The Science of Reading Meets the Science of Brain Organization. How Bright Brain Thinking® Individualizes Structured Literacy Instruction.

I want to take back “balanced” and “whole” in literacy instruction. Both terms are getting a bad rap these days, now that reading curricula are getting a comeuppance for encouraging readers to use context cues to guess at words instead of decoding them, effectively providing only one side of the necessary instruction for proficient reading. 

But what if “balanced literacy” meant exactly that, instead of the pejorative term used to refer to any literacy instruction that comes under the discredited names of “Units of Study”, “The Classroom Workshop” model or “Fountas and Pinnell”. In other words, programs that Louisa Moats claims are “hiding behind the phrase balanced literacy in order to win contracts from school districts and avoid public scrutiny” (Moats, 2007).

In my office, balanced literacy instruction quite literally means using the science of reading (SOR) in an explicit application of structured literacy methods that employ both sides of the brain in a balanced way to experience a whole brain approach to reading. We cannot read (or do anything for that matter) with only one side of our brain. We need both the foundation concepts of print (mainly left hemisphere skills) and the meaning-making ability of comprehending print (mainly right hemisphere skills). Yet the educators who disparage balanced literacy seem to assume that it means Whole Language, an approach that emphasizes meaning over phonics and the alphabetic principle. Take this post by Lexia Learning, for example, that sets out to explain the difference between the SOR and balanced literacy.

“Any instructional method that does not teach the components of the science of reading in an explicit, cumulative, and responsive way will leave children behind, often without understanding why the student is struggling. That is the unfortunate impact of many literacy approaches schools use today, like balanced literacy, when educators don’t have the evidence-based knowledge they need to help every student.”

The Lexia authors are correct in promoting explicit, structured, and responsive instruction, but wrong in their assumption that all who use the term “balanced literacy” are under the influence of pseudoscience. While I cannot speak for the knowledge and training of other teachers and literacy coaches, this Reading Specialist is well informed of the research, the best practices and the science that includes both skills-based and meaning-based instruction in explicit, cumulative, and responsive ways.

In fact, the evidence-based reading instruction that I’ve found works best, is instruction that allows for differentiation and individualization of strategies and skills through the science of brain organization and hemisphere lateralization. Bright Brain Thinking® is the name I’ve given this framework and it allows me to identify the exact skills that a student needs to close the gap in their reading development. It is the best of the science of reading in a balanced, whole-brain way.

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