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As I read new blog posts, articles, and white papers related to the science of reading, I will add the most useful articles to their respective categories.

The blog posts and articles in this post are written by people I respect, but the articles are not the research itself (that’s a future project). As you’ll see, some of these authors have different perspectives on the application of the science of reading. I do not agree with all of their perspectives, and they do not always agree with each other.

I hope you’ll come back to this page often as you find blog posts and articles to read and discuss with your colleagues!

If you’re looking for a specific author, you can search this page using Command-F on a Mac or Control-F on a PC.

Enjoy!
-Anna Geiger

Click a category to jump right to the related article.

ALPHABET

Title Website Summary
Savannah Campbell shares ideas for short, distributed practice with letter names and sounds.
Sarah Paul covers everything about teaching the alphabet in this post: why to teach the alphabet, tips for teaching it – from how to introduce letters to how to assess alphabet knowledge. So comprehensive and readable!
Tracey Tinley describes age-appropriate alphabet activities for older English language learners.
Sarah Paul explains how she helps students who are struggling to learn the alphabet, with a specific process for mastering letters and sounds.
Rachel Beiswanger summarizes Dr. Shayne Piasta’s findings (after reviewing 45+ alphabet studies). She gives specific action steps for teachers – a helpful post!
Wendy Darasz and Jen Yagid share how to use fluency grids to help students learn letters and sounds. Helpful videos are included in the post.
Rachel Beiswanger shares a variety of activities that students can do with an alphabet chart to build alphabet knowledge and phonemic awareness.
Emily Gibbons explains what to do for older students who never achieved fluency with letter names, letter sounds, and letter formation.

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THE ALPHABETIC PRINCIPLE

Title Website Summary
The Texas Education Agency explains how instruction can help children learn the alphabetic principle. Guidelines for rate and sequence of instruction are included.
Marnie Ginsberg defines the alphabetic principle and why she advocates teaching it apart from letter names. She shares a word building strategy, Build It, which is a quick way to teach the alphabetic principle. She also differentiates between the alphabetic principle and phonemic awareness.

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ARTICLES WITH MULTIPLE THEMES

Title Website Summary
In this important article, Dr. Louisa Moats explains the complexity of the English language and why teaching reading isn’t as simple as some might think.
Marisa Ramirez Stukey, Gina Fugnitto, Valerie Fraser, and Isabel Sawyer discuss the importance of explicit and systematic decoding instruction, describe the most effective format for phonics instruction, the role of comprehension, multiple ways to build a body of knowledge, and connections between research and classroom practice.

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ASSESSMENT

Title Website Summary
Stephanie Stollar defines different types of assessment and explains the difference between standardized and norm-referenced tests.
Joan Sedita shares basic explanations of key terms related to reading assessments: reliability, validity, screening, progress monitoring, and more. She also lists a process that teachers can use to help them use assessment to identify student needs.
Stephanie Stollar explains why many assessments use nonsense words and why these words are useful for assessment (but not instruction). She also explains what instructional information teachers can gain from the NWF assessment.
Savannah Campbell explains the difference between universal screeners and diagnostic assessments and between norm-referenced and criterion-referenced assessments. She helps teachers understand how to know when to give what assessment.
Margaret Goldberg explains why she used to resist early literacy data, but how she now understands that early screening data can help identify students who need early intervention. She explains why early screening data is actually predictive of future reading success, and how we can change a child’s trajectory through appropriate instruction.
Anna Geiger explains why she is no longer a proponent of running records – and what teachers can use instead.
Tim Shanahan explains why nonsense word assessments can be useful, but why they also have limits – and why he doesn’t recommend their use by the end of first grade for typical readers.

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BALANCED VS. STRUCTURED LITERACY

Title Website Summary
Savannah Campbell describes her previous commitment to balanced literacy and why she now uses a more structured approach. Specifically, balanced literacy does not include enough explicit instruction, it treats reading as a natural process, it includes harmful cueing strategies, and it prioritizes leveled text for beginning readers.
Margaret Goldberg describes her experience in a school with low-performing readers; having previously been a reading workshop and guided reading teacher, she soon realized that these approaches did not teach struggling readers to love reading. After she began providing explicit phonics instruction, however, children’s joy came from actually cracking the code.
Pam Snow asserts that balanced literacy is not well-defined; definitions are confusing and contradictory. But whatever “balanced literacy,” means, this approach does not offer enough systematic, explicit instruction in the code.
Margaret Goldberg explains why effective instruction, aligned with the simple view of reading, can raise literacy rates. This requires a change from the thinking and materials associated with a balanced literacy approach.
Margaret Goldberg explains that the use of leveled, predictable text with beginning readers promotes memorization, making up stories, using just the first and last letter to guess words, and using pictures to identify words. After having taught reading this way, she abandoned guided reading. “I was done pretending. Done with guided reading. And ready to learn how to teach reading in a way that communicated to my students that meaning and enjoyment can be derived from the words on the page.”
Margaret Goldberg explains that many balanced literacy teachers have actually created whole language classrooms. For example, if teachers use the beanie baby reading strategies, have leveled libraries, or teach beginning reading using predictable text, they may be unknowingly teaching whole language strategies. A must-read!
Margaret Goldberg explains why her entrance into the world of reading research was difficult, and why and how we need to warmly welcome teachers who are exiting balanced literacy into the research community.
Anna Geiger’s post contains a helpful chart which clarifies the difference between balanced and structured literacy.

