Top 12 Reading Specialist Skills to Put on Your Resume
In the competitive field of literacy education, a reading specialist stands out through a nimble, evidence-aware set of skills that elevates instruction and deepens students’ reading lives. What follows zeroes in on twelve skills worth spotlighting on a resume—practical, current, and ready to show how you help readers move from struggle to stride.
Reading Specialist Skills
- Literacy Assessment
- Curriculum Development
- Dyslexia Intervention
- Reading Fluency
- Comprehension Strategies
- Phonics Instruction
- Lexia Core5
- Guided Reading
- Data Analysis
- Wilson Reading System
- Orton-Gillingham
- Reading Recovery
1. Literacy Assessment
Literacy assessment is the careful study of a student’s reading, writing, speaking, and listening—what they can do now, where they’re wobbling, and how instruction should respond. A reading specialist blends formal measures with quick checks and observations to create a clear picture over time.
Why It's Important
Assessment anchors instruction. It clarifies strengths, reveals gaps, and points directly to next steps so support isn’t guesswork—it’s targeted and timely.
How to Improve Literacy Assessment Skills
Strengthen your approach with a toolkit that’s balanced and responsive.
Mix methods: Use diagnostics, screeners, running records, fluency timings, and comprehension tasks—both formal and informal—to see the whole reader.
Leverage technology when it helps: Digital assessments and dashboards can speed feedback, flag trends, and simplify progress monitoring.
Drive instruction with data: Group flexibly, target priority skills, and adjust pacing as growth data shifts.
Invest in professional learning: Stay current on valid measures, reliability, and culturally responsive practices.
Bridge home and school: Share simple, actionable ways families can reinforce goals at home.
Honor language and culture: Choose assessments and texts that respect students’ backgrounds and linguistic profiles.
Done well, assessment becomes a conversation over time—not a one-shot score—guiding instruction that actually moves the needle.
How to Display Literacy Assessment Skills on Your Resume
2. Curriculum Development
Curriculum development means shaping goals, choosing texts, and sequencing instruction so readers build from foundation to finesse. For a reading specialist, it’s the choreography between research-based practice and the messy, joyful reality of classroom learners.
Why It's Important
A coherent, well-sequenced literacy curriculum reduces guesswork, supports equity, and ensures students encounter the right challenges at the right moment—no more, no less.
How to Improve Curriculum Development Skills
Tighten the spine of your curriculum, then keep it flexible at the edges.
Lean on evidence: Center phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension with explicit, cumulative instruction.
Use technology with purpose: Digital libraries, annotation tools, and adaptive practice can widen access and personalize pathways.
Build for inclusion: Select texts, tasks, and routines that reflect diverse cultures, identities, and abilities.
Plan for differentiation: Offer scaffolded entry points, choice, and varied complexity so every student can grow.
Iterate: Review outcomes, gather student work, and refine units—curriculum breathes as your learners change.
How to Display Curriculum Development Skills on Your Resume
3. Dyslexia Intervention
Dyslexia intervention is structured, explicit, and cumulative instruction that targets phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension—delivered with intensity and precision.
Why It's Important
Targeted intervention changes trajectories. It builds efficient word recognition, reduces cognitive load, and opens the door to meaning, confidence, and access across the curriculum.
How to Improve Dyslexia Intervention Skills
Use structured literacy: Systematic, explicit lessons with ample practice, feedback, and cumulative review.
Assess, then tailor: Screen early, monitor frequently, and individualize pacing and scope.
Teach multisensory: Link visual, auditory, and kinesthetic-tactile pathways to reinforce learning.
Keep learning: Pursue certifications, coaching, and study groups focused on dyslexia research and practice.
Add assistive tools: Text-to-speech, speech-to-text, audiobooks, and accessible formats remove barriers while skills build.
Partner with families: Share strategies and routines for home practice that actually fit real life.
Team up: Coordinate with classroom teachers, SLPs, psychologists, and specialists for a coherent plan.
How to Display Dyslexia Intervention Skills on Your Resume
4. Reading Fluency
Fluency blends accuracy, rate, and prosody. When it clicks, decoding runs in the background so comprehension can take center stage.
