Some of the most sublime music is remarkably simple to read. Just as the balance of three simple ingredients can make your taste buds ‘pop’, a few notes organised in a particular way can become iconic themes. The opening of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and the beginning of the ‘Eastenders’ theme by Simon May are examples of this - as is ‘Jingle Bells’ - (as we are now in December). The point I want to make is that music, like nature, requires balance if it is to feel and sound good. We humans are part of the natural world and our music - varied as it is - is an important part of our natural expression. By this I mean that like other species, we use our voices to attract, bond with, (or repel) each other, socially. In the past two thousand years, music has been written to represent the full range of our social behaviours: from the battleground to the banqueting hall, from the wedding to the funeral, the shop floor to the dance floor, the gym to the sanctuary. We use music to regulate our emotions, to develop our stamina and to motivate ourselves as social groups which behave in particular ways.
We don’t need to read music to enjoy singing with friends at a party or to chant with fans at a sports stadium or to create our own music in the quiet of our own homes. However, if we want to share our own process of creating or performing music, we need to notate it (to write it down) so that we are literally ‘on the same page’ and therefore are able to collaborate more efficiently.
Can you learn to read music without an instrument?
It is very easy to learn to read music ‘without an instrument’ because our voice is our natural instrument. It is also possible to imagine a sound - in the same way that one can imagine a colour or a shape. Musicians can ‘read’ a sheet of music and use the ‘inner ear’ to hear the sounds. When we read a book, our inner voice reads the words in a similar way.
A debate raged for a long time in music education around the idea of ‘sound before symbol’. Some people believed that children were a ‘blank slate’ and needed to learn musical ‘sounds’ before they saw musical symbols in notated form. Others argued that children knew songs before they even started school, and could a manage a more demanding approach such as, ‘sound with symbol’. Fortunately, the era in which ‘sound before symbol’ dominated is now over and teachers can teach musical notation without being regarded as deviant or backward looking. Expensive musical instruments are not necessary for learning to read music. Each child’s voice is a priceless musical instrument, and every child can benefit by developing its use.
Music for health and well-being
Humans have been using music for self-expression for thousands of years. It has been used by people to manipulate perceptions of potential competitors or predators. In situations where people have felt threatened, singing together has helped them to feel strong and brave. Sea shanties are an example of this and in traditional societies people sing through the night to make themselves appear ‘larger’ to predatory animals. To regulate and balance the nervous system, people all around the world soothe themselves through music when they are dealing with grief, using elegies, dirges and laments. When parents comfort infants and young children they sing lullabies to them and also provide a rocking motion, which can ‘lull’ them to sleep.
The human voice can signal alarm through a blood-curdling scream, but it can also provide comfort through well chosen words. Musical expression mirrors this wide range of functions, but it goes much further than language by making use of the exhaling breath. Manipulating the slow exhale, humans have discovered how to shape the voice into elaborate patterns. We can hear this particularly in gospel and operatic traditions - where the feel of improvisation involves an outpouring of emotion. Is it possible to notate these beautiful elaborations? Yes they can be transcribed, but their beauty lies in their spontaneity and the feeling that they emerged from an impulse in a moment of inspiration.
Why do some people struggle to read music?
This is a great question. Given that I’m arguing for music as the natural ‘song’ of our species, why would this natural behaviour flow more easily through some people than others?
Reading as a skill is quite a recent addition to our repertoire of social behaviours. Music and language are natural to us and are ‘hard-wired’ into our nervous system, whereas reading is not - but we are able to learn to read. This skill is well-practised as humans have been using various signs and symbols to communicate for tens of thousands of years.
The main difference between reading music and reading words is that the rhythmic patterns in music are relatively inflexible, whereas printed language is rhythmically malleable. A three word phrase in a printed conversation, such as, ‘I don’t know’ can be reinterpreted by adapting the rhythmic qualities to convey a full range of emotions from exasperation to mystification. When we read, we are guide by the context of the passage. The context would help the reader to identify the most appropriate rhythm for the words. In this respect, rhythm in language reflects context as much as it does the underlying grammatical structure of the sentence.
When reading music, the prescribed rhythmic element reflects the musical context and style. A march, a samba and a ballad each have their own distinctive rhythmic feel. Repeated patterns need to be rhythmically consistent to sound ‘catchy’ or convincing. In this way, rhythm is the stylised and ritualised aspect of music and it can even be hypnotic. This quality in rhythm is the reason it is used by people as a motivational tool, or for self-regulation when the nervous system feels dysregulated.
When reading music, some people struggle to process the rhythmic element. The same people may struggle to move in time with the beat, but this is certainly not an insurmountable problem. It is a question of placing an emphasis on feeling the rhythm first, and then reading the rhythm, once the feeling has been established. This is not always easy because people sometimes feel anxious and believe that they are not ‘rhythmical’ enough.
Children who struggle to read printed language, have learned to read simple musical notation with ease and have responded very well to the Rhythm for Reading Programme. There is a remarkable shift in these children when they realise that by reading musical notation as a group, and through a very profound experience of well-being, belonging and togetherness that this brings, their reading fluency and comprehension also improve.
Our very simple introduction to musical notation involves:
working with music that is rhythmically balanced,
an atmosphere that is informal,
music-making that is joyful.
How to long should it take to learn to read music?
It takes only a few minutes to learn to read simple musical notation. Even children with very weak language reading skills can achieve fluent reading of musical notation in only ten minutes. We focus on integrating each sensory aspect of reading music: the children’s eyes, ears and voices. Children are able to bring their attention into sharper focus when they read musical notation because the rhythmical element, which for them represents emotional safety, has been addressed through our highly structured approach.
