The students in Emily Hoard’s first-grade class trace letters in their sand trays, then break down the sounds the letters make in simple words. This is what the science of reading looks like as Hoard and her fellow teachers at Stockbridge Community Schools in Michigan go all-in on their new approach to literacy instruction.
“The kids know exactly what to expect, and they’re so much more confident when they come to a word that they don’t know, or a big word in text, because they’ve been taught all of those little, tiny skills that they need, and the concepts of how words are made up,” Hoard said, who teaches at Emma L. Smith Elementary. “It’s not like a guessing game for them anymore.”
A small mid-Michigan district of 1,075 students, Stockbridge is among the first districts in the state to fully embrace training its teachers and building a curriculum that is supported by the science of reading, a body of research explaining how children develop reading and writing skills. This instruction relies heavily on phonics in the early years of schooling before building other essential skills like fluency, vocabulary, comprehension and the syntax of grammar and sentence structure in the later elementary grades…