From Whole Language to the Science of Hebrew Reading: Takeaways from the Transition to a New Kriah Program
February 20, 2026
Kriah That Lasts
February 20, 2026
Mrs. Chani Karp
Today, yeshivas and Hebrew schools across the globe face a difficult kriah situation. We see students who aced kriah in kindergarten and early elementary grades who then regress, sometimes barely able to read at all by the time they get to Gemara. Kriah is not simply building a skill; kriah is building spiritual sustenance. When a student sitting in a yeshiva or Hebrew day school can’t read Hebrew, despite having sat through kriah lessons, they feel lost. Their confidence plummets. They often won’t participate in תפילה, begin to feel disconnected from their studies, and even disconnected from their heritage. Very often, these students struggle alone, in silence, because dealing with relearning to read is humiliating. This places a huge responsibility on schools and teachers to teach kriah with best practice to build real skill and knowledge of kriah, so that it imparts permanence.
Shlomo Hamelech pre-solved this problem millennia ago in משלי where he wrote “חֲנֹךְ לַנַּעַר עַל פִּי דַרְכּוֹ; גַּם כִּי יַזְקִין, לֹא יָסוּר מִמֶּנָּה”, Train the youth according to his way, even when he grows old, he will not stray from it.To understand what this means practically, we need to take a look at the definition of the word “training”. Professor Raymond A Noe, known for his research on training effectiveness, writes,
“Training is defined as a planned learning experience designed to bring about permanent changes in an individual’s knowledge, attitudes, or skills.”
There is nothing new or novel about this 21st-century definition. Shlomo Hamelech told us this many millennia ago. Training is about permanence – לֹא יָסוּר מִמֶּנָּה. That sounds powerful in theory. How do we actually do that? What is the way to educate so that it creates permanent change, and how can we apply this idea to kriah instruction?
Memory vs. Knowledge
Teachers can create permanent change if they shift their focus from memory-based learning to learning that is based on understanding and knowledge.
There is a big difference between memory and knowledge. The dictionary definition of “memory” is “the ability to remember information”, while the definition of “knowledge” is “the understanding of or information about a subject that you acquire.” Information and understanding that you have in your mind is very different than the ability to remember information. Memory is simply the what. Knowledge is the how and why.
When we teach in a way that leads children to remember the information, we are engaging in memory-teaching, and they are engaging in memory-learning. Students who learn this way can’t and don’t connect to the knowledge. When children are using memory for learning, their memory is doing the work. When memory is tired, distracted, or simply not in the mood, it doesn’t perform well. Learning through memory is about retrieval work; it’s not about connection. It’s not about permanence.
Particularly when it comes to reading, memory-learning is not the way to go. Readers who use memory are bypassing the kriah systems in their minds. When they learn to read, they memorize the letters, sounds, and rules, but without engaging the knowledge faculties. They never attain knowledge of reading, which means they don’t know the how and why of the sounds they are trying to read. When they don’t have the system, they must rely on memory. The cycle goes round and round. Students use memory for reading, so they don’t develop knowledge, and then when memory begins to fail them, they don’t have the knowledge, so reading fails; and when reading fails, this can lead to other text-based and “Hebrew” related failures and disconnections.
On the other hand, children who read because they know how rather than remember, לֹא יָסוּר מִמֶּנָּה, their reading doesn’t fall apart. When we teach Kriah to give our children information and understanding that they can own in their mind, this builds connection, and we are following Shlomo Hamelech’s advice to train them in a way they will learn for life.
Learners with good memories will read better for a while, but memory-reading will almost always deteriorate and fall apart rather than improve. That’s why we see early readers in elementary grades with good and even great reading scores who later, in the middle and upper grades, become poor readers. The sad reality is that by that time, students are essentially on their own. Schools typically no longer monitor kriah in upper grades, and students are often too ashamed to admit that they can no longer read.
In my 1:1 kriah work with teenage students, parents will often ask how they missed the fact that their 15-year-old child can’t read. They wonder why the kriah problem is only coming to light now. The answer is that they may not have missed it. These students were reading from memory, and their memories were too full and overloaded by the time they reached Rashi or Gemara learning. There are so many new things for a student to memorize every day that the old kriah memories keep getting pushed to the bottom of the pile and become harder to access. These students often think that they can’t learn these texts when the truth is that they simply can’t read or access them. These students often arecapable of understanding Gemara, but they have disconnected from text-based learning in general because of failing memory-reading. (Another consideration is that children are extremely resourceful when it comes to avoiding shame. They will use various cognitive compensation and practical avoidance strategies to mask their poor kriah skills.)
