For parents who want the receipts
The science behind A New Page
Most reading apps say “science of reading” and move on. Here’s the actual research base we’re built on, the frameworks, the five pillars, and the people who proved it, and exactly how each one shows up in what your child does every night.
Who this is for, in one framework
Dr. Nancy Young's Ladder of Reading & Writing is one of the clearest maps of how differently children come to reading. It says a small share of kids (about 5 to 10%) seem to figure it out almost effortlessly. About 35% learn to read relatively easily with broad instruction, though most still need explicit teaching for spelling and writing. And then the biggest group of all, 40 to 45%, need code-based, systematic, explicit instruction to become skilled readers. Another 10 to 15% need every one of those things plus intensive practice and frequent repetition, at their exact skill level, for a lot longer than a typical curriculum allows.
Put those groups together and it is more than half of children who need explicit, systematic teaching to learn to read well. For a lot of them, it is more than that. This is exactly the audience A New Page was built for, and it is why every design choice, the mastery gating, the spaced review, the tiny wins at the child's exact step, the parent voice carrying the story so the child's voice can carry the decoding, follows from that reality rather than from a marketing wish. The rest of this page walks the science under those choices.
Put those groups together and it is more than half of children who need explicit, systematic teaching to learn to read well. For a lot of them, it is more than that. This is exactly the audience A New Page was built for, and it is why every design choice, the mastery gating, the spaced review, the tiny wins at the child's exact step, the parent voice carrying the story so the child's voice can carry the decoding, follows from that reality rather than from a marketing wish. The rest of this page walks the science under those choices.
The approach: Structured Literacy
A New Page is a Structured Literacy program, explicit, systematic, cumulative instruction in the building blocks of written language. We’ve built it to align with the International Dyslexia Association’s Knowledge & Practice Standards (authored by Dr. Louisa Moats), the consensus standard for teaching reading to children with dyslexia. There is no guessing from pictures or context here, we teach children to decode, the opposite of the disproven “three-cueing” approach.
The five pillars, and what your child does for each
The National Reading Panel identified five things every reader must build. We teach the three word-level pillars (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency) directly, and the two language pillars (vocabulary, comprehension) grow through the stories you read together.
1 · Phonemic awareness
Hearing and working with the sounds in wordsA short sound-play warm-up in every lesson, blending and segmenting by ear.
2 · Phonics
Matching sounds to letters, in a research-based orderAn explicit, systematic scope & sequence following the peer-reviewed UFLI Foundations sequence.
3 · Fluency
Reading smoothly and accuratelyYour child rereads each line until it’s smooth, and roughly every fifth session (about weekly at the four-night dose) we run a short weekly check, a timed passage from Level 5 and letter-sound, nonsense-word or word-reading measures before that, and chart it over time.
4 · Vocabulary
Knowing what words meanWord meaning grows through the stories you read together, in the world your child chose.
5 · Comprehension
Understanding what was readAfter each read, a comprehension question and a “tell someone” retell invite your child to show they understood. Comprehension grows through the story you read together.
The frameworks we’re built on
Scarborough’s Reading RopeSkilled reading is woven from word-recognition strands (phonological awareness, decoding, sight recognition) and language-comprehension strands. Our skill map is the lower strands of the Rope.
The Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer)Reading = decoding × language comprehension. Our Starting Check goes deep on decoding and pairs it with a short listening-comprehension check-in (a 30-second read-aloud and one parent-reported yes/no), so if a family flags trouble beyond decoding we can say so plainly rather than only ever drill sounds.
Orthographic mapping (Dr. Linnea Ehri)“Sight words” aren’t memorized as pictures, they’re built by bonding sounds to spellings through connected reading powered by proficient sound skill. Our mastery gating, spaced review, and daily decodable reading are the practice architecture that supports that mapping.
UFLI Foundations scope & sequenceWe follow the University of Florida Literacy Institute’s explicit, systematic sequence, a university-developed program with published efficacy research.