If you have enjoyed reading about musical notation…
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Discover more about the impact of Rhythm for Reading on children’s reading development in these Case Studies
These posts are also about musical notation
A Simple View of Reading Musical Notation Here are some very traditional views on teaching musical notation - and the Rhythm for Reading way which avoids loading the children with too much information at once.
Fluency, Phonics and Musical Notes Presenting the sound with the symbol is as important in learning to read musical notation, as it is in phoneme-to-grapheme correspondence. Fluent reading for all children is the main teaching goal.
Empowering children to read musical notation fluently The ‘tried and tested’ method of adapting musical notation for children who struggle to process information is astonishingly, to add more markings to the page. Rhythm for Reading offers a simple solution that allows all children to read ‘the dots’ fluently, even in the first ten minute session.
If curriculum lies at the heart of education, it is reading comprehension that enables the vibrant health and vitality of learning. If the curriculum is narrow, the heart of education is constricted, pressured and strained. Without the breadth and rigour of a curriculum that encourages expression and criticality, there may be too little in terms of intrinsic motivation to inspire effective reading comprehension.
Growth mindset, resilience and perseverance cannot compensate for a narrow and impoverished curriculum, nor can they motivate children to want to engage with learning. However, a rich and rewarding curriculum can encourage children’s natural curiosity, drive and self-sustaining motivation, which can bring focus, enjoyment and depth of engagement to reading comprehension.
If a child cannot read, they will not be able to access the curriculum and this has far-reaching consequences not only for the individual, but for all of us as well. A generation of motivated and enabled children who access and enjoy everything that their education has to offer without the limitations of fragile reading, will adapt and adjust with greater confidence to whatever the future holds.
Reading comprehension offers everyone enriched opportunities to develop their aspirations, talents and interests. Indeed, it is through reading comprehension that pupils become lifelong learners and gravitate towards the topics that most interest them. As a starting point, children must engage with different types of reading - fiction, non-fiction and poetry, and discover the many different styles of writing. Engaging with a wide range of reading material empowers children to take their first steps on their future path and to expand their vocabulary. Up to ninety per cent of this is encountered in books rather than day-to-day speech.
Some reading experts have said that a lack of requisite vocabulary or background knowledge can limit a child’s ability to access a text. This mismatch between the text and the child’s prior experiences does not happen in a vacuum and need not limit a child’s education. Lacking the vocabulary or the knowledge to access a passage of text, a child must be encouraged to fill in the gaps at school.
Outstanding schools that have a large proportion of pupils with English as an additional language (EAL), address this issue of a limited vocabulary by immersing the children in ‘enriched’ environments. Different topics that do not come up in day-to-day conversation such as space exploration, deep sea diving and mountaineering, are exciting for children and these schools use corridor spaces as places where children can sit in a ‘spaceship’ or a ‘submarine’ or a ‘safari jeep’ and listen to information about the topic, use word banks, hold relevant books and enjoy the illustrations.
What is reading comprehension?
Reading comprehension is not only an understanding of the text - this could be gained from the relatively static process of looking at illustrations or chapter headings. It is a more dynamic process that integrates information as the text is read. This happens when we hear spoken language: we follow along and reciprocate in real time. Reading comprehension is like a conversation, in the sense that it is a social invitation to extract meaning from what is written. If it does not engage the child socially, the text is unlikely to be understood.
What is the most important key to good comprehension?
When we are reading, the most important key to good comprehension in my view is the social connection with the words. Children make this connection at home before they start school, having been read to by parents or siblings or other caregivers since infancy. These adults will have built social cues such as tone of voice and rhythm into their child’s earliest experiences of books. These children also arrive at school with other social assets such as a strong vocabulary and a positive attitude towards reading.
Conversely, children with a more limited vocabulary may need to build their social connection with reading from scratch and they may also feel anxious about learning for any number of reasons. For them, the usual cues of social engagement such as tone of voice and rhythm are missing from the ‘marks on the page’. So a child with a limited vocabulary and little experience of being read to needs to discover for themselves that reading is primarily a social act before their reading comprehension can develop traction.
What is punctuation?
Young children learn through play. This involves a sense of heightened arousal as well as social engagement. Even a child playing on their own will be vocalising a narrative of some kind, involving specific sounds and patterns. Punctuation offers an opportunity to engage with a child’s instinct for social engagement and meaning-making through play. Exaggerated voices, list-building, sudden sounds, humour and suspense are invitations to play with words. In the Rhythm for Reading programme we occasionally use a word, purely for fun, at a rhythmically important moment in the music. One such word is, ‘Splash!’ This word marks the end of a very up-beat tune about dolphins and the children love to celebrate this final moment with pure joy. Their social engagement and their playfulness are central to the entire programme, so reading becomes an act of social meaning-making, regardless of the development of their vocabulary.
At the beginning of a child’s literacy adventures at school, conventions of using punctuation are taught in the context of meaning-making and involve the correct use of capital letters, full stops, question marks, commas, exclamation marks, two types of apostrophes and speech marks.
Then other punctuation marks are introduced, such as colons, semi-colons and brackets as a way to enhance meaning-making. Finally, the other conventions involving quotation marks, dashes and hyphens can be added as the child embarks on writing that involves more informality, unusual language, citations and compound words.
Moving beyond conventions and back to social engagement, it is important to consider the ‘state’ of the child. An anxious child with a limited vocabulary will be overloaded emotionally and grapple with word-by-word processing. Their working memory may not have sufficient resources to manage punctuation. A withdrawn child, on the other hand, may have insufficient motivation to engage with reading or writing. By addressing their ‘state’ through a rhythm-based approach, these social-emotional learning blocks can, and do, shift.
Why is punctuation important in reading comprehension?
