Recently, there’s been some conversation in the broader science of reading movement about the potential that schools are overteaching foundational skills. Reading researcher Mark Seidenberg, for example, has argued that while all students need to be taught phonics, students without reading disabilities might not need to learn every single phonics pattern they could encounter. Once they have the basics, they can pick things up through statistical learning.
I’m wondering if you think that there is a danger in recommending advanced decoding skills for everyone—might we be overteaching in some way?
Foundational skills, whether they’re early stage foundational skills in kindergarten and 1st grade or complex foundational skills in older grades, are essential. The research is incredibly clear, and they need to be built systematically. They need to be explicitly taught and explicitly practiced.
Children learn to unlock patterns
We emphasize teaching children to “crack the code” of written English by understanding how letters and sounds fit together to form words.
