What are decodable books?

Why does your child need decodable books?

Learning to read is not a natural process.

While learning to talk is a natural process that all human beings are wired for and which occurs when children are surrounded by language, learning to read is not natural.

To become readers, children need to know how spoken words connect to print. They need systematic, synthetic phonics instruction and they need to practise their reading skills with decodable books. There are hundreds of studies that support this.

If children haven’t grasped the basics of sounding out words in primary school, by the time they get to high school, they’re so far behind that their self-esteem may be damaged.

While being exposed to books and growing up in a language-rich environment may help some children learn to read, for many children, especially those with specific learning difficulties, exposure alone will not be enough.

For many children, decodable books are a fundamental part of the learning to read process. In this post, we’ll be covering what decodable books are, why they are an essential part of learning to read and where you can get some decodable books for your child.

So what is a decodable book?

Decoding is essentially sounding out letters.

Decodable books use stories constructed using words with phonetically controlled spelling patterns. These books contain the sounds and spellings that the child has been explicitly taught. The child then uses their knowledge of letters (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes) to read the words in the text on their own, without guessing.

Decodable books also contain high frequency words such as ‘was,’ and ‘the.’ These books are fantastic as they allow children to gain confidence as they sound out the words while practising their reading fluency.

These books also allow children to practise the crucial reading skills of blending and segmenting and help to build fluency and mastery with previously taught sounds.

Decodable readers are a crucial part of a systematic synthetic phonics approach to teaching reading. This approach involves teaching a small number of sounds at a time, and gradually adding in more sounds and spellings in a defined sequence.

Decodable books match a child’s current skill level

A child at the beginning stages of reading who has learned the spellings and the sounds that are associated with s a t p i n – will be able to decode and read simple words using these sounds like ‘mat’ sat’ ‘pin’ sit’ ‘tin.’ They will not be able to read more complex words like ‘train’ and ‘seed.’

A decodable book contains sounds and spellings that MATCH the child’s current letter and sound knowledge so the child has the necessary skills to read the words in those books.

On the other hand, a child with a take home reader which is predictable, like the one below, – relies on poor reading strategies. As they don’t yet have the knowledge to read words like ‘train, ‘bulldozer’ and ‘engine.’

So they guess. And look at the picture for clues. Which is not reading. It’s guessing.

To learn to fluently read, children need practise between the sounds and spelling patterns they are learning and the text they are seeing in their own books.

Whereas, when a child reads a fully decodable book, the only reading strategy they are using is sounding and blending words.

The child is linking the sound and letter patterns straight away and is able to improve fluency, accuracy and speed with those sounds and letters.

Being able to read the words, rather than guessing and hoping they’re right, builds the child’s confidence and teaches the child that reading is a code that they are learning to crack.

With continued reading practise and explicit teaching, the child will read increasingly more complex texts.

So, what decodable books are suitable for my child?

When choosing a decodable book, first consider what your child has been taught through phonics instruction.

The teaching sequence and the decodable book content must match up so children can sound out and blend the words in the book.

Beginning decodable books contain only simple phonic knowledge. Your child may have been introduced to the beginning sounds of SATPIN. Therefore, a beginning reader, who is learning to blend CVC (3 letter words) should start with books which contain only CVC words.

If you child is learning the consonant digraphs ck sh wh th – choose books which incorporate those phonic patterns.

If you child is learning about the sounds and associated alternative spellings for the /ae/ sound – focus on decodable books contain those spelling patterns – i.e. ai ay a_e ea a

Where can I get decodable readers?

The easiest way to get your child reading a decodable book at home is to download some apps.

Decodable books you can download as an app

• Little Learners Love Literacy
• Decodable Readers Australia 
• Fitzroy Sounding Readers 
• Oz Readers
• TAP teen and adult phonics library

Decodable books are for older learners, too.

Decodable books aren’t just for beginning readers.

The phonic books catch-up series are suitable for children aged 8-14 who have gaps in their phonics knowledge. Decodable books for older students focus on one phoneme (sound) and the alternative spellings for that sound. These books progressively allow children to practise fluency with the alternative spellings for the same sound. This assists older learners to build their reading fluency.

