Reading Research: 12 Articles to Get Started

We've compiled these 12 articles and reports that collectively capture some of the ideas, evidence, and debate about what it takes to teach reading most effectively. 

1. Top 10 Things You Should Know About Reading (Reading Rockets)
2. Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction (National Reading Panel, 2000)
3. Report of the National Literacy Panel for Language Minority Children and Youth (National Reading Panel, 2006)
4. 'It Works' and Other Myths of the Science of Reading Era (Timothy Shanahan, Shanahan on Literacy, 2023)
5. Building Background Knowledge (Susan Neuman, Tanya Kaefer, Ashley Pinkham, 2014)
6. Don't DYS Our Kids: Dyslexia and the Quest for Grade-Level Reading Proficiency (Leila Fiester, 2012)
7. Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert (Anne Castles, et al., 2018)
8. The Home-Learning/Literacy Myth (Lyn Stone, Lifelong Literacy, 2024) — If your school relies heavily on parental support, says reading expert Lyn Stone, maybe there's something wrong with your system.
9. Print-to-Speech and Speech-to-Print: Mapping Early Literacy (Jeannine Herron, et al.)
10. Teaching Reading Is Rocket Science: What Expert Teachers of Reading Should Know and Be Able to Do (Louisa Moats, 2020)
11. Intended Meaning of NAEP (NCES, 2022) — Educators and the media refer all the time to state scores on the NAEP test, which is often called the "nation's report card."  Here's a quick look at what those scores mean — and what they don't.
12. Fact-Checking the Science of Reading (Robert J. Tierney and P. David Pearson, 2024)

As we learn more about how children learn to read and write and how to teach them more effectively, the science of reading will evolve — and some of what we think we know will turn out to be wrong. In this entertaining TED talk, author Kathryn Schultz reflects "On Being Wrong."