Reading

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The Primary English Encyclopedia: The Heart of the Curriculum, Third Edition

See also books on-line, CD-ROM, cueing systems, genre, Internet, Literacy Time, living books, non-fiction reading and writing, phonics, phonological awareness, reading age, reading aloud, reading choices, reading conference, reading corner/area, reading diaries, reading environment, reading recovery, reading resources, reading schemes, responses to reading

A central aim of schooling is to help children become competent and thoughtful readers and writers. As a child becomes literate important kinds of thinking are developed and success in all parts of the curriculum becomes possible. Later, levels of literacy will affect job opportunities and contribute to competence in all areas of life. Literacy also enriches leisure whether a young learner’s preference is for fiction or non-fiction.

Here we are looking at the reading rather than the writing side of the literacy coin. At its simplest, reading is to do with getting meaning from print. In the twenty-first century there are new kinds of literacy to control and children need strategies to read media texts – CD-ROMs, software and the Internet – as well as print texts – books, newspapers and articles.

There is no definitive theory about how children learn to read nor one practical method of teaching which is generally agreed to be the only, or best, approach. Teachers and student teachers need to understand the reasoning which underpins their own practice so that they can evaluate any proposed changes and assess the results of research. In a particularly lucid and comprehensive book Graham and Kelly describe principles and practice to help those who teach reading and want to be in control of the teaching and learning processes (Graham and Kelly, 2007).

This entry aims to give you a foothold in this vast area, but of course you will need to consult government websites, other books and to follow professional development courses on reading to keep up with the latest developments. Although there are many different theories and philosophies of reading and an array of programmes and resources, there are in essence only three methods of teaching reading.

First, there is the alphabetic method. Here the first step is for children to learn to name aloud the letters of the alphabet. Next they name the individual letters of syllables and simple words and then they learn and memorise the spoken form of written words. This method goes back to medieval times and survived into the seventeenth century. ‘Horn books’ used to teach reading by this method can be seen in museums. These are made of wood on which a layer of paper is placed and protected by a transparent horn film. They look rather like bats for ball games and feature religious texts and the letters of the alphabet. The alphabetic method is rarely used now, but the alphabet books and friezes found in modern primary classrooms reinforce the continuing importance of the alphabet in learning to read.

Second, we have the phonic method which replaced the letter naming approach of the alphabetic method. Here, children are helped to decode words by using sounds. This method came to the fore in the mid-nineteenth century although it existed earlier. In its historic form children learnt carefully graded sequences of sounds and applied this phonemic knowledge to reading simple texts. As the English language is not phonically regular children’s early reading books or primers were limited to a vocabulary of phonically regular words. I remember being taught to read using a story called ‘Tig is a Pig’. While phonically viable the tale was bizarre semantically – you need the magic of a Dr Seuss to make phonically restricted books exciting. In the UK, phonics has been given a new lease of life and current programmes are based on the results of recent research. Further issues here are covered under ‘phonics’ and ‘phonological awareness’. The importance of the grapho-phonic cueing system in learning to read is well established but new approaches to developing phonemic awareness include games and activities rather than drills.

The third method, look and say, emphasises the visual aspect of learning to read. Children start by learning whole words, often from flash cards, before tackling them in a book. Reading books are graded to include an increasing number of key words. Just as phonic readers have a vocabulary carefully limited to sounds learnt so far, reading books based on key words have a controlled vocabulary with much repetition of key words. Aspects of the ‘look and say’ approach continue to inform current good practice. Since English is not phonically regular, some words have to be learnt by their shape, for example ‘yacht’ and ‘salmon’. Children also benefit from having a sight vocabulary of key words to go alongside phonic and other strategies. Further, this method recognises that it is helpful to look at families of words, drawing attention to the change of shape in the stem word when inflexional endings are added.

Combinations of phonic and ‘look and say’ approaches were used during the twentieth century and, in reborn forms, are still used as part of reading programmes today. Those interested in a historical perspective will also want to know about two approaches which, while not actually reading methods, were manifestations of some philosophies and theories of reading dominant from about the late 1960s. These are called the ‘language experience’ approach and the ‘whole language’ approach. Both incorporated aspects of the phonic and ‘look and say’ methods but they were embedded in a different philosophy of learning to read. The ‘language experience’ approach is associated with the provision of large collections of reading materials and resources and the principles and practice are carefully explained in a teacher’s manual called Breakthrough to Literacy (David McKay, 1970). A key principle is that children’s first reading materials are best based on their own oral language so that children’s talk provided an impetus into decoding the written language. Using huge word banks, children and teacher built sentences together using plastic sentence-making stands. Just as phonic primers were limited to phonically regular vocabulary and ‘look and say’ materials to key words, reading books to accompany the Breakthrough materials were based on a particular kind of content – built from the research team’s conversations with children on topics of everyday interest like ‘The Loose Tooth’ and ‘The Lost Dog’. There were some fairy tales and adventure stories as well. Critics felt that while phonic kits were included in the materials, there was no class based, systematic approach to teaching the grapho-phonic cueing system. But its linking of reading and writing and its recognition of the value of talking about reading is enshrined in current good practice.

