Rethinking Reading

This week's article summary is Rethinking Reading.

As you’ll see, more and more elementary schools are implementing Science of Reading curricula, e.g., Fundations, with their specific focus on strengthening word reading.

As we all know intuitively and through experience, strengthening student reading comprehension goes far beyond the ability to break down and read individual words. Quoting the article, ‘reading comprehension is one of the most complex activities, and our ability to do so is dependent upon a wide range of knowledge and skills.’

A recent research study from an earlier summary notes that ‘phonics is just one crucial piece of the reading puzzle—which must eventually be applied to authentic reading materials, such as books and short stories, as a regular part of the reading diet that involves more advanced skills like comprehension, prediction, vocabulary, and sustained attention.’

The five components of reading (phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension) can erroneously be considered and taught as independent skills rather than in an integrated fashion befitting the complexity and gamut of reading comprehension. 

I am thankful that under the guidance of Marsha Harris we have made available this school year more content-rich reading materials to support student development of content-specific vocabulary and knowledge, as word reading is but one aspect of being a strong reader.

Joe

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How can this be?” This was the response of principal Jane Avery when she saw her school’s most recent third-grade reading scores. Three years ago, she worked with her primary grade teachers to adopt and implement a new reading curriculum based on the “science of reading” with systematic and explicit instruction in phonics. Ms. Avery expected that the curriculum would lead to greatly improved scores on the state reading exam. She was shocked to see only a small improvement.

Ms. Avery is not alone in her expectations. Many others have seen the recent emphasis on the science of reading as the answer to America’s “reading crisis.”

Researchers have made significant progress in our understanding of how children learn to read, and this work is having an impact on classroom instruction. Much of the emphasis has been on developing word reading accuracy and fluency through explicit instruction in phonics. Word reading is critical to reading achievement, but reading involves much more than recognizing the words on the page. Students must also comprehend what they read. 

Research within the science of reading has investigated what is involved in comprehension and how children learn to understand what they read. Some of the findings from this research have been incorporated into educational practice, but not all that is known from research has been implemented in the classroom. 

Many educators view comprehension as a component of reading and one of the pillars of reading instruction. This view is an outgrowth of the report from the National Reading Panel (NRP) that separates reading into alphabetics, fluency, and comprehension. In the report, alphabetics was further divided into phonological awareness and phonics, and comprehension was divided into vocabulary and text comprehension. Over time, these components, along with fluency, became known as the big five or the five pillars of reading instruction. 

Today, much of reading instruction in the United States is guided by this component model of reading.

One limitation is that it can give the impression that the five components are independent and can be taught individually. In practice, the components are generally best taught together in an integrated fashion. That is, phonological awareness is best taught in the context of phonics, and vocabulary in the context of comprehending a text.

A more significant limitation is that including comprehension (and vocabulary) along with other components gives the impression that comprehension is skill based and similar in complexity and malleability to the other components. The model also implies that like phonics, comprehension can be explicitly taught, and once acquired, can be applied to all texts. 

In recent years there have been significant advancements in the science of how to teach and assess comprehension that are beginning to impact educational practices. At the forefront is the movement toward providing integrated comprehension and knowledge instruction within content-rich literacy curricula.

The focus on knowledge is important because of the critical role it plays in comprehension. Knowledge lays the foundation for building our understanding of text and provides an anchor for holding new information in memory. But despite the importance of knowledge, it has typically been neglected in comprehension instruction, which has focused primarily on teaching domain-general reading strategies and general vocabulary. 

Researchers who have recognized the importance of knowledge have begun to examine the effectiveness of content-rich literacy instruction in the classroom. Systematic reviews of this research show that content-rich literacy programs successfully increase vocabulary and content knowledge, as well as performance on standardized tests of reading comprehension.