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THE BRAIN & READING

Title Website Summary
Margaret Goldberg explains that even though every child is unique, they must all master the same set of skills to become proficient readers. The false idea that all children learn to read differently can be an excuse for lack of success. In contrast, when we learn the science of reading and how to apply it, we can raise expectations for student achievement.
Sarah Paul explains the process of learning to read and what is happening in the brain while we read. She then explains what this information means for teachers. Colorful charts break up this detailed, helpful post.

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COMPLEX TEXT

Title Website Summary
AFT
Marilyn Jaeger Adams explains how why simplifying textbooks denies students the language, information, and modes of thought they need to move up and on. She shares a three-step process for preparing students for complex texts.
Joan Sedita explains how to give students in all grades access to complex, grade-level texts.
Timothy Shanahan explains the history of text leveling and why children who are past the beginning stages need to be reading complex text, not text at their “independent level.”

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COMPREHENSION

Title Website Summary
Sonia Cabell explains how K-2 teachers can help students understand written language when it is read aloud. She lists the components of language comprehension and explains how K-2 instruction should address it.
In this must-read article, Hugh Catts explains why the idea of comprehension as a skill is a myth, how comprehension is much more complex than a set of skills, and what role knowledge plays in comprehension. He also lists implications for instruction.
Jennifer Buckingham states that scientific research doesn’t say to NOT teach comprehension skills and strategies; it says to not ONLY teach them. She says that despite some authors distinguishing between comprehension skills and strategies, there is not a clear distinction. For example, she states that while weeks of “inference” questions may not be useful, we still need to teach students the concept of inferring and how to apply it. She states that research does not reject explicit instruction in comprehension strategies in K-2, nor does it yet provide strong support that it should be embedded in a knowledge-building curriculum. A must-read!!
Savannah Campbell acknowledges that teaching comprehension is difficult, while also providing practical tips for teachers who may be overwhelmed and wonder where to start.
AFT
E.D. Hirsch, Jr. explains why we need to adopt a common core curriculum that builds knowledge by grade.
Daisy Christodolou addresses the myth that teaching facts prevents understanding.
Natalie Wexler explores the importance of knowledge for comprehension and encourages schools to adopt a content-focused literacy curriculum.
Isabel Beck, Margaret Mckeown, Rebecca Hamilton, and Linda Kucan explain how their process of Questioning the Author helps students build meaning as they read.
Susan Neuman explains how we’ve historically neglected building knowledge in early childhood and encourages teachers to make a change.
Daniel Willingham explains how knowledge speeds and strengthens reading comprehension, learning, and thinking.
Susan Neuman, Tanya Kaefer, and Ashley Pinkham offer practical classroom strategies to build background knowledge.
Janette Klingner and Sharon Vaughn describe Collaborative Strategic Reading, a process in which students use comprehension strategies while working cooperatively.
Mark Seidenberg and Molly Farry-Thorn identify the flaws they see in the famous “baseball study.” They conclude by agreeing that background knowledge is important, but that students also need to be able to read the words.
Rachel Beiswanger shares five ways to target language comprehension during read-alouds.
Anna Geiger explains how to help students be aware of their understanding as they read. She shares a chart with strategies that students can use to repair understanding.
Tim Shanahan asserts, for the most part, studies show that just having students read texts and answer main idea questions does not significantly improve reading comprehension; one reason for this is that finding main idea is affected by the text itself and the knowledge of the reader. He advocates for instruction that includes summarizing, developing an understanding of text structure, and/or paraphrasing. Lots of great references listed.

