Definition of Explicit Instruction and Systematic Curriculum
Dr. Dean Arrasmith Chief Learning Officer StudyDog

In 1998, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the US Department of Education came together to address the nation’s poor reading epidemic. The two organizations formed the National Reading Panel to make an evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction, One of the main conclusions of the panel was that in order to successfully teach children that are struggling readers to read they must be taught through the use of Explicit Instruction and Systematic Curriculum. This paper defines the meaning of the terms Explicit Instruction and Systematic Curriculum.

With the current emphasis in the reading literature on explicit and systematic instruction, many reading programs are aligning themselves with these descriptions. However, there seems to be very little agreement about the precise meaning of these descriptors. It is difficult in the current situation to evaluate the quality of programs without understanding the key features of explicit and systematic instruction. This paper defines more precisely the characteristics of explicit and systematic early reading programs and offers evaluative questions that can be used to explore the quality and limitations of these programs. Since the publication of the synthesis of early reading prevention literature edited by Snow, Burns, and Griffin (1998) and the emphasis by the National Reading Panel on effective research-based reading programs in early grades, the phrase explicit and systematic reading instruction has taken on increasingly important meaning. While there seems to be a general understanding of the meaning of this phrase, our review has found the phrase is used much as the term natural is used in the food industry. There seems to be a lack of a precise meaning of what the phrase connotes about the qualities of a reading program.

Reviewing the use of the phrase in the literature (especially in Snow, et al., 1998; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000; and Armbruster and Osborn, 2001) one learns that explicit and systematic reading instruction can improve young readers understanding of phonological structures of words, comprehension strategies, and vocabulary. In these reading skill areas, it seems that explicit and systematic instruction improved students’ understanding of the association of letters and sounds, their ability “summarizing the main idea, predicting events and outcomes of upcoming text, drawing inferences, and monitoring for coherence and misunderstandings” (Snow, et al., 1998, Part III, Chapter 6), and according to Stahl and Fairbanks (1986) improved students’ vocabulary skills to explicitly teaching words’ definitions and providing examples of words’ usages in several contexts.

Torgesen, Wagner, Rashotte, Alexander, and Conway showed, through a series of studies and journal reports (1997a, b, and c, 1998) about their work with students with reading disabilities, that the degree of instructional explicitness effected gains in phonetic decoding skills. However, “Programs that differ in level of instruction in phonological awareness as well as their relative emphasis on phonetic decoding skills produce essentially the same reading gains except in the area of phonetic decoding skill (1998).” The degree of explicitness seemed to affect the skills that are directly instructed, but did not necessarily have the same level of effect on more generalized applications or related reading skills.

Taking a broad look at effective early reading programs, five related reading strategies dominate the literature:
1. Phonemic Awareness – The awareness and skills to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words.
2. Alphabetic Principal – The awareness and skills to identify and produce the sounds of letters in written words.
3. Fluency – The skills and strategies to read written text with ease, accuracy, and appropriate pace.
4. Vocabulary – The recognition and understanding of the meaning of individual words.
5. Comprehension – The skills and strategies to understand the meaning in connected text.

Of these strategies, comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading instruction and the others strategies support comprehension. Many researchers (Adams, 1990; Gough and Wren, 1999; and Snow, Barnes, Chandler, Goodman, and Hemphill, 1991) advocate the effectiveness of early phonics instruction in helping students learn to decode text, a prerequisite skill for building comprehension of connected text. These same researchers also recognize that teaching phonics is a means to the end of teaching comprehension. Phonics provides scaffolding that supports students’ early reading efforts. With increased vocabulary skills and reading fluency, phonics is de-emphasized, allowing students to attend to understanding connected text. Struggling readers need the early scaffolding of phonics to learn to read, but phonics taught alone does not necessarily lead to better understanding of written text.

For the purposes of defining the qualities of early reading programs, this paper addresses explicit instruction, and then discusses the qualities of systematic curriculum. While this distinction does not always appear in the literature, it fits well the spirit of the general phrase of explicit and systematic instruction. In addition, this distinction proved useful in untangling some of the specific qualities that useful for evaluating early reading programs.

Explicit Instruction
Explicit reading instruction is the unambiguous, clear and direct teaching of reading skills and strategies. There are seven characteristics of explicit reading instruction that facilitates such plainness and distinctness that there is, for the student, no need for inference and no difficulty understanding instruction:
1. Clear Instructional Targets
2. Clear Purpose for Learning
3. Clear and Understandable Direction and Explanations
4. Adequate Modeling
5. Guided and Independent Practice with Corrective Feedback
6. Instructionally Embedded Assessments
7. Summative Assessments

Each of these characteristics of explicit instruction is discussed next. Clear instructional targets. Explicit instruction begins with a clear understanding of what the students are to learn and will be able to do. For example, such clarity in a phonics program may reflect the specific letter sound associations students are to learn in order to sound out specific regular words. The relationship of instructional stimuli to student responses is specified, as well as the domain from which specific instructional samples are drawn. The relationships between stimuli and responses are expressly included in each lesson plan. In addition, the domain of skills and behaviors expected from explicit instruction is clearly defined and guide the selection of instructional and assessment samples. Simply put, the teacher knows what to teach students to do.

