learn phonics or decoding before knowledge comes into the equation.

“The background knowledge that children bring to a text is also a contributor to language comprehension,” says Sonia Cabell, associate professor at Florida State University’s School of Teacher Education, on Science of Reading: The Podcast. Background knowledge serves as the scaffolding upon which readers build connections between new information and what they already know. Students with average reading ability and some background knowledge of a topic will generally comprehend a text on that topic as well as stronger readers who lack that knowledge.

What we know about knowledge and comprehension should inform instruction. “I think most, if not every, theory of reading comprehension implicates knowledge,” says Cabell. “But that hasn’t necessarily been translated into all of our instructional approaches.”

So, a central question is: How can we help build background knowledge—and thus comprehension?

Broadly, we can work to use literacy curricula that intentionally and systematically builds knowledge as they go.

We can also be “intentional throughout our day in building children’s knowledge,” says Cabell, offering the example of choosing books to read aloud. She suggests we ask not just “‘Do they have the background knowledge to understand something,’ but rather ‘Can what I’m reading aloud to them build background knowledge?’”

Cabell also suggests being a little ambitious in your read-alouds: “Read aloud books a couple of grade levels above where [students are] reading right now, so that they’ll be able to engage with rich academic language.”

Comprehension instruction in the classroom

So, what does this type of comprehension instruction look like? Let’s explore a few science-informed examples:

  1. Systematically build the knowledge that will become background knowledge. Use a curriculum grounded in topics that build on one another. “When related concepts and vocabulary show up in texts, students are more likely to retain information and acquire new knowledge,” even into the next grades, education and literacy experts Barbara Davidson and David Liben say. “Knowledge sticks best when it has associated knowledge to attach to.”
  2. Present instruction that engages deeply with content. Research shows that students—and teachers, too—actually find this content-priority approach more rewarding than, in Davidson and Liben’s words “jumping around from topic to topic in order to practice some comprehension strategy or skill.”
  3. Support students in acquiring vocabulary related to content.  Presenting key words and concepts prior to reading equips students to comprehend the text more deeply. Spending more time on each topic helps students learn more topic-related words and more general academic vocabulary they’ll encounter in other texts.
  4. Use comprehension strategies in service of the content. While building knowledge systematically, teachers can use proven strategies—such as “chunking” and creating graphic organizers—to develop students’ skills for understanding other texts.
  5. Use discussions and writing to help students learn content. Invite students to share their interpretations, supporting them in articulating their thoughts and connecting with peers’ perspectives.
  6. Help students forge connections. Help students draw connections among lessons and units—and to their own experiences—as they grow their knowledge together.

Comprehension goes beyond reading the words on a page. It involves actively engaging with the text, connecting ideas, drawing inferences, and relating the content to one’s own knowledge and experiences. By making sure students have the skills and knowledge they need to comprehend a text, we can help them comprehend the world.

More to explore

The importance of vocabulary in effective literacy instruction

When you learn to read, you don’t learn just to pronounce words—you learn to understand them, and how they work together to convey meaning. In fact, it almost goes without saying that vocabulary is an essential, non-negotiable building block of literacy. 

But there’s actually a lot to say about vocabulary. And in the context of literacy instruction, it’s about much more than memorizing and amassing words and definitions. 

If there’s one word we need to better understand to explore the importance of vocabulary, it’s…vocabulary. So let’s explore the word’s full definition, as well as how it fits into best practices in literacy instruction.

Why is teaching vocabulary important? 

Vocabulary is one of the five foundational skills in reading and a key strand in the Reading Rope. As a word, it refers to the collection of words that we understand and use in language. 

Vocabulary includes both the words we recognize and comprehend when reading or listening (receptive vocabulary) and the words we can use accurately and effectively when speaking or writing (expressive vocabulary). 

But our vocabulary isn’t just a list of words and their definitions. “Words are interrelated,” says Nancy Hennessey, former president of the International Dyslexia Association, on Science of Reading: The Podcast. “We’re storing words in networks of meaning.”

Entwined in those networks is background knowledge. We can memorize words in a vacuum, but they’re not really part of our vocabulary until and unless they’re grounded in what we know.

“Background knowledge and vocabulary are the main support beams in the comprehension house,” says Hennessey. 

How to teach vocabulary as students grow

First, it’s important to note that tactics and emphasis can and should shift as readers develop skills. As Hennessey notes, we can measure vocabulary in terms of both breadth and depth. These elements play distinct yet complementary roles in literacy development.

Vocabulary breadth refers to the sheer number of words a reader knows and recognizes. A broad vocabulary enables readers to understand a wide range of texts and communicate effectively in various contexts.

In the early stages of reading development, educators might emphasize increasing vocabulary breadth—exposing readers to diverse texts, books, conversations, and experiences. In this way, new readers start building a foundation of familiar words that they can understand and use.

As students learn more, instruction can shift from breadth to depth. Here’s where educators dig into the intricacies of word meanings—exploring synonyms, antonyms, contexts, and connotations. A deep vocabulary allows readers to grasp subtle nuances in language and engage in more sophisticated forms of expression and comprehension.

Vocabulary activities and instruction

Hennessey has developed a four-pronged approach to vocabulary instruction, grounded in the Science of Reading. The four prongs are:

  1. Intentional instruction: explicitly teaching the meaning of specific words.
  2. “Incidental-on-purpose” instruction: helping students understand new words as they come up.
  3. Intentional teaching of independent word learning strategies: giving students tools to help them determine the meaning of words on their own (e.g., using morphology, context clues, or even glossaries).
  4. Development of “word consciousness”: getting students interested in how words work to convey meaning, uses of figurative language, etc. 

