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Like many educators around the world, I came into the 2020 school year in September having two jobs. I was teaching both an in-person class and a virtual class. I knew the second-grade students entering my classroom had missed out on the last half of their first-grade reading education, and I had to find a way to combat that learning loss. To make matters worse, I could see a lack of confidence was affecting their potential for growth. With a new approach to reading instruction, I have found a way to help students believe in their abilities. Here’s how it works.

Teaching the science of reading

In college, I was not taught how to teach phonics. I was taught during the whole language era, so I wasn’t familiar with the effectiveness of structured literacy. I saw math as a subject that I could teach in a concrete way: every concept builds upon the previous concept. On the other hand, for decades, many educators had been teaching reading and literacy as an art, an abstract skill you pick up if you practice enough.

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