The Science of Reading is a large body of interdisciplinary research examining how reading develops, why some students struggle, and which instructional approaches most effectively support literacy growth. This research draws from education, cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and speech and language science (Castles et al., 2018).

An important insight from this research is that learning to speak is natural for most children, but learning to read is not. Children typically develop spoken language through conversation, listening, storytelling, and language exposure. Reading, however, requires explicit instruction because written language must be intentionally learned and connected to spoken language. Literacy experts such as Dr. Louisa Moats have emphasized that effective reading instruction should be explicit, systematic, cumulative, and grounded in the structure of language (Moats, 2020).

The Science of Reading is sometimes reduced to a conversation about phonics alone, but the research points to a broader and more interconnected picture of literacy development. Skilled reading depends on both word recognition and language comprehension, a relationship reflected in frameworks such as Scarborough’s Reading Rope (Scarborough, 2001).

Phonics teaches students the relationships between sounds and letters and how those relationships support reading and spelling. Through phonics instruction, students learn to connect spoken language to written language and apply that knowledge to decode and encode words.

At the heart of phonics instruction is the alphabetic principle, the understanding that spoken sounds are represented by letters and letter patterns in print. The alphabetic principle serves as an important bridge between phonemic awareness, phonics, and decoding.

Research consistently supports the value of explicit, systematic phonics instruction, particularly for beginning readers and students experiencing reading difficulty (National Reading Panel, 2000). Effective phonics instruction helps students build accuracy, develop decoding flexibility, and strengthen spelling development.

For example, students may begin with closed syllable words such as cat, sit, and jump, where a vowel is followed by one or more consonants and typically produces a short vowel sound. As instruction progresses, students apply their knowledge to more advanced spelling patterns, syllable types, morphology, and multisyllabic words.

However, phonics alone does not produce skilled reading. The growing Science of Reading conversation has elevated the importance of phonics instruction, but the research itself describes a more comprehensive view of literacy development. Phonics complements other components of the Science of Reading. It relies on phonemic awareness, supports decoding, contributes to orthographic mapping, and ultimately helps strengthen fluency and comprehension.

Phonics teaches students the relationships between sounds and letters and how those relationships support reading and spelling. Through phonics instruction, students learn to connect spoken language to written language and apply that knowledge to decode and encode words.

Research consistently supports the value of explicit, systematic phonics instruction, particularly for beginning readers and students experiencing reading difficulty (National Reading Panel, 2000). Effective phonics instruction helps students build accuracy, strengthen decoding flexibility, and develop more efficient word recognition.

For example, students may begin with simple consonant and short vowel patterns such as cat, sit, and map before progressing to vowel teams, syllable types, morphology, and multisyllabic word reading.

Phonics works closely with other components of the Science of Reading. It depends on phonemic awareness, because students must first hear and manipulate sounds before connecting those sounds to print (Kilpatrick, 2015). As decoding becomes more accurate and automatic, phonics also supports fluency, freeing students to focus on vocabulary, language, and comprehension.

Phonics is an essential component of reading instruction, but it becomes most powerful when connected to sound awareness, automatic word recognition, and meaning-making.

Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual phonemes in spoken words. Unlike phonics, phonemic awareness focuses on sounds rather than print.

Students may practice:

• blending sounds into words
• segmenting words into individual phonemes
• deleting sounds from words
• substituting phonemes to create new words

Research from David Kilpatrick, Louisa Moats, and Lucy Hart Paulson highlights the important role phonemic awareness plays in decoding, spelling, orthographic mapping, and skilled word recognition (Kilpatrick, 2015; Moats, 2020; Paulson, 2010).

Phonemic awareness complements phonics by providing the spoken-language foundation students need to connect sounds to letters. Together, phonemic awareness and phonics strengthen decoding, spelling, and automatic word recognition. These foundational skills, in turn, support later fluency and comprehension.

For example:

• Say cat without the /k/ sound. → at

• Change the /m/ in map to /t/. → tap

These sound-processing skills support later decoding, spelling, and automatic word recognition.

Students do not develop skilled reading through phonics alone. Strong sound awareness helps make phonics instruction more meaningful, efficient, and durable.