“These approaches are based on the fact that we know we need to explicitly teach words,” Hennessey says, “but we also need to continue developing vocabulary through oral experience and reading, because we can’t teach all the words that our students need to know.”

In the context of literacy development, vocabulary instruction is not rote memorization of lists of words. And, according to Hennessey, that’s not the way kids relate to it either. Students bring natural interest and curiosity to exploring figurative language, playing with palindromes, and finding and learning what she calls “$20 words.” 

When we integrate these activities into incidental or incidental-on-purpose instruction, Hennessey says, “we can embed this excitement and understanding of how words play such an important role in our lives.”

More to explore 

From full operation to lasting change with the Science of Reading: Phase 3

Welcome to the third and final installment in our series about the change management required to make the shift to the Science of Reading in your schools.

In Phase 1 of this series, we answered the question: Why is the Science of Reading important? We also described its potential to deliver literacy transformation—both in your classrooms and districts, and nationwide.

Change at that level requires hard work at your level, starting with what those in the field often call “exploration.” In Phase 1, we discussed what teachers should know about the Science of Reading. You established the rationale for changing to a Science or Reading curriculum and built buy-in from stakeholders.

In Phase 2 of this series, we guided you in evaluating Science of Reading programs, helping you answer the question: Which program will best help your school or district transition to the evidence-based practices that will drive results for students? We also walked through the selection, adoption, and initial implementation of Science of Reading resources.

And now you’re ready for change management Phase 3: full operation, innovation, and sustainability. What does this phase look like? How will the Science of Reading be used effectively? Where and how will you see student growth? Read on for all this and more.

Phase 3, part 1: Full operation

At this stage, Science of Reading literacy practices are fully integrated throughout your system.

Remember, the three key drivers of educational change are process, practice, and people. So let’s break the full operation phase down into these categories:

Process

Conduct routine data analysis to monitor student progress and determine areas of needed improvement.

Practice

Expand the focus on evidence-based literacy practice to other grade-level instructional areas to support the integration of these practices into the larger system (when appropriate). That might include personalized learning, intervention, support for bilingual students, and others.

People

Plan and implement onboarding processes for new teachers and administrators. Emphasize deeper understanding of resources and instructional practices through continuous improvement, coaching, and mentoring.

Questions to answer at this stage:

  • How has the integration of evidence-based practices and resources impacted literacy development of students?
  • What specific progress-monitoring processes are in place to track the effectiveness of literacy practices?
  • Are interventions effective for students not reading on grade level?
  • Have we reduced the number of students who are at risk?
  • How are staff onboarded and prepared to step into the system?
  • What ongoing professional learning will occur?

Phase 3, part 2: Innovation and sustainability

All these phases, all this work—here’s where it starts to pay off.

With Science of Reading practices fully in play, you’ll see them start to work in the form of student growth.

This stage will allow for refinement of instructional practice and a much deeper understanding of how Science of Reading research affects student achievement.

This is also a moment to continue building knowledge by focusing on middle school. Your middle schoolers need to draw on the foundational skills built in earlier grades—or get the intervention that will help them catch up—and build an academic knowledge base that will prepare them for success in high school and beyond. Continuing to bring research-based literacy practices to middle school instruction will help them get there.

And now, your final set of the 3 Ps:

Process 

  1. Leave room for innovation aligned with the ever-growing body of Science of Reading research.
  2. Consider creating processes that will allow for the expansion of pedagogy based on the Science of Reading into middle schools.

Practice

  1. Ensure that current research and data are informing instructional decisions and continuing to deepen the knowledge base you’ve built so far.
  2. Implement systems such as collaborative conversations about data, peer-to-peer instructional rounds, and the study of problems of practice to support deeper implementation.
  3. Develop professional learning systems and put them into practice.

People

  1. Emphasize a culture of collaboration and shared ownership, as well as a community of practice.
  2. Focus conversations on student growth and outcomes to better allocate resources.

Question to answer at this stage: 

  • What strategies and systems can we develop to encourage innovation while remaining true to the implementation of chosen resources?

Now you have the tools, the plan, and the motivation to help drive life-changing results and improve literacy outcomes for all students by bringing the Science of Reading into your classrooms. We’re happy to be part of that change. And we’d love to hear how it goes!

More ways to explore:

Introducing the 2024 Science of Reading Star Awards

There’s more than one way to name a star. You can honor someone you admire by symbolically attaching their name to a star in the night sky…or you can nominate a teacher you admire or a district lighting the way for students for Amplify’s third annual Science of Reading Star Awards!

As we like to say, it takes a constellation of people to help children learn to read—from district leadership to student families, and from inside the classroom to out there the real world. It also takes science—specifically, the science of teaching reading. And it takes leaders who can successfully lead their district in the shift to a curriculum grounded in the Science of Reading, educators who thoughtfully connect students and their families to the impact of the Science of Reading, and teachers who artfully use evidence-based reading instruction to light the way for their students.

We want to celebrate all of these Science of Reading stars!

That’s why we created the Science of Reading Star Awards. Read on for more information about them, including how to nominate someone (or an entire school or district) for the awards. (And if you’re already ready to nominate a star, go right ahead!)

