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Winter WSST Newsletter
What’s the science in sciencebased reading instruction? By Brian Bartel and Kevin Anderson When we start to hear language about the science of [insert any topic], our science teacher minds tend to take notice. That’s why the current discussion about the science behind reading instruction in Wisconsin has captured our attention. Not only does reading instruction directly affect our members who are teaching reading at younger levels, but it also impacts secondary science teachers (and beyond) as they receive these students downstream, expecting them to be able to read proficiently. That’s why we wanted to take some time to address some questions for you, like what is the science of reading? What’s the problem with how we currently teach reading? What will new legislation about reading require and prohibit? Can I trust textbooks and their authors? And how could this affect science instruction? Let’s start with some of the background. What’s the problem with how we teach reading? Many schools in Wisconsin (and across the U.S.) have adopted an approach to reading that includes a strategy known as “three-cueing”, which teaches students to use cues in a book such as meaning, structure and visual clues (or MSV). This may be taught in place of structured programs like phonics, where students learn that letters themselves have specific and learned meaning in our spoken language. And this is when the “science of reading” starts to creep into the conversation. In
the last few decades, we have seen research to indicate that three-cueing isn’t a strategy that good readers use. In fact, it’s a strategy used by slower, inefficient readers. Nonetheless, three-cueing is still being actively used to teach reading. And millions of dollars have been spent in curriculum, teacher preparation programs, and even in graduate programs that have supported this method. Let’s take a moment to reiterate that teachers of reading were trained in methods like three-cueing, had curricula and books that reinforced these methods, and believed in programs that utilized them. It’s just that research for many years has indicated that three-cueing doesn’t work for all readers. But the methods and books they were using were rarely updated with current and emerging research, and that research was often hard for teachers to obtain on their own. Journalist Emily Hanford (from American Public Media) has been investigating how children are taught to read, and has described this problem with the public in her articles and groundbreaking podcasts. Along
