Barrie Olson moves us beyond linear literacy instruction
For decades, reading instruction in the US has been the subject of debate while student scores have remained largely stagnant—and it’s time for a shift. Recent efforts have centered on the science of reading, often treated as a silver bullet to improve instructional practice and create stronger readers. Much of this focus has been on early grades, emphasizing phonemic awareness and decoding so children can master comprehension later.
This approach reflects the familiar axiom: children “learn to read” in the early grades and then “read to learn” starting in third grade. While this distinction is helpful, it is also limiting. Reading success does not unfold in a straight line. It is a reciprocal cycle in which each stage—sound, sense, thought, and knowledge—feeds and strengthens the others. When instruction honors this reciprocal cycle, students become fluent, thoughtful readers who can tackle increasingly complex texts.
If we overlook this reciprocal cycle, then we risk setting our students up to fail. I witnessed this firsthand with my own six-year-old daughter, Noa. In kindergarten, Noa was labeled a “reluctant reader,” a student who was capable of reading but was unmotivated or unwilling to engage with reading tasks. At first, I found this label shocking. Noa loved being read to when she was younger and, more than that, she loved telling stories of her own. To say nothing of having a literacy specialist who loves words for a mother. How could a child so in love with books and stories not be interested in reading?
Both at home and at school, we focused on decoding since, if she wasn’t reading, decoding was surely the problem. But it wasn’t. Noa could decode. So if she could decode, why did she resist doing it so much? And then one day it dawned on me. The issue wasn’t her decoding skills or low confidence. Noa wanted the stories. She didn’t want to read her books. She wanted to understand them. In other words, Noa was everything I could hope for in a reader—she was a lover of stories and information and everything that words could provide her with. But the materials we were giving her were denying her the thing she wanted most: stories. The decodables Noa was reading weren’t capturing the reciprocal nature of reading by either:
- Being decodable but not having a story worth reading;
- Having a story worth reading that was lost in the effort of decoding; or
- Requiring so much background knowledge build-up right before reading that by the time students began reading, that front-loaded knowledge was either in one ear and out the other or such a burden on a student’s brain that their capacity for decoding was decreased.
For a student like Noa—and so many of the other reluctant readers out there—the solution wasn’t decodables that were easier or knowledge blurbs before decoding started. It was the full reciprocal cycle.
Why Linear Models Fall Short
Current practice often assumes that once decoding is mastered, students move on to fluency, then comprehension, and finally knowledge-building. But this linear view overlooks a critical truth: skills and knowledge interact continuously. Knowledge makes decoding easier; decoding practice deepens comprehension. Fluency frees cognitive resources for reasoning, while reasoning builds knowledge that accelerates future decoding. Treating these stages as isolated steps means missing opportunities to leverage their interdependence.
Consider this: a student who understands the concept of photosynthesis will decode chlorophyll more easily than a student encountering the term in isolation. Conversely, a student who has practiced decoding multisyllabic words will approach science texts with greater confidence, making knowledge acquisition smoother. These reciprocal benefits are lost when instruction treats literacy as a one-way street.
The Four Stages—And How They Work Together
Think of reading development as a reciprocal cycle with four interconnected stages: sound, sense, thought, and knowledge. Each stage is essential, but none stands alone. Here’s how they work—and why they must be integrated.
Sound: Learning to Decode
The foundational skills of reading include phonological awareness, phonics, and word recognition. Students learn that letters and sounds map systematically and, especially in the beginning or in the face of more complex texts, will labor to decode each word, allocating most of their cognitive efforts to word recognition. Explicit phonics instruction and decoding practice with controlled (decodable) texts are the gold standard in helping students during this critical stage of literacy acquisition. But decoding is not an endpoint, and as students encounter ever more complex texts, decoding becomes more challenging. When students encounter familiar concepts, decoding becomes easier because the cognitive load shifts away from meaning-making. Knowledge lightens the burden.
Sense: Building Fluency
As decoding becomes more automatic, students can shift their attention from how the word sounds to what the word means. Fluency—automatic word recognition, phrasing, and expression—frees working memory for comprehension. Teachers can model fluent reading, encourage rereading, and monitor progress. Yet fluency without understanding is hollow. A child can sound fluent without actively thinking. But as fluency solidifies for students, their minds have bandwidth to engage in thinking about meaning—inference, prediction, and synthesis.