Honoring stellar educators, leaders, schools, and districts in the Science of Reading

We launched this awards program in 2021—a year when schools, educators, and students were still working to bounce back from pandemic challenges and into a new normal. Even then, educators drove change, leading their school communities on a journey to the Science of Reading.

Our awards program honors educators who advocate for and champion the Science of Reading in their classrooms, schools, and districts. They generate buy-in. They inspire their peers and students. They successfully bring research-based materials, phonics instruction, and foundational literacy skills into their approaches—and have remarkable gains to show for it.

These award-worthy educators can include/have included:

  • Teachers who’ve connected with their students and served as role models for their colleagues by applying the Science of Reading.
  • Principals or district leaders who’ve supervised a successful shift to the Science of Reading in many classrooms across several grades.
  • Schools or districts that are driving changes and seeing incredible results using the Science of Reading.

Meet (and learn from) some of our previous winners!

Javonna L. Mack, Lead Content Teacher, Caddo Parish Schools, LA

Award: Changemaker

How did it feel to be selected as a Star Award finalist?

I was and am still over-the-moon excited about being selected as an Amplify Changemaker Star Award finalist. I was very humbled by becoming the winner. It is an amazing feeling of accomplishment when you receive awards. It has become a hallmark of the hard work I have done in my district to support our push in the Science of Reading.

Do you have any advice for educators submitting to the Science of Reading Star Awards for the first time?

Make sure to tell your story. Be clear and concise. Remember to be reflective of all the ways that you have supported your district. I advise that you speak with your peers and gain feedback as to the ways that you have impacted the work they do. Detail your support. Be unique and track and celebrate your achievements.

Shennoy Barnett, Kindergarten Teacher, Johnston County Public Schools, NC

Award: Data Dynamo

How did it feel to be selected as a Star Award finalist?

It was an amazing feeling even to be considered as a semi-finalist, and an even greater one to be selected as a winner, given that it was my first year using the tool.

Do you have any advice for educators submitting to the Science of Reading Star Awards for the first time?

Your hard work and dedication with your students through [the] Science of Reading will tell your story. Even if you are not selected as a finalist, you are still a winner as you are using an amazing tool and touching the lives of your students.

Anila Nayak, Instructional Coach, Intervention Teacher, Los Angeles Unified School District, CA

Award: Science of Reading Superstar Teacher

How did it feel to be selected as a Star Award finalist?

I felt exhilarated at first and later responsible for sharing my learning about how best to teach children to read. It certainly made me more energized to work harder and continue to improve my practice. The award validated my efforts and steered my obsession to become an efficient and knowledgeable reading teacher.

Do you have any advice for educators submitting to the Science of Reading Star Awards for the first time?

Write your compelling narrative about the impact you make each day in the lives of young readers who need you most. You have the tools to reach students who may be struggling but just have not been reached yet. Tell about how you evolved into an expert despite challenges and how learning about the best ways to teach is an absolutely rich experience. After all, you are impacting so many students through your work. Show your pride, because you are doing important work. The Awards journey opens you up to a community of experts and makes you feel a part of new horizons; you get to listen to many experts and read about the new knowledge that is impacting our understanding of how literacy grows.

You can meet all of our 2023 winners here. Their stories and perspectives may help you discover how you can drive change in your classroom, school, and district with the Science of Reading!

Nominate a Science of Reading star!

Inspired? Now think of the educators in your world—especially those devoted to literacy. Do you know someone who has transformed their classroom and empowered their students with the Science of Reading? (And yes, this person might be you!) How about a school or district that has established strong evidence-based practices and seen incredible results? We also have new categories this year to honor both the traditional and less traditional Science of Reading champions!

Submit your nomination for the 2024 Science of Reading Star Awards by Feb. 15!

All award winners will receive:

The grand prize winner in the District and School categories will receive a regional event hosted by Amplify. The grand prize winner in the Individual category will be given full conference registration and associated travel costs to NCTE in Boston, in Nov. 2024.

Learn more:

Reading comprehension strategies grounded in science

When we teach reading using what science (specifically the Science of Reading) tells us, we guide the brain to start recognizing and understanding those letters, syllables, and words. And the most effective reading comprehension strategies depend not only on explicit instruction, but on building background knowledge.

Comprehension instruction: Breaking it down

According to the Simple View of Reading, two cognitive capacities are required for proficient reading: (1) decoding, and (2) language comprehension.

“Reading comprehension is the product, not the sum, of those two components,” says Dr. Jane Oakhill, professor of experimental psychology at the University of Sussex. “If one of them is zero, then overall reading ability is going to be zero.”

As Oakhill explains further on Science of Reading: The Podcast, each component contains its own set of distinct skills and processes. It’s crucial to help students develop all of these capacities.

Building mental models for new information

Some readers are great at decoding but struggle with language comprehension. Why might that be—and how can you support them?

Here’s some context: After you read this paragraph, you aren’t likely to recall the precise wording—but you will probably remember the idea. Researchers use the term mental model to describe the cognitive strategies for the structure you create in your mind to perform this feat of comprehension.

Historically, educators have thought about the process of comprehension — everything that happens after each word is recognized — as a black box. But now we know that there are two levels of comprehension at work: comprehension processes and comprehension products.

Comprehension processes are the steps you take to build a mental model of a text during reading. Comprehension products refer to the work you are able to do with that model after reading.