Why It's Important
Fluent readers free up working memory for meaning. That shift fuels understanding, stamina, and a smoother, more enjoyable reading experience.
How to Improve Reading Fluency Skills
Model it: Read aloud often—pace, phrasing, expression—so students hear what “smooth” sounds like.
Reread with purpose: Short, repeated readings build automaticity and confidence without drudgery.
Use timing wisely: Brief, low-stress timings highlight growth and spotlight words or phrases that need attention.
Teach phrasing: Chunk text into meaningful phrases; mark and practice line breaks together.
Give specific feedback: Name exactly what improved (pace, accuracy on multisyllabic words, expression) and what’s next.
Go chorus or partner: Choral and partner reading lower anxiety while lifting volume of practice.
How to Display Reading Fluency Skills on Your Resume
5. Comprehension Strategies
Comprehension strategies are the mental moves readers make—predicting, questioning, visualizing, inferring, summarizing, and connecting—to construct meaning and remember it later.
Why It's Important
Strategy instruction arms students with flexible tools. Complex texts stop feeling impenetrable; readers learn to wrestle with ideas and win.
How to Improve Comprehension Strategies Skills
Set a purpose: Use titles, headings, and visuals to prime predictions and curiosity.
Make it vivid: Teach students to build mental movies and sensory details that anchor understanding.
Question wide and deep: Before, during, after—literal, inferential, evaluative—model the full range.
Connect the dots: Text-to-self, text-to-text, text-to-world—tie new learning to familiar ground.
Summarize with precision: Distill main ideas, sequence key events, and leave the fluff behind.
Infer with evidence: Marry clues from the text to prior knowledge; show your reasoning out loud.
Monitor and fix: Notice confusion early; reread, annotate, use context, or adjust pace to get unstuck.
How to Display Comprehension Strategies Skills on Your Resume
6. Phonics Instruction
Phonics instruction teaches how graphemes map to phonemes, giving students the code to lift words off the page accurately and efficiently.
Why It's Important
Strong decoding underpins fluency and comprehension. Without secure phonics knowledge, everything else wobbles.
How to Improve Phonics Instruction Skills
Be explicit: Teach the pattern, model, practice, and review. No guesswork, just clarity.
Be systematic: Move from simple to complex in a consistent sequence with cumulative review baked in.
Go multisensory: Say it, hear it, see it, write it—link sounds to letters using multiple pathways.
Differentiation is nonnegotiable: Group by need, vary pacing, and adjust materials to fit readiness.
Integrate phonemic awareness: Blend, segment, delete, substitute sounds—these oral skills supercharge decoding.
Check and respond: Short, frequent assessments guide tomorrow’s lesson and small-group focus.
Apply in context: Read and write words and sentences that match the skill of the day; transfer is the goal.
How to Display Phonics Instruction Skills on Your Resume
7. Lexia Core5
Lexia Core5 Reading is an adaptive, online program for pre-K through grade 5 that personalizes practice across key strands of literacy and feeds instructors targeted data for intervention.
Why It's Important
It individualizes skill work, surfaces precise needs, and frees instructional time for small-group teaching that matters most.
How to Improve Lexia Core5 Skills
Tune the path: Use placement data and performance reports to adjust goals and offline lessons.
Layer supports: Pair digital practice with quick, hands-on routines to lock in skills.
Monitor often: Set checkpoints; respond quickly to stalled progress or fast growth.
Keep training: Attend platform PD, share tips in PLCs, and track which teacher moves lift outcomes.
Collaborate: Align classroom instruction and intervention so students meet the same skills in multiple contexts.
Invite families: Offer simple directions for home use and celebrate milestones to build momentum.
How to Display Lexia Core5 Skills on Your Resume
8. Guided Reading
Guided Reading gathers a small group with similar needs and gives them just-right texts, targeted teaching points, and immediate feedback—right in the reading moment.
Why It's Important
Students practice the very strategies they need, with coaching that’s nimble and specific. Confidence grows alongside skill.
How to Improve Guided Reading Skills
Start with sharp assessment: Use running records, benchmark tools, and observation notes to form groups that actually fit.
