October 2025 – Storyworld International

Just like learning a language, learning to read is hard! It’s actually a full-brain experience!

So, when children learn by engaging all modalities—listening, speaking, writing, along with with reading—they activate more neural pathways in their brain. This deepens comprehension and strengthens their long-term memory.

That’s why reading instruction that intentionally integrates all four language domains helps students understand, retain, and apply what they learn more quickly and builds a more powerful foundation for learning across subjects that will last a lifetime.

The Power of Multimodal Learning

Research shows that the brain learns best when information is presented in multiple ways. According to neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf (2007), the process of reading recruits and connects several areas of the brain that evolved for different functions—visual recognition, auditory processing, and language comprehension.

When children hear, say, see, and write new words, these systems work together, reinforcing learning through repeated, meaningful exposure.

Listening Builds Language

Listening is the foundation of literacy. Before children can decode print, they must first recognize how language sounds. When teachers use oral stories, songs, and read-alouds, they are strengthening children’s phonological awareness—the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in words.

This auditory groundwork developed through listening is essential for phonics instruction later on (Moats, 2020). Research from the National Institute for Literacy (2008) confirms that oral language development in the early years strongly predicts later reading comprehension.

Speaking Strengthens Understanding

Talking about stories helps children make meaning of what they read. “Turn and Talk” moments or retelling stories in their own words give students the opportunity to process ideas, clarify misunderstandings, and connect personally with text.

Oral language expression is the bridge between listening and reading comprehension—what Gough and Tunmer (1986) describe in the Simple View of Reading as “language comprehension”—a key component of overall reading ability.

Writing Deepens Memory

When students write words, phrases, or short summaries by hand, they reinforce the visual and kinesthetic memory of language. Writing about reading—even in short bursts—has been shown to improve both retention and comprehension (Graham & Hebert, 2011).

Handwriting, in particular, activates the brain’s Reticular Activating System (RAS), which helps encode learning into long-term memory.

Reading Connects It All

Reading is where all these modalities converge. A strong reader listens internally to the rhythm of language, speaks silently through inner voice, and recalls how words look and feel.

This is why StoryWorld’s program integrates listening, speaking, writing and reading—rather than isolating them—thereby mirroring how the brain naturally learns.

The Multimodal Advantage

By activating all modalities as students learn to read, educators give every child a stronger, more engaging path to literacy that will also make those early reading skills really “stick.”.

Teacher Tip: “Say It, Hear It, Write It, Read It.”

When introducing new vocabulary or phonics patterns, have students say the word aloud, hear it in a sentence, write it on paper, and read it in a short passage. This four-step cycle maximizes retention and understanding.

Cynthia Harrison Barbera

Cynthia Harrison Barbera is President and CEO, StoryWorld International. She served as VP Educational Technology for Scholastic and is the recipient of two US Presidential awards for educational programs. An Emmy-award winner for a television series on education, she has taught English to native-speakers and ELL students in the US and overseas.

References:

- - Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7(1), 6–10.
  - Graham, S., & Hebert, M. (2011). Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading. Alliance for Excellent Education.
  - Immordino-Yang, M. H. (2016). Emotions, Learning, and the Brain: Exploring the Educational Implications of Affective Neuroscience. W.W. Norton.
  - Moats, L. C. (2020). Teaching Reading Is Rocket Science, 2020: What Expert Teachers of Reading Should Know and Be Able to Do. American Federation of Teachers.
  - Wolf, M. (2007). Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. HarperCollins.
  National Institute for Literacy. (2008). Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel.

How do students move from the process of learning to the goal of “knowing?”

A few weeks ago, I was working with a group of struggling readers in middle school. Most had given up almost entirely on learning because they did not know how to read. While each student had spent hours “learning” in school, they had not mastered the important literacy skills along the way. The consequence? The effort to keep up just became too difficult.

Mastery happens with small, achievable milestones.

Students achieve learning milestones at different rates and in different ways. So, when students are only evaluated at the finish line, they miss those critically important mid-way opportunities that reveal their unique barriers to knowledge or skills with enough time to bridge the gaps. The result is that too many students do not master important foundational skills — like reading — exacerbating their learning challenges later.

But how do you approach “mastery” with a highly diverse class so that no student falls through the cracks?

Start with clear objectives and frequent feedback.

The idea of “mastery” traces back to Benjamin Bloom’s groundbreaking work in the late 1960s. Bloom argued that nearly all students can achieve high levels of understanding if given clear objectives, regular formative assessment, timely feedback, and opportunities for reteaching (Bloom, 1968).

What Bloom and his collaborators discovered is that when teachers use performance — not as a final judgment but as a tool for guiding learning — they open doors for all students to succeed (Block, 1971).

Use student “performance” to guide the learning process.

Achievement gaps close when schools embed performance and feedback into the learning process, and do not focus so much on the final grade (Guskey, 2007).

For literacy and language development, this means that teachers need to build in abundant opportunities for students to show what they know as they go: reading aloud to demonstrate fluency, listening and discussing to show comprehension, writing reflections to consolidate meaning, and speaking to apply new vocabulary in context.

Include all modalities.

As students read, listen, speak, and write, they reinforce and reveal understanding using different modalities. Breaking complex skills into smaller, observable performances can allow teachers to track growth of smaller steps toward proficiency over time (Marzano, 2007).

Not all students demonstrate mastery similarly. Some students may reveal deep comprehension through oral storytelling, others through writing or drawing. Flexible performance tasks ensure that mastery is accessible to every learner, with as much differentiated support as possible to scaffold learners (Tomlinson, 2017).

Motivation matters!

More frequent performance-based tasks send the message to students that mistakes made along the way are not failures but stepping stones toward mastery. For example, a student struggling with decoding could still demonstrate comprehension through oral explanation—an affirming performance that builds confidence while decoding skills catch up. Research on developing a “growth mindset” among students repeatedly shows that when learners believe their abilities can grow with effort and feedback, they are more likely to persist (Dweck, 2006).

Allow students to demonstrate what they know in multiple ways.

Ultimately, it helps to think of “mastery” not solely about accuracy—but also about the active effort of students to use and transfer their existing knowledge and skills. For example, a student who can read a story, talk about its themes, listen to a peer’s perspective, and write their own response is demonstrating robust, transferable knowledge across a variety of modalities—a demonstration of “mastery”.

This is why StoryWorld provides abundant differentiated opportunities for students to engage all modalities so they can demonstrate their mastery of both language and literacy at each level and milestone.

Bottom line: encourage performance in all modalities with timely feedback.

By embedding performance across different modalities into daily instruction along with frequent feedback, teachers ensure that mastery is not a distant goal measured only at the end of a unit or semester, but a lived, visible and engaging process that truly takes students from learning to knowing.