Punctuation is a shorthand that guides the reader to recognise familiar types of meaning-making. A series of commas tells the reader that they are going to make a meaningful list. A question mark and an exclamation mark invite the reader to ‘play’ with the concept of ‘an unknown’ or ‘novelty’ respectively. Both are motivational to the child’s instinct for social engagement - their natural curiosity. The full stop is an important rhythmic cue that defines grammatical structures that can stand alone. In a conversation, this could be an opportunity for facial expression or a nod of the head which acknowledges the social dimension of meaning making. In terms of reading aloud, the reader’s prosody - the rise and fall of their voice, shows that the information unit has completed a rhythmic cycle.
In a conversation, the rise and fall of the voice, as well as the dimensions of rhythmic flow create the socially engaged cues of meaning-making and also support reading fluency. These cues are exaggerated by parents when they talk to their young children. Defining utterances in this way creates a structural blueprint for language and social engagement that we as social beings use when we interact. Similarly, conventions of punctuation correspond to these same structures that infants learn in the first eight months of life, as they acquire their home language. For this reason, children intuitively understand punctuation marks when they read with fluency, provided they are socially receptive to and engaged by the content of they are reading.
Why do children struggle with punctuation?
Punctuation is the dynamic part of reading that organises individual words into grammatical chunks and ultimately, meaningful messages. It functions as a counterpart to grammatical awareness because punctuation as a symbolic system is processed ‘top down’ from the conscious to subconscious, whereas grammatical awareness, which was established in infancy is processed bottom-up, from subconscious to conscious. It’s important to recognise that conscious processing is relatively slow, whereas subconscious processing usually occurs at lightning speed. Children who struggle with reading, and have not integrated these different processing speeds, experience reading as a kind of rhythmic block, often referred to as a ‘bottleneck’. Although many academics have described this as a problem with processing print, in my experience this ‘bottleneck’ is more related to a child’s subconscious levels of social engagement as well as their ‘state’ in terms of their perceptions, attitudes, emotions and level of confidence.
The Rhythm for Reading programme addresses the so-called ‘bottleneck’. Changing a child’s ‘state’ involves ‘neuroplasticity’ or ‘rewiring’ unhelpful ‘habits of mind’ and it is possible to achieve this through regular, short-bursts of learning using high intensity, repetitive and rhythmical actions.
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If you enjoyed this post about reading comprehension and punctuation, keep reading!
The comma, according to Lynn Truss, clarifies the grammatical structure of a sentence and points to literary qualities such as rhythm, pitch, direction, tone and pace.
The sentence as a whole and coherent unit is vibrant, elastic and flexible with its meaning perceived not through the synthesis of its many phonemes, but through its overall rhythm and structure.
Just as a heartbeat is organic, supporting life in each part of the body from the smallest cells to the largest organs, rhythm in reading reaches systemically into every part of language. Like a heartbeat it spreads both upwards, supporting the structure of phrases and sentences and also downwards, energising and sharpening the edges of syllables and phonemes. Rhythm therefore brings the different grain sizes of language into alignment with each other.
All children from all backgrounds need to learn to read fluently so that they can enjoy learning and fully embrace the curriculum offered by their school. A key challenge for schools is identifying an appropriate intervention that effectively supports reading fluency - a necessary part of a coherently planned, ambitious and inclusive curriculum that should meet the needs of all children.
The children who lag behind their classmates in terms of fluency are not a homogenous group. Although time-consuming and costly, one-on-one teaching is essential for those who struggle the most. However, short, intensive bursts of rhythm-based activity (Long, 2014) have been found to give a significant boost in reading fluency in the context of a small group intervention. This approach is an efficient use of resources as it supports those children who struggle with fluency in ten weekly sessions of only ten minutes.
An evidence-based, rigorous approach to the teaching and assessment of reading fluency leads to increases in children’s confidence and enjoyment in reading. Whilst logic might suggest that the difficulty level of the reading material is a barrier to the development of reading fluency, manipulating the difficulty level of the text does not directly address the underlying issue.
Reading fluency involves not only letter to sound correspondence, but also social reciprocity through the medium of print and therefore the orchestration of several brain networks. The social mechanisms of a child’s reading become audible when the expressive and prosodic qualities in their voice start to appear. This is why a more holistic child-centred perspective is helpful - it allows children to experience learning to read as a playful, rather than a pressured experience.
The pressure felt by children with poor reading fluency arises because of inattention and distractibility, as well as variability in their alertness, which pull them off-task. Compared with their classmates, these children are either more reactive and volatile in social situations, or quieter, and more withdrawn. Our rhythm-based approach uses small group teaching to reset these behaviours, by supporting these children into a more regulated state. Working with the children in this way helps them to adapt to the activities, to adjust their state and to regulate their attention within a highly structured social situation.
What are the key components of reading fluency?
Different frameworks describe fluency in different ways. From a rhythm-based perspective, the components of expression, flow and understanding are the most important. There is one more to consider - social engagement with the author - the person who wrote the printed words. The extent to which the child reads with expression, flow and understanding reflects the degree of social engagement while reading. One of the ways to accomplish this is to free the volume and range of the voice by encouraging a deeper involvement with the text. It’s easy to achieve this in books that invite readers to exaggerate the enunciation of expressive or onomatopoeic words.
Flow in reading fluency
The flowing quality of fluent reading shows that the child has aligned the words on the page with the underlying grammatical structure of the sentences. This sounds more complicated than it actually is and doesn’t need to be taught, because children activate these structures in the first eight months of life, when they acquire their home language. Accessing these deep structures during reading enables them to feel the natural rhythm in the ebb and flow of the language. However, there are many different styles of both spoken and printed language, as each one may have a different rhythmic feel. Feeling the rhythmic qualities of printed language is inherently rewarding and motivating for both children and adults: it allows the mind to drop into a deeper level of engagement and achieve an optimal and self-sustaining flow state.