Clear purpose for learning.
The connection between the instructional targets and the general outcome of teaching is clearly understood by the teacher and is equally clear to the students. For young readers, it is critical that they understand that concepts of print, word attack skills, fluency, and vocabulary lead to understanding the meaning of connected text. The explicit teaching of early reading skills must include the context in which the application of the skills leaned will lead to understanding written text. The isolated teaching of a specific reading skill will increase performance of that skill, but does not necessarily lead to the generalization of the skill or to improved reading comprehension (Torgesen, et al., 1998; National Reading Panel, 2000, p. 2-159). By clearly understanding and teaching the connections between a specific lesson and the generalized skills in a domain of behavior, and the goal of comprehension, the students can learn the context of the skills they acquire and apply the skills in appropriate ways. Cunningham (2000) describes this connection when she encourages teachers to “direct children’s attention toward letters and sounds to enable them to use strategies, not learn skills.”

Clear and understandable directions and explanations.
This is the heart of explicit instruction. It requires clear directions and explanations to illuminate for students the subtleties of the skills and strategies taught. Instruction should explain the connections between letters and sounds, for example, illuminating the alphabetic principal and how and what sounds are represented by written letters. While there are differing views over the explicit teaching of phonetic rules (e.g., Cunningham, 2000, suggests that the brain recognizes patterns, and it does not apply rules; Peoples, 2000, recommends teaching 61 phonics rules), it is clear that teaching students to read requires very clear and understandable directions of how letters and words are read, and how words in connected text are understood.

Adequate modeling.
Modeling shows students what they are expected to learn and do within the context of reading tasks. Demonstrating how to use a new skill or strategy reinforces the students’ understanding. Initial learning and subsequent practice improves when students are shown precisely what they are expected to learn and be able to do. Providing students with examples of the application of the reading skills and strategies they are learning, showing how to sound out words, predict future events in a story, or use a word in a sentence, for example, reinforces clear and understandable directions and explanations. Further, modeling can show students how specific reading skills and strategies are used in a variety of contexts, reinforcing the generalization of the skills and strategies to broader domains.

Guided and Independent Practice.
Guided practice further reinforces direct instruction and gives student the opportunity to explore and learn new skills and strategies. Providing students with immediate feedback on the accuracy and appropriateness of their application of a new skill and strategy can greatly reinforce their learning. Guided practice should help students understand how a reading skill or strategy applies in a variety of situations. Students’ inappropriate application of the reading skill or strategy is corrected so the students’ do not reinforce wrong applications. Correct applications are reinforced with positive feedback.

Corrective feedback in guided practice is very important.
Such feedback clearly identifies the errors students make in the application of new reading skills or strategies and provides additional instruction, modeling, and guided practice as necessary. In guided practice, the instructional agent (a teacher or heuristically-based smart agent) must develop intelligence about each student’s performance and diagnose errors in order to plan corrective actions. The instructional agent optimizes each teaching activity to identify missing prerequisite skills, redirect instruction, and/or design additional practice of critical reading skills as the student is learning. To maximize the effects of corrective feedback, intervention in learning must be immediate and dynamically refocus student’s learning. Yet, intervention must allow students time to explore new reading skills and strategies as they practice. The instructional agent monitors student work and intelligently provides corrective feedback to encourage and guide student learning. The transition from guided practice to independent practice is often a natural transition as the students begin to master the reading skills and strategies. In some instances, students receive independent practice when continued guided practice is impractical. In either instructional strategy, independent practice allows students to build confidence in the reading skills and strategies they learn.

Instructionally Embedded Assessments.
Assessments, embedded in and that mimic instructional practice, can provide insight into the levels of mastery students achieve as they practice and learn new reading skills and strategies. The instructionally embedded assessments provide the intelligence an instructional agent needs to know when a student is struggling with a new reading skill or strategy and when a student should move on to additional lessons. Decisions to provide alternate instruction, additional modeling or more practice are driven by students performance within instruction. In this way, the embedded assessments provide an appropriate pace for student instruction that is matched to optimize each student’s learning.

Summative Assessments.
Periodic summative assessments are used to monitor students’ retention and reinforcement of skills and strategies following instruction. Summative assessments should measure how well students are retaining and generalizing prior instructed reading skills and strategies in order to become competent readers with expanded vocabularies and critical reading comprehension skills. Because early reading strategies provide scaffolding for reading comprehension, it is important to monitor the quality and skills students develop to attend fully to understanding printed text. The summative assessments provide proof of the skills and strategies students have developed and their progress toward effective reading comprehension.