Conclusion

At Learning Works Hub we love decodable books.

Decodable books are fantastic and should be part of every reading lesson.

There are plenty of options to incorporate a decodable book into your child’s reading routine.

Happy Reading!

Sounds Write

Sounds Write is a highly structured, systematic synthetic phonics program. The evidence-based linguistic program is recommended by AUSPELD.

Sounds Write teaches students how the alphabetic code works. Fundamentally, it teaches students the key skills required to be effective readers and spellers.

What we need to understand about learning to read is that it is not one skill; it is a complex of skills, conceptual knowledge and code knowledge. Children are biologically primed to learn the language that they speak but are not primed to learn the writing system of that language. We need to teach children the writing system explicitly and systematically.

Sounds Write starts with the skill that children learn naturally: the sounds of their own language.

Sounds Write then teaches that letters or combinations of letters are the ways in which we represent those sounds when we write.

The 3 skills Sounds Write teaches are:

1. Segmenting
2. Blending
3. Phoneme Manipulation

These skills need to be perfected and practised to become a fluent reader.

Segmenting

Segmenting individual sounds in speech is vital for both reading and spelling. To read, the reader must segment the sound-spelling correspondences in a word before blending them to make a recognisable word. When writing, a student also needs to split the word into its component sounds. E.g. /c/…./a/…/t/… and to represent each sound as a letter.

Blending

The skill of blending involves pushing sounds together to form meaningful words. For example /b/ /oa/ /t/ = ‘boat.’

Phoneme Manipulation

The skill of manipulating individual sounds within words enables one sound to be replaced by another. For instance, take the word ‘bat,’ and replace the sound /a/ with the sound /i/ so it becomes ‘bit.’ This skill is essential when the reader is problem solving when decoding. For instance, the letter <o> represents 4 completely different sounds in the words ‘go,’ ‘pot,’ ‘mother,’ and ‘to,’ When reading unfamiliar words, a child needs to decode by trying different letters or spellings and they must be prepared to test out alternatives. Therefore, the reader needs to be able to manipulate sounds instantly. This is a skill proficient readers are able to carry out automatically, and it occurs without having to think about it.

Core Concepts of Sounds Write

To become a proficient and fluent reader, a child must grasp the following:

1. English speech is written in a visual code where symbols, known as spellings or letters or graphemes, are used to represent individual sounds (phonemes).
2. You can spell a sound with 1, 2, 3 or 4 letters.
3. There are many different ways of spelling a sound. (e.g. the sound /ae/ as in ‘rain,’ play,’ ‘gate,’ or ‘break.’
4. A spelling can represent more than one sound. (For instance, the spelling <ea> in the words sea, head, break.

A systematic approach to the teaching of reading is required.

We start by teaching that you can spell a sound with one letter. Then, that you can spell a sound with two letters: ff, ll, ss, zz. In the Extended Code children discover through explicit, structured teaching more complex concepts. It is at this point of our English code that many children become confused and find spelling difficult. As many of our sounds have different spellings we begin with the most common and return to that sound, adding more alternatives. Just as in the Initial Code, lessons progress at a brisk pace with a variety of activities in each session. In general, teachers choose a target phoneme and spend 1-2 weeks working with words containing it.

Sounds Write is Multisensory

Sounds Write is also multi-sensory. As children are copying and saying the sounds they are using touch, sight, sound and speech. Using Sounds Write from the start children learn right away that the alphabet code, like any code, is reversible, you can both read and spell it. As they are using their senses, young children make a direct connection between what they hear and what they see written down.

Phonics Books

The secret to getting kids to read, is giving them books they can actually read. Decodable Readers enable children to use their knowledge of sound-letter relationships that they have been explicitly taught and practise their reading fluency through a story. We have the full range of Phonics Books UK, and Little Learners Love Literacy to enable children to practice what they have been explicitly taught in their lessons. This includes books for beginning readers, including Dandelion Launchers and Dandelion Readers and books from the extended code to books for catch-up readers, including the Moon Dog series, That Dog!, Magic Belt series, Alba, Totem Rescue, Titan’s Gauntlet and the Talisman Series. These books are compatible with the Sounds Write scope and sequence.

