A variety of different models have been created in the last couple of decades on what processes work together when learning to read.
The Simple View of Reading (Gough and Tunmer 1986)
The Reading Rope (Scarborough 2001)
The Active View of Reading (Duke and Cartwright 2021)
Let’s take a look at each to see how they are similar and in what ways they may be different.
MODELS OF READING
The Simple View of Reading SVR is a scientific theory that asserts the belief that reading comprehension is the PRODUCT of Decoding and Language Comprehension.
The SVR was first presented in a 1986 article by cognitive scientists Philip Gough and William Tunmer to address the ongoing debate between decoding (phonics) and whole-language (which was growing in popularity at the time).
Whole-Language theorists (Goodman and Smith) believed that decoding was not essential to reading comprehension and was just one of many skills developed naturally through the process of learning to read.
“Mastery of phonics does not make a good reader; good reading enables phonics mastery.”
– Goodman (1967)
Gough and Tunmer believed that in order to comprehend text a reader needs to have word recognition (through decoding strategies) and language comprehension. If one of these skills is not adequately developed, reading comprehension will be affected.
DECODING – Reading known and unknown words with accuracy and automaticity. This begins with the direct instruction of letter/sound relationships. Students then sound out words, which become familiar and can be read automatically. Having fluency and automaticity of letters and sounds allows readers to decode, quickly and accurately, both known and unknown words.
LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION – The understanding of spoken words and their meaning. Before children learn to read, they take the words they hear through conversation and parents reading to them and store them. They enter school with a bank full of vocabulary and knowledge about the world. When the child begins to read, they can connect the words they read on the page to all the things they know.
READING COMPREHENSION – The understanding of written words and their meaning. When children read printed words and connect them to their bank of vocabulary words and background knowledge, reading comprehension begins.
LEARNING TO READ IS HARD
Learning to read is a very complex process. There are multiple skills, working together at once, that make proficient reading happen.
Dr. Hollis Scarborough, a psychologist and scientist, specializes in early language development and its connection to later literacy. In the 1990’s, during lectures to teachers and parents, she would describe the elements of learning to read as strands of a rope that are twisted or braided together into a stronger form. In 2001, a visualization was created to help with the understanding of how the elements of reading are interconnected as a metaphor for the complex process involved in reading.
A NEW WAY OF THINKING ABOUT THE READING PROCESS
In the 2021 article, “The Science of Reading Progresses: Communicating Advances Beyond the Simple View of Reading,” researchers Nell Duke and Kelly B. Cartwright discuss advancements in the field of reading research. They describe a new way of thinking about the reading process that they call “The Active View of Reading,” which includes ways that the Simple View of Reading should be expanded upon.
AVR – Active View of Reading
SVR – Simple View of Reading
While both the AVR and the SVR base the process of learning to read on word recognition and language comprehension, the AVR shows these two processes as overlapping. Many of the skills needed for one are also used for the other.
In the language comprehension process, the AVR takes into account the large variance in each readers’ knowledge base and cultural experiences; these affect their understanding. Knowledge extends beyond simply knowing the meaning of individual words; it also includes understanding bigger concepts and experiences. Some reading difficulties can be context-dependent, meaning that when a certain knowledge base is needed that the reader does not have, the reader will struggle to comprehend that text, even if the reader does not have difficulty comprehending other texts at similar reading levels.
A reading skill that appears in the overlap between decoding and language comprehension is fluency. An important element of fluency is prosody. Reading with expression and phrasing allows for making meaning and shows that the reader understands the text.
The Active View of Reading recognizes that skilled readers do things like check themselves for understanding, choose strategies to draw upon, and maintain focus and motivation. Skilled readers also draw on more complex cognitive processes not accounted for in the SVR, such as working memory or the ability to maintain an understanding of the whole of a text while decoding at the same time.
In summary, the Active View of Reading takes all of these new findings into account, including potential causes of reading difficulty within and beyond decoding and comprehension, the overlap between decoding and comprehension, and the importance of self-regulation and strategy use.
5 COMPONENTS OF QUALITY LITERACY INSTRUCTION
Learning how to read, write, and communicate is the foundation for all other learning. Knowing how to read and communicate effectively through writing is the determining factor for later success in school and in life. Other learning cannot take place without the ability to read and write.
According to the National Reading Panel 2000, mentioned earlier in this chapter, there are five essential components to literacy instruction:
PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS
PHONICS
FLUENCY
VOCABULARY
COMPREHENSION
PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS
Phonological awareness is the ability to identify, manipulate, and distinguish individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. It involves understanding that words are made up of separate sounds and being able to hear, blend, segment, and manipulate those sounds.
