Earlier in July, three lower school faculty attended a one-day workshop through the Landmark School’s Summer Institute. The session was entitled “Unpacking the Science of Reading.” Third grade teacher Leigh Twarog, pre-kindergarten teacher Nicole Siverls, and grades 3-5 learning specialist Valerie Kerin attended in person on the Landmark campus in Beverly. Lower School Head Betty Pryor participated in the course virtually the previous day.
The workshop provided an overview of the science of reading, which is an ever-growing collection of research from experts in the fields of cognitive, educational, and neuroscience that explains and analyzes how the brain learns to read.
Participants learned practical and explicit strategies for teaching reading to students of all ages and abilities. The faculty look forward to sharing these strategies and incorporating them into their instruction in the fall.
Ms. Siverls offers her thoughts on and takeaways from the workshop below:
This summer, I attended a workshop entitled “Unpacking the Science of Reading” at the Landmark School. The Science of Reading is a vast, evidence-based body of research from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics detailing how the brain learns to read. The workshop’s central message is that reading is not a natural process; rather, it requires explicit, systematic instruction in foundational skills, coupled with language comprehension, to develop a skilled reader.
During this workshop, we reviewed older theories of reading and compared them with theories informed by recent research. The Simple View of Reading, initially proposed in 1986, demonstrates that reading comprehension (RC) is the product of decoding/word recognition (D) multiplied by language comprehension (LC), represented as: RC = D × LC. The Active View of Reading, developed in 2021, expands on the Simple View by highlighting the many processes that support reading development, including students’ motivation, self-regulation, metacognition, and executive functions, which help students sustain attention and monitor understanding, which in turn support successful comprehension.
I left the workshop with both a deeper understanding of the research and a renewed sense of purpose. I was particularly struck by how closely the principles of the Science of Reading align with Belmont Day School’s philosophy of “Rigor with Care”. This holistic perspective closely mirrors our commitment to challenging students while nurturing their individual growth. Moreover, the workshop I attended at the Landmark School has confirmed for me that our recent implementation of the Fundations Curriculum at BDS in pre-K is not just systematic, explicit, multisensory, integrated, differentiated, and data- driven literacy instruction; it is strongly rooted in the Science of Reading.
The workshop strengthened my confidence that we are building these essential skills in ways that are both developmentally appropriate and firmly grounded in current research.
– Nicole Siverls, pre-kindergarten teacher
