When I first started learning about the Science of Reading, I was extremely overwhelmed. I was bombarded with articles about plummeting literacy rates and the utter fear that children cannot read. My heart ached for these kids who have been failed by inadequate literacy education practices. On top of this, they’re distracted by tablets, social media, and AI, with little direction on how to use these tools in a healthy way.
Frantic, I started learning everything I could about the Science of Reading. I immersed myself in online courses, watched YouTube parody videos of the “lazy schwa”, and practiced speaking out loud to decode the different sounds (if you’ve done this, you know how awkward it can be to speak syllable sounds out loud at your desk!). It was somewhere between deciphering the difference between phonemes, phonics, and phonological awareness that I began to hit a wall — where do public libraries fit into this conversation?
Science of Reading Basics
The Science of Reading focuses on a Structured Literacy approach. Here, children are learning step-by-step phonics lessons on how to accurately decode words. This ensures that they are actually learning the technique of reading without relying on guessing or picture association.
It replaces the former Balanced Literacy approach. This assumes that reading is a natural skill and that children will eventually understand it through absorption and exposure.
The ultimate goal of the Science of Reading is for children to read automatically and fluently, which sets the stage for comprehension skills. This approach is backed by evidence-based scientific research on how the brain learns to read.
The Public Librarian’s Role
With all of this in mind, the truth is that public librarians are not reading specialists or teachers. We didn’t go to school for Literacy Education and most of us did not study phonics techniques. However, librarians DO support best practices in literacy. We can help teachers, parents, and families find and use resources. We can also subtly infuse structured literacy into our programming and find ways to incorporate phonics into our services. Libraries also naturally infuse many of these Science of Reading and literacy elements into our work already through storytimes, fluency rich programs, interactive read-alouds, and of course, access to a wide variety of high interest, diverse, and complex texts.
Another truth is that the kids will be alright. We have tools and strategies such as decodable books to help us help them to read. We can be a positive influence in promoting reading and de-influencing the allure of technological distraction. A perspective that I found most uplifting was the concept of Reading Joy. There is much research to support that choice of reading material increases motivation to read and creates lifelong readers – which is what we ultimately do at the public library. This Reading Joy is equally important to cultivate in children. Celebrate your role in this!
The In-Between
So, librarians are the in-between. We aren’t in classrooms teaching a structured scope and sequence of phonics. We don’t have the ability to track our patron’s reading progress in that way and we simply are not school. However, we can do numerous other things, such as creating decodable book collections and supporting parents, caregivers, and teachers in literacy endeavors. We hold an incredibly important role in bridging the gap between structured literacy and cultivating reading joy. We are the in-between: we can learn and root down into phonics while branching out to support interest, choices, and a variety of books for all readers to create a lifelong reading habit.
Joannie Lauria is the Youth Services Consultant at the Suffolk Cooperative Library System in New York. She has held many roles, including Children & Teen Services Librarian and Elementary School Librarian. Joannie is also a Certified Yoga Teacher specializing in yoga for children. Outside of work, she enjoys traveling and hiking.
Please note that as a guest post, the views expressed here do not represent the official position of ALA or ALSC.