The Simple View of Reading & Scarborough’s Reading Rope

The science of reading indicates that there are six main pillars of reading also known as The Big Six. These six important components include phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and oral language. You may have noticed that the six main pillars of the science of reading are connected to the benchmarks on Florida’s B.E.S.T. Standards. Successful readers need to have a foundation built on all six areas. Below is a brief description of each of these areas.  

• Phonological Awareness - The ability to identify and play with individual sounds in spoken words.

• Phonics - Reading instruction on understanding how letters and groups of letters link to sounds to form letter- sound relationships and spelling patterns.

• Fluency - The ability to read words, phrases, sentences, and stories correctly, with enough speed, and expression.

• Vocabulary - Knowing what words mean and how to say and use them correctly.

• Comprehension - The ability to understand what you are reading.

• Oral Language - The way we communicate with each other (verbally and nonverbally). 

The Simple View of Reading provides a simplistic view of this research. In this formula, reading comprehension is the product of decoding (or fluent word reading skill) and language comprehension (Gough & Tunmer, 1986).

Of course, as educators, we know that learning to read is slightly more complex. Scarborough’s Reading Rope has provided an excellent visual way of understanding the components of skilled reading and their interconnectedness. 

Similar to the Simple View of Reading, Scarborough’s Reading Rope has two main strands, Word Recognition and Language Comprehension. Within those main strands this visual details the important components that contribute to reading. These components are intertwined to show that these skills are taught concurrently, rather than sequentially or in isolation. Teaching these skills concurrently helps to build those important connections across the areas of our brain.

As we know not every child learns in the same way and at the same time. Scarborough’s Reading Rope can help educators to identify where the deficits lie for our struggling readers. Using this framework teachers can assess a student’s abilities and plan out interventions to address the areas that need the most focus. 

In our next series of blog entries we will explore each of the Six Pillars of Reading.