The Science of Reading

📚 What Is the Science of Reading?

The Science of Reading is an approach to reading instruction grounded in decades of reliable, peer-reviewed research about how children best learn to read. It’s not just about phonics—it includes understanding the brain processes involved in reading and using that knowledge to guide how we teach.

Key Ideas Parents Should Know:

🔬 Evidence-Based Instruction
Instruction is based on what research has proven to work. This includes strategies that have shown success across multiple studies—not just what “seems to work” in one classroom or program.

🧠 How the Brain Learns to Read
Recent research shows how children’s brains process language and text. Effective reading instruction should focus on:

• Decoding (sounding out words)

• Language comprehension (understanding what’s read)

• Working memory (holding and using information while reading)

• Auditory processing (making sense of sounds and spoken language)
  
  
  

• 📖 Simple View vs. Active View of Reading
  Older models, such as the Simple View, focused on decoding and comprehension. Newer research promotes an Active View of Reading, which includes:

• Motivation

• Strategy use

• Self-regulation

• Overlapping skills like vocabulary and fluency
  
  
  

🧩 What This Means for Your Child
Reading is a complex skill. Some students may struggle not because they can’t sound out words or understand them—but because of challenges with memory, language, or auditory processing. By using the Science of Reading approach, we ensure every child gets the support they need to grow into confident, successful readers.

The History of the Science of Reading 

Science of Reading: 

Reading instruction that  is based on what has  been scientifically proven  to work. 

Reference to the science of reading can be found as far back as the 18th century, in a study on  the science of linguistics that focused on the proper pronunciations of holy texts. When it  came time to teach the correct pronunciations in student primers, American educators relied  on the “science,” extending it to cover this situation. The actual term “science of reading”  has been used in educational literature as far back as the mid-20th century, but it wasn’t until  the so-called “reading wars” that it became associated with the debate between the use of  phonics or whole language as the best way to teach students to read (Keso, 2022). Horace  Mann, an early 19th century educational reformer, argued against teaching the sounds of each  letter. Mann said if students were taught in this way, they would not learn to read for meaning.  Instead, Mann advocated for students to learn to read whole words (Strauss, 2018).  

Jeanne Chall’s 1967 publication, Learning to Read: The Great Debate, further solidified the war  by presenting reading instruction as an either/or choice between a “code based” (phonics)  approach and a “meaning based” (whole language) approach (Cambourne, 2021). The labels for  each side changed in the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., literature-based vs. skills-based, top-down vs.  bottom-up etc.), but for all intents and purposes, the heated debate between the two sides  continued (Cambourne, 2021). The term “whole language” became the preferred label for the  meaning side in response to Orin and Donna Cochrane’s 1992 publication, Whole Language  Evaluation for Classrooms. After this publication, the debate was often framed using the terms  that are still common today — whole-language vs. phonics (Cambourne, 2021).  

A List of Labels on Each Side

Phonics                                                                        Whole Language

Code-based Meaning-based 

Skills-based Literature-based

Bottom-up Top-down

Explicit Implicit

Fragmented Holistic

The Dawn of a New Century 

At the start of the twenty-first century, the science of reading received increased attention for  two reasons. First, in 2000, the National Reading Panel published a report that outlined which  instructional methods were most effective in the teaching of reading. Specifically, this report  found that reading instruction should include explicit instruction in phonemic awareness as well  as systematic phonics instruction. The report also said that reading instruction should include  oral reading for fluency, vocabulary instruction, and direct instruction of comprehension  strategies. This report carried a lot of weight, so much so that today’s teachers are still often  trained on the five areas that were presented in the National Reading Panel’s report. - Below are some of the recommendations from the report:

Implications for Reading Instruction:

 There are few implications for practice that can be drawn from the small set of instructional studies in the database. What is important is that there are uses for the computer that do impinge on reading instruction. The following is an attempt to draw some of these implications, with the caveat that the implications are clearly tentative and need to be verified by continued research.

•  Computers can be used for some reading instructional tasks.

 Although there are only a few experimental studies that are relevant to this point, they do report successes. What is clear is that as computer software becomes more capable, the opportunities for computers to be used in reading instruction will expand. At the very least, computers can provide opportunities for students to interact instructionally with text for greater amounts of time than they can if only conventional instruction is provided. Although there was no research that provided a general rule for determining what works, careful selections from available software can provide additional instructional assistance in classrooms. Although there is a publication bias to report only positive differences, there were no instructional studies in which the computer did not provide a significant addition to the instructional context.

•  Word processing is a useful addition to reading instruction. 

A very large portion of the database involved studies of word processing. Because writing is often part of reading instruction, the findings concerning word processing are relevant, even though the studies fell outside the criteria for analysis. Word processing has many benefits for writing, particularly in its close match with process writing approaches. Although the implication has not been experimentally tested (in terms of its effect on reading instruction), this seems likely to occur in the future. One implication seems to be that word processing alone is unlikely to make a difference; it must be embedded in other instruction. •

•  Multimedia computer software can be used for reading instructions. 

