What is it?
The Science of Reading is a comprehensive field of study that seeks to deepen our understanding of how children acquire literacy skills, navigate the challenges inherent in the learning process, and developing teaching strategies to overcome them. Drawing on a vast body of knowledge generated through empirical research spanning over five decades, this field encompasses a range of disciplines, including cognitive psychology, linguistics, developmental psychology, neuroscience, and education.
With the advent of new technologies, researchers have gained insights into the workings of the brain during the process of learning to read and comprehend written information. This research has revealed that while humans possess an innate capacity for spoken language, the ability to read is a learned skill that must be explicitly taught. Specifically, effective instruction involves developing the neural pathways necessary for fluent reading through targeted instruction in print concepts, speech sounds, language, and word meaning. By connecting these key components of reading, educators can facilitate the development of effective practice in teaching and accessing for improving students outcomes in literacy.
How we use it
Using this body of research and Scarborough’s Reading Rope (2001), Cleverbean has carefully crafted lessons and materials that target two core areas of reading instruction: word recognition and comprehension. To develop word recognition skills, phonological awareness lessons provide a systematic and sequential approach to teaching phonics. This ensures that students are explicitly taught the relationships between letters and sounds, starting with basic phonetic concepts (eg. single letters grapheme) and progressing to more complex ones (eg. digraphs, trigraphs, silent letters). For early learners, these lessons use picture books to introduce different sounds and recommend literacy activities to support the introduction of letters including tactile, craft and play based learning activities.
To develop comprehension aspects of reading, lessons enhance students' understanding of vocabulary, build background knowledge, and grasp the language structure of texts, both literally and figuratively. Lessons are structured to explicitly teach these skills and provides ample practice time for students to master them. Furthermore, the lessons incorporate a range of quality mentor texts, including imaginative, persuasive, informative, and poetry, to further enrich students' reading experience and understanding of print concepts. These activities you find on Cleverbean are designed to make learning highly effective, fun and engaging, helping young children develop a love of reading