Common Misconceptions About Literacy Instruction

One of the most persistent myths in education is the belief that reading comprehension is a transferable skill. We’ve all been taught to believe that strategies like making inferences or identifying main ideas are universally applicable. But what if the key to comprehension isn’t about teaching "skills"—but building knowledge? Consider the classic “Baseball Study” by Recht & Leslie. It showed that students who knew more about baseball—even weaker readers—outperformed strong readers with little baseball knowledge when reading a baseball-related text. The takeaway? Background knowledge is often a better predictor of comprehension than reading ability itself. When students lack foundational knowledge, no amount of inference strategies will help them decode meaning. Knowledge equips students to fill in gaps, resolve ambiguities, and truly understand what they read. The real challenge? The dream of teaching “universal skills” is so alluring that it’s hard to let go—even when the evidence is clear. As Dylan Wiliam puts it, “Students don’t just need practice thinking. They need more to think with.” If we want students to become better readers, let’s shift the focus—away from abstract skills and toward deep, content-rich learning. Because the real “key” to reading comprehension? It’s knowledge. https://lnkd.in/dkkEE7qN

Teaching reading strategies in isolation—without developing the cognitive functions that support them—is like handing students tools with no grip. Strategies like summarizing, clarifying, or questioning are only effective when students possess the mental operations required to carry them out. That’s why we must intentionally introduce and strengthen thinking as we teach the strategy—not after students struggle. The cognitive work must come first or, at minimum, walk in tandem. When students are taught how to abstract, categorize, and compare as they learn to summarize, they build deeper comprehension, not just procedural memory. Mediated Learning Experiences provide the structure to do just that. They help educators target the specific mental processes behind literacy—functions like perceptual clarity, systematic exploration, and hypothetical thinking—so students don’t just mimic strategy use, they internalize it. When thinking is part of the strategy from the start, students gain more than skills—they gain intellectual control. And that’s how we move from rehearsed performance to real proficiency.

In the science of reading conversation, we often refer to the "Five Pillars"—phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. But as Hugh Catts & Alan Kamhi point out, comprehension doesn’t function like phonics, where explicit instruction leads to mastery and transfer across all texts. 🗨️They write: "The model also implies that like phonics, comprehension can be explicitly taught, and once acquired, can be applied to all texts. But comprehension is not a skill or set of skills; rather, it is a complex multidimensional ability. In fact, reading comprehension is one of the most complex activities that we engage in on a regular basis, and our ability to do so is dependent upon a wide range of knowledge and skills." This resonates deeply with my experience as a literacy educator. Teaching comprehension isn’t about drilling discrete strategies; it’s about systematically building background knowledge, vocabulary, and language structures. Without these, comprehension strategies are like empty containers—there’s nothing to fill them with. How do we shift the focus from isolated skills to the broader, more nuanced process of meaning-making? I’d love to hear your thoughts. #ScienceOfReading #ReadingComprehension #LiteracyEducation #StructuredLiteracy https://lnkd.in/eEsefpHE