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COMPREHENSION: TEXT STRUCTURE

Title Website Summary
The author defines each type of expository text structure, lists signal words, provides printable templates, and lists basic steps in teaching text structure.
Kausalai Wijekumar and Andrea Beerwinkle describe the TSS (Text Structure Strategy) procedure, which research has shown to be effective in improving reading comprehension. This article is very specific and practical and even includes a sample lesson.
Anna Geiger shares teacher prompts for teaching about story elements, outlines a routine for teaching narrative text structure and provides free graphic organizers.
Anna Geiger lists different types of expository text structure along with signal words and teacher prompts for each type. She outlines a routine for teaching expository text structure and provides free graphic organizers.
Rachel Beiswanger shares lesson structures for teaching narrative and expository text structures – including before, during, and after reading activities.

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Decodable text

Title Website Summary
In this white paper, Katherine Newman breaks down what we know about decodable text and why it’s an important tool for emerging readers.
Savannah Campbell shares the role of decodable texts, where and how to use them, and when to move away from decodable text.
Margaret Goldberg concedes that if can be difficult to listen to beginning readers struggle through decodable text, but that this work is important to rewire their brains as they crack the code.
Jennifer Buckingham responds to a Birch et al review of decodable and leveled reading books for reading instruction; in the article she offers multiple reasons to be wary of accepting Birch et al’s conclusion that teachers should not focus on phonics/decodables.
Anna Geiger explains why we should use decodable texts with beginners, how teachers should use decodables in the classroom, and where to find quality decodable text.
Anna Geiger explains why decodable texts should not be used indefinitely, and summarizes expert opinions on when to move students into more authentic literature.
This is a thoughtful post in which Wendy Darasz and Jen Yagid share six understandings for why we use decodable text, explain what the brain research tells us about using decodable text, and explain why the issue of when to stop using decodable texts depends on the individual student.
In this article, Nathaniel Hansford examines the research on decodable text and concludes: while there is a strong theoretical argument to be made for using decodable text with early readers, there is not compelling scientific evidence, nor is there evidence that texts need to be completely decodable. He advocates using a variety of text types with beginning readers, but to avoid predictable texts.
Christina Winter lists the benefits of using decodable books and shares a routine for using decodable books within a small group (with before, during, and after reading activities).
Nora Chabazi explains why it’s important for students to transition out of decodable text as soon as possible, and how her program (EBLI) has beginning readers move to authentic text in just a few months.
Anna Geiger shares a long list of recommended decodable book series, with a summary of each series and why she recommends it.

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DECODING/BLENDING

Title Website Summary
Margaret Goldberg explains why the beanie baby reading strategies are so problematic and lists prompts teachers can offer when students make specific decoding errors. So useful!
AFT
In this lengthy, detailed article, Louisa Moats asserts that decoding instruction should be grounded in what we know about the stages of reading development and the structure of the English language. Lots to consider!
Christina Winter describes different types of blending practice, with helpful videos and tips.
Rachel Beiswanger shares four tips to help students move away from sound-by-sound blending to simply reading the word automatically. Helpful!
Wendy Darasz and Jen Yagid explain specific things teachers can do to help students who are struggling to decode – including practice with specific letter sounds, successive blending, and teaching spelling.
In this thorough and detailed post, Marnie Ginsberg teaches the Blend As You Read approach (also called successive blending). She criticizes common word reading strategies and offers an alternative.

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DIALECT / ORAL LANGUAGE VARIATION

Title Website Summary
Julie Washington and Mark Seidenberg describe aspects of instruction, curricula, and assessment that may create obstacles to literacy for African-American children, and how to modify instruction to overcome these obstacles.

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DYSLEXIA

Title Website Summary
Nathaniel Hansford discusses a 2022 meta-analysis on the topic of dyslexia interventions. His summary: Students with dyslexia are best helped earlier than later, interventions that include phonemic awareness are most effective, and spelling instruction is essential.
Sarah Paul explains what dyslexia is, lists common indicators in different grade levels, explains how to begin the testing process, and provides links to other resources.
Anna Geiger shares signs of dyslexia across different ages.

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ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

Title Website Summary
This is wonderfully practical article in which Dr. Claude Goldenberg explains what to focus on in each grade, for English language learners in kindergarten through fifth grade.
Joan Sedita provides a summary of experts’ recommendations for teaching vocabulary to English language learners.
Tracey Tinley explains how to help older ELLs learn to read – with tips for making reading instruction age-appropriate.

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EXPLICIT INSTRUCTION / SCIENCE OF LEARNING

Title Website Summary
AFT
Barak Rosenshine presents 10 research-based principles of instruction with suggestions for classroom practice. A must-read!
Anita Archer and Charles Hughes list and expand upon 16 elements of explicit instruction.
Anna Geiger explains that explicit instruction is less about what to teach and more about HOW to each. She shares practical ways to bring Anita Archer and Charles Hughes’ 16 elements of explicit instruction to life.
Dylan Wiliam explains why it’s important to not have students raise their hands to answer questions, and what to do instead.

