Supporting Readers in Secondary Schools

What every secondary teacher needs to know about teaching reading and phonics

Wendy Jolliffe, David Waugh, Jayne Stead, Sue Beverton

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781446280638, 9781446280621
• eBook ISBN: 9781473905542
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Enseñanza de métodos de lectura

Are you a secondary school teacher who needs to know about phonics and teaching reading? Then this book is for you. 

There are lots of books on teaching phonics but most are written to support primary teachers. This book is written specifically for secondary teachers working with children who need support with reading. The text uses case studies from secondary schools to highlight effective ways to support children with reading and includes useful tips on teaching strategies and ideas for resources. The text covers the subject knowledge you need for the teaching of reading in the broadest sense, including phonics. Intended to support you, as a secondary teacher, it gives guidance on planning methods of assessment and explores a range of intervention programmes and resources.

This text is your comprehensive support resource in teaching reading.

1

What is the role of phonics in the teaching of reading?

Learning outcomes

By reading this chapter you will develop an understanding of:

• key theoretical models of how children learn to read;

• the role phonics plays in learning to read and spell;

• the benefits of learning phonics for reading and spelling;

• different approaches to teaching phonics.

2012 Teachers’ Standards

2. Promote good progress and outcomes by pupils:

• demonstrate knowledge and understanding of how pupils learn and how this impacts on teaching.

3. Demonstrate good subject and curriculum knowledge:

• demonstrate a critical understanding of developments in the subject and curriculum areas, and promote the value of scholarship;

• demonstrate an understanding of and take responsibility for promoting high standards of literacy, articulacy and the correct use of Standard English, whatever the teacher’s specialist subject;

• if teaching early reading, demonstrate a clear understanding of systematic synthetic phonics.

Introduction

Learning to read is a complex process and yet most adults do not recall the process by which they became a reader. This is largely because, once automaticity is reached, as with other skills, such as driving, much of this becomes an unconscious process with the end point in mind. In the case of driving, the end point is getting to a destination: in the case of reading, it is understanding what is read. Research into the teaching of reading continues, more recently aided by advances in neuroscience and neuro-imaging techniques, which are beginning to shed light onto the processes taking place in the brain (Hruby and Goswami, 2011). Debates over the best methods to teach reading also continue, and fierce arguments rage over the place of phonics as opposed to other methods. This chapter aims to illuminate that debate through a review of the research evidence, but also to provide a balanced approach to enable teachers to be able to support readers. Nothing makes more of a difference to the progress students make in school than the ability to read and understand text, and therefore supporting readers who are experiencing difficulties is the task of every teacher whatever their subject or area of responsibility.

This chapter will support an overall understanding of the role phonics plays in teaching reading, and its benefits in reading as well as spelling. It will also provide an overview of the different types of phonics and what place these play in a balanced teaching programme.

Theoretical perspectives/subject knowledge

Learning to read

Learning to read involves two key aspects: first, the ability to decode the letters on the page, so that the letters can be mapped onto the sounds of our language (or phonemes) and then be pronounced, either aloud or silently, to make words. The second key process is to map these words to our lexicon, or mental store of known words, and in turn to combine these into units of meaning: phrases or sentences. It is vital to understand that these are integrated processes, and children learning to read require support with both elements. In essence: decoding is supported through learning phonics, which helps unlock the ‘alphabetic code’, in addition to acquiring a fast recall of high-frequency irregular words.

Achieving understanding of text is often termed ‘language comprehension’. This is an umbrella term and not to be confused with narrow ‘comprehension’ activities. Language comprehension covers oral and written language and is multilayered. It spans understanding the words themselves, the ways the sentence is constructed, and the subjects of the text itself. Paris (2005) maintains that there are five essential skills in learning to read:

1. the alphabetic principle;

2. phonemic awareness;

3. oral reading fluency;

4. vocabulary;

5. comprehension.

He goes on to state that these skills need to be viewed differently as some are constrained; that is, once mastered (e.g. phonemic awareness or the alphabetic principle) they require little explicit teaching. Other skills, such as vocabulary and comprehension, require extended support.

In order to explain the processes involved in reading, researchers have constructed a number of models and an examination of the prominent ones follows.

The Simple View of Reading

The Simple View of Reading devised by Gough and Tunmer in 1986 focuses on two components: decoding and comprehension. Decoding means the ability to recognise words out of context and to apply phonic rules to this recognition; thus it is termed ‘word recognition’. Comprehension means linguistic comprehension, which is defined by Gough and Tunmer (1986) as the process by which words, sentences and discourse are interpreted. They also state that the two interrelated processes are both necessary for reading. This view has been developed since first proposed in 1986 and is represented in the Rose Review (DfES, 2006: 77) as shown in Figure 1.1 below.

