How We Teach Literacy

This blog post is the first in a series exploring literacy within education policy and practice. Here, we introduce the major methods of teaching reading and the debates surrounding them. Understanding these approaches — what they are, how they work, and why they matter — helps set the stage for discussing which ones actually lead to stronger reading outcomes. Future posts will trace how these methods developed over time and examine how state policy in Kansas, Missouri, and across the nation is shaping today’s response to declining literacy rates.

How do we teach students to read and write in the U.S.? The answer now and throughout history is it depends on the instructional practice employed by early childhood and elementary educators. 

However, the predominant method of teaching literacy can vary not only across school districts, but within them as well. While many may assume literacy instruction is straightforward, not everyone is hooked on phonics. 

This blog first introduces those methods and demonstrates how the U.S. has grappled with literacy instruction over time. 

Methods of teaching literacy

Over the last two centuries, several distinct approaches to teaching reading have competed for dominance in U.S. classrooms. Each reflects a different theory of how children learn, waxing and waning in popularity over time.

Phonics and the science of reading

Phonics-based instruction, which dates back to in the 1700s in America, is part of what researchers and policymakers refer to today as the science of reading. This approach emphasizes explicit, systematic teaching of relationships between letters and sounds. For example, students learn that sh makes the /sh/ sound in “ship.” 

The science of reading has six components that make up the evidenced-based approach to this method of instruction. 

• Phonemic awareness: The ability to understand and use individual sounds in spoken language.
• Phonics: Matching sounds to letters to recognize and spell words.
• Fluency: Reading accurately with speed and expression as the text conveys.
• Vocabulary: Knowing what a variety of words mean.
• Comprehension: The goal of reading, to understand the meaning of text.
• Background knowledge: Existing vocabulary, facts, experiences, and concepts a reader brings to a text to understand it, critical for reading comprehension. 

Students may spend classroom time in small group phonics lessons. A teacher introduces a sound and guides students through blending sounds into words, writing the word, and applying it in a sentence. Lessons build systematically, ensuring students practice pronouncing words before moving on to fluency and comprehension. 

Research consistently shows that the science of reading gives all students a stronger foundation for reading and writing — especially for struggling students. Importantly, the science of reading goes beyond phonics alone, highlighting the role of oral language, vocabulary, and background knowledge in building reading comprehension among students. 

Whole language

The whole language method rose to prominence in the 1980s and 90s, built on the belief that reading develops naturally in students through exposure to rich texts. Instead of focusing on drills to pronounce words (phonics), teachers emphasize meaning, story, and immersion into books. 

The method is found in common practices, such as:

• Encouraging students to guess words from context clues or illustrations.
• Reading and discussing stories entirely rather than breaking down individual components.
• Valuing the experience and enjoyment of reading and deemphasizing the skills behind it.

A teacher may read aloud a story, then ask students to use pictures and surrounding words to figure out an unfamiliar word. While this approach may spark a love of books, it lacks strong evidence for teaching skills necessary to read. Many students will fail to fully learn to read without systematic phonics support. 

Balanced literacy

Balanced literacy was designed as a sort of compromise during a heightened period of the “reading wars” (more on that in our next blog) during the 1990s. It attempts to reconcile the phonics-based approach with whole language methods. Theoretically, balanced literacy blends decoding skills with comprehension; in practice, however, it often emphasizes whole language techniques at the expense of the science of reading. 

Three common practices are associated with balanced literacy:

• The three-cueing system. Students are taught to guess words using context, where the word appears in a sentence, or pictures.
• Independent reading time. Students pick books for silent reading during a normal school day.
• Leveled readers. Teachers sort and assign books to choose for independent reading time based on difficulty ratings, with students assigned books below grade level to reduce frustration with reading. 

Under the balanced literacy approach, a second grader struggling with the word “cow” would be prompted to look at the picture or see if a particular word makes sense in a sentence, instead of sounding it out. During designated reading periods, students read quietly while the teacher circulates. 

Despite its relative popularity, balanced literacy often underplays systematic phonics. Evidence shows cueing encourages students to guess rather than sound words out, and that leveled books can hold students back from encountering grade-level material. 

Sight word memorization

All languages, including English, have irregular words that do not follow phonics rules. Think of the, said, or would. Students are often taught to memorize these as “sight words.”

Using frequent repetition, flash cards, and other techniques, students should remember these sight words. In combination with the science of reading, remembering sight words helps support eventual fluency.

An early elementary school teacher may have students chant words like “the” repeated while pointing it out in a sentence, encouraging them to recognize it in other simple sentences. Sight word spotting is meant to be selective in that teachers target tricky words, while helping students sound out regular ones. 

Selective use of this method is helpful, but relying too heavily on memorization to read is inefficient. Phonics provides the glue that makes learning words faster, easier, and longer lasting. Languages like Chinese show that while its certainly possible to learn to read through memorization — Chinese is comprised of characters instead of letters, which makes phonics-based instruction difficult — but it’s hard for many young children to memorize their way to fluency and comprehension. 

The goal is comprehension

While teaching methods are important to make strong readers, the aim is to help students recognize meaning. A student’s comprehension of a text not only relies on their ability to sound out words, but to have rich vocabulary and background knowledge to bolster their grasp of material.

Research and policymakers increasingly agree: instruction based on the science of reading coupled with rich content knowledge and vocabulary building are how we should educate aspiring readers. 

While different philosophies have shaped reading instruction, decades of research increasingly affirm that explicit, systematic approaches rooted in the science of reading produce the strongest results — a theme we will return to later in this series.

In the next blog of this series, we will take a step back and look at the history of reading instruction in the United States — how approaches like phonics, whole language, and balanced literacy rose and fell in popularity, and why the “reading wars” continue to resurface. This history provides the context needed to understand current debates and policy interventions.