Some common kriah teaching practices also lead students into memory-learning. Practices that use predominantly visual (flashcards) and audio symbols for teaching are considered memory-learning techniques. Having students repeat after the teacher or a classmate also reinforces memory-learning. (There is a place for this kind of repetition in תפילה and חומש, where the goal is fluency and familiarity with words and phrases, but that is different than the skills required for decoding and building reading of unfamiliar words.)
When we teach reading through reading, it’s one-dimensional and allows memory to creep in. When you read a page of one-syllable קמץ words, students with good memories or musical or rhythmical sense can catch onto the rhythm. That kind of reading feeds memory and allows students to collect hints to do “good” reading. Ah, bah, gah, dah, hah, vah… there’s a rhythm that kids can memorize and master without really knowing and understanding how they got those sounds. When a student repeats what another student or the teacher has read, they don’t even have to be looking at the words at all. A student can repeat each word by heart while looking out the window at the first snow.
In the world of kriah, a good memory is a double-edged sword. Children with stronger memories can do a better job at compensating and masking poor kriah for longer. This means they will only start getting the support they need much later than a child with a weak memory, whose poor reading will come onto the radar earlier.
Here are some examples of the breakdown of memory-reading:
Chaim can read a paragraph relatively well at one session, but only two lines at another. It’s almost as if what he read yesterday was magic in contrast to the poor reading today.
Shira is still confusing certain letters or נקודות. She squints her eyes or looks up into the corner, “thinking”. Sometimes she will even quietly mouth the letters (starting from aleph) to work out which one she is reading, or rote-say the נקודות to help herself while reading. It’s apparent that Shira doesn’t know those letters or נקודות, and she’s trying her best to extract them from memory.
Avi is reading, and he gets to a word that ends in a קמץ, under a “ך”. Surprisingly, he sounds like “lo”, as if the letter were a “ל”. He has memorized the symbol of the letter, the symbol of the נקודה, and the chant of the letter with the נקודה, without knowing how they come together. “Kamatz langer chof” he says as “lo”, thinking that “langer” is part of the name of the letter and associating that letter with the lamed sound. It’s clear that Avi is missing the knowledge of the kriah system.
Inconsistent readers are reading from memory and trying their best to remember through confusion. The kriah system is transparent and consistent. When students are in a place of knowledge of kriah, reading should feel reliable and sound smooth. Students should not be guessing and confusing letters and נקודות or reading inconsistently.
Letters and נקודות aren’t kriah. The way the letters and נקודות work together is kriah. To create a word rather than repeat it from memory, a student would have to know the letters, נקודות, and the system that brings them together. When we have students create their kriah, they will come to know, own, and connect with the system of kriah rather than memorize it.
Kriah through כתיבה
The way to do this is teaching kriah through כתיבה. The key to giving our students knowledge of kriah is getting them to write. Teaching reading through writing benefits both teachers and students. For teachers, teaching reading through writing feeds two birds with one scone because it’s the evaluation built into the teaching. It’s the x-ray happening at the teaching level. When students have to write the letter and נקודה sequences they are up to, teachers can see what they know and don’t know. Is the student using the final/ende/langer letters appropriately? Did the student put a regular nun at the end of a word or put a נקודה under a final mem? Teachers can see if students are confusing direction in their writing. A student’s writing is an assessment of the reading. It provides the teacher with an inside view of the knowledge of systems the student is missing as reading progresses or stalls.
For a student to write his reading, he would have to think in smaller increments and build words as he goes along. Which letter comes next? Which נקודה goes under each letter? Does the letter even have a נקודה? Writing is encoding, the use of the Hebrew code and syllable sound system.
We have to teach away from those memory situations, and the way to do that is to have students write and author their own reading. If Miriam can write בְּמִצְוֹתָיו, she was able to author it because she knows her letters, she knows her נקודות, and she knows the systems of how those sounds come together. She will definitely be able to read it, because she wrote it.
Getting our kids to write their reading means getting them out of memory-reading and into knowledge of the systems of reading. Getting our students to write their reading means having our students use the systems that turn letters and נקודות into kriah. Teaching kriah through כתיבה is how we teach away from memory-kriah. Teaching kriah through כתיבה is how we teach according to Shlomo Hamelech: “חֲנֹךְ לַנַּעַר עַל פִּי דַרְכּוֹ; גַּם כִּי יַזְקִין, לֹא יָסוּר מִמֶּנָּה”.
Mrs. Chani Karp, M.S.Ed., is a special education expert with over 20 years of experience in chinuch. She is the founder of the Confident Kriah Method, a knowledge-based, whole student approach to helping children and adults overcome reading challenges and build fluent, confident Hebrew reading skills. Chani can be reached at chani@chanikarp.com or through her website, confidentkriah.com.