Systematic Curriculum
Systematic curriculum is the logical, research-based sequence of educational activities that describes a developmental continuum which optimally leads to students’ coherent accomplishment of the learning outcomes and goals (e.g., Big Ideas in Reading, 2001; Gardiner, 2000). Closely allied with explicit instruction, a systematic curriculum builds from the clear and unequivocal understanding of the targets and purpose of instruction, and sound instructional processes, as described in the previous discussion of the qualities of explicit instruction. Systematic curriculum establishes the substance and order of instruction.
A well-formed systematic curriculum has four qualities that differentiate it from other curriculum. These qualities include:
1. Comprehensive Instructional Scope
2. Strategic Instructional Sequence
3. Consistent Instructional Format
4. Dynamic Modification of Instruction
Each of these qualities is described next.
Instructional Scope.
A systematic curriculum must clearly identify the domains of knowledge and skills students must master in a specific content area. Today, academic standards, adopted by state educational agencies, express these expectations. For early reading development, there is strong research support for five skill areas that students need to master:

Phonological Awareness – The awareness and skills to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words.
Alphabetic Principal – The awareness and skills to identify and produce the sounds of letters in written words.
Fluency – The skills and strategies to read written text with ease, accuracy, and appropriate pace.
Vocabulary – The recognition and understanding of the meaning of individual words.
Comprehension – The skills and strategies to understand the meaning in connected text.

Among these, comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading instruction, and the other reading skills support understanding written text. Systematic reading curriculum must establish an appropriate balance and order of instructional content across these areas optimally building reading comprehension skills for all students. The strong research support for these five areas provides a foundation for building a systematic curriculum.

Instructional Sequence.
The instructional sequence in the curriculum must provide a natural order of content that for any lesson include the prerequisite skills required prior to the specific instruction, the targeted instructional content of the lesson, and any extension skills and strategies needed to generalize the lesson. By looking back at needed prior skills, clearly explicating the skills to be learned and looking forward to extended skills, the instruction is strategically sequenced.
In the literature, there seems to be some confusion or silence on optimal instructional sequences. Several authors (Snow …) identify any logical sequence as adequate justification for sequencing instruction. However, a few instructional sequences, such as The Big Ideas in Reading (University of Oregon), are good examples of research-based instructional sequences. Perhaps with increased attention to reading research, a stronger understanding of optimal instructional sequencing will emerge. For now, it is important to identify a logical sequence, anchoring the sequence in proven, research-based practices where possible.

Consistent Instructional Format.
A systematic curriculum provides a consistent foundation for the development of effective teaching activities. The literature clearly establishes the form of instruction, including the balance of direct instruction, modeling, and practice of skills allowing students easily see the connections between instructional lessons, building skills, and reinforcing previous skills learned. A systematic curriculum establishes and communicates the order of skill development for the student. Individual instructional activities are explicitly tied to a development sequence.

A consistent instructional format requires instructional activities be designed that fit within the development sequencing of the curriculum. Some have identified this designing within a curriculum framework as backwards curriculum development (Understanding by Design). In such designs, the goals and outcomes of curriculum are identified prior to the development of instructional activities. Activities support and reinforce the systematic curriculum. Each instructional activity is purposefully fitted into the curriculum optimally leading to students’ mastery of the desired knowledge and skills.

Addresses Preferred Learning Styles.
A systematic curriculum addresses students’ different learning preferences (Gardner, 1993) and dynamically modifies instruction when students need additional instruction, modeling, and/or practice. A rote script for instruction can overlook critical learning needs of students. A systematic curriculum builds in a range of instructional strategies and assessment checks to make sure each child is learning at an optimal rate. Modification of instruction, changing to a different instructional strategy can reinforce and allow the instructional agent to learn how a student learns best. This feature of constant monitoring and dynamic modification of instruction can effectively assure that students are learning sequence of skills included in the systematic curriculum.



Summary
Many early reading programs claim they have explicit instruction and systematic curriculum. It is difficult to evaluate these early reading programs without a clear understanding of the qualities these terms imply. A spectrum of reading programs use the terms explicit and systematic. From a consumer perspective, clear definition of these terms could help establish guidelines for evaluating the quality of early reading programs. Further, program developers can better attend to critical qualities of their program, improving the overall effectiveness of early reading programs.

This paper proposed seven qualities for explicit instruction and four qualities for systematic curriculum. The definitions of these qualities is intended to offer guidance for evaluating early reading programs and to contribute to the development basic definitions of qualities of early reading programs. It is hoped that through the development of definitions and standards, the broad research-base of reading can be carefully mined to produce effective programs that leave no child behind.

References
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