Think of the process of building a mental model as a sort of micro-comprehension. Weaker comprehenders build weaker models, so they may struggle when asked to create a narrative text summary, identify a theme, put together predictions, or describe key details of a character’s evolving beliefs.

By actively engaging with text, connecting prior knowledge, utilizing graphic organizers, receiving explicit instruction, and exploring new information, students can learn to build robust mental models that enhance their comprehension of the text. These mental models serve as frameworks for understanding, organizing, and synthesizing information, which then leads to improved comprehension, retention, and critical thinking.

Researchers have identified as many as 17 comprehension processes that affect students’ ability to build and use their mental models. The following are a few of the comprehension processes that weak comprehenders most commonly struggle with, and that with practice, can be targeted for skill development and improved overall comprehension.

  • Anaphora (using pronouns to refer to an earlier word or phrase): Some readers struggle to process pronoun relationships (Megherbi & Ehrlich, 2005), identify antecedents, and answer questions that require resolution of anaphora (Yuill & Oakhill, 1988).
  • Gap-filling inference: When reading the sentence “Carla forgot her umbrella and got soaking wet,” more skilled readers will conclude that it rained. A lack of awareness of when and how to activate background knowledge to fill in gaps may hinder a student’s ability to make inferences and comprehend the text as a whole (Cain & Oakhill, 1999).
  • Marker words: Writers use connective words (e.g., so, though, and yet), structure cues (e.g., meanwhile), and predictive cues (e.g., “There are three reasons why…”) to signal ways that text fits together. Students with limited knowledge of the meaning and function of these words may struggle with the meaning of the text (Oakhill, et al., 2015).
  • Comprehension monitoring: When proficient readers encounter difficulty, they tend to stop, reread, and try to figure it out. Less proficient readers may just keep going or fail to recognize that what they’re reading doesn’t fit their mental model.

Two strategies that you can employ in your classroom to guide students in comprehension strategy instruction:

  • Graphic organizers: Use graphic organizers such as concept maps, story maps, or Venn diagrams to help students learn to visually organize information and relationships within the text. Visualization enhances comprehension (Graesser, et al., 1994). As the text progresses, students can refer to and update their models.
  • Comprehension monitoring: Teach readers to monitor their comprehension while reading by pausing to reflect on their understanding, clarify confusing points, and adjust their reading strategies as needed. Monitoring comprehension helps good readers stay engaged and actively construct meaning from the text.

How background knowledge powers comprehension

The Science of Reading demonstrates the importance of systematic and explicit phonics instruction. But students don’t have to learn phonics or decoding before knowledge comes into the equation. In fact, the opposite might even be true.

Let’s say you’re handed a passage of text describing part of a baseball game. You read the text, and then you’re asked to reenact that part of the game. Which is most likely to help you do so?

  1. Your ability to read
  2. Your knowledge of baseball
  3. Neither

If you answered “2,” you’re batting 1,000. This example summarizes an influential 1988 study that concluded that the strongest predictor of comprehension was knowledge. In the study, which showed readers (with varying degrees of background knowledge about baseball) a passage describing a game, struggling readers comprehended as well as strong readers—as long as they had prior knowledge of baseball.

“The background knowledge that children bring to a text is also a contributor to language comprehension,” says Sonia Cabell, Ph.D., an associate professor at Florida State University’s School of Teacher Education, on Science of Reading: The Podcast.

In fact, background knowledge is the scaffolding upon which readers build connections between prior knowledge and new words. Students with average reading ability and some background knowledge of a topic will generally comprehend a text on that topic as well as stronger readers who lack that knowledge.

But until recently, literacy instruction has typically focused on decontextualized skills—finding the main idea, making inferences—rather than on the content of texts and resources that students engage with. According to Cabell, what we know about knowledge and comprehension should inform instruction for the whole class. “I think most, if not every, theory of reading comprehension implicates knowledge,” she says. “But that hasn’t necessarily been translated into all of our instructional approaches.”

How can we help build background knowledge while teaching reading? Here are some strategies backed by science.

  • Systematically build the knowledge that will become background knowledge. Use a curriculum grounded in topics that build on one another. “When related concepts and vocabulary show up in texts, students are more likely to retain information and acquire new knowledge,” say education and literacy experts Barbara Davidson and David Liben. According to them, this retention even continues into subsequent grades. “Knowledge sticks best when it has associated knowledge to attach to.”
  • Provide instruction that engages deeply with content. Research shows that students—and teachers, too—actually find this content-priority approach more rewarding than, in Davidson and Liben’s words, “jumping around from topic to topic in order to practice some comprehension strategy or skill.”
  • Support students in acquiring vocabulary related to content. Presenting keywords and concepts prior to reading helps students comprehend text more deeply. Spending more time on each topic helps students learn more topic-related words and more general academic vocabulary they’ll encounter in other texts.
  • Use comprehension strategies in service of the content. While building knowledge systematically, teachers can use proven strategies—such as chunking and creating graphic organizers—to help students develop skills they can use to support their for understanding of important information.
  • Use discussions and writing to help students learn content. Invite students to share their interpretations, supporting their thought processes in their own words and connecting with peers’ perspectives.
  • Help students forge connections in small groups. Help students draw connections between reading lessons and units—and their own experiences—as they grow their knowledge base together.