Understanding in reading fluency
There is one prerequisite! Understanding printed language requires motivation to engage. Let’s call this the ‘why’. It involves a degree of familiarity with the context and a basic knowledge of vocabulary, which are both necessary to stimulate the involvement of long term memory, as well as a desire to become involved in the narrative. Many books introduce us to new concepts, vocabulary and contexts, but the ‘why’ must act as a bridge between what is already known and the, as yet, unknown. This ‘why’ compels us to read on.
About the ‘Why’
In a conversation there is a natural alignment between expression, flow and understanding. The energy in the speaker’s voice may signal a wide range of expressive qualities and emotions which help the listener to understand the ‘why’ behind the narrative, as well as keeping them engaged and encouraging reciprocation. The ‘why’ in the narrative is arguably the most important element in communication as it conveys a person’s attitude and intention in sharing important information about challenges or changes in everyday life and the experiences of individual characters - the staple features of many storylines or plots.
‘Handa’s Surprise’ by Eileen Browne
So, in Eileen Browne’s beautiful telling of ‘Handa’s Surprise,’ a humorous book about a child’s journey to her best friend’s village, the reader learns about the names of the fruits in her basket, the animals that she encounters and becomes curious to learn what happens to Handa as she walks alone in southwestern Kenya.
It isn’t necessary for young children to know the names of the fruits, such as ‘guava’, ‘tangerine’ or ‘passion fruit’. Despite the irregularities of words such as ‘fruit’ and ‘guava’ (and the need to segment ‘tangerine’ with care to avoid ‘tang’) children understand the story, having been introduced to the new (unknown) vocabulary in the (known) context of ‘fruit’. The child’s long term memory offers up the background knowledge of ‘fruit’ as a broad category, but adds the names of the new fruits under the categories: ’food-related’ and ‘fruit’ for use in future situations in their own life.
The new vocabulary in the story enriches children’s knowledge of fruit, but the ‘why’ of this tale is the bigger question… Will Handa complete her journey safely? Empathy for, and identification with Handa elicits, (subconsciously), an increase in the reader’s curiosity and brings further focus to the mechanisms of reading fluency. Once each new word has been assimilated into the category of ‘fruit’, reading fluency is self-sustaining and driven by plot development and empathy for the main character. Having read this story (and many others) with children, I have become aware that reading fluency must become closely aligned with the rule-based patterns of grammar, as these enable irregular words such as ‘fruit’ and ‘guava’ to be quickly assimilated into the flow of the story.
‘Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll
A more famous and exaggerated example of this effect is Lewis Carroll’s ‘Jabberwocky’. Many of the novel ‘words’ invented by Carroll for this poem must be assimilated into the reader’s vocabulary. The process is much the same for made up, as it is for unfamiliar words. Long term memory offers up categories of animals and their behaviour, relative to the evocative sounds of ‘words’ such as, ‘slithy’, ‘frumious’ and ‘frabjous’.
The grammatical structure of each line of verse is kept relatively simple, allowing the narrative to feel highly predictable, as it is clearly supported by the regular metre. The repetitive feel of the ABAB rhyme structure guides the reader to use the conventions of grammar in anticipating, and thus engaging with the unfolding, yet somewhat opaque narrative.
Together, the features of repetition, rhythm and predictability strengthen coherence, so that the words are chunked together in patterns based on the statistically learned probabilities of spoken language. Deeper grammatical structures that sit beneath these rhythmic patterns are logic-based: they offer up meaning and interpretation based on micro-cues of nuanced emphasis, intensity and duration within the fluent stream of language, whether spoken or read.
Why is reading fluency important?
Reading fluency is important for three reasons and these also act as drivers of motivation and learning.
Reading fluency brings the rhythmic patterns of language into alignment with deeper grammatical structures that are necessary for meaning-making.
These structures - which are probabilistic - bring into awareness the most likely next words, phrases, and developments in the story. These are not based on pure guesswork, but reflect the reader’s understanding of the genre, the context and text-specific cues.These include appraising the shape of the word, and automaticity in recognising the shapes of letters (graphemes), words and their corresponding sounds (phonemes). These cues are necessary, but not sufficient to orchestrate fluent reading.
Reading fluency supports children as they expand their vocabulary.
The majority of studies show that:
A strong relationship exists between vocabulary size and social background,
Up to ninety per cent of vocabulary is not encountered in everyday speech, but in reading,
Vocabulary is particularly important for text comprehension,
Children’s books tend to include more unfamiliar words than are found in day-to-day speech.
The first two mechanisms work together symbiotically to anticipate, adapt and adjust to what is coming up next in printed language, similar to when we hear someone speaking. The third mechanism changes a child’s perspective on life. Teachers and parents need to expose children to printed language, including the unfamiliar and orthographically irregular words, simply because it is through reading fluency that these words are assimilated into a child’s lexicon.
How do you measure reading fluency?
Listening is key to measuring reading fluency. If a child practises a sentence by repeating it at least three times, there should be a natural shift in the level of engagement. In a child struggling with reading fluency, four attempts may be necessary. Here is an example of the process of refinement through repetition.
A beard hoped up to my wind….ow.
A b….ir…d h…o….p…p….ed up to my w…in, win…..d…..ow.
A b…ear…ir…d, b..ird, BIRD…. hopped up to my wind…ow (long pause) window.
A bird hopped up to my window.
The pivotal moment was when ‘b-ird’ became BIRD. This would have sounded louder because the child’s voice would have become clearer once the (known) category ‘bird’ was activated in their long term memory and the meaning behind the word was understood. Long term memory offered up the strong likelihood of ‘hopped’ in relation to the category ‘bird’ and this helped the child to extrapolate that the final word must be a ‘thing’ to hop towards. This was not guesswork, nor was it an exclusive reliance upon phoneme-grapheme correspondence, but an alignment of 1. long term memory (including probabilistic language processing) with 2. visual recognition of letters and knowledge of the sounds they represent (including a degree of automaticity).
