In support of Patty Brown’s letter lamenting the lack of time spent teaching science and social studies in elementary school to accommodate time spent on reading instruction, knowledge of science and social studies is not important solely for its own sake, but also because developing subject matter knowledge is an essential component of learning to read.
Reading requires both decoding skills — phonics — and comprehension. Comprehension depends upon a student’s background knowledge of the subject they are reading about. Natalie Wexler’s book, “The Knowledge Gap,” looks at efforts to teach reading to elementary students as a series of abstract skills — identify the main idea of this, summarize that — at the expense of instruction in substantive subject matter; and cites cognitive scientists’ research to explain the limitations of such an approach.
There is more to the book than can be summarized here. But regardless of whether one believes that science, history, civics, geography, music, and art are important subjects for elementary students to study in their own right, the research concludes that meaningful progress in developing reading comprehension requires concurrent development of knowledge in multiple substantive areas.
— Nicole Stucki
Anchorage
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