Every day, the Science of Reading has more to tell us about comprehension as a multifaceted skill that requires a combination of various strategies, tools, and techniques to unlock meaning from text. Because of this body of research, we know that when educators bring intentional and evidence-based practices into the classroom, students can enhance their ability to comprehend grade level text, analyze information critically, and engage with diverse subject areas. By nurturing students’ reading comprehension skills grounded in the Science of Reading, educators can empower students to become good readers who can navigate complex texts with confidence and understanding.

Explore more

The Amplify blog:

Science of Reading: The Podcast

Strengthening critical thinking with a content-first approach: How Amplify CKLA is closing gaps in an elementary classroom

In my first-grade classroom, we’ve been studying early world civilizations. My students and I have pretended to hop in our time machines and travel back—first to ancient Mesopotamia, then to ancient Egypt. We’ve written our names on clay tablets in cuneiform and learned what it means for a religion to be polytheistic. We’ve compared and contrasted early farming systems and places of worship. As I prepared to read aloud another lesson a few days ago, I mentioned to the class that it was the eleventh lesson in the unit of study, prompting widened eyes and a chorus of “Already!?”

I teach eighteen six- and seven-year olds in a Title I school, where half of the students are low-income, 75% are non-white, and over half are multilingual/English learners or speak another language at home. In my job, I’m honored to empower students who schools and society have not always served well. I became a teacher to help end that inequity—to close the knowledge gap and ensure that low-income, non-white, and immigrant children receive the tools they need to build a bright future. A growing body of research tells us that a strong base of content knowledge is essential for student growth and success in literacy. We also know that students who come from low-income backgrounds are less likely to come to school possessing the academic background knowledge of their peers, presumably because they have more limited opportunities to come across this type of knowledge at home. For this reason, I’m grateful that around a year and a half ago, my district adopted the knowledge-based literacy curriculum CKLA.

Scenes from a knowledge-based curriculum

What does knowledge-based learning look like in practice? Here’s one powerful example of how a knowledge-forward lesson helped my students succeed in practicing an important literacy skill. We were reading about Howard Carter, the British archaeologist who wanted to locate Tutenkhaman’s tomb. The lesson lends itself well to one of our state’s curriculum standards for the quarter: to make and confirm predictions about nonfiction text. Part one of the Read-Aloud ends on a cliffhanger: After a years-long search with no success, encountering dead ends and tomb robbers, Carter uncovers a hidden door marked with a royal seal.

“A prediction,” I explained, “is a careful guess about what you think might happen, based on the clues you already know. Think about what you know from the story, and predict what Carter might find behind the door.” We quickly reviewed some of the main points as I scribed on chart paper: Carter had been searching for Tutenkhaman’s tomb for six years, pharaohs were often buried with treasure or gold, the door they found was in the last possible place to look in the Valley of the Kings. I handed out papers I’d prepared with sentence frames for students to record or dictate their ideas. We hadn’t yet spent much time this year explicitly practicing prediction-making—in fact, I wondered how many of my students even knew what the word prediction meant—but I could see the wheels already turning behind most of my students’ eyes as they wiggled with excitement, envisioning gold, ghosts, King Tut’s tomb, or a pile of bones.

“Maybe nothing,” one student—a six-year-old who speaks primarily Spanish at home—told me with a shrug as I helped him write down his ideas. “Maybe the tomb robbers took it all.”

How to improve critical thinking—with knowledge

Even though my students might or might not have been familiar with the literacy skill of making and confirming predictions, the rich and meaty Read-Aloud set them up for success. It was rife with topics of interest to many a six- or seven-year-old—exploration, tomb robbers, golden treasure, mummies—which kept them engaged. And it included plenty of details through which they could actually draw a meaningful inference about what Carter might have found. I had to explain only once that a prediction should be based on information you already have—not a random guess—and every one of my eighteen students successfully generated a plausible idea.

This is the magic of a knowledge-based curriculum. It levels gaps in learning by generating a rich, shared base of content knowledge that supports the development of key literacy skills. My students were successful in plausibly guessing what might happen next in the story because they had a strong grasp of the information about Howard Carter. I might have chosen to teach an entire mini-lesson on prediction-making first and then asked my students to apply the skill to a less thoughtfully selected text, or to an independently selected book on their own, but if they weren’t already familiar with the topics it covered, my guess is that they would have been far less successful.

The curriculum standards for literacy in both the Common Core and Virginia (my school’s state) emphasize critical thinking skills and specific comprehension strategies, such as inferencing, over content knowledge. This is understandable: Students must learn to make meaning of a text in front of them, not just read the words on the page. But as Natalie Wexler puts it, “The ability to think critically…is inextricably linked to how much knowledge you have about the situation at hand” (The Knowledge Gap, 39). How could my students make a prediction about a future event in a text if they didn’t understand the textual clues they were given in the first place? Especially given that students from low-income homes are likely to possess less background knowledge about the curriculum they will encounter in school, a focus on teaching skills in isolation can contribute to a far-from-level playing field.

Teaching “comprehension skills” first and then expecting students to apply them is common practice in the method of literacy instruction frequently referred to as balanced literacy. Though the conversation about literacy is, thankfully, moving toward a research-backed approach focused on the Science of Reading, we still have a long way to go. While student teaching during my education master’s program less than three years ago, I was encouraged to teach mini-lessons on topics such as “finding the main idea” and “using topic headings to understand,” which students would then practice with independently selected texts. This approach is not supported by research as a best practice—and it assumes a shared base of cultural knowledge. In that way, it entrenches inequality by privileging students who may already possess more background knowledge, allowing our most vulnerable learners to fall even further behind.

