Teaching Reading is Rocket Science

Doug Lidiak introduced Nancy Devine who is the Chief Academic Officer for District 6. Nancy went through the complex system of teaching children to read. She explained that teaching children to read is not as easy as putting a good book in their hands. The system District 6 is very calculated and is built to help each child learn at the pace that fits them best.

The foundation of the system used is a benchmark that measures the children's reading level and comparing it to normal children in that grade. After evaluation of each child's progress they evaluate the best way to either help a child catch up to where they should be or pushing children to go above and beyond what is expected of them but having a common schedule for all students. Nancy discussed the 5 big ideas of reading which are; phonemic awareness, phonic, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. These 5 things are what our teachers measure for each child to evaluate their reading level.