he article below provides critical information about the SoR Movement and would be beneficial to multiple audiences. Attached you will find a synopsis and key ideas from the article.

Please share this email message and the attachment with 5 other people you think would find this information useful. Ask them to send this same email to 3 other people. Perhaps they, too, will send this on to more people.

The Science of Reading Movement: The Never-Ending Debate and the Need for a Different Approach to Reading Instruction. National Education Policy Center (NEPC) Paul Thomas

     LINK: https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/science-of-reading 

ARTICLE OVERVIEW

“How students learn to read and how reading is best taught are often the focus of media, public, and political criticism. The contemporary reading reform movement is the latest chapter of a long history of controversies, dating from at least the early 20th century…This policy brief explores the controversial history of the reading reform movement, and provides recommendations for state and local policymakers to provide teachers the flexibility and support necessary to adapt their teaching strategies to specific students’ needs.”

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International Literacy Education Coalition (ILEC)

The article below provides critical information about the SoR Movement and would be beneficial to multiple audiences. Attached you will find a synopsis and key ideas from the article.

Please share this email message and the attachment with 5 other people you think would find this information useful. Ask them to send this same email to 3 other people. Perhaps they, too, will send this on to more people.

Stories Grounded in Decades of Research: What We Truly Know about the Teaching of Reading. Catherine Compton-Lilly, Lucy K. Spence, Paul L. Thomas, Scott L. Decker. 2023. Reading Teacher. ILA.

                                                                                        LINK: https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/trtr.2258

ARTICLE OVERVIEW

Stories Grounded in Decades of Research illustrates key ideas including research informants that challenge the “Science of Reading” (SoR) debates. The authors draw from a “multi-faceted and comprehensive” view of literacy using reputable research support that includes authentic student-centered 

observations. In combination, this offers a platform for understanding not just the WHAT but WHY of responsive professional decision-making that includes child-informed references. Contrary to the ‘simple and settled’ view of The Science of Reading, the authors position literacy as “complex, multidimensional, and mediated by social and cultural practices.”

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International Literacy Education Coalition (ILEC)

The policy statement below provides critical information about the SoR Movement and would be beneficial to multiple audiences. Synopsis of ideas.

                              Policy Statement on the "Science of Reading" NEPC 

The National Education Policy Center and The Education Deans for Equity and Justice issued a succinct and clarifying “Policy Statement on the ‘Science of Reading “ (March 2020) that identifies the numerous detrimental flaws and unscientific claims of the Science of Reading movement. This document clearly states the many reasons the SoR movement causes harm to children and teachers and highlights the “very troubling patterns” grounded in this movement. Most importantly, this policy statement provides guiding principles for what any federal and state legislation should and should not do regarding reading practices and policies.

The article below provides information about scientific studies that refute the SoR movement's message that word solving should not include meaning. These studies show how and why meaning is necessary for effective word solving. 

Synopsis and key ideas from the article. 

ARTICLE

Scanlon, D.M. & Anderson, K.L. Using Context as an Assist in Word Solving: The Contributions of 25 Years of Research on the Interactive Strategies Approach (ISA). (September, 2020). Reading Research Quarterly. 55(51), 519-534. International Literacy Association. 

Link:

https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.335

ARTICLE OVERVIEW

Predicated on 25 years of reading research for word solving using both code and meaning/context-based strategies with explicit, responsive instruction on the alphabetic code, the authors developed and refined the Interactive Strategies Approach for children with reading difficulties in the primary grades and an adaptation of ISA in the middle grades.  Five large-scale experimental (scientific)  studies and one smaller study conducted in kindergarten through fourth grade, show positive results. The research studies described share these characteristics:

1. Reading for meaning.

2. Responsive teaching to meet individual student needs.

3. Children developing flexible and efficient word-solving skills and a set for variability.

4. Transfer of skills to reading continuous texts.

5. Focusing on developing student independence, not teacher dependence.

6. Explicitly and directly teaching alphabetically and orthographically based decoding skills and teaching students to use context as an assist to word solving.

7. Giving older students who struggle graduated informational texts to increase their background knowledge and vocabulary for content area classroom texts.