According to research released this month from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, reading scores declined by five points from 2020 to 2022, which is the largest score drop in reading since 1990.
To support children’s reading development, Scholastic is proud to announce a new professional title, Reading Above the Fray by Dr. Julia B. Lindsey. Reading Above the Fray is a practical guide for teachers looking to implement instructional practices that draw upon decades of evidence and reflect the science of reading in foundational literacy instruction.
The title provides evidence-based routines that help young children decode words efficiently so they can effectively advance to other essential skills, including fluency and comprehension, and enjoy what they are reading.
Reading Above the Fray is organized around three critical ideas:
- Foundational skills are necessary for decoding, and decoding is necessary for fluency and comprehension.
- Foundational skills must be taught systematically and with a clear purpose in mind.
- Teaching foundational skills need not be daunting; Teachers can implement the provided “instructional swaps” for their current teaching practices to deliver more efficient and effective reading instruction.
To help support educators in implementing these three critical ideas, Reading Above the Fray unpacks the need-to-know essentials of how kids learn to read and includes concise decoding routines and strategies for multisyllabic-word recognition.
“We are in an all-hands-on-deck moment to support children as the pandemic has only exacerbated the disparities in reading we were already concerned about,” shared researcher and teacher, Julia B. Lindsey, Ph.D. “I wrote Reading Above the Fray to put information and tools into the hands of teachers with very immediate needs to support their students’ reading journeys. Teachers will be able to immediately implement reliable, concise decoding routines in their classroom that create space for both the joyful and practical elements of learning to read.”
To learn more about Reading Above the Fray, click here and be sure to check out @JuliaBLindsey and @ScholasticEd on Twitter and follow the hashtag #ScienceofReading!
