Evaluation of Structured Linguistic Phonics Instruction in Grades 4-8

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SRI is evaluating an innovative speech-to-print phonics approach for upper elementary and middle school students. We are generating rigorous insights about instructional approaches that have the potential to improve the learning trajectories of older struggling readers.

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Summary

Adolescents’ foundational reading and spelling skills are critical to their reading comprehension and writing. As part of AERDF’s Reading Reimagined initiative, SRI is conducting an experimental trial of a structured linguistic phonics intervention called Sounds-Write. The mixed-methods study is investigating Sounds-Write’s impact on students’ word reading, reading fluency, and spelling skills for students in grades 4-8. The Sounds-Write team is also also using qualitative methods to understand the experiences of teachers and students during Sounds-Write instruction. Initial findings show positive feedback from teachers and students and positive impacts on students’ reading fluency. Full report will be published in spring 2026.

Full description of project work

For adolescents to comprehend text, they need to be proficient in foundational skills, including phonics and more advanced decoding skills. Research shows that students who are not proficient decoders in middle and high school may remain stagnant in their comprehension throughout adolescence (Wang et al. 2019, 2024). These students may be left behind as ELA, history and science curricula assume foundational skills proficiency.

SRI is evaluating an innovative speech-to-print instructional approach for decoding called Sounds-Write. This approach incorporates systematic synthetic phonics instruction, anchoring children’s learning in their knowledge of spoken language to efficiently master the English sound-spelling system. Grounded in cognitive science, this approach exemplifies the Sciences of Reading and Learning to support every child in mastering both early and advanced decoding. The evaluation is funded by the Reading Reimagined project, an initiative of the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund.

Does Sounds-Write improve students’ reading and spelling? The evaluation measures students’ foundational skills growth using the innovative computer-adaptive Rapid Online Assessment of Reading (ROAR) assessment developed by Stanford University’s Reading and Dyslexia Lab.  ROAR is a brief computer-adaptive suite of foundational skills assessments that can capture growth across a wide range of K-8 student reading abilities. Working in two districts and 11 schools across two states, our study combines randomized and quasi-experimental methods to estimate impact on ROAR and spelling outcomes in both Tier I general education and Tier II intervention instruction.  

How do students and teachers like Sounds-Write? The evaluation team will interview teachers and conduct student focus groups to understand their day-to-day experiences with Sounds-Write. Teacher interviews will uncover insights about the training, curriculum, and coaching to understand how Sounds-Write helps support their students to become automatic decoders (especially for polysyllabic words). Student focus groups shed light on how adolescents experience the carefully designed and scripted instruction. Alongside the experimental findings, these data will help future districts decide whether speech-to-print instruction can help their struggling readers. Findings will also suggest future directions for speech-to-print programs like Sounds-Write. 

Preliminary analyses suggest Sounds-Write can be engaging for older students and may be shifting the balance of expert readers in their classrooms. A fifth-grade teacher stated:

In the beginning [of the school year] you always have 5 or 6 that are avid spellers or readers…If I have a class of 25, that is going to leave me with 19 who cannot. But then after Sounds-Write and going through the initial codes where we do all those basic sounds…Now instead of having just 6 people, it progresses to now we have 15 to 20 that are better spellers and can hear sounds and can say, “oh so this word is” [and identify it]. 

Contrary to a popular belief that carefully scripted phonics instruction isn’t engaging for older readers, students also reported positive Sounds-Write experiences. Two English learners even said their experience with Sounds-Write connected them to their family and made them feel more cared for at school:

Student 1: “Sometimes when I get stuck in like a big word, I sound it out in my mind, and then I’m able to say it to my sister or my mom or my dad.”

Student 2: “In my old school they didn’t…put too much effort so we can learn and read, write or nothing like that, so. They didn’t put too much effort into us.” The full study report will be available in spring 2026.

References 

Wang, Z., Sabatini, J., O’reilly, T., & Weeks, J. (2019). Decoding and reading comprehension: A test of the decoding threshold hypothesis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(3), 387. 

Wang, Z., O’Reilly, T., & Sutherland, R. (2024). Replicating Decoding Threshold in ReadBasix®: Impact on Reading Skills Development. Research Report No. RR-24-06). ETS.

Associated fields of research