Research on Science of Reading in Education

The brain cannot "memorize" words. Yup. You heard that right. Research by Professor Stanislas Dehaene indicates that whole word reading is an illusion. When someone reads, the brain looks at ALL the letters and activates ALL the sounds. 🤯 Yes, the brain can process the words quickly, appearing as memorization. However, Dehaene emphasizes that, “The brain still processes every single letter. It does not look at the whole shape.” If reading occurred at the whole word level, rather than letter by letter, we would confuse similar looking words. For example:  ➡peace ➡pace Upon first glance, those words appear almost identical. But one letter difference, changes the word entirely. This is why explicit and systematic phonics instruction is critical for students. Students need to be able to decode accurately in order to read words correctly. 🎥: https://lnkd.in/gPJwC9HX #scienceofreading #literacydevelopment #systematicphonicsinstruction

"Given the diversity of learners and the complexity of reading, it is impossible to justify a simple or single approach to teaching reading. While inconvenient and difficult to market, there is no program or product that will teach all children to read. Phonics is essential but not enough. The onus remains on teachers who must use formative assessment and careful observation to attend to individual readers and design instructional activities that will help children flourish as readers." Such an important article from literacy researchers (free, open access) that hopefully pushes us beyond just saying we're "doing SOR" and to instead understand reading as much more complex and think through our responses as we work with children. https://lnkd.in/e5kZn-2n

The #scienceofreading is not just about phonics and foundational skills. These are necessary but insufficient. It is about what we KNOW is crucial when teaching reading and learning to read. Not morally crucial, or socially urgent, but scientifically understood. "The idea that reading consists of transferable skills students can practice and apply across texts remains the dominant paradigm in American schools, despite the fact that it runs counter to the science, which tells us that reading-comprehension success is largely a product of a readers’ background knowledge and that skills like drawing inferences do not in fact transfer across subject-matter domains." #readabook