The ‘whole language’ approach, which is strongly associated with child-centred or progressive approaches to learning in general, was very much in evidence in some UK schools from the 1970s, but a similar approach was popular in the USA as early as the 1940s. All sorts of strategies were employed to help children to use all four language processes – speaking and listening and reading and writing – in their learning. There was emphasis on ‘real books’ rather than commercially produced reading schemes and children’s own writing and book making was encouraged. Like the ‘language experience’ approach this one was criticised for undervaluing phonics. Its insistence on ‘real’ books is no longer such a great issue as the gap between reading scheme books and ‘real’ books has narrowed. The work of many ‘real book’ authors is now found in commercial reading programmes, and books used in learning to read are much more socially aware and linguistically interesting. The welcoming of parents as partners in learning, the benefits of paired reading and the importance of children’s writing are all aspects of the ‘whole language’ approach that inform good current programmes.

So what is expected now of UK teachers helping children learn to read? They have to work within frameworks set out in a number of official documents. The National Curriculum English Orders 2000 link closely with the more detailed reading programme set out in the Primary Framework for literacy and mathematics (2006). Following the Rose Report (2006), teachers were advised to use the synthetic phonic method to teach beginning readers.

This model of reading, which replaces the ‘searchlight’ model of the 1998 Literacy Framework, leads to recommendations that children at the earliest stage of learning to read should be taught synthetic phonics discretely and daily, and in a multisensory way. Schools are asked to choose a phonics programme meeting the following criteria. It should help beginning readers:

Professor Rose’s ‘simple view of reading’ is set in a conceptual framework that recognises two main dimensions of reading – decoding and comprehension. He makes it clear that the first – learning to decode through phonics – is timelimited, while the second – the development of comprehension – progresses throughout life (Rose Report, 2006). While many will welcome the recognition of the role speaking and listening play in literacy learning and agree that phonics has a crucial role in learning to decode, they may feel less sanguine about the marginalisation of the other cue-systems, particularly the semantic and syntactic in the first stage of learning to read.

Reading programmes, including the renewed Framework, 2006 help us to promote progression in children’s reading abilities in several important respects, including progression in phonics and spelling. Reading development is also to do with becoming able to understand a range of different genres or kinds of reading material, both fiction and non-fiction and in a range of media. Of course, we would also expect there to be development within the main genres. For example, while a child in Year 1 would be able to enjoy a very simple fairy tale, by Year 6 an able reader would cope with a demanding fantasy like J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

The quality of response to fiction develops so that by the upper primary years children can use inference to get at an author’s more subtle meanings. We would also expect progress to be made in understanding and responding to more challenging kinds of non-fiction – texts featuring argument and persuasion. There is more about this under specific entries like Response to reading and the different kinds of texts – Persuasive texts, Argument and so on. The next section considers the importance of attitude in children’s journey towards wide, enthusiastic and reflective reading.

As well as developing a range of strategies to help children decode print and get meaning from it, teachers try to reinforce certain positive attitudes towards reading. Above all, we must communicate the sheer enjoyment reading can bring. Some kinds of reading are the means to an end – skimming through a train timetable or reading instructions to mend a fuse. But we need to convince children that many kinds of reading are deeply satisfying from a favourite story or poem to an information book about a historical period or about a creature’s life cycle. Children are helped to discover this satisfaction by teachers who read aloud to them for sheer shared delight.

It is also important to cultivate a child’s sense of confidence in their ability to learn to read and to use reading to learn about the world. Anxiety can be reduced by teachers and parents responding positively to what children are doing well. Quite small achievements are worth commenting on – ‘good – you stopped and tried again’ or ‘I like the way you broke that word up into chunks’.

Another useful attitude to cultivate in young readers is what we might term ‘tentativeness’ – a willingness to take risks and try things out and learn from mistakes. But in the end we have to direct a young reader to the words on the page and help them discover their meaning.

An attitude of openness to a range of reading experiences can be encouraged by creating a reading environment full of interesting and useful resources. Reading corners and displays exploiting the huge array of different kinds of text – in both electronic and printed form – support a breadth of reading experience. The resources work particularly well if used in a range of relevant contexts. For example, a display of work done in history lessons with reference books, artefacts and children’s work supports both the learning of history and the achievement of literacy. When it comes to non-fiction reading and writing it is best to link these activities to real purposes rather than used as a vehicle for decontextualised exercises. This is not to say that DARTs (Directed Activities Around Texts) are not sometimes helpful and interesting.