PHONICS
Phonics refers to the relationship between letters and sounds in language. It involves understanding how letters represent sounds and using that knowledge to decode written words during reading and encode words during writing. Many people have the misconception that the science of reading is solely based on phonics, but phonics is just one piece of a very large and complex puzzle.
FLUENCY
Fluency refers to the ability to read text accurately, quickly, and with proper expression. It involves automaticity in word recognition, comprehension, and prosody. fluency serves as a bridge between being able to read or decode words and being able to comprehend what is being read.
VOCABULARY
Vocabulary refers to the words students must know to communicate effectively through reading and writing. It includes understanding the meaning of words, as well as how words are used in different contexts.
COMPREHENSION
Reading comprehension is the ability to understand and make meaning from what has been read. It involves using background knowledge, decoding skills, vocabulary, and critical thinking strategies to construct meaning from text. Reading comprehension itself is the application of multiple skill components and can be seen as the main goal of reading.
*From Arizona Department of Education
STRUCTURED LITERACY: Teaching Kids How to Read
In addition to making sure that reading instruction is centered around the essential five components, the research on reading instruction indicates that it is most effective when teaching is:
Explicit
Systematic
Cumulative
Responsive to Students Needs
EXPLICIT – Explicit instruction is when the teacher gives direct and clear explanations for each new concept. Instruction intentionally covers all concepts and its rules with continuous student-teacher interactions. Students do not naturally know these concepts on their own or simply learn from exposure to materials.
SYSTEMATIC – Instruction follows a well-defined scope and sequence, which provides a logical progression of skills that move from simple to more complex. Instructional materials are organized so that the most basic concepts are taught first then progresses methodically to more difficult concepts with a logical scope and sequence.
CUMULATIVE – New concepts are layered on previously learned concepts. Lower-level skills must be mastered prior to acquiring higher-level skills.
DIAGNOSTIC/RESPONSIVE – Formative assessment is used to determine if students are learning. Progress monitoring allows for the teacher to make decisions on differentiation. Assessing students’ learning strengths or gaps in learning allow for the personalization of instruction. By continuously measuring students’ progress to adjust instruction to meet their needs, we can ensure that all students are getting what they need for reading success.
During systematic and explicit instruction, an emphasis on listening, speaking, reading, writing and the structure of language is critical.
The six components of structure literacy are:
PHONOLOGY
ALPHABETIC PRINCIPLE
SYLLABLES
MORPHOLOGY
SYNTAX
SEMANTICS
PHONOLOGY – the study of spoken words. Every spoken word is a sequence of individual sounds (phonemes). These phonemes (sounds) are represented by letters of the alphabet (graphemes). Sentences can be broken down into individual words. Words can be broken into individual sounds, rhyming words, and count syllables. Then students should be able to identify vowel sounds in each syllable and manipulate sounds in words, onsets and rhymes.
ALPHABETIC PRINCIPLE – how letters and speech sound correspond. Connect sounds and symbols by identifying the symbol that makes the sound and by reading each sound aloud. Write the symbols while hearing the sounds, since writing supports reading. It also helps to do word building using letter tiles and word sorts by rhyme or word families, as well as using decodable readers/controlled texts in the classroom.
SYLLABLES – larger units of spoken language than phonemes and easier for beginning readers to hear. Syllabication is the ability to identify and divide syllables in written words, which allows students to read multisyllabic words. There are six different syllable types, so teaching various vowel patterns is important for students to understand division rules.
MORPHOLOGY – the meaning structure of words. Morphology is understanding the meaning of word bases and affixes and how they combine to make words. Students break down words into suffixes, prefixes, and base/roots to find meaning, combine word parts to create words or manipulate word parts, then conduct word analysis for reading and finding meaning in complex words.
SYNTAX – how words are ordered in sentences or clauses to communicate meaning. This includes parts of speech, conventions of language, and the structure of different sentence types. Read aloud a sentence to see if the sentence is grammatically correct, combine two short sentences to form a longer sentence, or use sentence trees to break down and identify components of a sentence.
SEMANTICS – the meanings of single words, phrases, sentences (literal and implied meaning). Expand student background knowledge, define academic vocabulary words and use them in sample sentences. Relate words or concepts to students’ own experiences, as well as generate and answer questions based on the text.
PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER
The Simple View of Reading, the Active View of Reading, the Reading Rope, the 5 components of literacy instruction and structured literacy will all be discussed in the remainder of this chapter.
Each component of literacy will be presented with the essentials for effective instruction and what that looks like at each grade level K-5.
SO LET’S GET READING!
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