6 Interactive Ingredients to Crack the Code: Read and Write the Right Way, Right Away

It’s not complicated when you tune out the noise. 

These 6 science-backed essentials provide the first steps in building confident readers and writers-  whether you’re teaching in a classroom or sitting beside your child at the kitchen table.

1. Explicit, Systematic Instruction

Students need explicit instruction that teaches the written code from basic to more advanced, beginning with a handful of letter-sound correspondences (for example: s, a, t, p, i, m) and building systematically from there. Start reading and spelling words with those letters right away to help children connect sounds to print from the very beginning. This instruction should hone their ability to hear, blend, and segment individual sounds in words and map them to the letters that represent them. 

• Know that letters and groups of letters represent sounds.

• Learn letter sounds, formation, and names.

• Blend sounds to read (sssaaat).

• Segment sounds to spell (s - a- t).

 

2. Sound–Symbol Processes

Knowledge of letter-sound correspondences is not enough. Early readers need explicit instruction and guided practice to master sound-symbol processes: blending sounds to read words and segmenting sounds to spell them.

To read:

• Keep eyes on the letters to decode. No guessing.
• Track with a finger and blend the sounds together. Then read the word in one breath.

To spell:

• Segment each sound in the word.
• Match each sound to a letter.

3. Emphasis on Spelling

When children have to retrieve letter-sound connections while spelling, they strengthen word recognition and build automaticity in reading.

• Spell daily, segmenting each sound in a word and mapping those sounds to the letters that represent them.
• Say the sound while writing each letter to help the sound-spelling connection stick.
• Apply on-the-spot, corrective feedback in order to retain accurate sounds and spellings.

4. Self-Monitoring

Teach children to listen to themselves and monitor for accuracy as they read. This is where oral language is especially important. The reader must pay attention to meaning. 

• Decode an unfamiliar word, keeping one's eyes on the letters. Child thinks: Does it match a word in my vocabulary? If not, recode trying different sounds.
• Check for understanding as frequently as needed. Who did I read about? What just happened? or What did I just learn?

For a student who is not proficient in English, provide scaffolds including the frontloading of key vocabulary and activating the transfer of background knowledge and other skills from the dominant language.

5. Immediate Feedback

On-the-spot feedback is one of the most impactful ingredients in early reading and writing instruction.

• Apply corrections in the moment.
  • Have students reread misread words with accuracy.
  • Prompt students to say sounds aloud when fixing a spelling mistake.

6. Quality Practice

Students don't just need more practice, they need effective practice.

• Ample time spent reading and spelling with a laser focus on sound-symbol connections.
• Apply feedback right away.
• Gradually reduce scaffolds as accuracy and automaticity develop.

Learning to read and write is a dynamic process. With the right kind of instruction, most children can become successful readers. The ingredients are the same for all- the pace and path just differ. What matters most is giving each learner clear, consistent, and responsive teaching that builds the brain for literacy from the start.

There’s a lot of information circulating online. Some of it helps, some of it confuses, and much of it overwhelms. Take a deep breath and come back to the basics. The essentials from decades of reading science remain steady and reliable. Use credible assessments, observe your learners closely, and let real progress guide your next steps.

Remember: Teaching is both an art and a science. Keep learning, keep refining, and keep reflecting. Play the fun games. Add the extras as you'd like. Just make sure the core ingredients are prioritized and that no clutter takes up precious time. When explicit, systematic instruction, daily practice, and meaningful feedback on the knowledge, skills, and processes needed to crack the code are in place, real progress happens.

Less is More Literacy™

Highlighted Studies from Reading Research:

Chandler, B. W., Toste, J. R., Novelli, C., Rodgers, D. B., & Hardeman, E. (2025). A Meta-Analytic Review of Spelling Interventions for Students With or At-Risk for Learning Disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00222194251364836

Ehri, L. C. (2014). Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific studies of reading, 18(1), 5-21.

Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S. R., Stahl, S. A., & Willows, D. M. (2001). Systematic phonics instruction helps students learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel’s meta-analysis. Review of educational research, 71(3), 393-447

International Dyslexia Association. (2022). Building phoneme awareness: Know what matters [Fact sheet]. Retrieved from https://dyslexiaida.org/building-phoneme-awareness-know-what-matters/

Share, D. L. (1999). Phonological recoding and orthographic learning: A direct test of the self-teaching hypothesis. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 72(2), 95–129. https://doi.org/10.1006/jecp.1998.2491

Steacy, L. M., Wade-Woolley, L., Rueckl, J. G., Pugh, K. R., Elliott, J. D., & Compton, D. L. (2019). The Role of Set for Variability in Irregular Word Reading: Word and Child Predictors in Typically Developing Readers and Students At-Risk for Reading Disabilities. Scientific Studies of Reading, 23(6), 523–532. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2019.1620749

Duke, N. K., & Cartwright, K. B. (2021). The science of reading progresses: Communicating advances beyond the Simple View of Reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S25–S44. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.411