Essential Skills for Striving Readers

Just in case you’re in a rush, we don’t want you to miss out on this limited-time offer: Use coupon code LLN50-OFF for 50% off your first month of the Literacy Leadership Network.

Plus: We have an exclusive offer for D.C. educators. Thanks to the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), 4th-12th grade educators in Washington, D.C. can register for our self-paced course, Addressing Learning Gaps with Syllable Instruction, for free! Strengthen your understanding of how to use syllable knowledge to improve students' multisyllabic word reading skills by registering today.

It’s no secret that the latest NAEP scores were pretty worrisome. 67% of 4th graders are not able to read proficiently according to the 2022 NAEP. And when we look at our marginalized populations, the numbers are even more bleak. Students who are eligible for free and reduced meals are scoring lower than their non-eligible peers, English language learners are performing worse than their non-EL peers at every tested grade level, as are our Black, Hispanic, and Native American students.

Without the appropriate intervention and support, the odds are that these students will continue to struggle. With these striving students in mind, let’s consider what research has to say about the essential skills all students need to become proficient readers and how not achieving these skills will make learning to read all the more challenging.

Phonemic Awareness

Research has long proven the importance of phonemic awareness in reading proficiency. Students with the ability to blend and segment the sounds in spoken words are better able to decode and encode written words. “Phonemic awareness is one of the most reliable predictors of how well children will learn to read in their first two years of school.” (Ehri, et al., 2001)

Letter Knowledge

The other reliable predictor of early reading skills is letter knowledge. A significant amount of research has found that preschool and kindergarten students with poor knowledge of letter names and sounds are more likely to have difficulties learning to read.

Decoding and Word Recognition

However, letter knowledge and phonemic awareness are not skills that we teach for their own sake. These skills are prerequisites to effective decoding. When students have the ability to recognize the sounds that letters represent (letter knowledge) and then blend those sounds together to form a word (phonemic awareness), they are able to decode words in text. Proficient decoding is a prerequisite for automatic word recognition, because “If a child memorizes ten words, the child can read only ten words, but if a child learns the sounds of ten letters, the child will be able to read 350 three sound words, 4320 four sound words, and 21,650 five sound words.” -Dr. Martin Kozloff

Advanced Decoding Skills

While basic decoding skills are essential, as students encounter more complex words they will need more than basic decoding skills to read proficiently. By the age of ten, morphological awareness is a better predictor of decoding ability than phonological awareness. Knowledge of syllable types and syllable division patterns can also support students in tackling complex words, although this knowledge must be used flexibly.

Fluency

With automatic word recognition skills, students are able to read with fluency marked by accuracy, automaticity, and prosody. Oral reading fluency assessments are strongly correlated to overall reading proficiency, more so passages than word lists. However, it’s important to remember that fluency is not an end in itself but a critical gateway to comprehension. Fluent reading frees cognitive resources to process the meaning of text.

Vocabulary

After learning to decode, vocabulary knowledge accounts for around 50-60% of the variance in reading comprehension. While we know that vocabulary development starts early, effective instruction can help close any existing gaps to ensure all students have the vocabulary skills they need to comprehend any text.

Background Knowledge

In addition to a rich mental lexicon, students also need to have extensive knowledge about many topics and content areas. However, background knowledge doesn’t develop overnight. One study found that students benefited significantly after receiving at least four years of a content-rich, knowledge-building curriculum. The power of this expansive knowledge shouldn’t be underestimated. Studies have shown that this background knowledge can even help students with weaker decoding skills compensate for other components of reading that would typically derail their comprehension.

Reframing “Struggling” Readers

The final component of effective literacy instruction that we’d be remiss to not mention is our own expectations of students. Research shows that student achievement tracks closely with teacher expectations. Let's make sure we're honoring the hard work that our students are putting in to become the best readers they can be! Here are some ways we’re shifting our thinking about students who may find reading to be difficult:

❌ What if they weren't struggling, but instead making a great effort to achieve something really difficult?

💡 They would be a striving reader.

❌ What if they weren't struggling, but instead making maximum use of their talents and abilities?

💡 They would be a stretching reader.

❌ What if they weren't struggling, but instead were given the assistance needed to achieve the complex task of reading?

💡 They would be a supported reader.

Never give up on a child who is struggling to read. With the right help, they can overcome any obstacle. - Dr. Timothy Shanahan

What We're Working On

Announcing February’s Literacy Leadership Network Topic: Do I Have the Right Data?

Here's what's on the Literacy Leadership Network Calendar:

➡ February 5: Live webinar to help you translate reading research into concrete plans for instructional change.

➡ February 6: Webinar recording + members-only resources and downloads so you can take your learning with you.

➡ February 12: 2–4 short videos aligned to February's topic so you can further your learning.

➡ February 20: Live consultancy meeting to give you the time and space to receive feedback from and exchange ideas with peers.

➡ February 26: Office hours to ask our literacy specialists questions about your specific school or district situation.

There's still time to join the fun for this month! Register today using coupon code LLN50-OFF for 50% off your first month!

Attention D.C. Educators!

We have an exclusive offer for D.C. educators. Thanks to the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, DC educators in grades 4–12 can register for Addressing Learning Gaps with Syllable Instruction for free! Strengthen your understanding of how to use syllable knowledge to improve students' multisyllabic word reading skills by registering today.

Here’s what one participant had to say:

“I enjoyed this mix of in-person and individual learning. It provided me with a better understanding of how to teach foundational literacy (phonics) to middle schoolers. I feel better prepared and confident about how to approach this instruction for my struggling striving [TLA edit ] readers."

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