Good phonics programs, such as Sounds Write, teach children spellings (graphemes) and the sounds they represent. Decodable books offer reading practice, allowing children to blend sounds into words and to segment words into sounds when they spell. Decodable books offer children an opportunity to practice what they have been taught with guaranteed success. In each lesson, we incorporate decodable readers so children are given plenty of opportunity to practice their reading fluency.

What does the research say regarding reading?

The evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of the benefits of a beginning code emphasis and of an early start to phonics knowledge. There is a strong statistical relationship between phonemic awareness skills and success in the beginning stages of reading and spelling. The skills of blending, segmenting and phoneme manipulation have ‘remarkable strong predictions of and correlations with beginning reader acquisition’ (1994, p 81) Marilyn Jager Adam, author of Beginning to Read. Sounds Write is premised on the assumption that children learn the sounds of their own language naturally. Then we establish a link between the sounds and the visual signs (letters/graphemes) that represent those sounds.

There is a reason that Sounds Write is recommended by the peak body AUSPELD. It is a first-rate linguistic phonics program. The program is a highly structured, multi-sensory, incremental and code-oriented, instructional approach to successfully teaching children to read and spell. 

Children sometimes must hold maths in their hands before they hold it in their heads.

Watch the video to learn about how to teach using hands-on maths strategies. 

Learning times tables is one of the most important maths skills kids need to master in primary school.

Lots of kids struggle to remember their times tables. Being able to quickly remember times table facts and apply them to a problem is essential if a child is to confidently approach maths. Times tables underpin so many maths processes. 

1. Start with the easier times tables – we start with the twos

Getting the twos right establishes a pattern of understanding how one column of a table moves up one number at a time, and the other in multiples. So, if your child is having trouble with tables, time taken to build confidence with the 2 times table will often be the key to learning the rest.

And if they learn them easily, the pattern can be a springboard that will make tables pretty straightforward up to twelve times – and beyond.

2. Hang up a times table poster on the toilet wall

Hang up the chart in a place your child will see it regularly – the toilet is one example. That way, every time they visit this room they will be exposed to the tables.

3. Teach your kids some tricks

One of the great things about maths is that it’s full of tips and tricks – and times tables are no different. Our favourite trick involves using your fingers to figure out nine times tables.

Start by spreading all 10 fingers in front of you. To figure out 9×1, put your left pinky down. What are you left with? 9 fingers! For 9×2 put your left ring-finger down. What are you left with? 1 finger and a gap followed by 8 fingers or 18.

This trick works up to 9×9 (8 and 1 or 81). That said, when teaching children these tricks, encourage them to ask why these techniques work and the mathematical reasoning behind them.

4. Listen to some fun songs

What’s a great way to get information stuck in someone’s head? Yep, that’s right! Catchy music! We recommend checking out videos made by Youtuber, Mr.DeMaio, an American school teacher who uses clever parodies of pop songs to teach kids their times tables.

Our favourite is definitely his cover of Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson’s song Uptown Funk which aims to teach children their three times tables.

5. Make a multiplication wheel

One for the creative kids. Children start this activity by drawing the centre of the flower, in which they write the times table out. They then draw 12 petals around the centre, with each petal containing the numbers 1 through 12.

The last step is to draw another set of 12 petals which contain the answer to the centre number multiplied by the petals.

6. A pack of cards

Take out the aces and Kings, count Jack as 11 and Queen as 12, and you can practise the full range of tables by dealing your child two cards and asking them to multiply them.

7. Relating multiplication to addition.

Children begin laying the foundation for times table work in prep when they skip count in twos.

Before starting to learn their times tables, children should be familiar with addition principles. To master their tables, children need to learn that 2 x 3 is the same as 2 + 2 + 2.

Drawing groups of numbers helps to cement the idea that multiplication is simply repeated addition.

This also teaches kids why they are learning in the first place. It gives them a context for their learning – rather than just doing it because the teacher says so. It shows them in a concrete way that it saves time.