Reading fluency involves more than reading quickly. Fluent readers read with accuracy, automaticity, and appropriate expression, allowing them to devote greater cognitive energy to understanding text rather than laborious word decoding.

Fluency develops when students can efficiently apply phonemic awareness and phonics knowledge to recognize words with increasing accuracy and ease. As repeated decoding experiences strengthen orthographic mapping, words become stored for rapid retrieval and reading becomes more automatic (Ehri, 2014).

For example, a student who slowly decodes every word may struggle to maintain meaning across a paragraph, even when individual words are read correctly. As fluency improves, students can devote more attention to vocabulary, language structures, and comprehension.

Fluency is often described as the bridge between foundational skills and meaning-making because it reflects the growing integration of decoding and language comprehension.

Vocabulary refers to the words students understand and use across speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Vocabulary knowledge influences how students interpret text, connect ideas, and construct meaning. A student who can accurately decode a word still needs to understand what that word means.

Research consistently highlights vocabulary as an important contributor to language comprehension and skilled reading development (Scarborough, 2001).

Vocabulary development complements foundational skills by giving meaning to the words students decode. As students build stronger phonics, phonemic awareness, and fluency, vocabulary helps transform accurate word reading into meaningful reading.

Students benefit from repeated exposure to words, explicit instruction, morphology study, meaningful discussion, and opportunities to apply new language across contexts.

For example, a student may decode a sentence in a social studies text accurately but struggle to understand it because unfamiliar terms such as democracy, economy, or migration limit comprehension. Vocabulary knowledge helps students connect accurate word reading to ideas, concepts, and meaning across disciplines.

Reading success depends not only on recognizing words accurately, but also on understanding and using language in increasingly sophisticated ways.

Comprehension is the process of understanding, interpreting, and making meaning from text.

Comprehension depends on the successful interaction of multiple reading components. Students must be able to recognize words accurately while also drawing on vocabulary, oral language, background knowledge, and reasoning skills to understand what they read.

This relationship is reflected in frameworks such as Scarborough’s Reading Rope and the Simple View of Reading, which describe skilled reading as the interaction between word recognition and language comprehension (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Scarborough, 2001).

For example, a student may read a passage about the water cycle accurately and fluently but still struggle to explain evaporation, condensation, or precipitation because of limited vocabulary, background knowledge, or language comprehension. Skilled comprehension depends on more than accurate word reading. It requires students to connect words, concepts, language, and ideas to construct meaning from text. Learn more about Specific Strategies to Support Students for Curricular Learning.

Comprehension is strengthened by phonics, phonemic awareness, and fluency, which support efficient word reading. It is also strengthened by vocabulary and oral language, which support understanding and meaning-making.

Comprehension is not a standalone skill taught in isolation. It reflects the combined influence of foundational skills, language knowledge, and meaningful engagement with text.

Oral language includes listening comprehension, speaking, vocabulary, syntax, narrative skills, and expressive and receptive language abilities.

Unlike reading, spoken language develops naturally through interaction, conversation, storytelling, and exposure to language-rich environments. Long before students encounter printed text, they are learning words, sentence structures, meanings, and ways of communicating. These oral language experiences help build the foundation that ultimately supports reading development.

Oral language strengthens phonemic awareness by helping students notice and manipulate sounds within spoken words. It contributes to vocabulary growth, supports comprehension, and helps students make sense of increasingly complex text.

For example, a child who has heard and used words such as gigantic, whisper, or predict during conversations, read-alouds, and classroom discussions is more prepared to recognize, decode, and understand those words when encountering them in print. Exposure to rich spoken language helps students build the vocabulary, sound awareness, and language knowledge that support later reading success.

The Science of Reading highlights an important distinction. While speaking develops naturally for most children, reading does not. Strong literacy instruction therefore builds on oral language development while providing the explicit instruction students need to become skilled readers.

Decoding is the process of using knowledge of sounds, letters, and language patterns to read unfamiliar words.

Within the Science of Reading, decoding sits at the intersection of several important components. It relies on phonemic awareness because students must hear and manipulate sounds. It depends on phonics because students use sound-symbol relationships to identify printed words. As decoding becomes more accurate and automatic, it supports fluency, allowing students to shift attention from word recognition toward meaning-making.

