The Simple Art of Reading

Since 1986, the Simple View of Reading has been widely accepted as the view that reading has two basic components: word recognition and language comprehension, hence the focus on phonics instruction. However, learning to read involves the mastery and integration of several complex processes. First, a child must have a phonological awareness, which is the ability to know and employ different sounds separate from their meaning, in order to sound out the basic phonemes and graphemes to build a word (Branum et al, 2015). To recall these phonemes a child must employ their lexicon, which is like their storage space. In addition, working memory, ‘assumed to be a temporary storage system under attentional control that underpins our capacity for complex thought’ (Baddeley, 2007, p.1), is utilised to recall information. As well as phonological awareness, reading also involves vocabulary building, recall, comprehension or understanding of the words and semantics, which is the relationship between words, phrases and whole paragraphs and also individual word decoding (Cain, 2011). So, reading - a complex cognitive process which involves the decoding of symbols and taking meaning from it - not so simple after all, eh? 

It's a huge body of research into how we learn to read. I'm a waffler and would need 10,000 words to do it justice, so instead have a read of this amazing blog post by Clara Maria Fiorentini, who explains it concisely. 

There are 5 essential literacy skills which underpin the Science of Reading: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary and Comprehension. If there is a difficulty in mastering one of these skills, there is a knock on effect on the others. As an early reading teacher, the most common difficulty I come across is children struggling to blend. They can recall all their phonemes but when it comes to blending s-a-t you might get ‘dog’ as the response. Often, children who struggle to blend might not have mastered the skills of phonemic awareness. So how can we help? Do we keep flashing flash cards in the hope they magically begin to blend? While doing so, destroying their confidence and developing an 'I can't' attitude? The answer to all of these is plain and simply no. Sometimes you must take a step back to go two steps forward. 

Catherine Snow and Connie Juel have said that the ‘explicit teaching of alphabetic decoding skills is helpful for all children, harmful for none and crucial for some.’ With this in mind, over the past few years I have incorporated phonemic awareness and letter-sound correspondence activities. I feel these are quick wins to include at transition times, at the beginning of lessons, and at story time at the end of the day, in order to develop children’s phonological awareness and increase progress in reading.

Alliteration is a firm favourite and a great end of the day activity. 

Start off by introducing your friend sssslithery ssssnake. Talk to the children about what is exciting and unusual about these words (both starting with the ‘s’ sound). Ask the children to come up with other words to describe the snake that begin with the same sound. As their confidence develops, move on to other animals like ‘cat’, ‘mouse’, ‘tiger’ and then onto silly alliteration phrases like ‘tip, tap, toe’. As always, there are many story books to aid the teaching of alliteration such as ‘Ten Flashing Fireflies’, ‘Clara Caterpillar’ and ‘Some Smug Slug’. As you are reading it, ask the children to listen out for alliteration, this in turn, will develop their listening skills.

Onset and Rime is the building block for blending.

If the children can hear the rhyming in words they will be able to hear ending sounds more clearly. Rhyme recognition activities are endless. Nursery rhyme of the week develops recitation skills as well as enabling children to hear rhymes frequently, an important skill for ELL learners. In addition to nursery rhymes, rhymes can be built in to play such as row row row your boat for water play. A lovely rhyming activity is ‘I’m thinking of a name/thing and it rhymes with….’, it is like I-Spy, the children sit in a circle and take turns. Cut and sticking activities (Twinkl have differentiated ones) also develop fine motor skills while aiding segmenting and rhyme identification. An old reliable - odd one out, identifying the rhyme. Begin by having words with pictures so the children can identify the rhyme and then make it more difficult by only having pictures. My personal favourite is rhyme bingo. Each child has different images on their paper and the teacher is the bingo master, they must identify if their picture rhymes with the word the teacher has said.

Clapping and counting syllables enables children to segment words for reading and spelling. 

Simple and effective - say the word, clap the syllables. Children can use counters and cubes for a more hands-on approach or build syllable lego towers. 

Active Reading during story time at the end of the day can develop and reinforce the skills taught throughout the day. 

The children can have a focus. You might ask them to put their hands on their head when they hear a rhyming word, when they hear the sound of the day or the high frequency word of the day. You can also ask them to identify phonemic changes in words such as ‘hickory dickory clock’.

So, next time you have a child who can’t blend or segment words, try some of these activities and look further into phonological awareness - you won’t regret it.