Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

11.11.24What the Science of Reading Says “Post-Phonics” & Meeting Up in Nashville

Bringing the Book Back to Life

It’s exciting times at TLAC Towers in terms of reading.

Colleen Driggs, Erica Woolway and I are finishing the manuscript of a new book about translating the science of reading into classrooms. We’re really excited about it and will be sharing some of our new insights at our Reading Reconsidered workshop in Nashville December 5 and 6. In the meantime I’ll be sharing some excerpts from the draft manuscript here.

The book describes seven key arguments that we think tell us what should happen in reading classrooms “post phonics,” and we can probably best capture what we mean by that phrase with a diagram.

The green portion of the diagram below represents time spent teaching systematic synthetic phonics in the early grades. It is job one. It cannot be over-looked. The science behind its importance, as you hopefully know, has been ignored for too long and reflects a culture in schools that is not as responsive to the science as it should be.

But… systematic synthetic phonics shouldn’t be the only thing students do in the primary grades even if it’s the most important. How else should they spend their time.

And even more importantly, there’s the question of what should happen after the primary grades, assuming students have mastered decoding.

In that area we think there is a massive amount of science that tells us pretty clearly what we should do. And it’s not what generally happens in reading and English classes. So the book tells the story of the blue areas on the chart: what the research in each of seven key areas says and how we should apply it.

So for starters here are our seven key Research-Backed Arguments About ‘Post Phonics’ Reading

1) Fluency is a prerequisite to reading comprehension at all grade levels.

Fluency is the ability to read words quickly and easily as soon as they are encountered. The quickly and easily are important because they imply the lack of reliance on working memory. If the reading itself requires conscious thought, the process will crowd out other more advanced cognitive activities that are required to make meaning of text. The number of dysfluent students in your classroom is almost assuredly far higher than you think!

2) Once students are fluent, background knowledge is the most important driver of understanding and comprehension.

A common misunderstanding about reading comprehension is that it involves transferable skills like making inferences that once learned can be applied to other texts. Unfortunately there is little evidence that the skill translates and significant evidence that the skills happen naturally when readers have sufficient background knowledge to disambiguate texts.

3) Vocabulary is the single most important form of knowledge (but is often taught as if it were a skill)

Knowledge of words—both deep and broad—is a particular and particularly important form of background knowledge but it is often taught in ways that do not reflect how it is acquired and used.

4) Attention is central to every learning activity especially reading, and building attention is a necessary step in effective reading instruction

Attention is the currency of learning-in almost any task. But reading, especially, relies on and requires states of sustained focus and concentration. If the smartphone has taught us one thing it’s that people’s attention is malleable. But this also means we can intentionally build student’s capacity to attend to what they read. 

5) Intentional writing development can play a critical and synergistic role in developing better readers

Done carefully, writing in response to reading can both assist in memory formation and also help students develop mastery of the same code that reading relies on. Short exercises that can be easily and quickly revised and that intentionally develop students’ control of syntactic forms are especially useful.

6) The ability to read complex text is the gate keeper to long term success

Exclusively giving students texts to read that are easily accessible to them can seem easy and engaging in the moment but in the long run students must earn to read challenging text and become comfortable with the struggle implicit in texts they will read in their schooling and careers.

7)  Books are the optimal text format through which to build understanding and comprehension

Books package information and ideas in a unique form to which our brains are especially receptive from a learning stand point and that creates arguments of depth and nuance in a ways that is critically important in a digital society. Moreover books create the best opportunity to create for students the sort of shared social experience that is critical to their sense of belonging in schools.

Over the next few days and weeks I’ll be sharing more detail on these seven arguments so check back to read some key pieces of the argument. Or join us in Nashville to study classroom videos and practice teaching tools with us. If that’s of interest, here’s the link:

Reading Reconsidered: Train-the-Trainer Workshop

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