Happy multiplying!

Through our dyslexia tutoring at Learning Works Geelong, we see many children who have low self esteem.

Children with specific learning disorders, like dyslexia and learning disabilities have spent many years at school feeling “stupid.” Their self esteem is at an all time low.

We see many children for dyslexia tutoring at Learning Works who do not value themselves, believe they are capable or feel important. 

From a young age, children compare themselves to their peers in social areas, like their ability to make friends, their sporting talents and their skills in the classroom.

Children with learning difficulties and disorders are particularly at risk for developing low self-esteem. Consistently receiving bad grades, not “getting” the content in class and finding school work really tough, can have dire consequences for your child’s self confidence and self-belief.

There is a general agreement that children with special needs have lower self-esteem and self-concept than those without learning difficulties. Their academic achievement is generally lower and children with learning difficulties are less likely to have been accepted by their peer group and are sometimes bullied. Around half of all children we see through our dyslexia tutoring Geelong services have been teased and many have had experiences with teachers who are ignorant of, and who do not acknowledge the existence of dyslexia.

Vicious Cycle

Many children with learning disorders have been struggling in school without adequate interventions for many years before they are formally diagnosed or something is done. A diagnosis for a specific learning disability is typically made when there is a significant gap between the child’s IQ score and their results in a specific area. Therefore, a child with a specific learning disorder or difficulty has put up with many years of feeling inadequate, labelling themselves internally as “slow” or “dumb.”

Children we see for dyslexia tutoring at Learning Works feel “disappointed, frustrated, fed up, ashamed, depressed, angry and embarrassed,” by their difficulties. They question what the point of trying is when they find everything takes them much longer to grasp.

After many years of schooling where their hard efforts have not been recognised, a child with a specific learning disorder many fall into a trap of learned helplessness, developing an attitude that they shouldn’t bother trying anymore, because they always fail.

Your child with a specific learning disorder will likely feel confused, discouraged and worn down by the demands of school and their inability to “get it,” and understand aspects of learning like other children.

For some children, it is easy to see how they get into a vicious cycle where they give up trying with literacy skills because they haven’t had success, widening the gap between their school performance and the performance of others in their class.

The toll of low self-esteem

Children with low-self esteem, will not advocate for themselves and their learning needs properly. They may have trouble gaining the confidence they need to face their specific learning disorder.

Low self-esteem is also at the root of other concerning problems. The “secondary” symptoms of dyslexia and other specific learning disorders can lead to mental health problems, like anxiety and depression in children and a lot of acting out at school as a coping mechanism.

• Repeated failure can lead to feelings of anger, severe anxiety and sadness
• Children with low self-esteem can lose interest in learning and school
• Friendships can suffer as frustrated kids seek attention – even if it is negative. Children with low self esteem in certain areas (such as reading) are at a higher risk for disruptive behaviour such as conduct problems and hyperactivity in the classroom
• Many children with low self-esteem develop poor coping methods to deal with the challenges they face everyday – like quitting tasks and avoiding school.

Dyslexia has been associated with depression, anxiety, lower self-esteem, attention deficits and often, behavioural problems.

Labelling

After a diagnosis, many children we work with for dyslexia tutoring at Learning Works feel relief, as they now have an understanding about why their child found learning in certain areas so challenging. Some children and families however, have the opposite reaction and feel more stigmatised and see themselves in a more negative light after a diagnosis and label is given.

Learning Works sees children for dyslexia tutoring who blame themselves

Attributions are the reasons or explanations your child will give for their performance or the performance of someone else. Children who have learning difficulties are more likely to view any success they have as a result of luck and to attribute failure to a permanent problem within themselves. In other words they blame themselves for any failures. This can set up a feeling where children think there is nothing they can do that can change the situation so they give up trying at all.

The basic issue for teachers and parents of dyslexic children is to break this circle and start to change a child’s behaviour and experiences. Our job is to help these children see themselves more realistically, to raise their self esteem and self-belief in themselves. It is important to give verbal or written feedback in a way that attributes success to internal controllable factors such as the effort or imagination that a child has put into a piece of work.

