If you had asked one of Lisa Hepburnâs fifth-grade students to pronounce the word âpandemicâ not too long ago, heâd try âpandora,â âpandemoniumâ or âjust kind of guess whatever.â
But more recently, Hepburn, a reading specialist at Randall Elementary School, watched that same student âwhoâs reading at a second-grade level as a fifth-grader chunk out words like âtranquility.ââ
She credits the âscience of reading,â a literacy teaching method the Madison Metropolitan School District is shifting toward as it confronts low reading proficiency rates among its students. Itâs a move away from the âbalanced literacyâ approach the district has had in the past, in which literacy is taught through a variety of readings and word studies, to a more phonics-focused format of teaching students how to read.