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FLUENCY

Title Website Summary
Joan Sedita explains why prosody is important, how to assess it, and shares specific ways that teachers can help improve it.
Tim Shanahan shares instructional activities aimed at building fluency in upper elementary, middle school, and high school.
Tim Shanahan details the importance of text selection, purpose setting, modeling, rereading, feedback, and more in teaching reading fluency. Super practical!
Anna Geiger elaborates on eight ways to build reading fluency – including providing instruction in foundational skills, giving opportunities for repeated reading, and leading whole class fluency lessons.
Anna Geiger encourages teachers to assess oral reading fluency, to not focus solely on reading rate, to provide authentic experiences for repeated reading, and to provide daily opportunities for building fluency.
Sarah Paul explains that fluency begins with automaticity at the letter word, and phrase level. She shares specific activities teachers can use to help students develop automaticity.

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FOUNTAS & PINNELL

Title Website Summary
Mark Seidenberg responds to a series of blog posts by Fountas and Pinnell in which they defend three-cueing and their use of leveled texts with beginners. He defends the key problems with their approach. This article is where his quote “The best cue to a word is the word itself” comes from.
Margaret Goldberg explains why the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System is a faulty tool.
Margaret Goldberg explains that Fountas and Pinnell’s leveling system is based on the theory of three-cueing, which has been disproven by research.

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GUIDED READING

Title Website Summary
Savannah Campbell, who used to teach using guided reading, explains the key problem with guided reading (moving children through arbitrary levels) and what to do instead.
Anna Geiger explains why she no longer supports using guided reading levels; specifically, they are arbitrary, they don’t give us useful information, and research doesn’t support teaching students at their “instructional level.”

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HANDWRITING

Title Website Summary
William Van Cleave summarizes the research on teaching handwriting and offers specific suggestions for teaching pencil grip, paper position, and letter formation. He addresses the manuscript/cursive debate and shares a specific approach to handwriting instruction. A must-read!
This is a must-read, detailed article by Steve Graham about what research says about teaching handwriting, with specific tips for teachers. It includes a checklist of best practices and other helpful resources.
Joan Sedita explains why we should teach handwriting and goes into detail about how to teach letter formation.
Louise Spear-Swerling explains why handwriting is important and gives suggestions for teaching handwriting.
Rachel Beiswanger explains how handwriting impacts writing and reading ability, and offers considerations for efficient handwriting instruction. Thorough and extremely helpful!
Wendy Darasz and Jen Yagid explain how they explicitly teach letter formation, and why handwriting is still important in the digital age.

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HIGH FREQUENCY WORDS

Title Website Summary
Christina Winter walks readers through the heart word method for teaching students to read irregular high frequency words.
Sarah Paul explains what sight words are from a researcher’s perspective, and how to turn high frequency words into sight words. She includes many tips for teaching high frequency words, with helpful photos throughout.
Anna Geiger explains that “sight word” instruction should actually be incorporated into phonics lessons, since many high frequency words are phonically regular. She also shares a procedure for teaching irregular high frequency words. Free printable charts are included.
Anna Geiger distinguishes between the common definition of sight words as researchers’ definition. She explains a procedure for turning high frequency words into “sight words” – words students can read by sight.

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INDEPENDENT READING

Title Website Summary
AFT
Jan Hasbrouck reviews what reading fluency is, why it’s important, how to assess it, and how to best provide fluency practice.
Christina Winter explains why independent reading is still important in a science of reading-aligned classroom and describes ways to keep students accountable during this time.

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LEVELED & PREDICTABLE BOOKS

Title Website Summary
Margaret Goldbergs explains that predictable books are used with beginning readers because educators have misunderstood what it takes to become a skilled reader. She quotes from Fountas and Pinnell and Marie Clay to show how this misunderstanding become popular.
Jennifer Buckingham identifies the problems with predictable and leveled texts for beginning readers, and explains why decodable texts are better for beginners.

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Literacy centers

Title Website Summary
Christina Winter shares simple tips and strategies to keep students on task during literacy centers so the teacher can meet with small groups.
Christina Winter provides practical strategies for organizing literacy centers – including where to place them in the classroom, how to organize the physical materials, and how to choose where students should work.
Savannah Campbell shares things that other students can do while the teacher is meeting with a small group.