Figure 1.1 The Simple View of Reading

Source: DfES (2006) Independent review of the teaching of early reading (Final Report by Jim Rose). Ref: 0201/2006DOC-EN. Nottingham: DfES Publications, p 40.

The model is based on two axes and four quadrants, and children’s strengths or weaknesses can be identified and categorised into the quadrants, enabling teaching to focus on specific aspects. As shown in Figure 1.2, it can support the diagnosis of reading difficulties.

The model asserts the importance of both word recognition and comprehension, and Gough and Tunmer (1986) propose that reading comprehension is the product of decoding and listening comprehension. Critics of the Simple View of Reading object principally to the oversimplification of what is a complex area. Hoover and Gough (1990, 2000) further developed this model into the Reading Acquisition Framework (see Figure 1.3), which subdivided language and comprehension and decoding into their constituent elements with two broad domains: cipher knowledge and lexical knowledge. Cipher knowledge concerns the systematic relationship between the letters and the sounds. Lexical knowledge consists of knowledge about words and, in particular, where the relationship between the units of spoken and written words does not follow a systematic pattern.

Figure 1.2 Reader types predicted from the Simple View of Reading

Figure 1.3 The Reading Acquisition Framework

Source: Wren, S. (2001) The Cognitive Foundations of Learning to Read: a framework. Austin,TX: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, available at: www.sedl.org/cgibin/pdfexit.cgi?url=http://www.sedl.org/reading/framework/framework.pdf

The word recognition system

Appendix 1 of the Rose Report (DfES, 2006), provides a diagrammatic version of the processes contained between seeing words and pronouncing them. This acknowledges the processes where the child either quickly recognises the word and then relates it to a store of word meanings or, if not, applies phonic rules in order to pronounce it and then relates the word to a lexicon of word meanings. This is shown in Figure 1.4.

Figure 1.4 Diagrammatic representation of the word recognition system

Source: DFES (2006) Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading (Final Report by Jim Rose). Ref: 0201/2006DOC-EN. Nottingham: DfES Publications, p 86.

Strands of skilled reading

Scarborough (2009) provides a useful diagrammatic representation of the processes involved in skilled reading, as shown in Figure 1.5. Scarborough notes that:

Although most reading disabilities are associated with deficits in phonemic awareness, decoding and sight recognition of printed words, reading skill can also be seriously impeded by weaknesses in the comprehension strands, particularly beyond second grade when reading becomes more complex.

(2009: 24)

Figure 1.5 Strands of skilled reading

Source: Scarborough, H. (2009: 24) Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory and practice, in F. Fletcher-Campbell, J. Soler and G. Reid, Approaching difficulties in literacy development: Assessment, pedagogy and programmes. Los Angeles CA: Sage, pp 23–38.

Unlike the Simple View of Reading, therefore, this model proposes that weaknesses in reading comprehension may not be purely the product of weak decoding or listening comprehension. They could also be linked to vocabulary knowledge. For secondary school students, being faced with a growing range of words across subjects, this is a significant factor for students experiencing difficulties.

Activity 1.1 Applying theoretical models to practice

The models above are complex and abstract. Read the discussion below between two secondary school trainee teachers who have been studying the teaching of reading and the different models and applying them to their practice to see if this helps in understanding them.

Stan:	I’ve been reading about the models that explain how we learn to read and thinking about students in classes I teach to apply this. Take Jamie in Year 7, who is a very lively student with plenty to say and a very good vocabulary, but when he is faced with text he obviously struggles. I was surprised the other day that he found the words ‘tornado’ and ‘hurricane’ difficult. How do these models help explain his problems?
Marie:	He obviously doesn’t have very good decoding skills with unfamiliar words. Did he know what the words mean once you told him?
Stan:	Yes – he went on to tell me all about ‘twisters’ and freak weather as he had seen a documentary about it. Do you think his problems are around decoding then?
Marie:	Yes, it sounds like it. If you look at the Simple View of Reading, he would be in the top left quadrant, but it would be important to get an assessment done of exactly what he needs support with. I think the model showing the strands of skilled reading is helpful as it shows the different elements in word recognition. I had a look at this model when I was thinking of Emily in Year 8. She seems fine at reading the words but when I ask her questions about it, she struggles. That puts her in the bottom right quadrant of the Simple View of Reading, but I wanted to know more about what might help her. Looking at the strands model, I began to see that it wasn’t just a lack of vocabulary, but I think the language structures make it difficult for her. She was reading a sentence to do with wildlife conservation that said something like, ‘Even today, humans are ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• About the Authors
• 1 What is the role of phonics in the teaching of reading?
• 2 Understanding the alphabetic code
• 3 Challenges
• 4 Phonics into spelling (morphology and spelling strategies)
• 5 The pedagogy of reading in Key Stage 3
• 6 Tracking, assessing and intervening in students’ learning
• Index