Cultivating Lifelong Readers: A Journey to Adopt the Science of Reading at The Primary School

Over the past seven years, The Primary School has been on a transformative journey. One that involves one of the most basic, most fundamental, and most vital elements of education: literacy.

In our early years at The Primary School, we adopted a whole language curriculum, a literacy approach that emphasized using context and cues from the page to help children learn to read. This was an approach to literacy that many surrounding schools and districts were using at the time, and we were optimistic about its potential to help us grow our young learners into strong readers.

But over time, our education team noticed that students’ skills weren’t growing at the pace they could be – or should be – to lay the foundation for future literacy. So in the 2019-20 school year, we initiated a fundamental shift in our approach to literacy, moving to a language arts curriculum developed by EL Education to provide students with a comprehensive literacy program that developed both decoding skills and deep comprehension. Based on the structured phonics approach, more commonly known as the Science of Reading, the curriculum is rooted in the foundational “building blocks” of reading: phonics (sounding out words), phonological awareness, vocabulary, fluency, and reading comprehension. The impact of this transition has been felt throughout The Primary School.

In the following Q&A, Katherine Carter, Director of School Program; Jen Merz, K-2 Instructional Coach; and Elisa Madrigal, Lead Kindergarten Teacher at The Primary School share what the shift to a science-based literacy approach has looked like in their own words:

How did this shift come about initially?

Jen Merz: The approach we used early on resembled a balanced literacy program. Phonics and reading were taught in two different blocks during the day. When children were practicing their reading at the guided reading table, they were prompted to use text cues, such as guessing based on the context or picture, to figure out unknown words. They were learning decoding skills (sounding out words to decipher them) in their phonics block, but this wasn’t the primary strategy used in the reading block. Some children were showing growth in reading, but many readers were struggling and needed more explicit practice and opportunities to apply decoding skills to learn how to crack the code of reading. Many teachers began organically starting to gravitate towards more explicit phonics instruction because we saw the importance of building these foundational skills with so many of our early readers. Even with a robust phonics block, we recognized that our disconnected reading blocks weren’t serving all of our students, and after learning more about the science of reading, teachers and school leaders recognized that we needed to shift our instructional approach in reading to align with the reading research! This started us on our journey in adopting a new curriculum aligned to the science of reading and also developing our teachers as experts in reading instruction.

What did this look like in the classroom?

A second grade teacher works with a small group of students on a phonics activity.

Jen Merz: Over the course of the last few years we have built our expertise in practices that are aligned with the science of reading. Science of reading isn’t just about teaching phonics but also about learning how the brain builds foundational reading skills, including phonological awareness, vocabulary and fluency so that we can best support all students to become skilled readers who can read and comprehend texts. Phonics is no longer taught in isolation. It’s integrated and critical to a systematic approach to teaching students reading. In our early elementary classrooms, our reading block aligns to a structured literacy approach where all reading components are taught explicitly and systematically.

The timing of the transition in large part aligned with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. How did this affect things?

Katherine Carter: We were getting into the work right before the pandemic hit. Some of our lead teachers had visited other schools using this kind of curriculum, and we saw the connection to student agency and how they took an active learning approach to teaching structured phonics. Then the schools were closed because of COVID in spring of 2020, and our oldest students were in second grade, and most of them were not yet reading independently. How could we teach reading over Zoom to students who were 5, 6, and 7 years old? We emphasized our structured phonics program, and provided daily small group instruction for all students. We had good buy-in, but it was still challenging. We continued the professional development virtually and focused deeply on foundational literacy instruction. Everyone at the school became a reading teacher during the pandemic -- from our behavior specialists to our art teacher. We all pitched in to work with reading groups to ensure that students continued to learn to read during the pandemic. The team all understood the importance of this and were willing to step in to help.

How have parents played a role in supporting science based literacy instruction?

A parent helps her child select a book at a community literacy fair.

Elisa Madrigal: A big part of this is our relationships with parents. We tell parents ‘you are your child’s first teacher – teach them as much as you can!’ We do children’s circles where teachers share resources for parents to help parents support learning at home. When we’re teaching sight words, for example, if we provide a list of sight words and it includes the English pronunciation for Spanish speaking parents, they can help even if they don’t speak English. We also focus on making learning hands-on and engaging so students are excited and bring that excitement home. I’ve seen that the more fun and engaging we make literacy, the more students learn. For example, in my class we do a lot of playful learning – writing letters with playdough or sand trays, and using these materials to build words later in the year makes it more fun than just using traditional paper and pencil.

How have teachers responded to this change?

Jen Merz: Over the past three years we’ve invested in extensive professional development and training to make sure everyone has a clear understanding of the approach. We’re making our teachers experts in the science of reading, and they’re eager to do it. The majority of our teachers opted into a 3-4 month professional development course, which is a testament to their investment in this approach. I believe this investment stems from seeing the positive impact it has on our early readers.

A teacher and her pre-K students engage in a phonics activity,

What has been the impact of moving to a science based literacy approach?

Katherine Carter: We are seeing a big difference in both teacher practice and in student outcomes. We started by training teachers in small-group phonics instruction in lower elementary, and provided dedicated planning time to analyze assessments to plan ways to support each individual student. Last year, almost all of our teachers attended an optional professional development in the science of reading, and became even more skilled at planning and teaching reading. They began to identify changes they could make in the classroom, like adding leveled phonics readers to their class libraries (short books aligned with grade and skill levels) and encouraging students to read whole passages and not just sound out isolated words. This year we also hired a reading interventionist, to add another layer of support to ensure all students become fluent, strong readers. So far, what we’re seeing is very promising, especially in the lower grades. For example, at the end of the 21-22 school year, only 27% of Kindergarten students were at grade level in literacy, but the following year 72% of Kindergarten students had met that goal! We are still learning a lot, but are thrilled to see this kind of early progress.