Chris Ratcliffe, Head of Education at Scholastic
A key report published in 2000 by the National Reading Panel identified the five pillars of reading as ‘phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension’. More recently you will find common references to a sixth pillar of reading, ‘oracy’ and, at Scholastic, we have added our own seventh: ‘reading for pleasure’.
Why reading for pleasure? It is defined by OCED as "the single most important indicator of a child’s future success”, and also that"developing a love of reading can be more important for a child’s educational success than their family’s socio-economic background.” This excellent ‘what, why, how’ blog by the highly-esteemed Professor Teresa Cremin is worth a read.
Overall, these pillars are the building blocks of reading, and when put together they help children to become balanced, confident readers. As you would expect, reading with children and helping them practice these reading skills is proven to dramatically improve their ability to read. So what are the seven pillars that we advocate?
1. Oral language
Whether you refer to spoken language, oral language, speaking and listening or oral communication, you are also referring to oracy. Whilst oracy may sound like a new term to replace these more familiar names, it was first used over 50 years ago in Oracy in English Teaching to refer to ‘the development and application of a set of skills associated with effective spoken communication’. Oracy has two dimensions: Learning to talk, and Learning through talk. These dimensions can be supported through structures including the use of discussions, presentations, debates, performances and role play.
2. Phonological awareness
Phonological awareness is the grounding for success in early reading. Before children begin learning sound and letter (phoneme and grapheme) correspondences, they need to develop phonological awareness, and the best way to build on these skills is to encourage play where speaking and listening is central. It is at this stage they begin to increase their knowledge of words through dialogue; learn to enjoy language through rhythm, rhyme, alliteration and song; discriminate environmental, instrumental and spoken sounds; and begin to blend and segment words orally. A good phonics programme will suggest activities to develop all these aspects.
3. Phonics
Phonics is a process where children are taught to read letters or groups of letters by the sounds they represent. Knowing the relationships between letters and sounds helps children to recognise familiar words and decode new words. When the individual sounds are learned, they can then be blended together to make words.
4. Fluency
In recent years, reading fluency has come to be considered a key determiner of how well children can read. This has largely focused on the rate (or speed) of reading, with the figure of 90 words per minute often being used to determine a child’s reading fluency. When children read at this speed or more, they are less likely to be focusing on decoding and recognising words but instead concentrating on the meaning of what they read. However, reading with pace is only one aspect of fluency. It refers to reading the words in text effortlessly and efficiently (automaticity). The relationship between automatic word recognition and expression means that fluency is often described as the bridge from phonics to comprehension.
5. Comprehension
Teaching children to read is a complex process. Turning words on a page into meaning and understanding and with it the desire to read for pleasure is something that takes time, patience and a number of different strategies. Countless research papers have been written into how to teach children to read, and some have affected national policies, such as the Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading (2006) which became the underlying framework for teaching reading in England. Guided Reading, Reciprocal Reading, Repeated Reading/Close Reading, Shared Reading and Whole Class Reading are related comprehension strategies.
6. Vocabulary
Understanding what has been read is at the heart of reading comprehension. When children do not know enough of the words in a text, they will understand less. Having sufficient vocabulary knowledge is therefore essential to being a good reader. Having a good vocabulary means knowing a large number of words in depth, being able to build connections between words and understanding which words to use in specific circumstances. A good vocabulary is built upon rich knowledge of words, their definitions, relationships to other words and how to use those words to create different effects depending upon the circumstance they are used.
7. Reading for pleasure
There are a number of different definitions for reading for pleasure, reading for enjoyment or independent reading. The National Literacy Trust defined it as "reading that we do of our own free will, anticipating the satisfaction that we will get from the act off reading”. It also refers to reading that "having begun at someone else’s request we continue because we are interested in it”. Independent reading can be both reading for pleasure and also reading for information. Book selection is critical to independent reading. To ensure the best chance of success, teachers need to be aware of the reading ability of the child, reading interest of the child and the text complexity of books being recommended.
The free-to-access Scholastic Reading Hub breaks down the building blocks of reading, showing the research behind each one and bridging theory and practice with highly effective and researched-based resources. Here you will also find links to free live CPD for teaching reading, as well as previously broadcast sessions, access support and activities for the classroom, and opportunities to delve deep into the research behind each reading strategy.
The CST Blog welcomes perspectives from a diverse range of guest contributors. The opinions expressed in blogs are the views of the author(s), and should not be read as CST guidance or CST’s position.