Learning Works dyslexia tutoring can enhance self-esteem in children with dyslexia

The question is how can teachers and parents change a dyslexic child’s view of themselves and make a difference to change their life?

Children with dyslexia and other specific learning disorders often lack the hope that the future will be any better that the present. They feel they’re the only one with the problem. Our aim with dyslexia tutoring at Learning Works is to be the one person who stood by a struggling child, believed in them, and gave them the strength and courage to keep trying.

Speak to your child’s teacher about creating a friendly learning environment for your child

There are many benefits of increasing teachers’ knowledge of the social side of school. 

• Every child needs to feel competent – why would a child want to go to school if the teachers only focused on what he didn’t do well? Talk to your child’s teacher about their specific learning disorder and self-esteem issues. 
• Make sure your child feels safe at school and secure in their classroom and in their teacher’s presence.
• Ensure there is good communication between your child’s teacher and yourself.
• Use multi-sensory learning techniques at home so the dyslexic child can learn more efficiently.

Encourage your child’s interests

Find your child’s area of strengths. Figure out how your can use your child’s strengths to increase his or her feelings of competence.

Finding an activity they enjoy and that they are good at can help your child discover their strengths and keep their academic struggles in perspective. If you child is a gun at football or likes gymnastics or even computer coding, encourage them to pursue that so they can bolster their self-confidence in other non-academic avenues.

Praise your child’s approach and efforts—not just the end result.

Find something praiseworthy in your child – Be generous with your praise. Rather than just focusing on the outcome – praise the hard work that your child put into their work. Acknowledge the way your child tackled challenges – this teaches them that they’re capable of overcoming obstacles.

Find ways to praise your child for working hard on their school work and for the effort they are showing. Even if they are significantly below their peers – they are trying. That attitude is something you want to foster in your child.

Find examples of successful people with specific learning disorders

Knowing there are successful people, including athletes, celebrities and entrepreneurs with learning and attention issues who faced similar struggles can also be a source of inspiration. For example, actor Daniel Radcliffe has said that doing stunt work for the Harry Potter movies helped him overcome some of his struggles with dyspraxia.

Key takeaways

Helping your child develop positive self-esteem is possible. Being supportive, encouraging your child to have interests outside of school and being involved in your child’s learning are all ways to improve their skills.

No child will change until the adults in their lives have the courage to change – how we interact with them, and how we teach them. Contact us about our dyslexia tutoring at Learning Works to see how we can help your child today.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

References:

• Mark E. Boyes, Bree Tebbutt, Kathryn A. Preece and Nicholas A. Badcock, Relationships between Reading Ability and Child Mental Health: Moderating Effects of Self‐Esteem, Australian Psychologist, 53, 2, (125-133), (2017).Wiley Online Library

• Emily M. Livingston, Linda S. Siegel and Urs Ribary, Developmental dyslexia: emotional impact and consequences, Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 10.1080/19404158.2018.1479975, 23, 2, (107-135), (2018).
  Crossref
• Tiina Turunen, Elisa Poskiparta and Christina Salmivalli, Are reading difficulties associated with bullying involvement?, Learning and Instruction,10.1016/j.learninstruc.2017.05.007, 52, (130-138), (2017).
  Crossref
• JONATHAN GLAZZARD, The impact of dyslexia on pupils’ self-esteem, Support for Learning, 25, 2, (63), (2010).
  Crossref

There are 5 key skills required for a child to become a reader

Unlike speaking, reading does not come easily or naturally to children. For a child to learn to read, they must be taught clearly and in a defined sequence. Correctly sounding out words (decoding) and understanding what words mean (comprehension) are the two broad skills every child needs to become a reader.

Broadly, the 5 skills a child needs are:

1. Phonemic awareness 

2. Phonics

3. Fluency

4. Vocabulary

5. Comprehension

Phonological awareness – a broad umbrella term that involves many skills

• Phonological awareness is the understanding that words can be broken down into sounds that have different meanings.
• It is made up of a group of skills and involves the ability to recognise and manipulate sounds in spoken language.
• It is a broad skill set that allows children to break up spoken words into sounds.
• Children who have phonological awareness skills can clap out the syllables in a word (hos-pi-tal)
• They can do things like rhyme “cat, sat, mat”
• They also recognise that words can have the same initial sounds such as the ‘f’ in ‘frog’ and ‘fish.’

