| While a great emphasis is placed on teaching children the
mechanics of reading, and ensuring they are able to correctly
sound out words on a page, there is often not enough attention
paid to their understanding of the concepts they are reading
about. Donna Thomson and Ruth Nixey describe
their own investigations of the discrepancy between decoding
and comprehension, in a large rural primary school. |
"We want children
not only to read the lines but also to read between the lines."
Fisher (1990)
For many years, our large rural primary
school prided itself on the high reading ability of its children
- particularly since the implementation of a very effective reading
system introduced to the school five years ago by a Reading Recovery
expert. This system focused on teaching reading skills and strategies
that do not rely simply on phonics, as well as frequent monitoring
of children's reading progress and assessment of their reading
ages, using the 'PM Benchmark' (2000). It produced a significant
number of confident young readers in key stage 1 (some as young
as six years old) who were achieving impressive reading ages as
high as 12 to 13 years old.
However, evidence from 'Probe' (1999), an in-depth reading comprehension
assessment from New Zealand that we introduced in 2001, highlighted
an extraordinary discrepancy between the children's ability to
read and their overall comprehension. The evidence showed that
many had very impressive decoding skills but alarmingly poor understanding
of the text in comparison. Ongoing assessments throughout the
school the following two summers revealed the same discrepancy
between decoding and comprehension; although the children with
good decoding skills were "reading for meaning and sense"
(Clay, 1990), they seemed unable to gather information effectively
and accurately with regard to comprehension - and in some cases
seemed quite disengaged with the whole comprehension process.
"Many children who can understand what they
read at a literal level, find it difficult to understand a writers
underlying meaning and intentions. There is a tendency for them
to interpret only what the words say, not what they mean."
Fisher (1990)
With such startling results, we had to question
the validity of the 'PM Benchmark' assessment procedure, and possibly
even the methods we were using to teach children to read. Why
hadn't the discrepancy between decoding and comprehension ability
been detected before? Why did so many excellent readers, who were
regularly involved in class discussion of texts during shared
and guided reading sessions within the literacy hour, appear to
have gained so little from their exploration of text?
To begin to answer some of these questions, we began to look
at how the school assessed the children's reading, comparing a
number of children's 'PM Benchmark' results with that of the 'Probe'
assessments. We found the reading levels were completely different
for both assessments - although the tests had taken place only
weeks apart.
It did not surprise us that the 'PM Benchmark' results were higher
than those of 'Probe', because while it provides excellent decoding
analysis, it only skims the surface of comprehension compared
with the comprehensive questioning of the 'Probe'. 'Probe' not
only analyses decoding ability, but also provides clear evidence
of a child's understanding of the author's inferential and evaluative
intentions.
It seems extraordinary that we, like so many other practitioners
across the nation, had considered it possible for children in
key stage 1 with little experience of the world, to have reached
meaningful reading ages as high as 12 or 13 years (which, after
all, is the equivalent of an excellent level 5 in Year 6), without
it being questioned more by teachers, support staff, parents or
pupils.
It led me to query just how much knowledge and enjoyment children
in schools had actually been gaining from their reading over the
years of these decoding achievements. It was obvious from the
information provide by 'Probe' assessments that the current reading
approach was falling short of a whole reading experience for our
children. David Bell, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector, draws our
attention to this in his 'Good Read' speech when he states, "I
firmly believe that there is no more important task for schools
than that they get their teaching of reading, both in primary
and secondary schools, right and succeed in helping young people
become keen readers." (Bell, 2005)
It is easy to see that great assumptions had been made by all
of us in our school. We now realised that the books that the children
had been expected to read, simply because they had been able to
decode them fluently, had often been read without any real understanding
of the vocabulary, phrasing of words or the author's intention
behind the information in the narrative. Surely "being able
to read" means having a full understanding of what is being
communicated to us beyond the symbols that are in the print? As
the Collins English Dictionary (1998) defines reading - it is
"to interpret the significance or meaning of…"
Analysis of the children's responses to the comprehension assessment
questions suggested that there was a need for the children to
think and question more during their reading. They needed to explore
the text in greater "depth"; enquire as to the author's
meaning and be able to use inference, deduction and evaluation
to predict possible outcomes in the narrative as they read.
"Reading is an active process: meaning
is brought to life afresh through an energetic collaboration or
dialogue between the writer and the reader.
