Engaged Aided Reading — A New Approach to Literacy Education
What is Engaged Aided Reading?
Engaged Aided Reading (EAR) is a science-supported cognitive aid designed to make the process of learning to read more efficient and enjoyable. This innovative approach helps learners build word-specific fluency by engaging them in an active reading process. By combining the benefits of aided reading and phonemic recoding, EAR makes reading a less cognitively taxing and more rewarding experience.
The EAR practice
An Engaged Aided Reading (EAR) practice enhances the traditional concept of aided reading. In aided reading (AR), a reader visually absorbs the entire written word while an assistant pronounces the unfamiliar word aloud. This starts to build word-specific fluency, but only slowly. Reading by EAR adds a new layer to an AR practice, focusing the reader’s attention on the precise sequence of letters that make up the word — we call this the word’s alphabetic- or orthographic- identity. These temporally-adjacent visual and auditory inputs help emerging readers build word-specific fluency, through training the pVWFA, without the cognitive overhead of recoding letters into phonemes and phonemes into words. This makes reading a more fluent and enjoyable journey.
The Benefits of Engaged Aided Reading
An EAR practice offers several benefits:
- Reduce Cognitive Overload: With EAR, learners are not burdened with the task of recoding letters into phonemes and phonemes into words. This makes the reading process less mentally taxing, allowing learners to focus more on comprehension.
- Efficient Word-Specific Fluency Development: By focusing attention on the alphabetic identity of the word, EAR enables learners to build word-specific fluency more effectively. This allows students to read words quickly and accurately, facilitating smoother, more fluent reading.
- Increased Comprehension: By easing the cognitive load of decoding words, a practice of EAR frees up cognitive resources for understanding the text, leading to better comprehension.
- Enhanced Enjoyment: A practice of EAR makes reading a more enjoyable experience by reducing the cognitive load of decoding words and increasing comprehension.
The Science Behind Engaged Aided Reading
An engaged aided reading practice is informed by the latest generation of neuroscience research, which reveals that reading involves the automatic recognition of words in a specific region of the brain, the pVWFA. Fluent reading is not skilled phonemic recoding. This understanding informs our approach to literacy instruction. Our theory is that by focusing on the alphabetic identity of words, a focus that a practice of relying on phonics skills to read unfamiliar words also requires, EAR helps emerging readers build word-specific fluency with as much efficiency as intensive phonics instruction. Our research, for which we’ve applied for funding from the National Science Foundation, is designed to validate this hypothesis.
Implementing Engaged Aided Reading with SARA’s Books
Our e-reader app, Read by EAR, is being developed to facilitate Engaged Aided Reading. With carefully curated content and alphabetic-identity attention activities as cognitive aids for unfamiliar words, our app will help students build word-specific fluency and grow their sight word vocabulary. By embracing an EAR practice, we aim to create a world where every child is a confident, proficient, and fluent reader.
Join the Revolution in Literacy Education
Discover the transformative power of Engaged Aided Reading with SARA’s Books. Let’s journey together towards a future where every child can experience the joy of reading. Consider joining our team.
