This paper provides a review of the science of learning to read, spanning from children’s earliest alphabetic skills through to the fluent word recognition and skilled text comprehension characteristic of expert readers. The authors explain why phonics instruction is so central to learning in a writing system such as English. This comprehensive review gives practitioners the tools to make informed decisions about how to translate the psychological science of reading into classroom practices. The authors call for an end to the reading wars so that the translation of scientific findings can make its way into policies and practices.
Castles, A., Rastle, K., & Nation, K. (2018). Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(1), 5–51. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100618772271