Early phonological awareness

A child’s phonological awareness prior to starting school is one of the most important predictors of their later reading success. Phonological awareness should be a key feature of early literacy programs.

Awareness of rhythm and rhyme

Phonological skills develop in steps. Children first realise rhymes in songs and can clap along to the syllables. It also involves noticing how sounds repeat themselves and sound the same at the end (alliteration). This rhyming aspect of English is why so many young children enjoy Dr. Seuss and nursery rhymes.

Rhyming is a critical skill as it indicates that the young child has identified specific features of spoken English. Research from the past 20 years shows that rhyming games and nursery rhymes helps pre-schoolers learn sound similarities in language.

This is an important step prior to reading and understanding that squiggly drawings correspond to sounds. Rhyme has a significant role to play in emerging literacy skills.

Required phonological skills in learning to read are:

• Being able to clap beats in a word
• Recognising and making rhymes
• Identifying separate sounds in words
• Separating and manipulate separate sounds in words

1. Phonemic Awareness – the most important of the phonological skills

Your child’s phonemic awareness on entering school is the single most powerful determinant of success he/she will experience in learning to read. 

What is phonemic awareness?

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear individual sounds (phonemes) in words. Children need to be aware that spoken words are made up of sounds.

The word ‘sat’ has three phonemes – ‘/s/ /a/ /t.’ To successfully learn to read, children must learn to make a link between sounds and letters.

There are 44 phonemes in English – including sound combinations like ‘th.’

Phonemic awareness is absolutely essential in learning to read. A strong relationship has been established between phonemic skills and later reading. Even when intelligence and memory are considered, phonemic awareness is the strongest predictor of learning to read.

Important Phonemic Awareness sub-skills:

Segmenting

Segmenting and blending work together in emerging literacy. Blending sounds together to make words and segmenting words into sounds needs to be taught and practised. These skills are difficult to master, but can be achieved with explicit teaching and practice.

Blending

Blending words involves saying sounds in a sequence and also blending them together to say a word (reading). For example, using the same sounds /b/ /i/ /g/ to hear and say the word big.

These skills go together as we sound out the phonemes /bbbb/ /iiiii/ /gggg/ and then join them together to make big.

Blending and segmenting are the most important of all the phonemic skills. (National Reading Panel, 2000).

Isolation

The ability to hear each separate sound in a syllable.

For example, the first sound in the word soon is /s/ and the last sound is /n/.

Alliteration

The ability to hear the first phoneme in a syllable or word. That is, the /d/ in dad. Identifying the first phoneme is a critical step in breaking words down into their separate parts.

Letter-sound knowledge – the alphabetic principle

The understanding that spoken words are made up of sounds that are represented by letters.

Required skills

• Clapping beats in words
• Recognising rhyming patterns
• Detecting the separate sounds in words
• Separating and manipulating the separate sounds in words

2. Phonics – sounds

Phonics is the relationship between sounds and their letter symbols.

It is the process of using letters and their sounds to sound out (decode) words. 

Phonics instruction taught early is much more effective than phonics instruction introduced after the first year of school.

For example, it is knowing that ‘ea’ can make a short ‘e’ sound as in the word ‘bread,’ and using that knowledge to sound out similar words, like ‘head.’

The awareness of sounds and how they are represented in letters is an important part of learning to read. By learning the relationship between speech sounds and letter-symbols, children can use this code to read almost any word.

Letter sound knowledge = the alphabetic principle = phonics.

We start off teaching the spoken sounds of the alphabet, then introduce vowel teams or digraphs. This is when two vowels go together to form one sound – such as the /ai/ in the word ‘rain.’

Once clearly taught, phonic skills need immediate practice in reading.

We teach systematic synthetic phonics at Learning Works,which has the most research to back up its use. 

