Science of Reading and Learning Science
Understanding how children learn changes everything. The Science of Reading and broader learning science give us a research-based picture of how the brain develops, how children acquire skills, why some students struggle, and what instructional approaches make the biggest difference. Explore our articles to dig into the evidence.
Reading Starts With Your Ears — And That Changes How We Teach It (Part 1)
Before a child reads a single word, their brain needs to do something that has nothing to do with letters: it needs to hear. Phonological awareness — the ability to isolate, blend, and manipulate the sounds inside spoken words — is one of the strongest predictors of reading success researchers have ever found, and most parents have never heard of it. The rhyming games and silly tongue twisters you thought were just fun? They were building the exact neural foundation that makes learning to read possible.
Cursive’s Comeback: What Brain Science Actually Says
Keyboards were supposed to make cursive obsolete — but neuroscience just proved otherwise.
Keyboards were supposed to make cursive obsolete — but neuroscience just proved otherwise. When children learn letters by hand, stroke by stroke, the brain's reading centers light up in ways that typing simply cannot produce. Those looping letters aren't old-fashioned; they're building brains. What researchers discovered next is changing the way educators think about screens, pencils, and everything in between.
Why Your Child Writes Backwards—And Why That’s Actually Normal
A cup is a cup whether the handle faces left or right — and for millions of years, that kind of visual flexibility kept our ancestors alive. The problem? The letters b and d are the same shape, just flipped. Your child's brain isn't confused; it's working perfectly. The real story is how reading instruction gradually teaches the brain to break one of its oldest survival instincts.
Reading Isn't Natural—And That Changes Everything: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Learning to Read
Your child can name every dinosaur, recite their favorite book word for word, and spot the golden arches from a mile away — but none of that is reading. Reading is not a natural human ability, and that one fact changes everything about how we teach it. The science behind why is fascinating, and it's the foundation for every article you'll find here.