I have been teaching middle school English Language Arts for 22 years.

Over the years,

I have had students who were excellent readers and many who were not. I’ve often had

concerns about those who were not good readers. Sometimes I would attribute their lack of

reading skills to low effort, or the student not reading enough, or laziness. Today I know that

there are many more factors that may have caused those students’ reading struggles because

reading issues are not always a simple problem to overcome.

As an RLL student, I was first introduced to Gough and Tunmer’s Simple View of

Reading and how a mathematical equation can be used to demonstrate the necessity for both

decoding and language comprehension in equal parts in order for successful reading

comprehension to take place. Then, I learned about the work of Dr. Hollis Scarborough and how

the diagram of his Reading Rope mapped out the way a reading brain should function. It was

as if a lightbulb had popped on in my head. In one picture, I had an understanding of why many

of my students over the years had come to me as a struggling reader. Many simply lacked the

elements of a proper reading foundation.

I believe that a child’s literacy journey begins at home. In 1983, Denny Taylor studied

middle-class families and concluded that although the parents did not directly teach their

children literacy skills, they supported and encouraged their child to participate in literacy

activities and therefore the children were successful with their literacy journey. Although I do not

believe it to be this simple, I do believe that if a child sees a parent reading and writing, it sets

an example of literacy early in that child’s life. If a parent takes the time to read to their child,

then the stage is set for the child to develop a concept of print. According to the Reading

Rockets website, “When a child is read to regularly…they begin to understand how the system

of print functions.” This means that the child will enter school with an understanding of books

and words. A family’s involvement in a child’s literacy journey provides a strong foundation for

the schools to build upon.

 A child entering into a literacy-rich classroom environment has another tool to add onto

the foundation that the family has provided. It is the responsibility of the schools to choose to

follow the science of reading and provide teachers with training and materials that are

research-proven methods for teaching reading. Students need to interact with letters,

phonemes, and words. There needs to be a connection between the text, the spelling words,

and the writing assignment. It is essential that schools follow the science that has been

presented and not skip over different parts of a reading program for the sake of test scores. We

cannot just put up a word wall and expect sight word reading to be achieved.Linnea Ehri has

stated that “The road leading to automatic word reading is not short. It is not reached by having

novice beginners practice reading words on flash cards.” (Ehri, 2022). Schools have to have

collaboration between the teachers and all stakeholders. We must work to move students

through Ehri’s phases of word reading so that students can become successful readers.

Finally, I feel that it is important for a child to find joy in reading. Every year that I have

taught students admit that they do not read over the summer or they don’t like to read at all.

When the school year is filled with reading a passage and taking a test on what was read, it

makes reading become work. Reading Rockets has a guide called “The Joy of and Power of

Reading:A Summary of Research and Expert Opinions. “ In it Dr. Anne Cunningham and Dr.

Jamie Zibulsky are quoted as saying, “The amount and frequency with which one reads, or

one’s reading volume, has profound implications for the development of a wide variety of

cognitive capabilities, including verbal ability and general knowledge.” Even if a child is reading

for fun, they are still developing and gaining word recognition and language comprehension

which will help them to succeed with reading comprehension and thus become a lifelong reader.
 Works Cited

(n.d.). The Joy and Power of Reading: A Summary of Research and Expert Opinion. Reading
Rockets. Retrieved April 13, 2024, from
https://www.readingrockets.org/sites/default/files/guide/JoyAndPowerOfReading.pdf

(n.d.). Print awareness is a child's earliest introduction to literacy. Reading Rockets. Retrieved
April 13, 2024, from https://www.readingrockets.org/reading-101/reading-and-writing-
basics/print-awareness#:~:text=Children%20with%20print%20awareness
%20understand,restaurant%20or%20warn%20of%20danger.

Ehri, L. C. (2022). What Teachers Need to Know and Do to Teach Letter-Sounds, Phonemic
Awareness, Word Reading, and Phonics. The Reading Teacher, 0(0), 1.
https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.2095

Moats, L. C. (2020). Speech to Print (3rd ed., p. 15). Paul H Brookes Publishing Co.

Tracey, D. H., & Morrow, L. M. (2012). Lenses on Reading: An Introduction to Theories and
Models (2nd ed., p. 203). The Guilford Press.