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  • Big Picture

The Courage to Teach Reading Differently

Carla Stanford standing at an easel in classroom with students.
Carla Stanford works with a group of students while coaching at La Verne Heights Elementary School in California. Photo by Ming Lai
Two students in class
Photo by Alvaro Nieto

These kids were smart and had great background knowledge and curiosity, but they could not consistently pull the words off the page. "I knew deep down that there had to be something missing. This was a ‘me’ problem and I knew that I still had a lot to learn," she says.  

She remembers what it felt like to sit across from the parents of those struggling readers. "There were always tears and frustration — mine and the parents'," she says. "It was the heaviest."  

Ms. Stanford’s tenacity and openness to change would soon lead her on a journey toward a different way of teaching reading.  

Young girl sitting on the floor and reading in her classroom.
Photo by Ming Lai

Like most elementary school teachers she knew, Ms. Stanford had always taught reading the way she’d learned throughout her training, using a method known as balanced literacy.

In the mid-1990s, when she was in college, the dominant theory in literacy education was whole language, which posits that students learn to read through immersion in words and text. That theory morphed into what became called balanced literacy, which emphasizes using meaning and context to figure out unknown words. Phonics is seen as one tool among many for determining what a text says.

"We were basically taught to expose kids to books, provide them with books to read in their book box level, and do lots of read-alouds," Ms. Stanford says. "I used guided reading, which relies on pictures, background knowledge, and predictable texts. If a student continued to struggle, we’d focus on looking at the pictures — not the words — and thinking about what would make sense within the context of the story. Here and there, I would throw in a little phonics lesson ... but there was no real system."

What Is Balanced Literacy?

Balanced literacy is an approach to teaching reading that involves a mix of techniques, including teacher-led instruction, guided reading in small groups, and independent reading. Students receive some phonics instruction, but it is generally not a focus. In a balanced literacy classroom, when a child comes to a word they don’t know, a teacher may encourage the student to draw on context clues, sentence structure, or even the pictures to figure out the word — a strategy called three-cueing. Research has shown that three-cueing (opens in new window) reinforces guessing at words and other habits used by unskilled readers.  

Carla Sanford tapping with student.
Photo by James Dickerson

Ms. Stanford did have many readers at the end of each year, meaning her methods were working for some students. But the premise she was working under — that learning to read should come somewhat naturally if students are exposed to enough books — was in contrast to decades of cognitive research about how reading really works. Teaching phonological awareness and phonics directly and systematically, the research shows, yields better outcomes for all.

"I just did not have the full knowledge at the time — that in order to learn to read, children need explicit, step-by step instruction," Ms. Stanford says. "I feel incredibly sad about how long it took me to come to this realization."  

Soon after receiving her teacher of the year award, Ms. Stanford saw the documentary The Big Picture: Rethinking Dyslexia, which Robert Redford’s son James had made about his own son’s struggles with dyslexia. The movie shows that struggling readers can succeed — if they’re explicitly taught to crack the alphabetic code. "I watched it with my jaw on the ground," says Ms. Stanford. "I kept thinking, ‘Are you kidding me? I have been teaching reading wrong all this time?'"  

With doubts and questions buzzing, Ms. Stanford sought more knowledge. She dug into the science on reading acquisition, learning about the Simple View of Reading and Scarborough’s Reading Rope, among other influential theories backed by years of research. She took more in-depth courses such as Orton-Gillingham training, a highly structured, multisensory approach that has long been used for students with dyslexia. And she began to see the importance of teaching decoding skill by skill, with frequent assessment to gauge what kids know and ongoing vocabulary building. 

What Is Structured Literacy?

Structured literacy encompasses a science-based approach to reading instruction that is explicit, systematic, and cumulative. Also sometimes known as the science of reading, it’s based on decades of research showing that students need to know how the alphabetic code works and have sufficient language comprehension in order to understand what they read. The approach focuses on explicit teaching of phonological awareness, phonics, and fluency, as well as of other key components of literacy, such as vocabulary, comprehension, and writing. Teachers use direct instruction, rather than relying on discovery or exploration, and ensure students have no gaps in their knowledge of how reading works. Ongoing assessment helps teachers individualize instruction and guide kids towards skilled reading.

