New Research-Backed Approach to Literacy Prioritizes Consistency for DA’s Youngest Learners
Story and Photography by Melody Guyton Butts
Depending on the decade in which one learned to read, references for literacy instruction vary widely. Mention the topic, and children of the ’80s will hear echoes of “Hooked on Phonics worked for me!” Earlier generations might visualize pages from the Dick and Jane sight-word primers. And now — thanks to “the science of reading,” a body of convergent evidence from decades of cognitive and neuroscience research — schools like Durham Academy are taking a more comprehensive approach to literacy than ever, emphasizing explicit foundational skills in phonics, word study and grammar while exposing children to rigorous, engaging texts.
Eager to put the science of reading into practice at DA, the Preschool and Lower School have adopted new literacy curricula: Beginning this fall, 95 Percent Group’s 95 Phonics Core Program will be used for phonics instruction in kindergarten–grade 4, and reading and writing will be taught via EL Education’s language arts curriculum in grades 1–4.
“We are using the science of reading to apply findings from neuroscience research to how we teach, like how our brains are processing print and how important oral language is to reading comprehension and writing development,” explained Alison Provan, Lower School literacy specialist. She and the Lower School literacy committee — which includes teacher representatives from each grade level — explored more than 30 curricula in search of programs that incorporate the science of reading; instruction in phonics, word study and grammar; and “rigorous grade-level and above-grade-level texts” before homing in on 95 Phonics and EL Education.
The change will bring consistency across grade levels, which was lacking in the previous medley of curricula. For years, the backbone of literacy instruction has been the Lucy Calkins Units of Study (better known as Readers and Writers Workshop), which Lower School Director Carolyn Ronco described as strong in developing students’ reading comprehension and writing stamina. However, it was weak in phonics and grammar, so teachers had to supplement with additional programs.
“We started to hear from teachers, ‘It's hard to pull from here, to here, to here. We know that having a consistent program is really effective,’” Ronco recalled. “We were doing one thing in kindergarten with phonics instruction, then they would go to first grade and do another program, and then they would go to second grade and do another program. A couple of years ago, it became clear that our goal was, number one, a program that incorporated it all, that was consistent from kindergarten to fourth grade.”
When Provan — who came to DA fall 2023 — interviewed for the literacy specialist position, she made clear that she was excited about potentially leading faculty “through a change in this exciting time in education — where there is a lot of buzz around making that bridge of research-to-practice,” she said. “... I didn't know they'd be ready for it the first year. I thought I'd have to do a lot more convincing.”
But Provan’s new colleagues’ enthusiasm for making the change matched her own, so Ronco asked her to move forward with a timeline for implementation in fall 2024.
Teachers were involved in every step of the process — from poring over curriculum samples and asking sales reps tough questions, to nixing programs that lacked culturally relevant texts or that weren’t universally strong across grade levels.
Phonics
“One thing I really liked and teachers really liked about [95 Phonics] is that it goes in depth in aiming for mastery, which can help fill gaps or misunderstandings early on,” Provan explained, “and going for the automaticity, where when the child is writing, they don’t have to slow down so much to focus on spelling words that they lose their train of thought.”
In keeping with the science of reading, 95 Phonics supports both phonemic awareness — the ability to perceive and manipulate the sounds in words — and orthographic mapping — the process of instantly incorporating sound and spelling information to recognize words from memory. Students learn to identify the various sounds (phonemes) within words, and then match which letters (graphemes) make each of those sounds. They go on to analyze the meaningful parts (morphemes) within words, such as roots and affixes.
“Five, 10 years ago, when a child reached a word they didn't know, we might have asked that child, 'What makes sense?' based on what is happening in the story, and then have them confirm their guess based on the spelling of the word,” Provan said. “But the neuroscience is telling us: That's not how good readers read, that's very inefficient and slow, and that's depending on a lot of vocabulary that many young children may not have. ... And that starts to fall apart in third and fourth grade when you get to multisyllabic words that are less phonetic and less common.”
Kindergarten teacher Sloan Nuernberger, who serves as the Preschool’s literacy academic leader, is looking forward to the new curriculum smoothing kindergartners’ transition to first grade.
“When you're teaching phonics, you're practicing sounds and you're learning jingles to help you remember the sound, like ‘a, apple, app,’” Nuernberger said. “It's a lot for the child to learn it one way in Preschool, and then a completely different way in first grade. … It's going to be really great to have the alignment across divisions so that the language we speak here [in the Preschool] will be familiar when they get to first grade.”
Also speaking that language will be pre-kindergarten teachers, who will use a 95 Percent Group phonemic awareness kit to set a foundation for the full curriculum.
Reading and Writing
EL Education will serve as the reading and writing program for grades 1–4, with a possibility that the program will be expanded into the Preschool in the future. The curriculum is based on freestanding trade books — like those in a library or bookstore — that incorporate social-emotional learning, feature diverse representation and inspire rich discussion.
In addition, the EL Education curriculum has a strong grammar component that is linked to students’ writing. All students will read the same texts — and reference them in their writing — which results in greater equity than when students select different topics. Many of the books included in the new curriculum center around science and social studies, with students engaged in in-depth research and analysis on those topics over time.
“The idea being that you're reading to learn while you're learning to read, and then you're writing about what you've been reading about,” Provan explained. “Everyone has a lot to say about it because everyone can find evidence in the text. And everyone's vocabulary and syntax are developing because their mentor texts, the books we've been studying, are so rich. That's a stretch for some students who were not reading at that level independently, and it is enriching those students who are already choosing to read those kinds of books on their own. But it's more equitable because everyone's referencing the same source to begin with.”
To prepare for the transition in curricula, teachers have taken on several hours of asynchronous training outside of school hours, and multiple professional development days have been devoted to training and preparation as a faculty. Despite that heavy lift, Ronco said there’s an air of nervous excitement for the change among teachers.
“We're asking a lot of them,” Provan added. “And they're up for the challenge.”