Some reading assessments are summative and like the National Curriculum SATs take place at the end of an age phase (see entries on assessment, SATs and standardised reading tests). However, for a fuller and richer picture of a child’s developing reading abilities we need to integrate assessment and recording into the planning, teaching and learning cycle and to keep evidence of progress. Formative tests, those which have a diagnostic element, are useful in informing our next round of planning for particular children.

Most schools have a portfolio system, often electronic, to store samples of children’s work (see entry under Portfolio). So – what would a good reading section of the English portfolio be likely to contain?

From time to time all this evidence needs to be summarised and presented in a helpful and easy to use format, agreed by the English/Literacy subject manager or Co-ordinator with the other teachers. The format should be designed to make communication with parents and the next class teacher easy. One well-known and much-praised format is the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education Language Record which provides space for the views of parents and the child and notes if English is being acquired as a second or additional language. The latest version, The Primary Learning Record (incorporating the Primary Language Record) is a welcome development for many teachers as it simplifies and unifies the whole record keeping process across the curriculum (details from CLPE, Webber Street, London SE1 8QW).

Some teachers find the National Curriculum reading levels in some respects rather schematic. To help here, the team at the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education has devised some reading scales to use alongside the official levels of reading attainment. Children from six to eight are placed on a criterion referenced continuum from the dependent beginner reader to the exceptionally fluent reader who ‘has strong established tastes in fiction and non-fiction’ and enjoys pursuing their own reading interests independently.

Another well-thought-of reading profile which shows a child’s progression at text level, making use of context and making meaning at word level is the First Steps Reading Development Continuum from Australia. This profile takes us through six phases – Role Play Reading, Experimental Reading, Early Reading, Transitional Reading, Independent Reading and Advanced reading. Information from both the CLPE Reading scales and the First Steps profile feed directly into good planning for individuals and can be summarised on a record keeping format like the Primary Language Record at the end of the school year.

If you work with the foundation age group (three to six years) your records will take account of children’s progress in the reading element of the Early Learning Goals. Objectives to do with reading include broad understandings like recognising the elements of stories and knowing how we use non-fiction texts as well as word-level skills like linking sounds to letters. You may also find the Croydon Early Years Development Record helpful in filling out the picture. It provides evidence for the Entry Profile and is designed to reflect competencies in the child’s home language as well as in English. Devised by a working party of teachers from Nursery and Infant schools in Croydon and Lewisham, the Record has statements which can be highlighted, ticked and initialled. Statements are organised under Attitude to Books and Stories, Rhythm and Rhyme, Reading Illustrations and Print Awareness (contact The Schools Advisory Services Croydon or Raising Standards, Lewisham Education).

New literacies are created as society and technology moves on. How children are taught to read in the future will depend on the findings of educational researchers and on cultural developments including innovations in technology. What one wonders will be the effect in the classroom of innovations like voice recognition computers? Already we attend much more in the classroom to visual kinds of literacy from ‘reading’ diagrams and graphics of all kinds in print and electronic form to understanding purpose and meaning in photographs and images on video film and the Internet. Effective ways of evaluating multimodal and multimedia texts are sought and addressed by researchers, for example Bearne, 2004. Language is dynamic and changes whether we wish it to or not.

Barrs, Myra et al. (1988) The Primary Language Record London: Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (www.rmplc.co.uk/orgs/clpe/index.html).

Barrs, Myra and Anne Thomas (eds) (1991) The Reading Book London: Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.

Bearne, Eve and Grainger, Teresa (2003) Classroom Interactions in Literacy Milton Keynes: Open University Press (foregrounds social and cultural issues and looks in depth at the nature of classroom discourse).

Bearne, E. (2004) ‘Multimodal texts’, in Evans, J. (ed.) Literacy Moves On: Using Popular Culture, New Technologies and Critical Literacy in the Primary Classroom. London: David Fulton.

DfEE/QCA (1999b) Early Learning Goals London: DfEE/QCA.

Early Years Reading Development Record London: Schools Advisory Service, Croydon with Lewisham Education.

First Steps: Indicators For Reading Development Continuum (1994) Education Department of Western Australia. Published by Longman Australia.

Graham, Judith and Kelly, Alison (2007 edition) Reading Under Control: Teaching Reading in the Primary School London: David Fulton.

Grainger, Teresa (ed.) (2003) The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Literacy London: RoutledgeFalmer. (The 25 contributors have a broad conception of literacy and contemporary literacy practices and cover the influence of popular culture, new technologies and multiple forms of text.)

Hall, Kathy (2002) Listening to Stephen Read: Multiple Perspectives on Literacy Milton Keynes: Open University Press (reading experts each have their own view on how to help Stephen).

The Electronic Framework (2006) at: www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/primary Framework.

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