There are many unanswered questions about the efficacy of multimedia learning. All of the conditions under which multimedia learning is more effective than conventional learning are not known. However, there appear to be many students who benefit from the addition of multimedia instruction to a conventional curriculum. One example that was tested in several studies was the addition of speech (computerized or not) to the instructional context. When multimedia software is available and appropriate, it should be exploited. •  

• Computers do have a motivational use in reading instruction. 

Although there were no experimental instructional studies that supported this implication explicitly, the motivational aspects of computers should not be overlooked. This effect may diminish as computers become ever more common. For the time being, they still retain some motivational advantage over conventional instruction. •  

• Hypertext has a great deal of potential in reading instruction.

 There is a growing interest in hypertext because of its potential to allow the reader to control some of the presentation of text, determining what to read at various junctures in the text. Another potential is the use of hypertext to assist the reader who is having difficulty with a passage. Even though there were no experimental instructional studies on this topic that met Reports of the Subgroups 6-8 Report the NRP criteria, the application of hypertext concepts to reading and reading instruction seems to have a great deal of potential. The use of hypertext and hypermedia on the Internet almost mandates the need to address this issue in reading instruction. In the meantime, hypertext, particularly coupled with Internet access, seems to have been adopted in many classrooms, regardless of the lack of research. 

Area Description

Phonemic Awareness  - Knowledge of phonemes or individual sounds of words 

Phonics  - Knowledge that letters and patterns of letters represent sounds 

Fluency - The ability to read text accurately, quickly, and with expression 

Vocabulary - Knowledge of the meaning of words 

Comprehension  - Understanding the information in a text 

Secondly, in 2001, Dr. Hollis Scarborough conceived a way to further detail Gough and  Tunmer’s model of reading, known as the Simple View of Reading, or SVR. In 1986, Gough  and Tunmer developed a way to reconcile the “reading wars” argument as previously discussed.  Together, they created a formula to illustrate that while reading is a complex mental activity, it  can be represented as two interdependent processes — word recognition (decoding, or D) and language comprehension (LC). When multiplied together, the product represents reading comprehension (RC).  Copyright Professional Development Institute www.webteaching.com

The image of a rope is powerful because it shows how reading is made up of many individual strands, each representing a different skill. Just like a rope can tighten or loosen depending on how strong its strands are, a child’s reading ability can grow stronger or weaker over time based on practice, support, and changes in their learning needs.

Reading development isn’t always a straight path—it can move forward, slow down, or even circle back as children revisit and strengthen certain skills. For example, a child might read fluently but struggle to understand a more complex text, reminding us that both decoding and comprehension need ongoing attention. The rope shows us that all the parts of reading work together, and that reading is a flexible, lifelong process, not a fixed destination.

Understanding Scarborough’s Reading Rope: A Parent’s Guide

Reading is more than just sounding out words—it's a combination of many skills that work together to help children become strong, confident readers. Dr. Hollis Scarborough created a helpful visual called the Reading Rope to show how these skills are woven together over time.

The rope has two main strands: Language Comprehension (understanding what is read) and Word Recognition (reading the words on the page). As children get stronger in each area, the strands work together to create skilled reading.

1. Word Recognition: Learning to Read the Words

These are the foundational skills that help children figure out how to read words:

Skill

What it Means

Examples

Phonological Awareness

Hearing and playing with the sounds in words.

Clapping out syllables in “el-e-phant,” or recognizing that cat and hat rhyme.

Decoding

Sounding out new words using letter-sound knowledge.

Looking at the word ship and using sounds to read it: /sh/ /i/ /p/.

Sight Recognition

Automatically knowing common words without needing to sound them out.

Instantly reading words like the, said, or look without hesitation.

2. Language Comprehension: Understanding What We Read

These skills help children make meaning from what they read and connect it to what they already know:

Skill

What it Means

Examples

Background Knowledge

Knowing about the world so reading makes sense.

A child who knows about farms will better understand a story set on one.

Vocabulary

Knowing the meaning of words.

Understanding that enormous means really big helps with reading comprehension.

Language Structure

Understanding grammar and sentence structure.

Recognizing how words fit together in a sentence, like subject and verb.

Verbal Reasoning

Thinking through ideas and making inferences.

Figuring out that a character is sad even if the text doesn’t say it directly.

Literacy Knowledge

Knowing how books and stories work.

Understanding that we read from left to right, or that a story has a beginning, middle, and end.

How This Helps Your Child

All of these skills develop over time and through practice. Think of it like braiding a rope: the stronger and more connected each part is, the stronger your child’s reading skills will be. As parents, you can support this growth by:

• Reading aloud with your child.
  
  

• Talking about new words and what they mean.
  
  

• Pointing out letter sounds and playing word games.
  
  

• Asking questions during and after reading.
  
  

• Connecting books to your child’s real-life experiences.