What does the National Reading Panel report actually say? Research is clear: letters > sounds     Phonemic awareness is under attack. Kind of. Mark Seidenberg, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, has written several recent articles (and a book) questioning the efficacy of the way phonemic awareness is being taught. Phonemic awareness, of course, is regarded as the cornerstone skill for beginning reading and a pillar of Orton-Gillingham and “science of reading” instruc

There's nowhere to go but up for state reading scores Linguistics Edge has relocated from Kirkland, Washington, to Portland, Oregon. The move was for personal reasons, but it turns out the Beaver State is the perfect place for those who teach the science of reading. That’s because in the most recent national assessment of student reading and math Oregon ranks 50 th  – dead last – in its fourth-grade reading scores. Lower than Mississippi. Lower than Louisiana. Lower than Arka

Marrying words with mental images makes them easier for students to learn and remember. “He is a good storyteller who can turn men’s ears into eyes.” - Moroccan proverb      S ound structured literacy programs are explicit, systematic, cumulative, and multi-sensory. Much of the emphasis on the latter point arises from Dual Coding Theory, or DCT. Developed in the early 1970s by psychologist Allan Paivio, DCT confirms what tutors working with dyslexic kids were already seeing:

Adults are reading for pleasure less often than ever. How can they encourage kids? I ’ll call her Mary. She was a bright fourth- or fifth-grader who was struggling with reading. Her deficit was not severe, and she was reading at grade level within a few months. She can read what she needs to and did well in middle and high school. But in her spare time she wouldn’t be caught dead with a book in her hands. We tried many genres: short stories, graphic novels, popular series, ch

In recent weeks I’ve had a surge of “twice exceptional” (2e) students, a relatively new addition to the education lexicon. These kids are...

For reading instruction, not necessarily Conventional wisdom deems private schools – with smaller classes, stricter discipline, and...

Sounds vs. letters The foundation of reading, according to experts, rests on phonemic awareness -- the ability to distinguish and...

Most people can’t remember how they learned to read. This isn’t unusual. Most of us don’t remember how we learned to do many things: tie...

The International Dyslexia Association defines dyslexia as “a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is...

“Millions of Americans are not illiterate; they are simply not literate. In other words, they can read and write just enough to get by —...

“The most faithful disciples were…Boxer and Clover. These two had great difficulty thinking anything out for themselves…they absorbed...