How to Explicitly Teach Students to Read

By Paula Witkowski, PhD

Teaching reading is a specialized set of skills. If you look up the term "explicit instruction" you will find that it means leaving nothing to guess work — making sure that students understand what they are expected to do and to learn.

Just what does ‘being explicit’ mean?

In fact, explicit reading instruction is grounded on brain research about how we all learn in a structured, systematic approach. In other words, effective reading instruction equals excellent teaching. Explicit systematic reading instruction requires a great degree of instructional expertise. In their book entitled, “Explicit Instruction: Effective and Efficient Teaching,” Anita L. Archer and Charles Hughes identified 16 key elements that the teachers need to be aware of. There are:

1. Focusing instruction on content that is important and matches the students’ instructional needs.
2. Teaching the sequence of skills logically from easier to more difficult.
3. Breaking down complex skills and strategies into smaller instructional units.
4. Being able to design organized and focused lessons.
5. Beginning each lesson with a clear statement of the lesson’s goals and expectations as well as information about how the information or skills will help them as learners.
6. Reviewing prior skills and knowledge related to the current lesson.
7. Providing step-by-step demonstrations.
8. Using clear and concise language.
9. Providing an adequate range of examples and non-examples.
10. Providing guided and supported practice.
11. Requiring frequent responses from students in a high level of student-teacher interactions.
12. Monitoring student performance closely.
13. Providing immediate affirmative and corrective feedback.
14. Delivering instruction at an appropriate pace to help students process information.
15. Helping students understand how skills and concepts fit together.
16. Providing multiple opportunities to practice and retain the information.

How do teachers put it into practice?

Each element sounds easy. However, teaching students to read involves understanding students’ individual learning style and developing instructional strategies to meet the learning outcomes as required by different grade levels. This means the teachers need to understand the skills in oral language that underlie learning to read and write. More importantly, teachers need to understand how to correctly evaluate a student’s reading abilities so that they can effectively plan instruction.

I am reminded of a second grade student who I was working with in a pull-out situation. She brought a worksheet focused on short vowel sounds from class with her and asked me if I could help her complete it. I soon discovered that she had no idea what it was about, how to figure that out, or why her teacher thought it was important for her to do it. It was just an assignment that had to be completed.

Many of those 16 key elements were omitted in this student’s instruction. To her, school was just a confusing plethora of unrelated assignments and activities to complete throughout the day.

There is really no one best way to teach that will work for everyone. Think of instruction as being on a continuum with explicit instruction at one end and discovery approaches such as problem-based learning at the other end. The teacher needs to determine what degree of structure and support is needed for each of the students being taught and for the information being learned. Expertise in teaching is required. Some learners require an explicit, systematic approach. Others with more knowledge and skills in a specific area are able to benefit from more constructivist approaches.

All instruction needs to be student-based — that is, based on a student’s individual needs for effective learning.