By contrast, a knowledge-based curriculum creates that base together, giving all students a better chance at success. My own experience confirms the research. CKLA empowers my students to take ownership of their learning, expand their vocabularies, make connections, and passionately engage. I’m grateful to use an evidence-based curriculum designed to ensure that every student—including those too often left behind by our schools and other institutions—can learn to read.

More to explore

Using formative assessment to support literacy

Learning to read is not linear. That’s because reading is not just one skill, but a bundle of skills, intertwined and supporting one another.

In the late 1990s, reading and literacy expert Hollis Scarborough helped us visualize this complex process by creating a model that’s now known as the Reading Rope. Grounded in the Science of Reading, this now-iconic model emphasizes the need for a comprehensive, deliberate approach to reading instruction. It’s an approach that recognizes the importance of building both reading skills and the background knowledge that makes them even stronger.

The Reading Rope model also connects educators to key strands of formative data that guide instruction and assessment.

With data and information that support the relationship between language comprehension and word recognition skills, teachers can devise reading comprehension strategies and get a better idea of where to focus their instruction. And thanks to the Science of Reading, this data can also help you track what students know, and where they need to go.

Let’s take a closer look to see how it all works.

Reading comprehension and more: The strands of the Reading Rope

The design of the Reading Rope shows that the two core components of reading are word recognition and language comprehension.

Word recognition encompasses the ability to accurately, effortlessly, and rapidly decode printed words. Phonological awareness, phonics, and sight word recognition contribute to this strand.

  • Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the individual sounds (phonemes) within spoken words. It includes skills such as identifying rhymes, segmenting words into syllables, and manipulating sounds within words. Phonological awareness provides the foundation for phonics instruction.
  • Phonics involves the systematic relationship between letters and the sounds they represent. It includes understanding letter-sound correspondences, decoding unfamiliar words by applying sound-symbol relationships, and blending sounds to form words. Phonics instruction gives students the tools to decode printed words.
  • Sight word recognition happens when students have had enough practice decoding words that they can automatically recognize and apply sound-spelling patterns across words. Automaticity in word recognition allows students to shift their focus from decoding to comprehending texts.

Language comprehension involves the understanding of spoken and written language. This includes vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and the ability to make inferences and draw conclusions. Language comprehension allows readers to extract meaning from and create meaning with text.

  • Vocabulary refers to the words one knows and understands, both orally and in writing. A robust vocabulary enhances comprehension and communication.
  • Grammar and syntax are the rules and structures that govern language. Understanding and applying grammatical rules help students comprehend and construct sentences, enhancing their ability to make meaning from and create meaning with text.
  • Inference skills involve the ability to draw conclusions, make predictions, and derive implicit meaning. With these skills, students are able to combine their background knowledge with information in the text to make guesses and reach conclusions.

The importance of knowledge

The Reading Rope affirms that readers use their existing knowledge and experiences to make sense of what they are reading. A student who brings relevant background knowledge to a text can understand it even better than a stronger reader who’s new to the topic.

Background knowledge also helps readers navigate unfamiliar vocabulary or concepts. When readers encounter words or ideas they already have some familiarity with, they can make connections and use contextual clues to determine meaning, which contributes to reading fluency and comprehension.

Intentionally building background and academic knowledge—coupled with comprehension strategies—fuels students’ capacity to understand texts, answer questions, and grapple with ideas.

As educators Barbara Davidson and David Liben write: “Although students’ independent reading is often at lower complexity levels at the beginning of a unit, as they acquire knowledge about the core topic they are generally able to read texts on their related topic at complexity levels greater than their diagnosed grade level.”

Putting it all together with formative assessment

There are a variety of ways to gather information about your students’ skills and knowledge, using the Reading Rope as your guide. Here are just a few examples that correspond to its strands:

Word recognition

  • Letters: See how students do with letter-sound correspondence tasks such as: matching graphemes to phonemes, writing letters that represent sounds, word-building activities, and sound sorts with word cards.
  • Words: Gauge students’ ability to apply sound-symbol correspondences by asking them to spell words with sound-spelling patterns they’ve already learned.

Language comprehension

  • Knowledge: How much are students learning about a topic overall? Keep asking—through pre-reading tasks, discussions, and checks for understanding.
  • Vocabulary: Track students’ vocabulary growth with word-mapping, context-clue, and word-brainstorming tasks.

Skilled reading

Here’s where it all comes together. Many formative assessment activities will help you discover what your students know about the skills they’re using as readers. Here, we’ll focus on the power of students speaking and writing about what they’re reading.

  • Speaking: As children learn to speak, they develop vocabulary and knowledge of sentence structure, both of which support reading comprehension. Simply giving students the opportunity to talk about a topic can provide insight into their oral language development.
  • Writing: Challenge students to write summaries, critiques, and analyses of texts to see what they’re comprehending from what they’re reading.

More to explore

Alert: Progress in early literacy is slowing.

The latest middle-of-school-year data from Amplify show that throughout the spring and fall of 2023, schools across the country made some progress increasing the number of K–2 students on track for learning to read. But that progress is slowing.

Between 2021–2022 and 2022–2023, the number of K–2 students on track for learning to read increased by four to five percent across all grades; however, between 2022–2023 and 2023–2024, the increase was only two percent in each grade. Yet this is not the time for slow progress, because literacy rates in the United States are already a concern. Only half of K–2 students are on track for learning to read, and three in ten students are far behind.