(Dougill, 1993)
We believe that this "energetic collaboration" between
writer and reader that Dougill talks of, requires a constant use
of creative and critical thinking skills - which children need
to be taught. As Nutbrown (1994) insists, "If children are
obliging enough to tell us what they are thinking, their parents,
teachers and other educators are in a better position to help
them to develop further."
We explored ways in which to encourage the children's creative
and critical thinking via the 'Reciprocal Guided Reading Framework',
from the Australian 'First Steps' literacy guide (1999). However,
we discovered that it was not possible to meet all the objectives
within this framework, or indeed some of the objectives within
the National Curriculum. This was because teachers and children
were being told what to teach and learn but not how to do it.
We began to analyse the framework to see how the objectives could
be delivered in smaller steps, and managed to match National Literacy
Strategy reading objectives to the broad objectives of the 'First
Steps' Reciprocal framework. From this, it was clear what additional
skills the children needed to learn before we would be able to
apply the 'First Steps' approach to their reading. Of these skills,
it was questioning skills that would prove to have the most impact
on the children's understanding and enjoyment of their reading.
In order to begin to dissolve the disparity between decoding
and comprehension, we looked for resources that actually explained
how to teach children about authors' intentions but found very
few. So, in 2003, we began to work with the children in Years
5 and 6 to create a programme of our own - a generic framework
that, as it grew, would organically facilitate thinking skills,
encourage independent learners and broaden the children's understanding
and enjoyment of their reading.
By creating an open, lively, thinking environment within the
classroom - using authentic classroom activities, imaginative
visual prompts and 'real' books in a series of interactive mixed-ability
sessions - children across the ability range have been taught
how to successfully and enthusiastically respond to, and generate,
literal, inferential and evaluative questioning.
The process has also taught the children how to find key word
connections in questions, and link these to evidence from the
text to provide an answer. They have also learnt how to work together,
modelling their different strengths to support each other within
collaborative teams. They are much more willing to learn from
each other, and are keen to explore and challenge each other's
assumptions about text and author's intention.
As well as teaching children how to recognise and distinguish
between the different ways of gathering information effectively,
this approach has, as Dr Maureen Lewis stated in her enthusiastic
report after observing a session in our school during a National
Literacy Strategy visit, "opened the gates to the children's
learning of prediction, clarification, questioning and summarising".
As a result, the children are experiencing a much greater appreciation
of the books they are reading and are better prepared to engage
in more independent and meaningful exploration of author's intention,
style of writing, narrative and non-fiction texts, and different
genres.
We are currently developing a decoding/comprehension assessment
that is Reading Recovery-levelled and correlates with National
Curriculum levels. This not only analyses each child's individual
progress in their whole reading experience but also helps the
teacher identify the areas that need developing in each child's
reading and thinking skills. These skills provide a crucial foundation
for creative and critical thinking within secondary education
and adult life beyond schooling.
The success of the programme was evident in the achievement of
last year's Year 5 and 6 pupils, and in the children's approach
to their own learning in general. We are creating a whole school
approach to provide teachers with interactive and highly visual
resources to effectively develop and nurture these inference and
evaluative thinking skills from a much earlier age. We hope that
by doing this, we will be producing children who, through their
more meaningful and enjoyable experience of reading, are more
confident writers, problem-solvers and independent learners from
Year 1 - with thinking skills that are used effectively in every
area of the curriculum.
"Young children are capable of the whole
range of human thinking if the context is right. They can produce
imaginative ideas, attempt to solve problems, explore implications,
explain, predict, interpret, express feelings, reason logically,
justify an opinion, and unselfconsciously find it all fun, if
they are only given the proper opportunities."
(Dougill, 1995)
Bibliography and references
D. Bell (2005) 'A Good Read', World Book Day speech,
www.ofsted.gov.uk/publications
M. Clay (1990)
Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement,
Hong Kong: Heinemann
P. Dougill (1993)
The Primary Language Book, second edition,
Buckingham: Open University Press
Collins English Dictionary (1998) New Edition, Collins Gem. Harper
Collins Publications
R. Fisher (1990)
Teaching Children To Think, Basil Blackwell
Ltd.
C. Nutbrown (1994)
Threads of Thinking, London: Paul Chapman
Publishing Ltd
Probe (1999) New Zealand: Triune Publications
PM Benchmark (2000) Nelson
Donna Thomson and Ruth Nixey, October 2005
This article is an edited version of one that appeared in
Literacy
Today, September 2005.
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