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The Alabama State Board of Education Thursday adopted a new literacy coursework for Science of Reading for teacher preparation programs in the state.

The , approved on a unanimous vote, comes after years of a state focus on literacy scores, especially in the lower grades.

State Superintendent Eric Mackey said the standards would apply to elementary teachers, collaborative special education teachers and 鈥渃ould be applied to some other areas also.鈥�

鈥淢ostly, they are focused again on early childhood and elementary teachers,鈥� he said.

The Science of Reading is an interdisciplinary body of research about reading and issues of reading and writing. definition, cited in the standards, includes phonemic awareness and letter instruction as instructional practices but not emphases on larger units of speech, such as syllables.

The new standards also outlaw the 鈥渢hree-cueing鈥� system in institutions of higher education and K-12 schools. The rule change defines three cueing as a 鈥渕odel of teaching students to read based on meaning, structure, and syntax, and visual cues.鈥�

Three-cueing is a teaching strategy that is affiliated with 鈥渂alanced literacy,鈥� a compromise between whole language and phonics-based instruction that became prominent in the 1990s, Three-cueing encourages students to guess and look for clues, such as at pictures, when facing an unfamiliar word.

The skills associated with the Science of Reading were not taught in schools for many years, as reported by As of May 2023, 15 states had outlawed the use of three-cueing after Hanford鈥檚 reporting, with some lawmakers and policy makers citing the podcast, .

sponsored by Rep. Leigh Hulsey, R-Helena, would have banned the use of three-cueing, with some exceptions. The legislation passed the House of Representatives on March 5 but was among the many bills that died in the .

鈥淭his prohibition is specific to the teaching of foundational reading skills and should not be construed to impact the teaching of background knowledge and vocabulary as connected to the language comprehension side of Scarborough鈥檚 Reading Rope,鈥� the reads.

Scarborugh鈥檚 Reading Rope is a visual representation of establishing proficient reading, according to the

Hulsey said Tuesday that her bill was 鈥渃omplementary鈥� with the standards adopted by the board, and that she expected to bring it back next year.

鈥淯ltimately, kids need to learn how to actually read, and that is done through the science of reading, learning how to decode sound out letters, and figuring out how to put those things together to actually decode the word and be able to be lifelong readers, versus someone who is just looking at words and guessing,鈥� she said, 鈥淲e鈥檙e not setting kids up for success if we鈥檙e not actually teaching them how to read.鈥�

She said the exceptions in the bill were mainly for older learners and those with learning disabilities.

members of the Literacy Task Force cited teacher training and implementation as a hurdle in implementing literacy instruction.

Mackey said they had received comments earlier. They received no additional public comments on the current version, which they voted on the intent to approve months ago.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: [email protected]. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

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