To address slowing gains, schools and districts need to act now to accelerate literacy outcomes.

Early reading: Why we need to act now

The decline is especially urgent for students in kindergarten through the second grade. That’s because of what comes next: third grade, known to be the make-or-break year for reading and future academic success. To put it bluntly, students who are not proficient in reading before entering fourth grade are much more likely than their peers to struggle in school, and they are much more likely to drop out.

“The data is clear—literacy rates at the earliest and most critical time for student development are slowing. Changing this course requires schools and districts to act now and review their approaches in all grades,” says Susan Lambert, chief academic officer of elementary humanities at Amplify. “Schools that deliver strong outcomes focus on building a solid foundation at the start and intervening quickly when students need extra support, rather than trying to play catch up later, when it can be more difficult.”

The good news: We know what to do.

When students receive science-based reading instruction, literacy outcomes improve.

Changing these outcomes requires that districts and schools review the processes and practices they have in place at all levels. Schools that deliver strong outcomes focus on getting students on track—and often ahead—in the earliest grades, because it’s easier to get students ahead from the beginning than to catch them up later.

Districts should:

  • Administer universal screening assessments three times per year to monitor levels of risk for reading difficulties.
  • Allocate staff to support students who are at risk, spending additional time in literacy instruction beyond grade-level instruction.
  • Regularly monitor progress for students who are at risk, making adjustments as needed.
  • Ensure that instructional staff gain knowledge about science-based reading instruction and implement high-quality core curriculum with fidelity.
  • Instill a love of reading and books during all school-based programs, with the support of caregivers and the community.

“The good news is that when students receive science-based reading instruction, outcomes improve,” Lambert continues. “And, when that instruction takes place in the earliest possible grades, research shows that most students can be taught to read at or approaching grade level.”

Read the full report.

More to explore

The power of data-driven instruction for reading success

Words tell stories—and so do numbers. Even though reading can take us to magical places and spark immeasurable wonder, it’s data that can best guide literacy instruction (and instructors) toward delivering reading success.

Amplify’s Executive Director of Learning Science Danielle Damico, Ph.D., notes in this webinar that educators and districts can, understandably, get stuck in out-of-date beliefs. One common one is that reading is a natural process, the product of variables we can’t change in schools. But data shows the opposite—and provides immense opportunity.

Data is at the heart of what we now call the Science of Reading—a term for the decades of data now available on how kids learn to read and write, and how to best teach them. In making the shift to instruction grounded in the Science of Reading, educators can make effective use of this data to change not only literacy practices, but lives.

If you’ve been following the Science of Reading movement, you likely know the power of making that shift. But whether you’ve been following it for years or are just learning about it, there are some questions you’ll need to explore. What data do you need to make your case to your school or district? And what data will help you monitor implementation—and future success?

Using data to make your case for the Science of Reading

When making the shift to instruction grounded in the Science of Reading, you need to build buy-in among key stakeholders. Your most powerful tool in this endeavor? Data.

If your screening data shows that 20% or more of your students require intervention, it’s time to make the shift. That key performance metric is sometimes all you need, but other indicators can include high error rates among students reading decodable words, fluency below grade-level, words-per-minute scores, or struggles in identifying base words with a prefix or suffix.

Your teaching materials are also a source of data. When you conduct an audit of their content and approach, do you notice—for example—a lack of direct connection between phonics lessons and texts? Emphasis on visual strategies for decoding? Few decodable texts in the first place? These clues (or even red flags) could point to materials that are not grounded in the explicit, systematic instruction recommended by the Science of Reading.

The same may be true of your shared or inherited instructional practices. Is reading typically taught through isolated topics or generic skills (like “find the main idea”) that are disconnected from knowledge domains? Those approaches to reading could contribute to low performance data—and could help you make your case as you champion a shift to data-driven instruction.

What does data-driven instruction look like—in implementation and beyond?

Science-based reading instruction reduces the need for intervention and allows students to move forward as capable, confident readers. Once you’ve begun to implement data-driven instruction, you’ll need to collect key information to make sure you get—and stay—on the right track for all of your students.

Among the eight core principles of the Science of Reading, universal screening and progress monitoring are two that are absolutely necessary to ensure that all students receive the right instruction. It’s also important that your universal screener measures phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

It’s important to monitor improvement in foundational literacy skills and decline in the number of students requiring literacy intervention as well. Collecting qualitative insights regarding classroom practices and tracking their alignment with Science of Reading principles forms a crucial part of the data landscape during this instructional shift.

And finally, as Danielle Damico notes, implementation data can help you:

  • Confirm that your program has indeed been implemented.
  • Ensure that student learning is meeting key goals.
  • Distinguish between an ineffective program and an effective program not being implemented as designed.
  • Determine opportunities for professional development and coaching.

To take a deeper dive into all the data that can help you champion, navigate, and succeed in this shift, download our ebook The Story That Data Tells: Using Data to Chart Your Course With the Science of Reading and explore our webinar What Does Data Tell Us? Building Buy-In and Determining Areas of Need With Data.

Suite success: How we support early literacy

Educators are expected to balance and deliver assessment, differentiated curriculum, opportunities for higher-level thinking, and remediation—not to mention engaging content that holds student interest and hones early literacy skills. We’ve got to become efficient in numerous systems and platforms in order to pull it all off and help students succeed in early reading. It sounds nearly impossible—and I can honestly say that earlier in my career, it felt that way, too.