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LUCY CALKINS

Title Website Summary
In response to Lucy Calkins article, “No One Gets to Own the Term Science of Reading,” researcher Mark Seidenberg accuses her of “co-opting the term so that the science cannot be used to discredit her products.” He breaks down her article and points out the holes in her arguments. A must-read.
Margaret Golderberg responds to Lucy Calkins article, “No One Gets to Own the Term Science of Reading,” pointing out the contradictions between Calkins’ assertions and the actual curriculum she’s created (with photos and screenshots). Super helpful!
Margaret Goldberg respectfully writes another open letter to Lucy Calkins, in which she asks Lucy to be “transparent with us about what you have learned, what that’s revealed to you about instruction in balanced literacy classrooms,” and to explain the changes teachers need to make to better serve their students.

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MORPHOLOGY

Title Website Summary
Savannah Campbell explains how to get started with morphology, how to teach it (using a sound deck, review, and explicit teaching), and where to find resources for teaching morphology.
Nathaniel Hansford discusses the research on morphology instruction and concludes that morphology instruction is a high yield strategy. He says it’s too soon to say whether or mot morphological instruction is better than phonics instruction because it has a much smaller research base than phonics instruction.
In this incredibly thorough and helpful post, Sarah Paul explains how to begin teaching morphemes to beginning readers, with specific ideas for hands-on activities. A must-read!
Sarah Paul explains what morphemes are, lists their types (in a clear and colorful chart), differentiates between base and root words, and more. Super helpful!

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MTSS

Title Website Summary
Stephanie Stollar explains that the three-tiered MTSS model is about instruction, not students. (There are three tiers of instruction, but there is no such thing as a “Tier 2 student.”) She explains how to use universal screening to identify students at risk and evaluate the effectiveness of the Tier 1 program.
Stephanie Stollar explains the purpose of Tier 2 instruction, how it’s defined, how it’s different from Tier 1, and how it should be provided and evaluated.
Sharon Vaughn and Jack Fletcher explain why some children struggle to learn to read, and how educational systems like MTSS can support teachers so they can meet the needs of a range of readers. This is a very informative, useful article!
Lenora Forstyhe and Marisa Ramirez Stukey share the research behind MTSS, explain the need for high-quality Tier 1 instruction, and urge alignment with Tiers 2 and 3.
Stephanie Stollar addresses misconceptions surrounding MTSS. She asserts that Tier 1 instruction shouldn’t always be implemented with fidelity, all students don’t necessarily need the same Tier 1 instruction, Tier 1 instruction shouldn’t always be delivered in whole group, and students with disabilities don’t have to have the same Tier 1 instruction as the rest of the grade.

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ORTHOGRAPHIC MAPPING

Title Website Summary
Jessica Farmer explains that orthographic mapping is a manetal process that can be promoted through various activities. She explains what activities teachers can do to help students build pathways in the brain to consolidate reading skills.

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ORTON-GILLINGHAM

Title Website Summary
Marnie Ginsberg challenges the Orton-Gillingham method, explaining its limitations and gaps. She explains how her program, Reading Simplified, can accelerate reading development.

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PHONICS

Title Website Summary
Nell Duke and Heidi Anne Mesmer list common mistakes in teaching phonics – from neglecting the alphabetic principle to using inappropriate key words. An excellent article!
AFT
Louisa Moats shares why decoding instruction should be grounded in the stages of reading development and the structure of the English language. She addresses problems that she sees in classroom practice.
Savannah Campbell describes how to use cumulative review to review phonics skills. She discusses dictation, fluency grids, decodable folders, and review cards.
Rachel Beiswanger elaborates on five routines she includes in her phonics intervention lessons: rereading previous texts, word chains, spelling dictation, reading new decodable text, and cumulative review.
Jennifer Buckingham disagrees with Jeffrey Bowers’ paper in which he asserts that there is not not a strong research base to support systematic teaching of phonics; she refutes his argument point by point. She also states that there is insufficient evidence to see Structured Word Inquiry as an alternative to systematic phonics. An incredibly thorough article!
After looking through current research, Nathaniel Hansford concludes that there is weak or non-existent scientific evidence that multi-sensory instruction is necessary in phonics instruction; the same is true for the claim that multi-sensory instruction is especially useful for dyslexic students. He breaks his conclusions down in this article.
Sarah Paul lists the eight jobs of silent e, elaborates on each one (with tips for teaching it), and even explains how to incorporate morphology when teaching about silent e. A must-read!
Amie Burkholder explains how to use the vowel intensive procedure (common in Orton-Gillingham based phonics programs) to help students master short vowels.
Anna Geiger elaborates on mistakes to avoid when teaching phonics, such as: not teaching phonics explicitly and systematically, forgetting to incorporate phonemic awareness, and not giving students enough practice.

