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Doing What Works: Evidence-Based Reading Instruction

Teaching children to read is the most important thing our schools do. Yet, for too long, schools have been embroiled in bitter debates about how to teach this most basic skill. Thankfully, in recent years, scientists have evaluated good reading instruction and curricula to determine how to teach reading skills most effectively to young children. The researchers tell us that 95 percent of all children will learn to read if they are taught using—

• Systematic and explicit instruction in phonics, decoding, comprehension and literature appreciation

• Daily exposure to a variety of texts, both fiction and nonfiction, as well as incentives to read independently and with others

• Vocabulary instruction that emphasizes the relationships among words and among word structure, origin and meaning

• Instruction in comprehension that includes predicting outcomes, summarizing, clarifying, questioning and visualizing

• Frequent opportunities to write

These guidelines have proven effective in even the toughest of classrooms. Many students once considered "hard to teach" are now reading confidently, so we know it can be done. Now that we know what works in our classrooms, we must do what works in every classroom. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Education will continue to help educators and the public know the important pre-reading and language skills that our youngest children need to learn in order to be ready when they reach the classroom.

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Last updated—December 17, 2004 (jer)