Kymyona Burk, Ed.D., is a Senior Policy Fellow at ExcelinEd.
Literacy education has long been understood through the familiar maxim, “learning to read, reading to learn.” This statement reveals a widely held view of reading development: Students spend their time in the early grades gaining foundational skills—particularly in decoding words—and once those skills are established by third grade, students can then use reading as an access point to knowledge in new and advanced subjects.
The idea that there is a time when children pivot from learning to read to reading to learn is conceptually helpful, particularly for understanding why students who haven’t mastered foundational skills by grade three may require another year of instruction before they are ready for the material they will experience in fourth grade. But the phrase shouldn’t be construed to mean that students and teachers should focus exclusively on skill building in grades 1-3. The science of reading tells us that students should be exposed to rich vocabulary and academic content as soon as they enter the classroom. That exposure should happen while students are learning foundational skills and for the rest of their education.
As students shift to classroom environments defined by reading comprehension and a focus on content learning, schools still need to continue to concentrate on fundamental reading skills—like advanced decoding, vocabulary, fluency and word recognition.
Unfortunately, some students won’t master foundational skills or will need continued support throughout elementary and into middle school. They will still be “learning to read” while they are “reading to learn.” This reality may challenge how schools are set up to serve students and how we equip teachers across classrooms and content areas to support all students. Once students reach middle school, reading is no longer a stand-alone subject but integrated across the curriculum.
For example, many schools don’t evaluate students’ word recognition skills past third grade, but as students move into middle and high school, reading demands intensify, as texts increasingly include academic or technical language. If core instruction in advanced decoding doesn’t continue, students can experience a gap in word recognition.. This can lead to reading stagnation among students and lend itself to academic difficulties in upper grades.
Research offers a strong explanation for adolescent students’ reading difficulties that start with decoding, which is the ability to translate written letters into sounds and words automatically and effortlessly. Without this skill fully developed, students often struggle with complex texts in later grades.
Researchers with Educational Testing Service (ETS) outline this challenge through the “decoding threshold,” a term coined to describe a crucial level of word recognition and accurate decoding that students must attain to make gains in reading comprehension with harder texts.
Young readers begin decoding using simple words, such as hat and napkin. As students progress, reading materials become more complex. They will encounter multisyllabic words, content-specific vocabulary and new word parts that add or change meaning, such as prefixes and roots. If word recognition isn’t strong, and students are unable to decode longer, more complex words, reading comprehension suffers. That struggle with individual words makes the task of reading laborious and creates cognitive strain.
ETS research found that students who score below the threshold on word recognition and decoding showed much slower growth in vocabulary and overall reading comprehension than peers who scored above the threshold. Students scoring below the threshold also displayed adverse reading behavior, such as quickly giving up on unfamiliar words rather than applying phonics concepts to unpack the word’s sound patterns.
This underscores what has been observed in classrooms for quite some time: many older students struggle with reading texts accurately, especially as the content becomes more difficult, leaving them at a disadvantage.
The “learning to read, reading to learn” maxim implies that once students have been given the foundational tools to read, which is expected by third grade, they no longer require explicit support for those foundational tools.
However, the assumption that this support is not needed is not backed by data. Students in upper elementary and middle school still need strong advanced decoding skills, and these skills do not develop on their own simply because a student has learned to recognize simple words.
Once students reach upper elementary, middle, and high school, they will encounter academic texts with dense language in such subjects as science, history, economics and mathematics, among others. These texts contain multisyllabic, content-specific vocabulary and complex sentence structures.
As learning becomes more complex, reading instruction must keep up. Strong core instruction in advanced decoding, morphology—the study of word parts such as suffixes and prefixes—and sentence structure is essential to continue into middle school.
A student might be reading a social studies or economics textbook that includes the word “heterogeneous.” A student who has an issue with decoding might stumble over this word, attempting to sound out each syllable without immediately recognizing it. The cognitive effort spent in decoding detracts from the ability to comprehend the context of the sentence: “markets consist of heterogeneous consumers with diverse preferences.”
When several words stack up in a paragraph, you can imagine the difficulty and fatigue that ensues in attempting to decode for a student reading below the threshold. One of the most troubling aspects of this issue is that students who are otherwise motivated and self-starting may become demoralized, as cited by ETS.
