Reading. It's been a big topic over the years in
education, and for a very long time. People have argued about what's the best way to teach kids how
to read. We all know the importance of reading, though. One of the primary purposes of education
is to teach students how to read so that they can learn on their own later on. They can read about
anything that they're interested in. Similarly, writing is another big topic that we teach to
students. So how do we teach reading so that we guarante
e that the highest number of students
are successful as they learn how to read? Well, over the past few years, there's been more and
more discussion about the science of reading. What that is, what that means, and how we can
integrate it into classroom instruction to ensure that every student learns how to read
efficiently and effectively. Let's start by talking about what the science of reading is
and what it is not. First off, the science of reading is a research base. It's based off of
decades of research that show how people learn how to read. Reading is the most studied aspect
of human behavior. We have lots and lots and lots of research that shows the most efficient and
effective ways to teach someone how to read. The science of reading points to five essential
components that must be integrated into reading instruction. The first is phonological
awareness, then phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. We're going to
break down each of those topics in future vid
eos, but let's dig in a little bit more into this
concept of reading instruction. We'll begin by looking at a model that was developed by
Hollis Scarborough called Scarborough's Rope. Scarborough's rope shows two big elements that
are essential to teach people how to read. Within those big elements there are specific strands.
We'll start at the bottom. The bottom relates to word recognition. The idea here is that we begin
with teaching students phonological awareness, getting students to be
able to hear that
words are made up of sounds. From there, we focus on decoding skills, where students
have the ability to break down words either into individual sounds or into chunks, to be able
to read or decode what a word says. We also teach students high frequency words that are irregular
in nature. Words whose sound spelling patterns don't match the rules. Some of those words are
very simple, like the and some are more complex, like foreign. Those words don't follow the sound
spell
ing pattern and rules. So we have to teach students those words specifically and explicitly.
So that they can recognize them when they're reading. The idea with word recognition is that
we want students to build automaticity. We want them to be able to see a word and automatically
recognize it, not have to spend their cognitive energy breaking down what that word is, whether
they do that sound by a sound or by chunks. We want them to see a word and know
it. Then, their cognitive energy can
go towards understanding what that word is,
how it fits in within the particular piece of text.The top part of Scarborough's reading
rope relates to language comprehension. This is a separate but just as important strand.
Here, we're talking about the background knowledge that students have and need in order
to understand what's written. The vocabulary that's embedded within the text that students
need to understand in order to comprehend. The language structures that are presented, how
co
mplex the text is. Verbal reasoning skills, like metacognition. And literacy knowledge
like genres, for example. We want students to be increasingly strategic with this knowledge as
they move towards comprehension. It's important to say here that comprehension is always the goal
of reading instruction. We want students to be able to learn to read effectively and efficiently
so that they can read anything they're interested in and get to the critical thinking to getting
to why is this import
ant? How is this help me, do I care about this? Is this important to me?
How does this fit in within my family, my community, my school, my county, my state,
my country, the world? Why is this important? That's always the goal of reading. Instruction
is comprehension, understanding what's there, and engaging in critical thinking about what
students are reading. That's where we want their cognitive energy to go to. And so, we utilize
specific strategies to help students get there. Now, it's h
elpful here to also mention the simple
view of reading, which is a mathematical formula. It's decoding multiplied by language comprehension
equals reading comprehension. It's important that it's a multiplication problem, not addition.
Here's why. If you have no decoding skills, you cannot break down the words, but you
understand all of those words. Maybe if they're told to you you're not reading.
That's not reading comprehension. It's zero multiplied by one equals zero. Similarly, if you
c
an decode all of the words, you can read them, but you don't know what any of them means. You
have one for decoding multiplied by zero. for language comprehension equals zero. If you
have some decoding skills, point five and you have some language comprehension
skills .5 .5 times 0.5 equals 0.25, you're still not getting to reading comprehension.
You need both elements strongly in place, word recognition and language comprehension and
skills in order to get to true skilled reading comprehen
sion. It's likely that we have all
experienced students in both of these camps. A student who cannot decode very well and really
struggles with just reading the words on the page. They cannot comprehend the text well. On the
other hand, we have students who can decode very well. They can read any word in the text, they
can read the text with some level of fluency, but can't understand anything that they've
read. It means that they're missing some critical components that we need to teach so
that
students can be effective and efficient readers. I also want to mention what the science of
reading is not. It's not a specific curriculum. It's not only teaching phonics. It's not
only one of these specific components: phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. It's all
of them. It's all of them being taught explicitly and intentionally to help students
learn how to comprehend what they've read. In this series of videos, we're going to explore each of tho
se five
big components of reading instruction. It's important to note that here we're going to
show you how to integrate these concepts into your instruction through Be GLAD. It doesn't mean
it's a replacement for the literacy instruction that you're doing at some point during the day,
but rather how you are reinforcing these skills through the instruction that you're using with
Be GLAD strategies. That might be during language arts, that might be during science or social
studies or mathem
atics or any other content area. How do we reinforce the skills, teach those
skills, provide additional practice for these skills so that students are learning content
and language as they're learning how to read.
Comments
Love this! ❤