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PHONICS: Multi-syllable word reading

Title Website Summary
Wendy Darasz and Jen Yagid explain how to use syllable division rules to help students read multisyllabic words.
Marnie Ginsberg shares a video tutorial which shows how to introduce students to multisyllable word reading and how to use the simple Flex It decoding strategy instead of teaching syllable types and syllable division rules.

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PHONICS: Teaching specific graphemes/skills

Title Website Summary
Sarah Paul explains what vowel teams are and walks readers through how she teaches vowel teams, with helpful charts and photos throughout. As always, Sarah’s post is very thorough and helpful.
The schwa is actually the most common vowel sound and can be spelled with any printed vowel. Sarah Paul explains the concept of schwa in detail. She shares tips for identifying the schwa, and shares activities that will help students practice reading and spelling words with schwa.
Wendy Darasz and Jen Yagid define glued (or welded) sounds as groups of letters whose sounds are difficult to separate when segmenting words: all, am, an, ang, ank, ing, ink, ong, onk, ung, and unk. They explain how they recommend teaching them.
Wendy Darasz and Jen Yagid describe consonant blends and explain how to teach students to read words to read and spell words with initial and final blends.
Wendy Darasz and Jen Yagid explain what r-controlled vowels are, and how to explicitly teach students to read and spell words with r-controlled vowels.
Wendy Darasz and Jen Yagid explain the process for helping students read and spell words with vowel-consonant-e.
Amie Burkholder shares specific activities to help students read CCVC and CVCC words – including moving from the known to the unknown, and incorporating phonemic awareness.
Christina Winter explains when to start teaching CVC words, how to teach them, and where to find free resources.
Emily Gibbons explains how to teach blends within an Orton-Gillingham approach, along with tips for determining sequence and incorporating lots of practice.
Savannah Campbell explains why she thinks it’s important to teach consonant blends systematically and explicitly.

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PHONICS: Syllable types

Title Website Summary
Christina Winter defines the six syllable types, explains why we should teach them, and shares free resources to get teachers started.
Sarah Paul defines the syllable types, explains why we should teach them, and provides free posters.
Anna Geiger examines the arguments for and against teaching syllable types, summarizes what we know from research, and links to other articles with varying points of view.

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PHONOLOGICAL & PHONEMIC AWARENESS

Title Website Summary
Dr. Stephanie Stollar lists 23 things that she believes to be true about vowel phonemes.
This is an older article in which Marilyn Jager Adams, Barbara Foorman, Ingvar Lundberg, and Terri Beller explain why phonemic awareness is important and list what research tells us about it.
Christina Winter defines phonemic awareness and gives specific recommendations for teaching it, based on research.
Savannah Campbell addresses controversies about phonemic awareness in the science of reading community and clarifies things in her clear, readable style.
Michelle Sullivan defines phonemic awareness and explains why it’s important to incorporate letters with phonemic awareness instruction. She then describes specific activities that teachers can do to build phonemic awareness.

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Preschool and the science of reading (and writing)

Title Website Summary
AFT
Tayna Wright and Susan Neuman use research to explain what a supportive and stimulating pre-K looks like.
AFT
Susan Neuman lists strategies for building literacy skills in Pre-K and gives recommendations for policymakers.
AFT
Hope Gerde and Tanya Wright explain how adults can support children’s early attempts at writing.
Sonia Cabell, Laura Totorelli, and Hope Gerde present a framework for individualizing early writing instruction in the preschool classroom.

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READ ALOUDS

Title Website Summary
Tanya Wright describes interactive read-alouds and explains how they can be used to teach students about the world, vocabulary, text, and literacy skills and strategies.
Susan Hall and Louisa Moats list the benefits of reading aloud to children and give practical tips to make it enjoyable across different ages.
Judith Gold and Akimi Gibson discuss the power of reading aloud and explain how think alouds highlight strategies used by thoughtful readers.

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READING RECOVERY

Title Website Summary
Nathaniel Hansford, Kathryn Garforth, Joshua King, and Sk McGlynn break down their meta-analysis on the impact of Reading Recovery. They explain that while the research has many limitations, there is strong evidence that Reading Recovery is highly effective in the short term. Importantly, however, there is also evidence that students who receive Reading Recovery do worse over the long term.
In this paper, Jennifer Buckingham breaks down the studies that have examined Reading Recovery and summarizes their evidence. She concludes that the studies “have provided no sound evidence that (Reading Recovery) has sustained positive effects on children’s reading achievement in the medium or long-term, despite its widespread use and high cost.”

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SCHEDULING THE LITERACY BLOCK

Title Website Summary
Christina Winter offers a possible schedule for a 90-minute literacy block. Her schedule includes time for whole group phonics instruction, small group instruction, and whole group language comprehension instruction.
Rachel Beiswanger explains how she would organize a 120-minute literacy block. Her block includes phonemic awareness teaching, phonics lessons, small group instruction, read-aloud, handwriting, and writing.