Pick the right text: Match complexity to instructional level; consider content knowledge, vocabulary load, and decodability needs.
Prime the pump: Briefly introduce key vocabulary and background; set a purpose that’s crystal clear.
Teach what matters: One or two focused teaching points, then coach while students whisper-read or read softly.
Vary participation: Mix aloud, partner, and silent reading to keep energy steady and practice high.
Circle back: Post-reading talk, quick writes, or word work to reinforce the strategy of the day.
Regroup relentlessly: Update groups as data shifts; fluid movement beats fixed labels.
Keep learning: Study guides, observe peers, and refine routines that lift both accuracy and understanding.
How to Display Guided Reading Skills on Your Resume
9. Data Analysis
Data analysis means turning assessment results—screeners, diagnostics, running records, fluency rates, error patterns—into instructional decisions that actually change student outcomes.
Why It's Important
It focuses time and resources where they matter most, tracks growth, and makes the case for adjustments before weeks slip by.
How to Improve Data Analysis Skills
Build data fluency: Know your measures, cut scores, and what each tool can (and cannot) tell you.
Use practical tools: Spreadsheets, assessment dashboards, and SIS reports help visualize growth and needs at a glance.
Keep learning, keep calibrating: Attend PD, norm scoring with colleagues, and check interrater reliability on key measures.
Collaborate: Meet in PLCs to interpret patterns, design interventions, and schedule progress checks.
Implement, then revisit: Try the plan, monitor impact within weeks, and pivot quickly if growth stalls—evidence first, always.
How to Display Data Analysis Skills on Your Resume
10. Wilson Reading System
The Wilson Reading System is a structured literacy program designed for students with dyslexia or significant decoding and encoding needs. It’s multisensory, explicit, and sequential, with intensive practice that sticks.
Why It's Important
It targets core word-level skills—phonemic awareness, phonics, and spelling—while supporting fluency and comprehension, giving strugglers a clear, cumulative path forward.
How to Improve Wilson Reading System Skills
Personalize and pace: Use mastery checks to decide when to repeat, slow, or accelerate lessons.
Stay current: Pursue ongoing training and coaching; fidelity plus informed tweaks make a difference.
Blend in tech: Use digital whiteboards, recording, and progress tools to extend practice and capture growth.
Share the load: Coordinate with classroom teachers so word study, vocabulary, and reading tasks reinforce one another.
How to Display Wilson Reading System Skills on Your Resume
11. Orton-Gillingham
Orton-Gillingham is an approach—structured, sequential, diagnostic, and multisensory—focused on teaching the logic of the English language for reading and spelling, especially effective for learners with dyslexia.
Why It's Important
Because it’s individualized and cumulative, students get exactly the instruction they need, no fluff, and plenty of practice to mastery.
How to Improve Orton-Gillingham Skills
Deepen expertise: Pursue advanced coursework and mentorship through recognized training providers.
Customize relentlessly: Use continuous diagnostic teaching—today’s lesson flows from yesterday’s performance.
Expand multisensory routines: Sand trays, sound cards, finger tapping, dictation—varied, purposeful practice.
Network and reflect: Join study groups, observe peers, and refine lesson templates based on student outcomes.
Align supports: Pair OG lessons with accessible texts and assistive tools to maintain comprehension while decoding catches up.
How to Display Orton-Gillingham Skills on Your Resume
12. Reading Recovery
Reading Recovery is a short-term, one-to-one intervention for first graders who need intensive support with reading and writing, typically spanning 12–20 weeks.
Why It's Important
Early, individualized instruction can prevent long-term reading difficulties. It restores momentum and self-belief when they matter most.
How to Improve Reading Recovery Skills
Keep learning: Engage in ongoing training and coaching to sharpen observation and lesson design.
Let data lead: Use daily records, running records, and brief fluency and word-reading checks to steer each lesson.
Blend print and tech: Leverage decodable and leveled texts alongside simple digital practice that reinforces goals.
Partner with families: Share compact, doable routines for home reading and word work.
Coordinate schoolwide: Align with classroom teachers and intervention teams so supports stack, not scatter.
How to Display Reading Recovery Skills on Your Resume