For example, a student decoding the word shipment may use phonemic awareness to distinguish sounds, phonics knowledge to apply spelling patterns, and growing fluency to read the word efficiently within connected text.

Decoding also connects to comprehension. Students cannot make meaning from words they cannot accurately recognize. At the same time, accurate decoding alone does not guarantee understanding. Skilled reading requires the interaction of efficient word reading, vocabulary knowledge, oral language, and language comprehension.

Decoding is sometimes framed as a narrow phonics skill, but research-based reading instruction positions decoding as an important bridge between foundational skills and comprehension.

Reading comprehension depends on more than recognizing words accurately. Students also draw on background knowledge to interpret ideas, connect concepts, and make meaning from text.

Background knowledge includes what students know about the world, academic topics, vocabulary, concepts, and experiences. This knowledge supports language comprehension and helps readers understand increasingly complex texts.

For example, a student may decode and read a passage about ecosystems accurately but still struggle to understand concepts such as adaptation, habitat, or biodiversity without sufficient background knowledge.

Background knowledge works alongside vocabulary, oral language, and comprehension. As students build knowledge through reading, discussion, content learning, and language experiences, they become better prepared to understand new texts and ideas.

Strong literacy instruction supports both foundational reading skills and knowledge building. Accurate word reading matters, but comprehension is strengthened when students have meaningful knowledge to connect to what they read.

As students progress into more advanced reading, morphology becomes increasingly important.

Morphology is the study of meaningful word parts such as prefixes, suffixes, and roots. Understanding morphology can support decoding, spelling, vocabulary development, and comprehension.

For example, a student encountering the word unpredictable can use knowledge of the prefix un-, the root predict, and the suffix -able to support pronunciation, spelling, and meaning.

Morphology complements phonics by helping students analyze longer, more complex words. It also strengthens vocabulary and comprehension because understanding meaningful word parts can support interpretation across academic content areas.

Thought leadership connection: Reading development does not end with basic phonics patterns. As texts become more sophisticated, morphology helps students navigate increasingly complex language.

Orthographic mapping is the process through which words become stored in memory for rapid, automatic recognition (Ehri, 2014).

As students repeatedly connect sounds, spellings, pronunciations, and meanings, words become increasingly familiar and easier to recognize without conscious decoding effort. These stored words become part of a reader’s mental lexicon, the internal network of known words that supports fluent reading, vocabulary development, and comprehension.

Orthographic mapping depends on strong phonemic awareness and phonics knowledge. Students must be able to analyze sounds within words and connect those sounds to written letter patterns. Over time, successful decoding experiences help build more automatic word recognition and stronger reading fluency.

For example, a student may initially decode the word jumped sound by sound. After repeated successful reading experiences, the word becomes stored for instant recognition within the student's mental lexicon.

This process also helps explain sight words. Skilled readers do not typically memorize words simply by visual exposure alone. Instead, many familiar words become recognized “by sight” because they have been orthographically mapped. Some educators may use the term heart words to describe high-frequency words that contain regular patterns alongside portions that require extra attention or explanation.

Thought leadership connection: Orthographic mapping helps explain how students move from laborious decoding to efficient, automatic reading. It also highlights why strong phonemic awareness and phonics instruction matter for developing skilled readers.

References: 
_{Castles, A., Rastle, K., & Nation, K. (2018). Ending the reading wars: Reading acquisition from novice to expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(1), 5–51.}

_{Kilpatrick, D. A. (2015). Essentials of assessing, preventing, and overcoming reading difficulties.} 

_{Moats, L. C. (2020). Teaching reading is rocket science, 2020: What expert teachers of reading should know and be able to do. American Educator.}

_{National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.}

_{Paulson, L. H. (2010). Phonemic awareness. In D. A. Kilpatrick, D. S. O’Brien, & R. C. Joshi (Eds.), Essentials of assessing, preventing, and overcoming reading difficulties.}

_{Scarborough, H. S. (2001). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In S. Neuman & D. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of early literacy research (Vol. 1, pp. 97–110). Guilford Press.}