Not everyone spells it with a hyphen, but if you’re new to the Science of Reading, the hyphen helps. “Knowledge-building” is a scientifically proven method for increasing students’ reading comprehension.
After decades of brain-science experiments, combined with cognitive psychology studies, educators now know definitively how to improve reading comprehension. It involves interweaving many language development activities, but for this paper, we are only discussing knowledge-building—another key component of reading instruction.
Really? Scientifically proven? Haven’t we been struggling for decades to get American students’ reading comprehension to improve with practically no success?
Yes. Unfortunately, that is the case. Which is why all advocates for the Science of Reading are pushing hard to educate the public, including teachers, on the scientific evidence that proves how human beings learn to read—and comprehend.
Mostly Overlooked Knowledge-Building
Phonics, of course, is one piece of the puzzle. Another piece—mostly overlooked—is knowledge-building. That is, the layering of deep knowledge within any given subject area. According to the Science of Reading, knowledge-building should begin in kindergarten.
Moreover, the Science of Reading—through the activity of knowledge-building–proves that this old saying is false: “In grades 1-2, students learn to read. Then in Grade 3-5, they read to learn.” It may sound like a wise observation, but it is actually a false statement of how students learn to read.
So, it is not true that children learn to read, and then read to learn. The Science of Reading proves that children, from the beginning of their school years, should be learning, learning, learning. But how? If they can’t read yet?
American elementary education must turn itself around and stop teaching bare skills, set on weak, meaningless content.
Forget Skills-Based Teaching
I was told many years ago by an elementary teacher, that there was no need to teach “stuff,” that in the future, we will all be looking up everything we need. I was skeptical. It seemed unrealistic to think that people could get along without some knowledge-base of information guiding them through life.
Furthermore, it seemed dismissive to call information within a subject area “stuff.” Over the years, I often met people who confessed they were uncomfortable and embarrassed because they didn’t know much about…you name it. They wished they had more history knowledge, or some basic understanding of the human digestive system, or literature, or lifeforms on a beach. Just look at the current trends of booksellers making millions on “how-to” books. Americans are eager to gain knowledge.
Therefore, knowledge-building is the educational process of teaching deep content. The acquisition of content has proven to be the fundamental support for reading comprehension. For example, to understand text that describes a football game, the reader should know something about football before he begins reading.
Does this reasoning seem circular?
The point is that any text—any writer—leaves out minute bits of information. Often the left-out bits are pieces of cultural knowledge, or bits of common practice. A text that includes every minutia of information would be impossible to get through. So, widely read readers fill in the gaps with their acquired knowledge. To help students get there, schools must immediately adopt content-centered curriculum for elementary schools. There are several series now on the market (not mine—this is not a sales pitch). These in-depth curricula often start children learning ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman history in first grade. Yet, how does a teacher introduce these topics to non-readers?
Listening Comprehension As the Foundation for Reading Comprehension
The Science of Reading evidence has shown educators that children’s hearing comprehension is keen during their younger years. This makes sense since children need to hear and respond to their parents’ commands and warnings to keep safe. It is a natural ability. Educators should be using this natural ability to teach content through read-alouds, videos, role-playing, and demonstrations.
Simultaneously, they are teaching K-2 students the decoding skills they need to match sounds to letters, paving the way to read the written word. Thus, as children build cultural content knowledge, they are learning how to decode the written word through phonemic awareness and phonics exercises. Thus, the mental knowledge matrix is ready by the time children are decoding, and finally reading.
Of course, the above is an oversimplified description. The actual teaching also works with language development and encoding—writing—to bring the child into a fully developed, reading student.
Comprehension then arises out of shared cultural knowledge. All students1 should be learning as much cultural knowledge, scientific knowledge, literary knowledge, and artistic knowledge as they can to promote reading comprehension. This video, produced in 2009 by Professor Daniel Willingham, explains it best. It’s only 9:58, and I highly recommend it.2
Are you offering knowledge building opportunities to your students?
- Pondiscio, Robert. “At long last, E.D. Hirsch, Jr. gets his due: New research shows big benefits from Core Knowledge.” Thomas B. Fordham Institute. 4-13-23. See paragraph 4.
↩︎ - Willingham, Daniel. “Teaching Content Is Teaching Reading.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiP-ijdxqEc ↩︎
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