Reading fluency can be measured in terms of engagement, expression, flow and understanding and in the Rhythm for Reading programme we specialise in transforming children’s reading at this deep (subconscious) level. Children move from relying on unreliable decoding strategies (because the English language doesn’t follow the regularities of letter to sound correspondence), through to full alignment with the language structures that underpin their everyday speech. Once this shift has taken place, the children are able to enjoy interacting with books and they also grow in confidence in other areas of learning and social development.
We have helped many hundreds of children to engage with reading in this natural and fluent way using our rhythm-based approach, which is delivered in only ten weekly sessions of ten minutes. There are almost a thousand case studies confirming the relationship between our programme and transformations in reading fluency. Click the link to read about selected case studies.
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If reading fluency is of interest, you may enjoy these posts
Schools ensure that all children become confident fluent readers, so that every child can access a broad and balanced curriculum. Fluent reading underpins a love of reading and is an important skill for future learning and employment and it also enables children to apply their knowledge and skills with ease.
Prosody is closely associated with skilled reading, being integral to fluency and a predictor of achievement in reading accuracy and comprehension. Prosody is not taught, but it is a naturally occurring feature of competent reading. The words on the page may be arranged in horizontal lines, but a good reader transcends the visual appearance of the words, allowing them to take on a natural, flexible and speech-like quality.
Many teachers and head teachers have remarked on the improvement in their pupils’ reading fluency, so it seemed important to try to capture what has been happening. Of course, there are different ways to define and to measure reading fluency, but here is a snapshot of what we found when using two types of assessment.
References
Eileen Browne (1995) Handa’s Surprise, Walker Books and Subsidiaries.
Long, Marion. “‘I can read further and there’s more meaning while I read’: An exploratory study investigating the impact of a rhythm-based music intervention on children’s reading.” Research Studies in Music Education 36.1 (2014): 107-124.
Obviously, it is important that ALL children learn to read well. However, the lowest attaining twenty per cent of children are less likely to become confident, fluent readers. As a consequence, schools must monitor the development of pupils’ progress in phonics.
It is essential to identify any pupil who is falling behind the pace of the school’s phonics programme and to put effective support in place, but the quality of such support must withstand scrutiny. A certain amount of cognitive bias has been identified and found to disadvantage the lowest attaining children. Much of this is centred around verbal interactions - ie the spoken words between teacher and pupil. These verbalisations can be heard as criticism of the pupil and bias has also been found in the subtle manner in which expectations of the pupil are voiced.
In the teaching of early reading, communicative approaches are considered to have significantly positive effects. It is therefore important that when teachers are engaged in modelling language and reasoning, extending vocabulary and drawing attention to letters and sounds, they guard against cognitive bias, particularly in schools that serve disadvantaged communities. Given that unconscious bias can influence the way a child learns, it is important to understand how the emotional cues or ‘tone’ of the voice intersect with the human nervous system in the teaching of early reading.
Image credit - Michal Parzuchowski via Unsplash
What is phonemic awareness and how important are long and short vowels?
Phonemic awareness and decoding are essential for the development of reading. After all, as research has shown - guessing words from their context is only accurate for ten to twenty per cent of the time. As the foundation of a systematic approach to the teaching of reading, phonemic awareness and the alphabetic principle need to be explicitly taught until they become automatic.
The principle of automaticity is key to the development of good reading. When the reader has internalised the correspondence between letters and their sounds, the cognitive load lightens and frees up capacity in working memory, as well as cognitive attention. As availability of both memory and attention expands, the reader engages with the text with increasing fluency, ease and understanding.
However, as each word consists of a unique combination of phonemes and each syllable is characterised by a vowel sound, awareness of the differences between long and short vowels can make or break the development of phonemic awareness. Why is this? Well, vowel sounds are particularly interesting because they carry information about the meaning assigned to a word, and in everyday speech, they also carry the speaker’s tone of voice, as well as their attitude or intention towards the listener, including any cognitive bias.
Arguably, if the sounds of vowels are associated in the mind of the child with feelings of confrontation, then the vowel sound may trigger an anxiety-inducing response that does not support learning.
What is the vagus nerve?
The vagus nerve relays sensory information that helps us to perceive the physiological signals that inform the brain of our internal state. As a cranial nerve, it connects the brain with almost every organ of the body and although the information travels in multiple directions, the majority of it flows upwards from the body to the brain. Certain parts of the vagus nerve are important for speech and are discussed below.
The vagus nerve descends on the left and the right of the neck. It innervates both sides of the larynx before it drops down into each side of the chest and then passes back up into the neck and into the larynx. On this ascending pathway the vagus nerve innervates all the remaining intrinsic muscles of the larynx, which are responsible for opening and closing the vocal folds. The nature of this return journey may account for why these branches of the vagus are known as the recurrent laryngeal nerve.
The larynx
The larynx (or voice box) has three important functions. One is to prevent us from inhaling food or liquids. Another is to support breathing. The third is to produce sound through speaking, singing, shouting and screaming. The muscles of the larynx adjust the length and tension of the vocal folds (vocal cords) and this is how people adjust the tone and pitch of the voice, though the nervous system usually takes care of this for us subconsciously.
The tone of voice can be modified to portray a wide range of emotions such as anger, fear, surprise, sadness and joy. In stressful situations, chronic tension in the larynx can arise and can weaken the coordination between the muscles controlling the vocal folds.
The job of the cricothyroid muscles is to tense the vocal cords, resulting in more forceful and higher pitch speech. This is the only muscle that is innervated by the superior (upper) laryngeal branch of the vagus nerve. This muscle fundamentally changes the main acoustic of the sound, in terms of the emotional content and the contrasts in tone.