Third grade remains the most important literacy checkpoint. It is critical to ensure that students reach a basic decoding threshold by the end of third grade and receive supports to reach that point. This may include retention when absolutely necessary. Retention policy plays an important role in setting students up for success by ensuring that students do not advance without the foundational skills essential for success in coursework requiring advanced reading.
However, screening and other supports should not end when a student enters fourth grade. Some students may have received appropriate supports in early grades. Others may have reached the decoding threshold but may still struggle once texts become more demanding. The increasing demands of upper elementary, middle and high school coursework means that without continued monitoring and literacy support, some students will not have an opportunity to succeed. Retention is a vital tool, but ongoing screening and support fortify the literacy progress that retention seeks to solidify.
Despite evidence that shows decoding and comprehension continue to grow together beyond third grade, some practitioners still believe that moving from decoding to reading comprehension following the third grade is relatively easy. Several factors contribute to this established belief:
However, these factors are only part of the picture. Schools must ensure that students are screened at key milestones throughout their academic studies beyond the early grades. This means that teachers across all grade levels must be trained to see the warning signs of foundational reading difficulties. Once identified, students should be referred to specialists who can provide fundamental support to prevent the widening of reading gaps.
The learning to read while reading to learn mindset acknowledges the importance of continuing to offer instruction in advanced word reading as students continue to be given access to complex text. The disparity between fourth and eighth grade NAEP reading scores illustrates that significant work remains when it comes to sustaining literacy across throughout adolescence.
Without fundamental literacy support and continued literacy development opportunities into the upper grades, students with persistent reading gaps remain at a major disadvantage. If their ability to access increasingly complex texts is severely restricted, it creates a situation that, among other things, can unfortunately eliminate students’ “spark” and interest in learning.
These challenges are embedded in instructional systems. Addressing this issue requires more than local interventions or remediation. States need to adopt policies that reflect the reality that reading development spans the continuum of students’ K-12 experience.
Expanding the “learning to read, reading to learn” maxim to “learning to read while reading to learn” means adopting a new framework for literacy education, one where literacy is approached as a skill to be formally developed throughout students’ K-12 careers and alongside their work with increasingly demanding texts.
Many states have made progress in early-grades literacy, especially in terms of instruction based on the science of reading. However, reading gaps have extended to the middle and upper grades, where they create academic hurdles. The result is a policy blind spot that impedes the high-quality core instruction and intervention support that students need the most when texts become challenging.
To advance adolescent literacy, policymakers must embrace a revised way of thinking. At its core, this approach to adolescent literacy must do three things well:
These components of adolescent literacy work in alignment with content knowledge development. At their core, these policy goals are designed with the understanding that strong word recognition, advanced phonics, vocabulary and fluency are tools students must use well beyond elementary school to better engage in demanding subjects. They’re also tools that transfer to college and career.
The “learning to read, reading to learn” adage suggests that literacy is a skill students learn in a snapshot in time. Research and classroom experience have shown myriad factors go into how students learn as they progress into the upper grades. We have to build on the maxim and acknowledge that students are “learning to read while reading to learn” keeping third grade as the clear pivot point but acknowledging that reading instruction must continue into middle school so students continue to advance in their learning of content and reading comprehension as text become more difficult. Additionally, curricula that contain robust vocabulary play an important role in facilitating joint growth of decoding skill and comprehension.
Older students’ struggles are often misattributed to lack of motivation, missing background knowledge or a simple discrepancy in effort. However, recognizing that literacy gaps persist means this is an issue that can be remedied through instruction and improved literacy systems. Students who struggle with reading in upper grades often disengage. They cannot be left behind.
The good news is that adolescent literacy policy can be stacked on top of the strong inroads that states have made in early literacy. Literacy must be viewed as a common thread throughout a student’s entire academic career, and the tools and resources to address this mainstay of academics must be provided.
To learn more about how your state can implement strong adolescent literacy policy, contact ExcelinEd’s K-12 Literacy policy team to see how your state can effectively support and improve students’ literacy throughout their educational career.
For additional information on adolescent literacy, view our model policy and fundamental principles.
