Neena’s Top Reading Research Picks for December 2025

Neena Saha, Ph.D., Research Consultant, Literacy Expert, Research Advisor. Author of the Reading Research Recap

7 minute read • Dec 4, 2025

Lexile and Reading

Welcome to the Reading Research Recap!

Some updates re: The Recap

Hi all, this will be my last month producing the Reading Research Recap.

I started this blog on Substack over five years ago to spread awareness of reading research to the field. At the time, I was told repeatedly that teachers didn’t want to read research studies.

But I had a hunch that may not be right.

Perhaps it wasn’t that teachers didn’t want to engage with research; maybe they simply didn’t know where to turn. After all, no one had ever tried providing weekly, relevant, concise summaries that connected directly to classroom practice.

I thought it was a hypothesis worth testing, and the Reading Research Recap was born! I was shocked when hundreds of people signed up just hours after a single post on Facebook, and even more shocked as thousands more people signed up over the next two years simply via word of mouth.

Fast forward to today, where I am consistently amazed by the high email open rates, indicating that educators truly are hungry for accessible, research-based insights. It turns out that when research is presented in a clear, practical way, teachers do want to engage with it.

Huge Thank You to MetaMetrics and All of You!

Thanks to the incredibly talented marketing team at MetaMetrics, the blog grew to reach tens of thousands of teachers, parents, literacy coaches, and administrators across a variety of social media platforms. I’m especially grateful to the team at MetaMetrics for encouraging me to experiment with different formats, tirelessly spreading the word, and always promoting growth and innovation in how we share research with educators.

This journey has been incredibly rewarding, and I’m grateful to everyone who read, shared, and applied these ideas in their classrooms and communities. While this chapter is closing for me, I’m confident that the conversation around evidence-based literacy practices will continue to grow as MetaMetrics evolves The Recap next year.

Thank you for being part of this community and for your dedication to students and reading education.

What’s Next for Me

I’ll still be involved in the reading/literacy space here and there, but I’ll also be making a lot more time for creative projects that I’ve always wanted to attempt/complete.

And, speaking of creative projects, I did want to shamelessly plug my new children’s book, The Secrets of Starlight: How Meghnad Saha solved the mysteries of the stars. (25% of proceeds will be donated to The Planetary Society, helping children everywhere discover the wonders of space that inspired Meghnad Saha).

And, of course, I got a Lexile score for it—It is 760L!

Help Shape the Future of The Recap

The Reading Research Recap is evolving, and we’re excited to shape its future with your input. Share your ideas in this short survey so we can build a Recap that continues to grow with this community.

Ok, on to the research for this month!

Deep Dive: A New Way to Analyze Oral Reading Errors

There were two really cool studies on decoding strategies/errors that were published recently.

A new decoding strategy measure: Theoretical Foundation and Validation of the Record of Decision-Making (RODM) – open access!
A new type of running record which measures children’s word reading and fluency: The Word Recognition Record (WR2): An Oral Reading Error Analysis Framework for Use with One-Minute Fluency Probes

I would have covered both in-depth, but unfortunately, this first one came out after I had already recorded. So, I will leave the first paper linked above for you to read if you want (it is open access), and I’ll cover the second paper below (which is not open access)!

Background

We know that Running Records, IRIs, and MSV error analysis don’t work. But teachers also know that listening to students read out loud is incredibly valuable. What if there were a more research-based way of analyzing children’s word-reading errors?

Rationale

This study piloted the Word Recognition Record—a new way of analyzing children’s word-reading errors—to determine if it was reliable.

I loved that the Word Recognition Record could be used with existing fluency probes like DIBELS, Acadience, etc. Teachers are (hopefully) already conducting universal screening via these probes/passages. Perhaps instead of using another follow-up test or decoding inventory/phonics survey, they could get a sense of children’s phonics skills and fluency via the Word Recognition Record.

Methods

The researchers conducted a Generalizability and Dependability study to assess the reliability of teachers using the Word Recognition Record and protocol.

Sample

Ten teachers each listened to 10 different oral recordings of students. The students’ reading ability was varied.

Results

The results were promising. Teachers were able to reliably code errors using the Word Recognition Record.

The only area of poor/low reliability was for fluency expression ratings. The authors suggest that more training in this area and an additional rater could help make this area more reliable.

“The findings demonstrate that training in the use of the WR2 resulted in increased accuracy, reliability, and teacher confidence in their abilities to record, analyze, and categorize oral reading errors using the WR2 reading word recognition categories of phonics, high frequency words, and fluency (expression).”

Take-home message

This is a preliminary study, and more reliability research needs to be conducted (especially on different, commonly used classroom passages). That said, if you are looking for a reliable alternative to running records and/or informal reading inventories, I suggest you check out the Word Recognition Record.

“Finally, the WR2, used in conjunction with one-minute fluency probes, returns the long-standing practice of analyzing oral reading errors to its well-deserved historic place in the classroom, clinic, school, and laboratory assessment arsenal.”