The more gentle sounds of the human voice are produced by the muscles innervated by the recurrent laryngeal nerve, after it has travelled through the chest area. These muscles include:
The thyroarytenoid muscles, which relax tension and shorten the vocal folds.
The posterior cricoarytenoid muscles, which widen the space between the vocal cords and pull them away from the midline of the body.
According to research findings by Arnal and colleagues (2015), human screams exploit a unique acoustic property. They display a ‘roughness’ that activates not only the brain’s auditory system, but also the amygdala, a deep brain structure that is involved in processing fear and danger.
A scream is a long vowel sound, ‘ah’, characterised by its high pitch and initial loudness. The researchers showed that a scream is distinctive (when compared to high pitched singing) because of its rough rather than harmonious qualities. It is the roughness that produces the fear-inducing response in listeners. However, context is key. In school playgrounds, under adult supervision, many children let off steam by running fast and screaming as they chase each other. This is a healthy use of the voice to release emotion in a playful way. A fast-paced and playful environment with a lot of emotional release reinforces active coping strategies and builds resilience as well as social connection.
The vagus nerve, which ascends through the vocal folds, and into the brain innervates two areas that are important for managing emotional and physiological pain: the insula and the anterior cingulate cortex. Given that our tone of voice can indicate how we feel in our social environment, and how we feel influences how we learn, how might this information apply to the way we approach vowels in the teaching of early reading? Let’s first consider vowel sounds in the context of phonemic awareness.
How are long and short vowels related to the vagus nerve?
The emotion in the voice is related to the variability of vowel sounds as well as vowel length and impacts the vagus nerve in the following ways.
Social engagement and learning
Given that the majority of our learning (via peers, experts, books or online media) is social, it’s interesting to know that the ventral part of the vagus nerve allows us to feel comfortable whilst we are socially engaged. This part of the vagus nerve is located towards the front of the body and opens up the heart space, allowing us to breathe more deeply. This is how the vagus nerve supports our ability to communicate easily with others. It ensures that we feel regulated and can handle what’s happening. In this socially engaged state, the voice shows variation in rhythm and pitch. An extreme example of this can be heard in the exaggerated rise and fall of the voice, as well as the lengthening of vowel sounds when parents interact with their young children. These particular sounds encourage feelings of safety and achieve an ideal environment, particularly for acquiring the child’s first language. In the majority of socially relaxed situations, people smile with their eyes and produce a calm friendly voice with warmth in both longer and shorter vowel sounds.
Confrontational behaviour and learning
When people feel threatened, learning continues as part of an active coping strategy, but this is a different kind of learning. There’s tension in the shoulders and the sides of the ribs are constricted. The jaw may be clenched and speaking will feel reactive and sound lower in pitch. The vagus nerve enables these changes by allowing the heartbeat to pick up pace as a reaction to a perceived threat or stressor. Learning therefore takes place in a competitive rather than an exploratory context. There’s potential for the individual to overcome the threat through assertiveness. There can be confrontation, criticism and aggression in the voice, as the rise and fall of a socially engaged voice has been replaced by a more defensive tone, with a distinctive roughness in the vowel sounds. Assertiveness may or may not prove to be a successful strategy, but either way, the behaviour and outcome are appraised and stored as a memory.
Defeated behaviour, dysregulated behaviour and learning
If a situation is intolerable, feelings of flight and anxiety increase arousal levels and produce shallow, fast breathing and a relatively high pitched, faster pace of speaking. A low-level sense of dread limits focus, absorbs attention and constrains learning, whereas the most passive coping strategy of all involves the dorsal branch of the vagal nerve, which decreases arousal by freezing behaviour to such an extent that the person’s own voice feels unavailable and socialising is unimaginable. Learning is impossible in this state, as the body is too busy conserving energy: it is difficult to imagine doing anything, but survive.
Concluding thoughts
Given that we are ‘wired’ to learn and to be social, it’s essential to understand the importance of tone of voice. The tone of voice can trigger a response from the vagal nerve and if the voice is perceived as threatening, this will impact learning. The teaching of vowel sounds in a phonics programme must be undertaken with awareness of the role of the voice, particularly in terms of tone quality. Any abrasion in the voice is likely to impact learning in very young children. So, let’s avoid an abrasive vocal tone in the teaching of reading and instead, allow ourselves to engage in that melodious sing-song voice that children find reassuring, because this signals safety for ALL children during the teaching of early reading.
A child with sensitivity to rhythm is attuned to the onsets of the smallest sounds of language. In terms of rhythmic precision, the front edge of the sound is also the point at which the rhythmic boundary occurs. Children with a well-developed sensitivity to rhythm are also attuned to phonemes and are less likely to conflate the sounds.
Vowel sounds carry interesting information such as emotion, or tone of voice. They are longer (in milliseconds) and without defined edges. Now imagine focussing on the onset of those syllables. The consonants are shorter (in milliseconds), more sharply defined and more distinctive, leaving plenty of headspace for cognitive control. If consonants are prioritised, information flows easily and the message lands with clarity.
There is no doubt that the foundation of a good education, with reading at its core, sets children up for later success. The importance of phonics is enshrined in education policy in England and lies at the heart of teaching children to become confident, fluent readers. However, young children are not naturally predisposed to hearing the smallest sounds of language (phonemes). Rather, they process speech as syllables strung together as meaningful phrases.
Reference
Arnal LH, Flinker A, Kleinschmidt A, Giraud AL, Poeppel D. Human screams occupy a privileged niche in the communication soundscape. Curr Biol. 2015 Aug 3;25(15):2051-6. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.06.043. Epub 2015 Jul 16. PMID: 26190070; PMCID: PMC4562283.
