What Science Of Reading Strategy Posters Actually Are
They are visual reference tools printed on 8.5 by 11 or 11 by 17 paper, laminated, and hung at student eye level to support explicit literacy instruction. They are not teaching tools on their own. A poster that says "stop and check" does nothing unless a teacher has already modeled what stopping and checking looks like during a read-aloud. I have seen entire classrooms where the posters were beautiful, color-coded, perfectly laminated, and completely ignored because nobody had ever tied them to active practice. The free options live mainly on Pinterest, Teachers Pay Teachers (the free filter), and individual reading specialist blogs. The paid versions from sellers like The Literacy Lab, ReadWriteThink affiliates, and Orton-Gillingham training sites tend to have better typography and more precise alignment with systematic phonics scope and sequence. If you are on a budget, I print the free versions myself and spend about twenty minutes per set redoing fonts so everything uses a true sans-serif like Arial or Verdana at a minimum. Comic Sans ruins decodable text for kids who are already struggling with letter recognition. I keep a running folder on Google Drive labeled SoR Posters v1, v2, v3, because every time I print a new batch I adjust the wording based on what my students actually needed in the room that year.
How to Use Them in a Classroom Without Wasting Money
Print one set on cardstock, laminate it, cut it, and place it where students can see it while they are working independently at their desks or at a small-group table. That is the only time they work. Hanging a poster above the reading rug does not help a second grader who is sounding out "ship" because he cannot see it from the carpet. I learned this after spending two hundred dollars on a full wall set that nobody referenced for three months straight. Each strategy poster should correspond to a specific skill you are teaching that week. If you are doing CVC words, the poster should show chunking: touch each sound, blend them together, say the word. If you are doing multisyllabic words, the poster should show division between syllables with a line and the instruction to read each chunk separately. Keep the number of posters visible at one time to four or five. More than that and students start tuning them out. I use a rotating system where I change the visible set every two weeks based on what the lesson is covering. The most common mistake I see is putting comprehension strategy posters next to phonics strategy posters and expecting kids to know which one to use. They do not. Third graders will look at a "visualize" poster when they should be looking at a "divide the word" poster because the poster is there and the skill is automatic. Keep the sets separate. Phonics posters go near the guided reading table. Comprehension posters go near the independent reading corner.
Edge Case: What Happens When Kids Already Know the Strategies
I had a class last year where half the kids were readers and the other half were two years below grade level. The posters helped the struggling readers but the fluent readers started treating them as decoration. I solved this by having the advanced readers create their own strategy posters for a different skill, like annotating text or tracking main idea versus detail. They made them themselves, hung them up, and then had to explain each one to a partner during reading workshop. It took thirty minutes to produce but those posters stayed up all year because ownership matters more than anything else. There is also the problem of ESL students who can read the English words on the poster but do not understand the instruction. I add a single icon next to each key phrase. A magnifying glass next to "zoom in on the sounds." An arrow pointing left next to "chunk from left to right." A lightbulb next to "make a prediction." It takes extra time to design but it cuts down on questions by about forty percent during independent reading.
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Technical Details That Matter More Than You Think
Font choice is not optional. Use a true open-type font like OpenDyslexic only if your district has adopted it specifically. Otherwise, Arial or Verdana at fifteen to eighteen point is the standard. Never use anything smaller than fourteen point for a classroom poster. I have seen teachers download posters where the font was eleven point because the original designer made them for a booklet. Those are unreadable from six feet away and you will spend more time telling kids to move closer than they will spend actually using the strategy. Lamination method matters. A cheap heat laminator will bubble the edges within a month if you are printing on standard copy paper. Print on cardstock, use a thermal laminator that runs at medium heat, and trim with about a quarter inch of border around the edge. It adds five minutes per poster but the posters will last two or three years instead of six months.
Download Resources for Science Of Reading Strategy Posters
If you want something ready to go, the Reading Rockets website has a free set of phonics strategy cards. The American Academy of Pediatrics publishes a simplified version of decoding strategy posters that are useful for younger grades. For a more complete set, the Orton-Gillingham affiliated training materials from the International Dyslexia Association site include printable strategy posters that align closely with structured literacy principles. My personal recommendation is to combine two sources. Take the phonics chunking poster from the IDA materials and the comprehension monitoring poster from Reading Rockets. Redo both in your own layout software so the fonts match. Then add your own icons or drawings for the ESL accommodation. The total time investment is about forty-five minutes and you end up with a set that actually fits your classroom rather than a generic one that looks nice online.
When These Posters Do Not Help at All
They do not help if the student has not been explicitly taught the strategy before the poster is displayed. A poster is a reminder, not a lesson. I have watched teachers put up a "ask five before you ask me" poster and then act surprised when kids still raised their hands immediately. The poster had nothing to do with it because the behavior was never practiced. The same goes for any comprehension strategy. Posters support routines that already exist. They do not create routines. They also do not help when the classroom environment is noisy or chaotic. Posters require visual attention. If a room is full of movement and disruption, the posters become background noise in the literal sense. I had a situation where a teacher moved a poster set from a calm resource room into a general education classroom with twenty-five kindergarteners and no paraprofessional. The posters sat unused for six weeks. The environment needed to change first, not the posters. If your school is short on time for independent poster creation and you need something fast, the free TPT resources are fine for a single year. If you want something that will survive multiple years and multiple class setups, buy a paid set, adjust the fonts to something readable, and redo the layout yourself. The difference between a poster that works and one that does not is almost always about readability and relevance, not about how colorful it is.
