Youth Success Movement The Reading Engine

What has to be built, and what can get in the way

Everything we know, on one page. Click any part to find out what it is, how it gets built, how you would know, and what to do if it is not there.

Start here

Two minutes, and the rest of the page makes sense.

What is the Reading Engine? A short video goes here — what reading actually requires, and why so many children who can read the words still fail the test that counts.
  • Reading is not one thing. Getting words off the page and understanding them are separate jobs, built at different times by different people.
  • The page has four layers. Conditions at the bottom decide whether anything works. Above them, what builds a reader. Above that, the engine itself. At the top, reading.
  • Where to look first: the bottom layer. Conditions are cheap to check, common, and any one of them can hold back everything above it.
  • Nothing here diagnoses anything. Each part tells you what to notice and what to do — at home, or in one sentence to your doctor.
  • The Science of Learning Model \u2197 — the whole thing on a page, if you would rather see it than click through it.
Who is this for?

Click any part of the model below. Start at the bottom if you are not sure where to begin. Choosing an age above tailors what each part tells you.

Four questions

Nothing is stored. This just decides what to point you at.