I get lots of workshops all over the country and give them on all different aspects of struggling
reading and I start every single workshop with the same introduction and it's called the simple
view of reading it's research that is the most important research in my opinion that's ever
been done on reading because it clarifies very clearly what good readers do well and what those
who don't read so well struggle with a simple view of reading is research that was first done in 1990
it was proposed in 1986 and it's been replicated hundreds of times since then people have tried to
disprove it and they've tried to prove it they can only prove it they cannot disprove the simple view
of reading and what it says simply is that reading is made of two components decoding and language
comprehension in order to be strong at reading comprehension you got to be strong at decoding
and you got to have background knowledge and understand the words that you're reading if you
are the most brilliant person in the world and you understand physics and you can draw pictures and
you can't have code the words you can't achieve reading comprehension you only have language
comprehension decoding is also a critical skill you must be able to read the words accurately I
work in Africa sometimes helping develop programs for languages that children in rural Africa speak
their languages I don't speak full full-day Kanuri will of Bhullar they have what's called
a transparent orthography that means one letter always spells the same sound not like English
where one letter can spell a number of sounds I can decode those languages perfectly you tell me
that a c' spells and I can I can read any word because the vowel the vowel a always spells ah
Oh always spells oh so I can read Cho I don't have a clue what those words say I don't know
one word in wool of but I can read a whole page I can decode a whole page I've got decoding but
I don't have any language I can't get to reading comprehension so the simple view of reading tells
us two things we have to be strong and decoding and we have to have strong language knowledge we
have to know knows know something in that helps us know what the words are researchers all know about
the research the symbol you're reading teachers don't know about it and it's the most important
thing that teachers if they would understand that students must be strong decoders that means you
don't guess your way through material you can decode unfamiliar words it means that you know
what you're reading about they would understand then that if you have a Tier two student meaning
that student has a little bit of reading problem not a severe reading problem they would not say
all tears due to students go into the same program oh you're a tier 2 student and you're in 3rd grade
we're gonna put you in read naturally naturally is right for some students but we don't know because
all we have is that they're a tear to student meaning they're behind in reading comprehension
we kind of dig further and find out is that a decoding problem or is that a language problem and
we teach those two things separately and we test those two things separately and that is that's
something that teachers they don't carry that with them and if if they if teachers could carry that
with them they would number one no they've got to teach decoding until it's very strong they cannot
let kids guess their way through text the second thing they would know is that a student isn't
performing as well as we want them to we don't say what's wrong with their reading comprehension
we say I wonder if the problem is decoding or language comprehension and that is the most
important knowledge that we have from research that is absolutely applicable to teaching the
teachers don't know about if teachers understood the simple view of reading they would know that
there when a child has a reading difficulty they're not performing as well as we want them
to on a reading test we have to dig deeper and the first thing we ask is is the problem that the
student has difficulty decoding it's the problem that the student doesn't understand what they're
reading or do they have both problems and if they have both then we have to address them differently
and with separate kinds of interventions decoding is finite and we've we teach decoding you can
read words that you don't even know what they mean you're a strong decoder if you can decode
them like I'm a I'm a really good decoder in wool off' and before they ignore 'i don't know anything
about the language but i'm very strong decoder in those even in those languages if the problem
is language obviously for me problem is I have no vocabulary so that would be easy teacher with the
words mean if I get a student who speaks English and I know that they have a language problem how
do I know they have a language problem because the reading scores are low and they're strong
decoders it's simple algebra it has to be language the problem has to be language well then just like
the simple view of reading says well the problems reading is a decoding language if a student has a
weakness in language I ask two questions is it a vocabulary background knowledge difficulty
weakness which is relatively easy to fix or is it reasoning in syntax that the student just
doesn't get it even though they know what the words mean but they just miss the idea one is
pretty easy to fix the other is more difficult to fix there are a number of tools that we can use
unlike decoding language is not finite everyday we're all learning something new
where just by experience we're adding to our language comprehension it's very complex and
it's very simple and the reason I say that is it's complex to figure out exactly where the
issue is but it's very simple once you find the issue you know exactly what to do let
me give you an example I was working in a ninth grade special education language arts class and
there were eleven students nine of them had decoding issues very apparent so fix their
decoding put them in decoding intervention two of them had comprehension issues one of
the ways that I when I when I don't have extensive information I try to figure out
I just ask students can you read a paragraph if there are strong decoders which these kids were
he's - were strong decoders and tell me what you just read one of the they read a paragraph about
alligators and how long they had been in southwestern America south eastern
southern and southeastern America United States and all about that so the first girl
read it and she read it and I asked her please tell me what you read and she said
[Music] it was a million years so I said can you tell me anything else you read
alligators so she real clearly is reading and not getting a whole picture of what she's reading no
boy read you read the he read the passage and I said can you please tell me what you read we've
alligators in our an hour by you write down the house from us and there are alligators do
you know sometimes when they're babies the only way however much they weigh but the way oh my
gosh they can wave however much they can weigh he knew so much about alligators but him tell
me anything he read she told me just what he knew so she had exactly the opposite problem
but that I'm not going to work with them the same so the way I start with this is I teach
the kids how to describe a picture so I held up a picture of a kangaroo and there's a big kangaroo
and there's a little tree cute few trees in the background some some brown at the bottom and I
said to the girl could you please describe this picture she said there are three trees she just
goes to some detail it was like she didn't even know how to describe okay so then I thought the
boy yep could you please describe this picture oh that's an Australia now that picture we it
might be in Australia but he's gonna bring all so I have to address their problems very differently
however I'm going to use a picture at first to get them to focus on the picture to tell me about the
picture one of them I have to keep him in the picture the other ones I have to show her how
to describe different things and that's just the best example that I can come up with right now
to show you how a reading comprehension a language comprehension problem can be
children can have a low score and yet the reason for exactly the same low score is very different