Science of Reading-Informed Curriculum

In consultation with premier literacy experts, including Wiley Blevins, our ELA programs are designed specifically to address the latest reading research. Thousands of studies have provided a persuasive body of evidence on how proficient reading and writing develop, why some students experience difficulty, and how educators can most effectively assess and teach to improve student outcomes.

Benchmark Education resources reflect current and confirmed research on learning to read and teaching reading.

Our structured literacy approach incorporates explicit and multi-modal phonics instruction, deep levels of vocabulary and language competencies, and daily application to reading and writing using accountable decodable texts to develop key components of reading fluency:

• Standards-aligned units support the key tenets of structured literacy, including criteria from the International Dyslexia Association (study available here).
• Foundational skills are taught through explicit, systematic instruction.
• A cohesive structure develops literacy skills and content knowledge.
• An integrated foundation reinforces content-area concepts and development of academic vocabulary and comfort with text complexity.
• Authors and consultants are pedagogical leaders, instructional innovators, and teaching veterans, with expertise grounded in real-world classroom practice.

Our structured pathway to literacy is aligned to Science of Reading research.

Adapted from Gough and Tunmer (1986) and Scarborough (2001).

Read about the research foundation of our core ELA programs—based on Gough & Tunmer’s Simple View of Reading (1986) and Scarborough’s Rope (2001), which focus on the word recognition and decoding and language comprehension that are critical for learning to read and expanding literacy and background knowledge.