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The Science of Reading

Scarborough's Rope
“The body of work referred to as the “science of reading” is not an ideology, a philosophy, a political agenda, a one-size-fits-all approach, a program of instruction, nor a specific component of instruction. It is the emerging consensus from many related disciplines, based on literally thousands of studies, supported by hundreds of millions of research dollars, conducted across the world in many languages. These studies have revealed a great deal about how we learn to read, what goes wrong when students don’t learn, and what kind of instruction is most likely to work the best for the most students.”
​~Dr. Louisa C. Moats

The Science of Reading is a comprehensive body of scientifically-based research about reading and issues related to reading and writing.  This research provides us with the information we need to gain a deeper understanding of how we learn to read, what skills are involved, how they work together, and which parts of the brain are responsible for reading development. 

The brain is designed to process oral language and naturally develops pathways to do so.  Teaching the brain to understand printed text requires explicit, systematic instruction to help the brain make those connections.

Scarborough’s rope and the simple view of reading show us how students learn to read. Students need a very strong set of foundational skills (phonemic awareness, phonics, and fluency) in conjunction with language comprehension: background knowledge, language structure, verbal reasoning, and more, to reach the end goal- overall reading comprehension. Without a solid foundation, growing as a reader and “reading to learn” is quite a challenge. Science shows us that without explicit and systematic instruction, the brain won’t be able to make those connections for all students.