Carla Sanford helps train a teacher on teaching reading.
Ms. Stanford works with Max Venia, a teacher at Riverside Elementary School in Toledo, Ohio, who is learning about structured literacy. Photo by James Dickerson

Using the balanced-literacy approach, Ms. Stanford would have, for example, come up with a list of words with ‘ck’ for students to memorize — tack, muck, sick — and then given a spelling quiz. "Surprise, surprise ... the next week, many of the kids had no memory of how to read or spell those ‘ck’ words," she says. 

Through structured literacy, she learned to teach the ‘ck’ pattern as part of the larger, cumulative phonics system. Students first learn single letters and sounds, and eventually move on to more complex phonics patterns like ‘ck’. They learn that you spell the /k/ sound with the letters ‘ck’ when /k/ comes at the end of a word with a short vowel, like sack or kick.

Students no longer need to spend time memorizing words; rather through practice they internalize these patterns and use them to read and spell words. The words are stored in memory through a process called orthographic mapping, in which sounds, spelling, and meaning come together.

Ms. Stanford is frank with other teachers about how much work it took to transition from balanced to structured literacy. It entailed a several-year process of researching, learning the science of reading, and then applying that new big-picture knowledge into the day-to-day lessons in the classroom.  

When she first started doing explicit phonics instruction, she started too slowly, drilling students on the sounds day after day and never quite making the connection to fluent reading. "It’s like I was going to the burrito bar and only putting on the sour cream,” she says.

But she eventually learned to implement a systematic approach — and began to see the payoff. Finally, she could "sit across from parents and say, 'Let me show you what is going on with your child — here’s the data,'" she says. She could point to the exact skills a student needed to work on, either in word recognition or language comprehension, rather than estimating where the gaps were and throwing strategies at the wall. 

"Being able to actually show parents what is going on changed everything," she says. "No more tears, rather a solid, achievable plan." 

Carla Sanford with a group of teachers and students.
Ms. Stanford poses with 1st grade teacher Taurra Dorsey, REAP coach Elizabeth Hogan, and students at Hope-Hill Elementary School in Atlanta. Photo by Tanya Marineau

The more she learned and the better her teaching became, the more Ms. Stanford wanted to share her knowledge with other educators. In addition to coaching teachers and modeling in their classrooms, in 2013, Ms. Stanford cofounded a not-for-profit called Reading Is Essential for All People, or REAP. Based near Atlanta, REAP funds trainings for public school teachers in the foundations of research-based reading instruction, specifically multisensory, systematic, and direct phonics instruction.  

 When teachers understand the findings that have been supported by research again and again, they can avoid pendulum swings in trends and stay true to what actually works in teaching reading, Ms. Stanford says. 

Even so, many teachers are apprehensive about learning how to teach reading in a new way, and they fear losing what brought them to the profession in the first place.  

Ms. Stanford has advice for these teachers. "You can still love literature and still love having your students sit on the rug for read-alouds. That’s so important! But you also have to teach children explicitly how to decode,” she says. “You can't just read aloud and think that osmosis is the way it’s going to go. And so, it is about intentionally breaking down the reading process into bite-size pieces for kids and teaching them these steps in very engaging, exciting ways.”   

In February 2024, Ms. Stanford joined Reading Universe as director of instructional design. Reading Universe is a free professional-development service aimed at helping teachers and coaches learn about research-based reading instruction. It offers lesson plans, videos, activities, assessments, and explainers. Ms. Stanford now spends her days collaborating with content experts and a multimedia team to develop a step-by-step guide for teaching reading.

“I was a teacher who didn't know all the research on teaching children how to read, and I didn’t want that experience for other teachers,” she says.  

Above all, Ms. Stanford wants teachers on the precipice of a similar change to know they are not alone. “There are lots of resources and lots of other teachers also on this journey of changing — wholesale — the way they teach reading,” she says. “If I can do it, so can you.” 

Teaching Closed Syllables with the Alphabet Queen

In this video, Ms. Stanford demonstrates a creative, fun way to teach students about how to recognize closed syllables, an important skill for early decoding. "The Alphabet Queen is a perfect example of how phonics does not have to be dry and boring; it can be fun and entertaining so that the knowledge is deeply understood and sticks," she says. Watch Ms. Stanford tell her students the story of The Alphabet Queen.

Video thumbnail for Teaching Closed Syllables with the Alphabet Queen

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.