What changed that? The Amplify literacy suite. These products have not only fostered incredible growth among our students, but also transformed my experience as a teacher and, now, a literary coach.

I started my journey with Amplify products as a seasoned mCLASS® DIBELS® customer, where I put a lot of stock in the reading foundations’ measures and the data this system offers. The program led to rich data discussions and conversations around appropriate interventions and necessary classroom supports, yet it sometimes felt out of alignment with the curriculum content we used at the time. Our students weren’t always able to put their skills into practice in real time.

Then, a couple of years ago, the Science of Reading became a priority and we adopted Amplify CKLA. This program brought us worldly topics to expand our learners’ experiences, levels of rigor, differentiation, cyclical units of study, and science-based methods. This was the systematic, explicit early literacy curriculum we needed to connect skills and content!

Extending that connection, we found that mCLASS DIBELS paired with Boost Reading provided another layer of support for our students. This combo creates a personalized pathway to strengthen and challenge each learner at their level through engaging, interactive play. Together, these programs provide the perfect blend of actionable data and customized learning.

And just when I thought one platform could never meet the needs of all my students, we added mCLASS Intervention—the culminating piece to the suite, which serves our Tier 3 students (a group that includes even those who have received the Dyslexia Indicator through the mCLASS DIBELS assessment).

Balancing the needs of our readers can be overwhelming. We’re operating in a time of heightened need for proper reading instruction. Our world has never been more connected, and communication has never been a more important skill. The Amplify literacy suite is truly the most effective, balanced approach I have found. It meets your needs from start to finish—whether you’re the student, educator, interventionist, administrator, or parent.

More to explore

5 ways to boost biliteracy with the Science of Reading

Research shows that bilingual instruction (including dual language instruction and dual language immersion) supports the long-term success of dual language learners—in both languages, and beyond.

How do we best support those students?

More precisely, how are we serving our emergent bilingual students so that they can develop their biliteracy? This is a question posed by biliteracy expert and Amplify product specialist Alestra Flores Menéndez. And in our recent webinar Leveraging the Science of Reading to Boost Biliteracy, she and other experts attempt to answer it.

The power of biliteracy

Knowing more than one language is a powerful tool for opening up new worlds, meeting different people—or even just asking directions in an unfamiliar place.

But that’s not all. Bilingualism itself is a cognitive strength. Research conducted in 2015 by Claude Goldenberg and Kirstin Wagner links bilingualism to increased control over attention, improved working memory, greater awareness of the structure and form of language, and better abstract and symbolic representation skills.

“Our multilingual learners really are using their brains differently,” says Flores Menéndez.

And as with all students, we need to start early to make sure they’ve got their best shot at literacy.

The number of emerging bilingual students in our classrooms is growing, with 15.5% of them in grades K–3. That group includes the key developmental year—third grade.

Third grade is seen as the last year students learn to read before they start reading to learn. Without proficiency by fourth grade, they’re at risk of struggle across subjects.

And for many students, literacy is biliteracy. So how to make sure they get there?

Helping all multilingual learners succeed

“Bilingual instruction has been proven to be the most effective,” says Amplify biliteracy specialist Ana Torres, M.Ed., citing research by Virginia Thomas and Wayne Collier.

Other models (English immersion, transitional bilingual) are a fit for students with certain language profiles. As Torres notes, “We have to be intentional and purposeful to make sure there are positive outcomes for all students.”

But the proven impact of the bilingual model shows this: Knowledge of, and in, a second language builds from the first.

Foundational skills, vocabulary, and knowledge are essential, and all transfer to the second language—through explicit, research-based instruction.

Key elements of that instruction:

  1. Assessing literacy in both languages. “Assessing what [students] know in their native language is crucial to their success in acquiring that second language,” says Torres. A 2019 study at the University of Oregon looked at phonological awareness among Spanish-speaking pre-K students. (Phonological awareness represents the understanding that words are made up of a series of discrete sounds.) When assessed in English, 63% of students needed Tier 2 or 3 intervention. But when assessed in Spanish, only 21% did. “We need to look at the overall picture of students’ literacy,” Torres says. “Otherwise they’re going to get the wrong instruction.”
  2. Deliberately bridging from the native language to the new one. Spanish and English share many elements, among them letter sounds. If students know the sounds of the letter m in Spanish, they’ll be able to map that sound onto the same letter in English.
  3. Grounding in the Science of Reading. The Simple View of Reading has been validated in more than 150 studies across multiple languages. Foundational skills, vocabulary, and knowledge can all transfer through explicit instruction.
  4. Honoring students’ home languages, cultures, and community experiences. “It’s well documented that when children feel a sense of belonging, they’re more motivated to learn and experience more success in school,” says Menéndez. “Students should see themselves reflected positively in any curricular material.”
  5. Emphasizing knowledge. Perhaps you’re familiar with the iconic baseball study. Students with prior knowledge of baseball greatly outperformed their peers on reading comprehension—even those peers who were stronger readers. “Building knowledge is absolutely essential for literacy development,” says Menéndez.

Learn more

Explore Amplify Caminos.

Watch the full webinar: Leveraging the Science of Reading to Boost Biliteracy.

Biliteracy and Science of Reading principles in English and Spanish.

Read about The Importance of Dual Language Assessment in Early Literacy.

Binge our biliteracy podcast playlist.