What Does the DataBase Tell us About Teaching Reading?

The Real Books DataBase offers a completely new starting point for teaching reading. It highlights exactly which skills (graphemes and phonemes together with high-frequency words) occur most often and are consequently the skills that are most usefully taught to beginning readers. Furthermore, the DataBase indicates the exact order in which these skills should be taught. The Database identifies:

• The 16 common words that make up 28% of all children’s books
• The 100 common words that make up 52% of all children’s books
• The order to teach letter sounds so that the most useful are taught first
• Which phonemes are useful in learning to read and which are redundant as they occur so infrequently.

In short, the Database provides teachers with a complete curriculum that doesn’t squander time and attention spans on irrelevant material. The Database gives teachers the confidence to know that the skills they are teaching are rooted in scientific evidence and the results are proven.