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SET FOR VARIABILITY

Title Website Summary
Marnie Ginsberg explains what set for variability is, what researchers have learned about it, and why it is a decoding skill that we should be teaching.

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THE SIMPLE VIEW OF READING

Title Website Summary
Linda Farrell, Michael Hunter, Marcia Davidson, and Tina Osenga define the Simple View of Reading and list its implications for reading instruction and assessment. Very clear and helpful!

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SMALL GROUP / WHOLE GROUP INSTRUCTION

Title Website Summary
Sharon Vaughn, Marie Tejero Hughes, Sally Watson Moody, and Batya Elbaum discuss the research and implications for practice using whole class, small group, pairs, and one-on-one instruction.
In this white paper, Linda Diamond unpacks the research behind whole class and small group instruction. She explores how small-group, mastery-based instruction is a crucial missing ingredient in many reading curricula.
Savannah Campbell describes what she does with small group in kindergarten intervention.
Savannah Campbell goes into detail about what she does with her small groups in first, second, or third grade intervention. SO useful and practical!
Rachel Beiswanger explains that planning small groups is about using data intentionally and focusing on specific skill deficits.
Savannah Campbell breaks down the structure of her intervention lessons with older students: morphology, text reading and comprehension, and vocabulary (tied into the text reading). As always, very practical info!
Jocelyn Seamer explains her view on when and why to use small groups for foundational skills instruction, and why it’s important to minimize the time teachers aren’t receiving instruction from the teacher.
Timothy Shanahan believes that phonics instruction is best delivered whole group to maximize learning time. He doesn’t believe it’s a problem for students further behind in the scope and sequence to learn later skills in whole group.

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SOUND WALLS

Title Website Summary
Christina Winter defines consonant phonemes, describes their categories, and explains how to use a sound wall to teach them.
Christina Winter explains the purpose of a sound wall, gives information about vowels, and explains how teachers can use a vowel valley sound wall to teach vowel phonemes.

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SPEECH TO PRINT

Title Website Summary
Jeannine Herron et al explain how early literacy benefits from both print-to-speech and speech-to-print instruction.
Anna Desjardins believes that the print to speech vs. speech to print debate “has set up a false dichotomy in how reading should be taught” and gives considerations that will help teachers decide what order to teach grapheme-phoneme correspondences.
Nathaniel Hansford clearly lays out the difference between traditional phonics programs and “speech to print” (structured linguistic literacy) programs. He examines the research and concludes that we have sufficient experimental evidence to say that a speech to print approach is highly effective, but that we can’t yet say whether or not it is superior to a traditional phonics approach.
Nora Chabazi compares traditional (“structured literacy”) phonics approaches with speech to print (“linguistic phonics”) approaches. A helpful chart displays the differences.

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SPELLING

Title Website Summary
Louisa Moats explains the logic of English spelling, lists key content and strategies to teach across the grades, and explains how spelling supports reading.
Joan Sedita shares a set of charts that list basic spelling principles and rules for adding suffixes.
Emily Gibbons suggests different spelling inventories, tells when to give them, and explains what a student’s spelling errors can tell us about what they need to learn next.
Savannah Campbell describes five ways teachers can review previously taught spellings: dictation, word chains, look-alike words, sound-symbol mapping, and changing the medium.
Sarah Paul begins by providing background information about the English spelling system and then goes into detail about English spelling patterns and syllable types. She shares a step-by-step process for teaching spelling, addresses spelling tests, spelling stages, teaching students with dyslexia, and a lot more.
Anna Geiger defines invented spelling, examines arguments against the practice, and explains why invented spelling is valuable when teachers provide appropriate feedback.
Anna Geiger shares important do’s and don’ts for teaching spelling within a structured literacy classroom.
Anna Geiger shares a spelling dictation routine that teachers can incorporate into their phonics lessons. She includes a video of the dictation routine.

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THREE-CUEING

Title Website Summary
Christina Winter explains why three-cueing is not effective and what teachers should teach instead.
Wendy Darasz and Jen Yagid explain the problems with three-cueing: it is inefficient, it weakens the correct neuronal pathways, it limits vocabulary, it causes disfluent reading, and guessing becomes a habit that is hard to break.

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UNDERSTANDING RESEARCH

Title Website Summary
Stephanie Stollar offers guiding principles for evaluating the opinions of different experts in the science of reading … especially when they don’t agree.
AFT
Daniel Willingham shares four steps for helping teachers distinguish between good and bad science and deciding whether or not a practice should be adopted.
The National Institute for Literacy shows teachers how to recognize effective research and use research literature as a guide for instruction.