What on earth is systematic synthetic phonics?

When children learn synthetic phonics, they learn the associations between letters and their sounds in a clear sequence. Children also learn how to blend (putting sounds together to make words) and segmenting (sounding out words).

The role of sight words

Sight words refer to high frequency words that do not ‘play by the rules,’ and cannot be sounded out, so they must be recognised visually. Helping children learn high frequency words is a useful way to help children who struggle with their reading. Rapid word recognition is necessary for independent reading.

3. Fluency

Fluent reading shows a reader is confident, accurate and expressive. Fluent readers read rapidly and smoothly. Fluency is affected by familiarity with words and background knowledge of the text.

Fluency is important because it frees students to understand what they read and to read for meaning.

How to improve fluency:

1. Repeated reading with guidance:

Reading the same book again may be repetitive, but repeated reading improves word recognition, speed and fluency for your child.

2. Extensive independent reading

Good readers spend much more time reading than poor readers. Children benefit from regular reading, so great encouragement should be given to your child to read books at their reading level at home.

4. Vocabulary

Vocabulary knowledge is strongly related to reading skills and school achievement in general. The greater the vocabulary, the more chance there is that readers will recognise words as they attempt to decode them.

Young readers find it incredibly difficult to make sense of words that they have not heard before and that are not part of their vocabulary.

Building a wide and varied vocabulary is an important part of a reading program.

Children learn early words and develop their vocabulary from their parents, other adults they have contact with and family members. Readers find it very difficult to read words that are not already part of their oral vocabulary.

Beyond the importance of vocabulary development for reading, word knowledge has wider implications. It influences thinking, speaking and writing throughout a child’s life.

5. Comprehension

The final fundamental skill in your child’s reading process is comprehension – the reason for it all! Comprehension is the process where your child gains meaning from what they have read, and opens the door to a world of knowledge and creativity.

For beginner readers, the most common obstacle for comprehension is poor decoding of words first, followed by vocabulary.

Typically, reading comprehension improves as decoding skills advance. In children older than 10 years who struggle with comprehension – it becomes the most concerning focus. 

Other factors that can cause difficulties in comprehension are:

• working memory
• making inferences
• a child’s ability to stay focused.

Good readers have purpose

Good readers know why they are reading, whether it is to work out how to make slime, read a recipe, work out how a video game works or research a topic for an assignment.

Good readers actively engage in the text

Good readers think about what they are reading, ask question, search for answers, and mentally picture events relating to the text. Good readers know when they have difficulties what they are reading and know what to do when that happens. Good readers become involved in their own reading processes.

Poor readers do not typically do these things. They do not use comprehension strategies efficiently.

Comprehension is a skill that can be taught

Thankfully the evidence shows that comprehension can be improved when specific comprehension strategies are used.

Teachers can show children strategies that will help them develop the skill of identifying the purpose of reading by:

• accessing prior knowledge
• asking and answering questions as they read
• distinguishing major content from small details
• creating mental images as they read.

Tips for helping with teaching comprehension

Choose a variety of books, including short books

As adults, most of the reading we do is short newspaper articles, letters; emails; recipes, newsletters and so on. Yet much of the material that we ask our children to read is long. Including shorter paragraphs, sports stories, even materials like cartoons and jokes – are helpful.

Teach comprehension from the first stages of reading

Even before your child can sound out all words properly, you can start helping them with their comprehension. Teaching comprehension is really teaching thinking. Picture books can even be used to teach comprehension. Non-fiction picture books can convey an enormous amount of information through photographs, maps and diagrams.

Teach comprehension by reading to your children

Children beyond middle primary school still enjoy listening to stories. You can read at a level that is beyond their own reading level and expose them to more sophisticated vocabulary and language. You can model your own thinking as you determine the meaning of the text.

Important comprehension skills are: 

• Clarifying the purpose of reading
• accessing prior knowledge
• organising new information into current knowledge
• distinguishing major content from details
• using a range of strategies to help understanding, such as rereading, confusing sections, creating mental images, taking notes, summarising, using concept maps and using a dictionary or thesaurus.