The Science of Reading: How Parents Can Help Build Strong Readers at Home

The Science of Reading

If your child is already in elementary school, you’ve probably heard the term the science of reading. If your child isn’t there yet, you probably will. The science of reading is an umbrella term for the vast body of research that explores how people learn to read and how best to teach reading. In education (as in most things in the world) there have long been pendulum swings from one way of teaching things to another. Teachers and schools get caught up in the swing and work hard to keep up with the right or best way to teach our children. The emphasis on the science of reading in the last several years is an attempt to ground everyone in the research and to avoid everyone jumping on the bandwagon of the latest, greatest trick.

The Five Pillars of Reading

The science of reading tells us that what matters in teaching early readers are the following five “pillars” that successful reading is built on:

1. Phonological Awareness

2. Phonics and Word Recognition

3. Fluency

4. Vocabulary and Oral Language Comprehension

5. Text Comprehension

So, let’s break down what each of these means and how you can help your child develop these skills at home. Today’s post will focus broadly on all five pillars. Each week leading up to the new school year, I will be breaking down one of the five pillars in depth and sharing ways that you as a parent or caregiver can support these skills in a fun, stress-free way at home.

Phonological Awareness

This big term simply means the awareness and ability to identify and manipulate the sounds in words. This begins with teaching kids things like rhyme and syllables. Then you can move on to breaking apart and putting together the individual sounds in words. Phonological awareness activities are not written down and do not use printed letters. The focus here is ensuring that your child’s ears can hear the sounds and training them to recognize oral patterns and sounds that are the same. Reading and listening to nursery rhymes together are great for this.

Phonics and Word Recognition

Phonics generally refers to the sounds that letters make alone and together. The research tells us clearly that we should teach children letter sounds and sound-spelling patterns (i.e. ai says a in the beginning or middle of a syllable, ay says a at the end of a syllable) explicitly and systematically. There are several great programs you can use to do this, and I will highlight them in the Phonics and Word Recognition post in a few weeks. The important thing to remember here are the words explicitly and systematically. Phonics should not be taught as words come up in reading. It is fine (and may even be beneficial) to explain a spelling pattern your child hasn’t learned yet if it comes up in something they are reading, but don’t expect them to remember that pattern.

A huge part of reading success in the early years is building confidence. I see this on a daily basis with my own daughter. She is four years old and an extremely eager reader. She was ready (not all four year old kids are), so we have been working on learning new phonics spelling patterns and applying them to the books we read together this summer. She is a bit of a perfectionist like her mother, and she can get very frustrated when she reaches for a book and struggles to sound out the words. These are the moments when I explain to her that I haven’t taught her a spelling pattern yet. She can only be held accountable for what I or her teachers have taught her. As a teacher, I used to tell my students all the time that it was great for me when they didn’t know something because if they already knew everything…I wouldn’t have a job!

Clearly, I could go on and on about phonics and word recognition. I’ll wrap this section up for now with one last important note. Phonics and word recognition instruction, whether at school or at home, should include reading AND writing of these patterns and words. Teaching the patterns to help your child read is wonderful, but they should also be expected to use them in their writing once they’ve learned them. I’ll dive more into that in the phonics and word recognition post, as well.

Fluency

Ah, my good friend reading fluency. The part of reading where so many kids get stuck because they simply don’t enjoy reading, and so they don’t do it enough to become fluent. Fluency includes reading quickly/automatically (not having to say each sound in a word when you read it) and reading expressively (not like a robot). The single best way to build your child’s reading fluency is to put books they like to read into their hands and to encourage them to read those books out loud again and again. You know those books your 8, 9, or 10 year old son loves that you think are horrible and not teaching him anything? Let him read them! Again and again and again. I promise you, they are helping to build reading fluency and to encourage him to love stories and reading.

Vocabulary and Oral Language Comprehension

Vocabulary and deep word knowledge has been proven to be extremely beneficial for readers. Young readers with great vocabularies (who know lots of words) will have a much easier time reading because once they attempt to sound out a word their brains tell them, “Oh wait, that almost sounds like this word I know that makes sense in this sentence.” Then they correctly read the word.

In teaching and supporting your kids in reading at home, this looks like having language-rich discussions and interactions with your kids and explicitly teaching them about related words. For example, if I am reading a book with my girls and the word spectacular comes up, I can relate that word to spectacle and inspect. I can talk about what those words have in common. You may or may not know that the root spect means “to see,” but you can look it up together. It’s important for kids to see that you as a grownup are also learning new things all the time.

Text Comprehension

Text comprehension means understanding what you read. Kids build these skills before they can read independently when listening to others read stories to them. This is why daily shared reading is so important for young children. (It also helps incredibly with vocabulary development.) When reading with your kids, you can do what teachers call “think alouds.” You probably already do this sometimes, but maybe you can be more intentional about it. After you read the title of a book you can make a prediction about what the story might be about. As you read you can share a connection you made between the story and your life or this story and another one your child knows. When you are tired at the end of the day and you misread a word, talk about it (i.e. “Wait, that didn’t make sense. I think I read that word wrong. Let me go back to the beginning of the sentence to see what it really said.”)

Final Thoughts

There is a lot you can do at home to support your budding and growing readers. I am here to help! Sharing my knowledge and insights as a reading specialist who has worked with strong to struggling readers for the past 10 years brings me joy. There are few better gifts we can give children than the gift of becoming a lifelong reader.

Teachers are superheroes. I know this because I have worked so closely with so many of them. They work tirelessly and often thanklessly to show up for and help their students grow each day. Not one of them got into teaching for the money. They all chose it because they want to serve others and they believe in children’s potential. Find and thank a teacher today!

Learning more about the science of reading at home will help you better partner with your child’s teachers this school year. Teachers spend years learning how best to teach children. These tips cannot match the level of understanding you would get by pursuing a master’s in curriculum and instruction. They can, however, help you support your kids at home, and what parent doesn’t want to do that?

I hope you will join me this year in our reading adventures. Make sure to subscribe to my email list so you never miss a post! Next week, I’ll be diving deeper into phonological awareness, including what this looks like for older readers.