“If you are just able to decode the words, but you don’t have the context to understand them, you’re not getting to that effective, efficient, purposeful reading for meaning,” explains Dr. Molly Ness, a reading researcher, author, and vice president of academic content at Learning Ally, a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to closing the reading gap.
Reading proficiency requires the mastery of many complex skills. From phonological awareness and the alphabetic principle to background knowledge and vocabulary, each component is integral to a reader’s ability to comprehend text. Research shows that to become proficient readers, students need early literacy instruction in both word recognition and language comprehension.
Recently, EdSurge spoke with Dr. Ness about the skills needed for reading, the most effective way to teach them and how Learning Ally’s Excite Reading can help.
EdSurge: What does the science of reading show about the skills necessary to become a proficient reader?
Dr. Molly Ness: The science of reading is a long-standing interdisciplinary body of knowledge that shows that to be proficient readers, kids need to be able to lift the words off the page—or decode—and then also need the language skills to understand them. It shows that many interrelated literacy skills intertwine and weave into each other to produce efficient and effective reading.
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