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VOCABULARY

Title Website Summary
Joan Sedita names different types of context clues and explains how to teach students to use context to get clues to the meaning of a word.
Andrew Biemiller reviews the research around teaching vocabulary and explains why teachers need to better promote vocabulary development, especially in the early years.
Isabel Beck, Margaret McKeown, and Linda Kucan explain how pre-K through elementary school teachers can enhance vocabulary development by focusing on words from texts that are read aloud to students.
Timothy Shanahan lists and explains the five key principles for teaching vocabulary.
Joan Sedita gives tips for choosing words to preview before reading; she also gives examples of vocabulary knowledge checklists.
Rachel Beiswanger shares specific activities that encourage students go beyond the surface and have a deeper understanding of vocabulary words.
Anna Geiger encourages teachers not to leave vocabulary building to chance, to choose Tier Two words for instruction, to teach vocabulary within read alouds, and to teach new words in depth with plenty of review.

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WHAT IS THE SCIENCE OF READING?

Title Website Summary
Dr. Mark Seidenberg shares his concern that the SoR is turning into “a new pedagogical dogma” tied to dated research and ill-advised assumptions. He believes that the science of reading (as a body of research) has been far too simplified and that teachers rely too much on “a few classic studies.” An interesting (if depressing) read.
Nicola Bell explains that the science of reading (the body of research) is based on an accumulation of data from multiple fields of research. “Science is a web – not a single strand. All that’s needed is a little patience to tease out the knots.” Very thought-provoking!
Jennifer Buckingham distinguishes what is “nice to know” vs what we need to know when it comes to the science of reading. She discusses the speech-to-print vs. print-to-speech debate, teaching irregular words, the teaching of letter names, syllable types, and more.

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WHAT IS STRUCTURED LITERACY?

Title Website Summary
Members of the International Dyslexia Association describe the elements of structured literacy instruction and explain how critical elements are taught within that structure.

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WIDE READING

Title Website Summary
Anne Cunningham and Keith Stanovich address the “Matthew effects” in reading and explain why reading volume is important.

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WORD RECOGNITION / ORTHOGRAPHIC MAPPING

Title Website Summary
Stephanie Stollar explains the instructional sequence for helping children recognize words instantly through the mental process of orthographic mapping.
Linnea Ehri describes her phases of word reading development with specific things that parents (and teachers) can do to help children move into the next phase.
Savannah Campbell explains, in everyday language, what orthographic mapping is – great for teachers new to the concept!
Savannah Campbell describes how to promote orthographic mapping through phonemic awareness instruction and sound-symbol mapping.

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WRITING

Title Website Summary
Joan Sedita offers a list of guiding questions that students can use to guide their personal reactions to narrative text.
Members of the Vermont Writing Collaborative write that, in addition to understanding the writing process, teachers should also know the role of knowledge and structure when teaching students to write. They describe how to determine whether a piece of student writing is effective and how to plan fo reffective writing instruction.
AFT
Judith Hochman explains how to help children become clear thinkers and coherent communicators through explicit writing instruction.
Joan Sedita explains the difference between transcription and composing skills. She also shares a chart which lists grade level expectations in these areas for grades K-3.
Joan Sedita explains how to teach the concept of a paragraph, basic paragraph structure, color coding to emphasize paragraph structure, and other activities for teaching this concept.
Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler describe a clear, coherent, evidence-based method for teaching writing that can be used in any grade.
The International Dyslexia Association defines dysgraphia and explains what instructional activities improve the handwriting of children with dysgraphia.
In this white paper, Marisa Ramirez Stukey and Elyse Eidman-Aadahl explore key characteristics of high-quality, research-based writing instruction: creating a community of writers, ensuring a reading-writing connection, teaching the writing process, and teaching conventions and grammar.
Jocelyn Seamer asserts that reluctant writers are not simply disinterested in writing; they find writing difficult. She identifies key areas of difficulty (handwriting, spelling, memory and regulation, and text generation) and shares practical ways to help reluctant writers. Excellent article!

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Reader Interactions

2 Comments

  1. Patty G

    This post (just like your podcast index one) is another “Measured Mom masterpiece”! Would you ever consider adding some open-access articles from The Reading Teacher and/or Reading Research Quarterly? I’m so curious to know which ones your brilliant mind would pick!

    Reply to this comment

    • Anna Geiger

      Actually, yes! That is on my list, and I am also working on a video index (webinars, etc. on YouTube). I am a long way out (perhaps a year or more) from having either ready, but they are in the works. 🙂

      Reply to this comment

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