Thought: Making Meaning
Comprehension strategies like inferencing, summarizing, and questioning help readers move beyond literal recall. Students can begin to infer missing information, connect ideas across sentences or texts, evaluate evidence and bias, and reflect on themes and implications. But thinking without knowledge lacks depth and stability. Readers can only reason with the ideas they have access to. That’s why thinking becomes richer when students have a strong base of content knowledge to think with.
Knowledge: Building Understanding
Building understanding means students can integrate text-based learning into broader conceptual frameworks. Students can connect what they read to what they already know, revising and expanding mental models. They can also build disciplinary knowledge (e.g., history, science) and conceptual understanding that supports comprehension of future texts because this knowledge then loops back, making future decoding and fluency easier. In other words, knowledge is not the finish line—it is fuel for the next cycle. When students know more, they can think more efficiently and fluently. They decode faster (because familiar words and concepts are easier to recognize), comprehend more deeply, and continue building knowledge not only for themselves but for others.
Why Reciprocity Matters
- Decoding without knowledge is inefficient. Readers expend energy on vocabulary and meaning instead of fluency.
- Knowledge accelerates decoding and comprehension. Familiarity with a topic frees cognitive resources for skill practice.
- Instruction should integrate both. Aligning decodable and comprehension texts by topic maximizes reciprocal benefits.
- Topic integration alone is insufficient. Teachers must make skill transfer explicit—showing students how comprehension supports decoding and vice versa—to balance cognitive load and ensure alignment in both knowledge and skill instruction.
How the Reciprocal Cycle Looks in Practice
Students move through the different stages depending on the text, and critically, these stages aren’t necessarily linear. A child might read a chapter book for meaning in the morning and decode technical terms for science in the afternoon. Adults experience the same reciprocal cycle—think about your experiences reading a legal document. You may be a skilled reader, but without deep knowledge of the law, you will struggle because unfamiliar terms (e.g., ex parte, per stirpes) and complex syntax disrupt fluency and comprehension. Decoding alone doesn’t solve the problem; knowledge does. Understanding that legal language often uses Latin terms—and what those terms mean—reduces effort and increases accuracy. Without that background, even correct pronunciation offers little help. This mirrors what students experience daily when encountering new texts. Interestingly, we don’t call the adults who hire lawyers rather than read and decipher legalese “reluctant adult readers.”
Implications for Instruction
To design instruction that reflects the cyclical nature of reading, educators should:
- Integrate skills and knowledge
Pair phonics instruction with domain-rich content. For example, teach decoding strategies alongside science or social studies texts. - Make reciprocity explicit
Show students how comprehension strategies help decoding and vice versa. Use think-alouds to model this interplay. - Sequence for reinforcement, not isolation
Avoid rigid “first phonics, then comprehension” schedules. Instead, weave decoding, fluency, and meaning-making throughout the day. - Choose materials wisely
Select texts that are both decodable and meaningful. Avoid stories that sacrifice sense for simplicity. - Build knowledge gradually
Use thematic units to deepen understanding over time. Knowledge is cumulative—and essential for fluency and comprehension.
For Noa, the breakthrough came when, in the days leading up to a decodable about oceans, Noa’s teacher introduced oceans to her students through informational texts, fiction, and even visual texts. By the time Noa got to her decodable, she was reading concepts, ideas, and vocabulary that were familiar. And this exposure didn’t just make the decoding easier by lowering her cognitive load (though it did). It also gave her what she wanted from the experience: understanding the story as she read.
The key with Noa (and so many children like Noa) is balancing decoding and fluency with knowledge and comprehension, not focusing on decoding and fluency as a step toward comprehension.
Making the Shift
Reading instruction should not be a ladder students climb once. It is a reciprocal cycle of sound, sense, thought, and knowledge—a dynamic process where each stage strengthens the others. When educators design instruction with this reciprocity in mind, they empower students to become lifelong readers who can approach new texts with confidence, even in the face of text complexity.
Dr. Barrie Olson leads the literacy team at Curriculum Associates, where she advances a forward-looking, systems-based vision for literacy that connects every level of the educational ecosystem. By uniting the perspectives of researchers and practitioners across education, English, psychology, and cognitive science, she designs high-impact, authentic, standards-driven reading and writing solutions that empower students.