How practice is engineered (the science of learning)Four practice architectures run under every session: retrieval (warm-ups make your child pull sounds and words from memory, no hints first), spacing (mastered material returns on a widening schedule instead of disappearing), cumulative review (tonight’s new pattern is practiced alongside old ones in word chains and rereads), and interleaving (a couple of “old friends” from earlier levels appear on ordinary nights so nothing goes cold). These are the same four practices professional evaluation tools now check programs for by name.
The researchers whose work this stands on
We build on their published science. (We don’t claim they endorse us, we claim we did our homework.)
- Drs. Sally & Bennett Shaywitz (Yale)Dyslexia is a specific difference, not a deficit, a “sea of strengths.” We teach to the gap without shaming the child.
- Dr. Louisa MoatsA lead author of the IDA standards and “speech-to-print” instruction, the structure of our scope.
- Dr. Linnea EhriOrthographic mapping, the science under our spaced review.
- Dr. David KilpatrickEfficient word-learning depends on phonemic proficiency, why we build sound skills to mastery.
- Drs. Maryanne Wolf & Mark SeidenbergFluency and automaticity are their own pillar; reading must be taught explicitly.
- Castles, Rastle & Nation, Ending the Reading Wars (2018)The definitive modern synthesis: systematic phonics first, then fluency and meaning. Our sequence follows that arc.
One straight answer, about the earliest readers
For a child at the very earliest steps (roughly steps 1.1 through 1.7), the story worlds run in a warm-up mode: the parent still reads the full episode aloud, and the child reads short decodable warm-up lines that match the beat and their own skill exactly, rather than the story's authored line word for word. The moment their skills reach mid-Level-1 (about step 1.8 to 2.5, depending on the beat), the child begins reading the story's own words directly, and by step 2.5 the whole ladder of story lines is open. This is on purpose. We would rather a child read a warm-up sentence they can actually decode than trip over a story sentence with a vowel team they have not been taught yet. The story never disappears; the child's voice grows into it.
How we measure, in the language your school speaks
Our Starting Check looks at letter-sounds, blending, and real and nonsense (“robot”) words, plus a short parent profile, the same skills the validated screeners measure. Each week we run a one-minute check, letter sounds, nonsense words or word reading in the early levels and a timed passage from Level 5, and chart your child’s own growth over time, accuracy first, with the national reading fluency benchmarks, accurate words read per minute (Hasbrouck & Tindal) shown for context from Level 5 rather than as a formal grade score. One limit we state out loud: those national ranges only fully apply to an unseen passage at true grade level, so on our program-level passages the number to trust is your child’s own trend, and a formal grade-level fluency score should come from the school’s free benchmark screener. Right at the end of the Starting Check you can print or save a plain-language one-page summary to share with a teacher, tutor, IEP team, pediatrician, or evaluator, no account required.
The domains a Structured Literacy program should cover
The IDA Knowledge & Practice Standards expect teaching and progress-monitoring across these domains. Here’s how A New Page covers each, and, honestly, where we’re still deepening.
Phonological processing
A blend-and-segment sound-play warm-up in every single lesson.
Decoding, real words
Explicit phonics, word-building, and decodable story reading at your child’s exact step.
Nonsense-word reading
“Robot words” in the Starting Check and mastery checks, pure sounding-out, nothing memorized.
Spelling (encoding)
Guided dictation every session: say it, tap the sounds, write it, check it.
Fluency
Repeated reading for smoothness, plus a short weekly check roughly every fifth session (about weekly at the four-night dose), a timed passage from Level 5 and letter, nonsense-word or word-reading measures before that, tracked over time, with national ranges shown for context from Level 5.
Comprehension
A comprehension question after each read, and a “tell someone” retell, a domain we’re actively deepening.
Oral language & vocabulary
Word meaning lives inside the chosen-world stories and the parent-child reading, also expanding.
What we’ll always be straight with you about
A New Page is an evidence-aligned teaching and progress-monitoring program, not a clinical diagnosis. A dyslexia diagnosis takes a full evaluation by a qualified professional, and if that’s the right next step for your child, we’ll tell you and help you find one.
For a child who is struggling severely, we’re the daily engine that works alongside a specialist, not a replacement for one. And no single program works for every child; we’ll always be honest about that.