Many people think that reading musical notation is difficult. To be fair, many methods of teaching musical notation over-complicate an incredibly simple system. It’s not surprising that so many people believe musical notes are relics of the past and are happy to let them go - but isn’t this like saying books are out of date and that reading literature is antiquated? In homes all around the world, parents of all nationalities can teach children as young as three to read musical notation, as this has for a very long time become an internationally standardised system. In many schools in all parts of the UK, I’ve taught children at risk of failing the phonics screening check to read simple musical notation fluently in ten minutes. There are distinct differences in my approach and I’m sharing these here.
What is musical notation?
Musicians refer to musical notation as ‘the dots’!
These little marks written on five lines show musicians not only the musical details, but also the bigger picture - they can see the character and the style of the music by the way ’the dots’ are grouped together. Imagine you are looking at a map of your local area - you’d be able to see where buildings and streets are more densely or sparsely grouped together.
This is the skill that musicians use when they look at a page of music - it’s simply a convention for mapping musical sounds.
When was the first music written down?
Early evidence of this practice of notating music can be traced back to its archaic roots in Homer (8th century B.C.E.) Terpander of Lesbos (c. 675 B.C.E.) and Pindar (5th century B.C.E.). However, following the fall of Athens in the 5th century B.C.E., there was a break with tradition. Aristoxenus (c.320 B.C.E..) documented the cultural revolution that had taken place - the rejection of all traditional classical forms. Traditional music had been replaced by -
a preference for sound effects imitating nature
free improvisation
a new fashion for lavishly embellished singing
The rejection of the old ways, including the ‘old music’ appeared to allow space for a new level of freedom. The new emphasis on individual expression rejected:
traditional tuning systems and forms of both music and poetry
being part of something greater than oneself
creating something that would endure.
Musical notation, as the history shows, is less related to individual expression and more to the concept of building a musical canon - a collection of forms, styles and conventions, which are best represented in certain iconic ‘classical’ works. As such, there’s an emphasis on a standardisation of musical language, one that is mathematically well-proportioned, enduring and able to be passed on from generation to generation.
The most ancient system of musical notation, ‘neumes’ in ‘sacred western music’ was used between the 8th and 14th centuries, (C.E.) and was built upon Greek terminology. Most interestingly, the use of the apostrophe /‘/ ‘aspirate’ in the ‘neumes’ survives in today’s musical notation and shows when a musician takes a new breath or makes a slight pause. Part of the standardisation of musical notation has been that it is written on five lines.
What are the five lines called?
These lines, called ‘the stave’, show musicians whether the sounds are higher or lower in frequency (pitch). To take an extreme example, the squeak of a mouse is a high frequency sound (high pitch), and to show this frequency, the dots would be written far above the stave. Conversely, the rumble of a lorry has a low frequency sound (low pitch); to map this sound accurately, the dots would be written far below the stave. Extending the stave in this way involves writing what musicians call ‘ledger lines’.
In a central position within the spectrum of these very high and very low pitched frequencies, we have the pitch range of the human voice. Consider the sounds of the lowest male voice and the highest female voice and it’s clear that the spectrum of frequencies is still very wide. To accommodate this broad range of sounds, musicians write a different ‘clef’ sign at the extreme left of the stave. There are four ‘clef’ signs in common use: the treble (named after the unbroken boys’ voice), alto, tenor and the bass; these clefs are used by singers and instrumentalists alike. The two most commonly used are the bass and treble clefs.
The bass clef indicates that the pitch range is suited to lower frequency sounds, matching the range of broken male voices.
The treble clef at the extreme left of the stave indicates that the pitch range matches that of children’s and female voices.
What is the line between the notes called?
In the early 1600s, for reasons of clearer musical organisation, vertical lines started to appear in notation, which divided the music into ‘bars’ (UK) or ‘measures’ (US). For the most part, the number of beats is standardised in each bar. Keep reading to find out more about the beats!
Many of the most catchy pieces of Western music rely on simple repetition of short patterns as well as predictable beats. We perceive these to fall naturally into a regular grouping, and most melodies fall into a pattern of two, three or four beats, spread across the piece or song. Here are two recognisable examples, the first in three time, the second in four time:
God save the King (UK) or God Bless America (US)
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.
Of course, we all know music that’s more complex than this. For example, traditional dance styles from all around the world are often more elaborate and combine rhythmic groupings of faster-paced patterns such as:
2s with 3s
4s with 3s
4s with 5s
Although these occasionally appeared in iconic classical works of the 19th century such as Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition,’ and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, they became more commonplace in the early 20th century. These slightly irregular groupings create subtle feelings of asymmetry that is as delightful to the ear as new taste sensations are to the palette.
If there are five beats, as in ‘Take Five’ by Dave Brubeck, then after each group of five beats a vertical line shows the end of the ‘measure’ (US) also known as the ‘barline’ (UK). The bars or measures are units of time that show the organisation of the beats in the music.
Generally, ‘the dots’ and rhythms show the structure of a piece, or how it ‘works’ musically. In performance, a musician would maintain a consistent rhythmic ‘feel’. So these two essential notational elements offer a framework of predictability, which the musician reads, understands and feels:
the number of beats in each bar
the grouping and rhythm of the beats and notes within these bars
However, too much emphasis on the predictability and the vertical organisation of the beats can produce an effect that is wooden and robotic. Although a strict sense of rhythm and pulse (the beat) is essential for successful music making, the actual phrasing of these is more horizontal and somewhat elastic in feel.
This can work by making more of the musical tension, by stretching it in time and intensity, as well as making it louder and moving forward; it can help the listener wait in anticipation for the all-important climax and moment of release. This is incredibly effective at all levels of music making, and is known to us all in the more familiar context of telling jokes and stories, where the pacing is as important as the details.
