How to Create Good Readers

Kids have stopped reading. Adults have stopped reading. According to some experts, we are living in a reading crisis.

Unless we’re not.

Some believe young people and older people might be reading more today than ever. They’re just not reading the way we’ve read over the past 1,000 years.

But one thing we know for sure is that we do have a population of readers who are not performing at a high enough level – whether it be reading a novel or an Instagram post. So we need to improve reading abilities, for both young and old.

Reading researcher Matt Burns points to five interventions necessary to turn us into better readers. They are:

“Be appropriately challenging,

Be correctly targeted,

Give students opportunities to respond,

Offer explicit instruction, and

Provide immediately feedback”

In addition, Burns offers three more pieces of advice when trying to improve reading power. They are:

To stop thinking that reading “levels” aren’t the right tool to pinpoint students’ individual needs. Burns’s research suggests that one of the most popular leveling systems only accurately predicts students’ reading ability a little more than half of the time. Instead, testing for a learner’s discrete skills – phonics, fluency, vocabulary knowledge, as examples – and then target intervention accordingly.

Understanding that practice solidifies students’ knowledge, but not all practice is created equal. This is where personalized learning comes into play, and traditional classrooms struggle. Too many classroom teachers feel the need to “teach to the middle,” whereby every learner receives the same time to practice. But the reality is that each individual learner requires their own practice schedule, based on their strengths and their challenges.

Being cautious of “cognitive overload.” Too much is too much when it comes to learning. Our brains learn the best when there is a clear plan about what there is to learn, how learning will occur, and how it will be assessed. Burns says it like this: “When working with a teacher of interventionist, if students start getting things wrong that they were previously getting right, it might be a sign that they’re reaching their limit for the moment.”

We need to stop teaching to the middle. We need to start learning to our young learners while they are going through the learning to read and reading to learn process. We need to create, execute on, and evaluate a learning plan, including reading goals. We need to build the right type of relationship with our young learners so that they feel comfortable with success – and challenge.

The big question is this: Can our traditional K-12 system do all this, and, more importantly, can they do it for those young learners most in need of reading development and expertise – black, brown, and poor kids?

Friday News Roundup tomorrow. SVB

Some of this article’s details was taken from Sarah Schwartz’s “What Makes and Effective Reading Intervention? One Researcher’s 5 Criteria,” printed in EducationWeek online (October 10, 2025)