The Brain Science Behind Literacy

In the world of elementary school literacy instruction, there have always been two camps: whole language and phonics. 

For those outside of the elementary education, allow us to give a brief lesson or two. Whole language is a method of teaching reading and writing that emphasizes learning whole words and phrases by encountering them in meaningful contexts, while phonics is a method of teaching beginners to read and pronounce words by learning the phonetic value of letters, letter groups, and syllables.

During our time as educators, we have seen elementary school education swing between the two as opinions and views vary and change. Phonics was more common when we were children and when we were in college studying to do educators, whole language was the trend. 

But as a school, Seven Hills has always had the approach of taking the best of both whole language and phonics and blending them together.

In all of our Lower School classrooms, we have been embracing the science of reading through work with our consultant Hannah Fernweh, from Erin Kent Consulting. In recent years, the understanding of how the brain acquires the ability to read has evolved. There are areas and networks in the brain involved in processing print, speech sounds, language, and meaning, but the neural connections between them required for reading do not exist in the pre-literate brain.

Simply put, reading is not a natural process and developing literacy takes explicit instruction, which has been proven to be more effective than an immersion in language. Practically in primary grades, students need a solid understanding of how to break the code of how letters and words work before they start the work of really digging into aspects of literature. 

Fernweh has helped our teachers understand the philosophy behind the Scarbrough Reading Rope, which shows how word recognition and language comprehension are entwined to develop reading comprehension. 

It takes explicit and systematic instruction of phonics to help students decode unknown words. When kindergartners know the difference between an open and closed syllables, it creates a strong base of phonics that has shown to improve reading comprehension and spelling going forward.

And it is not just in the Lower School program, students of all ages can utilize their phonological knowledge when they encounter a word they do not know and break it down to discern the meaning. 

When we were children, phonics was the preferred literacy instruction, but, unlike today, it was “drill, drill, drill.” There was no context. Today, our students learn phonics terminology and understand why letters make certain sounds when they are positioned in a specific way. Students are practicing decoding and encoding simultaneously and are equipped with decodable readers. They learn to tap out words and practice blending learning in various ways.

A favorite activity for the Doherty first graders is spotting “the errors” in a sentence their teachers have written on the board and being able to “correct” her work.

At Seven Hills, we consider ourselves a best practice school. And this is exactly the approach we believe is best when it comes to developing literacy. We are taking the best pieces of these proven methods and blending them together to create balanced literacy instruction to ensure our students grow into strong readers.