none was more so than that of the National Reading Panel (NRP), published in April 2000. The report focuses primarily on five areas related to reading instruction: (1) phonics, (2) phonemic awareness, (3) fluency, (4) vocabulary, and (5) comprehension. For each area, the panel conducted a review of the extant research and makes recommendations for practice.
Many praised the work of the NRP for its rigorous methodology, but others (particularly those who advocated for a whole-language approach) found fault with the areas the NRP chose to focus on. Advocates of whole-language approaches viewed the NRP’s emphasis on decoding skills (phonics, phonemic awareness) as a step backward. Although the NRP’s report includes comprehension as one of its areas, many researchers and educators believed that there was a subtle repositioning: “Comprehension became the natural consequence of teaching the [alphabetic] code well in the early stages of instruction instead of the primary goal and focus of attention from the very beginning of a child’s instructional life in school” (Pearson & Cervetti, 2017, p. 39). A lively debate, often called the reading wars, ensued; the crux of the conversation centered on whether a phonics-based approach or a whole-language approach was best for students.
In 2010, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers released the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Although the standards are surrounded by controversy (much of which stems from the false notion that the federal government created the standards), many reading researchers see them as striking a healthy balance between phonics and comprehension. Advocates of whole language, such as Pearson and Cervetti (2017), describe the publication of the CCSS for English language arts standards as a “comeback” for reading comprehension (p. 12) and state that “the CCSS for reading seem to be well grounded in solid theories of reading comprehension” (p. 45).
In their chapter of the fourth volume of the Handbook of Reading Research, William E. Tunmer and Tom Nicholson (2011) summarize the benefits and drawbacks of both whole-language approaches and phonics approaches:
Whole language provides plenty of opportunity for children to read but is weak on teaching the alphabetic principle…. Phonics gives lots of practice in learning the alphabetic principle but does not provide much opportunity for putting the alphabetic principle into practice through actual reading of text. (p. 425)
They conclude their comparison of whole language and phonics by suggesting that the most effective reading instruction “draw[s] on key elements of both approaches to provide instruction that best suits the needs of individual children” (Tunmer & Nicholson, 2011, p. 425). In the next section, we elaborate on how we believe teachers can best provide such reading instruction. Here, it suffices to say that the current state of research in reading acknowledges the importance of both phonics and whole-language approaches.
Development-Based Reading Instruction
As we mention previously, Tunmer and Nicholson (2011) assert that effective reading instruction looks different depending on what students already know and are able to do:
The search for the “best method” of teaching reading is fundamentally misguided, as the most effective approach used with any given child depends crucially on the reading-related knowledge, skills, and experiences the child brings to the task of learning to read. (p. 405)
They use the term literate cultural capital to describe the literacy assets that students may or may not have when they begin school. Table 1.4 (page 16) lists literacy activities that children may experience at home or in the community before they come to school, along with the reading-related knowledge or skills that they may learn from such activities.
Table 1.4: Literate Cultural Capital
| Literacy Activity | Reading-Related Knowledge and Skills |
| Seeing parents and other adults reading for entertainment or informational purposes | Understanding the value and purpose of reading |
| Listening to and participating in conversations | Developing oral language Developing vocabulary knowledge |
| Playing alphabet games (such as I Spy) and reading alphabet books | Building knowledge of letter names and sounds |
| Playing rhyming games (such as using pig Latin or reading nursery rhymes) and reading rhyming books (such as Dr. Seuss books) | Gaining sensitivity to individual sounds and groups of sounds in spoken words (phonemic and phonological awareness) |
| Inventing spellings (such as KLR for color or FRE for fairy) | Developing sensitivity to spelling-sound correspondences (phonics knowledge) |
| Participating in shared reading experiences | Gaining a basic understanding of concepts and conventions of printed language Gaining a familiarity with decontextualized language Becoming sensitive to the grammatical constraints of written sentences Understanding basic genres of written language Acquiring knowledge about the world and particular topics Using basic meaning-making strategies |
Source: Duke & Carlisle, 2011; Purcell-Gates, Duke, & Stouffer, 2016; Tunmer & Nicholson, 2011.
Students who lack literate cultural capital often struggle when learning to read. However, research shows that high-quality teaching can compensate for these deficits. Catherine E. Snow, Michelle V. Porche, Patton O. Tabors, and Stephanie R. Harris (2007, as cited in Duke & Carlisle, 2011) find that students from home environments that were rated low (regarding literacy experiences and support) still made expected gains in reading achievement if they were in classrooms that were rated high (regarding literacy instruction) for two consecutive years. In contrast, only 25 percent of students from low-rated home environments made expected gains if they were in a high-rated classroom for one year, and none made expected gains if they were in low-rated classrooms. These findings indicate that high-quality reading instruction is of paramount importance in ensuring that all students learn to read.
As we mentioned previously, the hallmark of high-quality reading instruction is what Victoria Purcell-Gates, and colleagues (2016) call “a diagnostic approach to teaching reading.” Such an approach “results in greater reading achievement by learners, is documented as a key element of successful classrooms, and is statistically related to reading achievement (p. 1241).
To implement a diagnostic approach to reading instruction, we believe that teachers must understand how reading skill develops. If a teacher has a mental model of the skills reading requires and an understanding of the continua along which those skills develop, he or she can assess a student’s current status for each skill and determine what the student needs to learn next to improve. Such a mental model can also help a teacher understand how various reading skills interact with each other, and the ramifications of low or high skills in particular areas. In figure 1.1, we present a model that teachers might use to conceptualize the development of skilled reading. In the remainder of this introduction, we present research supporting the model.
Figure 1.1: Development of skilled reading.
Notice the headings at the top of each column and at the bottom of figure 1.1: foundational skills, word recognition, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Scott
