Teaching students to read is one of the most important things we do as educators.
Reading Universe can help. You'll find ready-to-use teaching strategies, in-classroom videos, interviews with teachers and reading experts, and quick, concrete answers to common questions about teaching reading and writing. And it's all free! We're glad you're here.
Teaching Step by Step
The Reading Universe Taxonomy is your interactive, step-by-step guide to teaching reading. It's designed for teachers, reading coaches, tutors, and caregivers — anyone who wants to help a child learn to read. Watch below to learn more — or dive right in and give it a try!
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[Music] If you teach reading, you know how rewarding it can be. But you've probably also found that in every class there will be students who really struggle with learning to read.
Reading Universe is here to help. With expert guidance we've developed a new framework to support educators everywhere. It's called the Reading Universe Taxonomy.
How does this free professional resource work? It's built upon the leading research on how we learn to read. We are born with the ability to learn oral language, but making sense of the written word doesn't come naturally; so we need to teach students that the letters on a page represent the sounds we all use to speak with each other.
The path to literacy is through word recognition. Children need to crack the alphabetic code using phonological awareness and phonics. They need to be able to hear that a spoken word like net is made up of separate sounds: /n/, /e/, /t/. That's phonological awareness. And they need to connect those sounds to the letters of the alphabet to see 'n', 'e', 't' and read net. That's phonics.
But being able to read words is just one part of the process. Students also need to understand what the words mean. That's called language comprehension. As children gain more knowledge of the world around them, they begin to recognize more of the words that they sound out. Then they can build on their knowledge through more reading. Only students who develop word recognition and language comprehension can achieve reading comprehension. It takes both to become a good reader.
Inside the Reading Universe Taxonomy you'll find everything you need to know about how to teach the reading skills your students need to master. Each literacy component is broken down into its many skills and processes. For each skill we show why it matters and how to teach it effectively, and we offer ideas for supporting students who need extra help. We don't just describe effective teaching, we show it with in-classroom video filmed in schools around the country.
Ongoing assessment is critical to effective teaching, so we provide guidance for determining what each student needs and how to tailor your instruction to meet those needs. Reading comprehension is not just one skill. It's the product of all the many skills that we teach our children.
We hope the Reading Universe Taxonomy will become your trusted go-to guide and that, together, we can give more children the chance to excel as readers and in their lives. This is Reading Universe.
Special Thanks
Reading Universe is made possible by generous support from Jim & Donna Barksdale; the Hastings/Quillin Fund, an advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (opens in new window); the AFT (opens in new window); the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation (opens in new window); and three anonymous donors.
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Real Teachers in Real Classrooms
Reading Universe highlights great teaching from across the country, as in this video featuring Kimberly Schneider, a teacher at Shull Elementary in San Dimas, California, who has her students decode a word with a short vowel, like hop. Then she adds an ‘e’ to the end to make a new word, as in hope.
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Kimberly Schneider: Before I put silent 'e' right here, who can tell me? What does that word say? Nicole? What does it say?
Nicole: Hop.
Alright, everybody say, hop.
Students: Hop.
Kimberly Schneider: Hop. Put out your arm. Tell me the sounds.
Students and Ms. Schneider: /h/, /ŏ/, /p/. Hop.
Kimberly Schneider: Good job. But if I add a silent 'e', that's no longer an /ŏ/. It's an /ō/. Do you already know what that says? Okay, Sophia, what does it say?
Sophia: Hope.
Kimberly Schneider: Everybody say hope.
Students: Hope. Hope.
Kimberly Schneider: Ooh. Let's do this one. What does my word say without the silent 'e'? What does it say?
Sophia: Kit.
Kimberly Schneider: Everybody say, kit.
Students: Kit. Kit.
Kimberly Schneider: But when I have silent 'e', he makes that 'i' stand up tall. Say its name. You already know what it says. Nicole, what does it say?
Nicole: Kite.
Kimberly Schneider: Kite. Very good.
The Big Picture
Children across the country are struggling with reading. What can research tell us about how children learn to read? What can we all do to help more students succeed?
Timely Talks from Experts
Take an in-depth look at critical reading topics. Watch reading specialist Margaret Goldberg explain the science of how children learn to read. No registration required. Watch Julie Washington, Ph.D., offering guidance about teaching children who speak African American English at home. Watch Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan, Ph.D., discusses best practices for teaching English Learners.
Reading Skill Explainers
You Asked ... Experts Answered!
Is handwriting actually important for writing?
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Let's talk about handwriting and/or keyboarding. If you want to get something out on paper, you have to be able to write it. You also have to be able to spell it. But even if you know how to spell the word, you have to be able to get those letters down on the paper. And if students of any age have to put too much energy into thinking about how to form those letters, it's going to take energy away from the critical thinking parts of being able to write. Now, there's a lot of research out there that shows that students, by the time they're in fourth grade, if they're not fluent with that handwriting and spending too much energy, it really affects the quality of their writing, of their composing.
Now, there's uncertainty ... there's no set answer to the question about should it be cursive, should it be manuscript, but we do know that whichever it is, students have to become fluent in that. Now, let's also make the connection to keyboarding or typing. Very young children don't have ... they're not developmentally able to do the kind of keyboarding that adults and older students can, but they can hunt and peck. Once students hit about fifth or sixth grade, they're developmentally more able to do the keyboarding. And there's great debate over whether we should spend time with handwriting or go right to keyboarding. I'm not here to answer that question. I do believe that for elementary children, in particular, there's also so much research that shows that if students are learning to hand write the letters at the same time that they're learning the letter-sound correspondences, that improves the letter writing, and it also improves the alphabetic knowledge that they're developing during a phonics lesson. So, for lots of reasons, the ability to be fluent in that transcription skill of handwriting and/or keyboarding is absolutely essential.
When students struggle with forming letters, they aren't able to focus on figuring out what to write. In this video, Joan Sedita, founder of Keys to Literacy and an expert on writing instruction, explains why students should learn handwriting skills early and concurrently with sound-letter correspondence.
Building on decades of experience ...
Reading Universe is a service of WETA/Reading Rockets, the Barksdale Reading Institute, and First Book.
Reading Universe is made possible by generous support from Jim & Donna Barksdale; the Hastings/Quillin Fund, an advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (opens in new window); the AFT (opens in new window); the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation (opens in new window); and three anonymous donors.