Inside a classroom in St. Charles Parish, a group of first graders sit around their teacher as she points to an easel with a large piece of paper titled "READING." Under it, six steps lay out how to identify a word using its vowels and syllable type.
Today, the group is working on consonant blends, when two or three consonants appear next to one another in a word. The students start by reviewing "S" blends, reciting the words wasp, crisp and clasp.
"We've got to say that blend to help us read the word correctly," Toni Dugas, a reading intervention teacher at Norco Elementary School, tells her students.
To an untrained observer, it might have looked like a typical reading lesson. But in fact, it's a big departure from how reading has been taught in many U.S. schools, where phonics instruction is kept to a minimum and students are encouraged to use context clues to read unfamiliar words.
In sharp contrast, the approach used in Dugas' classroom is based on a body of research known as "the science of reading," which teaches students to decipher words letter by letter and sound by sound.
This year, national data showed Louisiana led the country in fourth-grade reading gains on a closely watched test and outpaced other states in post-pandemic reading improvement. State education leaders credit the success to a series of laws and policy changes over the past four years that have pushed Louisiana schools to adopt practices rooted in the science of reading.
It's an approach that's gained traction throughout the U.S., with 40 states passing similar policies over the last few years.
St. Charles' school system has been on the front lines of the shift, having spent years transitioning to methods informed by the science of reading that are meant to systematically teach students how to read words one sound or letter pattern at a time.
While the process was difficult, Norco staff and teachers say that their students have seen undeniable success, as demonstrated by rising test scores.
The old methods "served us really well at certain times in the past, but now we have more advanced research," said assistant superintendent Erin Granier, who called the new approach "a game-changer." Now, "we know how kids learn to read."
A new way to teach reading
Until recently, St. Charles schools - like many across Louisiana and the country - taught students to read using a method called "balanced literacy," where teachers give short lessons on reading skills, then students spend a lot of time reading on their own. If students come across a word they don't recognize, they're encouraged to guess the meaning using context clues or pictures - a strategy called "cueing."
"You might have a book that would say, 'The ball is red,' but the picture would have a red ball, so the student wouldn't even need to read 'red' or 'ball,'" said Ada Webre, who oversees literacy coaches in St. Charles schools.
Balanced literacy has come under attack in recent years, with experts and educators saying it's left many students without basic reading skills. In 2022, Louisiana lawmakers banned schools from teaching the cueing strategy.
As balanced literacy fell out of favor, alternative approaches based on the science of reading have been on the rise.
Based on research into how the brain develops the ability to read, students learn how to connect sounds to letters and about the different sounds produced by letter combinations, while also studying vocabulary and practicing reading aloud.
The sounds and skills are taught in order, beginning with the component parts of words.
"It's like building a house, building that foundation," said Cheney Murray, a longtime first-grade teacher in St. Charles. "If a child doesn't understand the 'ch' sound, when they get to a word that uses it, they can't do anything."
Louisiana began requiring schools to adopt practices based on the science of reading in 2021.
Teachers now must take intensive training courses and school districts need to provide teachers in grades K-3 with literacy coaches who can offer on-site training, demonstrate lessons and provide feedback. Schools now give a reading assessment to students in grades K-2 three times each year and, beginning this spring, third graders who don't hit state targets on the assessments can be held back.
Unlike balanced literacy, the new approach is based on decades of research.
"It's a collection of insights and principles based on replicable, peer-reviewed evidence from studies that go back 40 years," said Maryanne Wolf, a child-literacy researcher and advocate. As the new methods take hold in more schools, "there's a good feeling that we're really moving the dial, and the studies show that."
Changes bring tears, then big gains, in St. Charles
Years before Louisiana began to push for literacy reforms, teachers in St. Charles Parish sought ways to help their youngest students, whose reading scores had lagged.
District leaders knew something needed to change, but they also knew it wouldn't be easy. Some of their educators had been using the old methods to teach reading for decades.
"It was hard," said Granier, the district's assistant superintendent. "Lots of tears, lots of anger."
Granier said she understood teachers' reluctance to abandon a style of reading instruction that many had built their careers around.
"It becomes your belief system," she said. "We took that away from teachers, and they didn't have an identity anymore."
But it didn't take long for everyone to get on board when they began to see results, she added.
One person who embraced the new methods was Tiffany Webre, Ada Webre's daughter, who is a second-grade teacher at Norco Elementary.
On a recent morning, her students gathered on a rug in the center of the room, looking up at a smartboard that displayed a lowercase, upside down "e."
"Remind me what sound this makes," Webre, who is Ada Webre's daughter, said to the class as she motioned to the board.
"Schwa," the students responded.
After a short lesson where students called out words that use the "schwa" sound, the children split into pairs to do worksheet activities where they identified letter combinations needed to make different sounds. Depending on each pair's skill level, some worksheets only included individual words while others featured phrases or full paragraphs.
An important part of the activity is getting students to read the words out loud, explained principal Shannon Diodene.
"They're reading to each other, and over the course of the year, they learn how to give feedback," she said. "It's really just building their fluency."
The reading assessments that Louisiana schools must give younger students throughout the year help identify the ones who are falling behind.
In St. Charles Parish, those students are pulled into a daily, half-hour-long reading "intervention" where a special instructor guides a small group through the day's lesson, giving each student one-on-one attention. When they return to the classroom, they're able to jump back into the next lesson without interruption.
One teacher described it as a "well-oiled machine."
Before, "we were asking our most at-risk kids to learn two whole different processes of reading," Ada Webre said. "What they taught in the classroom didn't always match what they taught in intervention."
The district's yearslong shift to the new reading approach appears to be paying off.
In 2023, 61% of the school's third graders tested at benchmark or above on state literacy assessments. The following year, that number rose to 76%, and the latest mid-year scores suggest the progress has continued.
"They're able to read things that they've never been able to read before," Granier said. "It's just amazing."