So, this is why experienced musicians use ‘the dots’ only as a map, and allow their ‘feel’ for the rhythm, the harmony and the style to bring freedom and individuality to their expression.
What are ‘heads’ and ‘stems’?
The anatomy of ‘the dots’ tells musicians about the pitch and the time values of sounds they make.
The ‘heads’ are the oval shaped part of a note, whereas the ‘stem’ is the line that may be attached to the ‘head’. The ‘head’ of the note moves around on the stave and tells the musician about pitch and depending on whether it’s filled (black) or open (white), about time value. The ‘stem’ of the note can join with other ‘stems’ (called ‘beaming’) and tells the musician about time and emphasis.
Some teachers of musical notation are very ‘head’ focussed and have elaborate mnemonics for memorising the positions of ‘the dots’ on the stave. Here are some examples:
All Cows Eat Grass (the spaces of the bass clef - A,C,E,G)
Good Boys Deserve Fun Always (the lines of the bass clef - G,B,D,F,A)
FACE (the spaces of the treble clef - F,A,C,E)
Every Good Boy Deserves Food (the lines of the table clef - E,G,B,D,F)
The major problem with this approach is that it involves cognitive loading, as remembering these patterns rapidly absorbs a child’s finite cognitive resources. As a prerequisite for learning to read notation, these mnemonic patterns must be memorised and then applied in real time. Although this approach is not difficult for pupils with a strong working memory, it is absolutely why reading musical notation has gained its reputation for being ‘too difficult’ for some children to engage with.
Some leading musical education programmes in use today, are very ‘stem’ focussed and have elaborate time names for longer and shorter durations: ‘ta’ ‘ti-ti’ ‘tiri-tiri’ and ‘too’. Or, ‘Ta-ah’ ‘Ta’ ‘Ta-Te’ ‘Tafa-Tefe’ and there are many more to choose from.
The issue here is that the sound names are confusable because they sound so similar. Children with specific learning difficulties are likely to conflate these, and experience rhythm as confusing. This is unnecessary and easily avoided. Furthermore, it places children with weak working memory and weak sensitivity to phonemes at a considerable disadvantage.
We have completely avoided these issues in Rhythm for Reading and have opted for something simpler that does not front-load children’s attentional resources. In addition, our approach allows reading fluency to develop in the very first session.
We use simple and familiar language. ‘The dots’ are compared with lollipops and described as ‘blobs’ and ‘sticks’. Time names ‘ta’ and ‘ti-ti’ are simplified as ‘long’ and ‘quick quick’. There’s no confusion. This allows us to get on with the business of reading - fluently.
We offer professional development (CPD) that is deeply rooted in neuroscience, the development of executive function and of course, cognitive load theory. You can find out more in the following links.
Fluency, phonics and musical notes: Presenting the sound with the symbol is as important in learning to read musical notation, as it is in phoneme-grapheme correspondence. Fluent reading for all children is our main teaching goal.
Empowering children to read music fluently: The ‘tried and tested’ method of adapting musical notation for children who struggle to process information is astonishingly, to add more markings to the page. Rhythm for Reading offers a simple solution that allows all children to read ‘the dots’ fluently, even in the first ten minute session.
In early reading, children must use their ears, eyes and voices in a very focused way. Their attention, already scanning everything that moves in the environment around them must suddenly narrow down onto a page, an illustration and then onto the tiny squiggles of black ink that they are learning to decode and understand. Many children willingly take on the challenges of reading. Some learn to read effortlessly, but what about those children who cannot focus their eyes and ears and voices onto the page? Read on to discover how to support all learners, particularly the most disadvantaged and those with SEND, as every child needs to connect deeply with reading in order to access the curriculum. If, like me, you are passionate about helping every child to access the curriculum and to overcome their challenges with connecting to the text, click the link to get the FREE downloadable pdf checklist.
What does connected to the text mean?
When writers convey messages through words, their readers receive those messages. For the development of reading comprehension, connections with the text should have been made between:
the writer and the reader,
the writer and the words,
the reader and the words.
The words are the ‘messengers’ that provide the link between the writer and reader. Even though communicating through written language is complex, as it involves knowledge and skill, it is also an important form of social connection that people use every day of their lives. Reading with fluency and understanding therefore builds a child’s resilience, confidence and independence. Until the invention of the telegraph, people wrote letters to each other when they needed to convey an important message. Emails have replaced letters to a large extent, but reading comprehension is important for understanding many different forms of written language such as:
text messages
emails
letters
news articles
stories
non fiction books
websites
How many types of connection are there between the writer, the text and the reader?
According to Keene and Zimmerman’s book, ‘Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a Reader’s Workshop’, published 25 years ago, there are three main levels of connection and these make the text more relatable and meaningful to the reader.
text-to-text connections
text-to-self connections
text-to-world connections
Text to text connections allow the reader to grasp the style of language being used, which may be formal and using jargon, or informal and using everyday language. Reading a wide range of different texts helps readers to adapt to a variety of styles of language use, and also supports fluency and comprehension.
For example, the first time someone reads an official letter from an authority, the formality of the tone, and the use of unfamiliar words and phrases might be off-putting. However, when a similar letter arrives one month later, it’s easier to make connections with the underlying message, because the reader has already adapted to this particular writing style, with its ‘professional’ tone and use of formal language. This is one example of how text-to-text connection speeds up the process of understanding the message conveyed by the official letter.
Text-to-text connections also allow the reader to pick up the structure of a story. For instance, when a reader returns to a novel and starts reading a new chapter, there is a sudden recollection of the plot and characters from earlier chapters. Text-to-text connections are made as soon as the information from the earlier chapters of the book spontaneously arrive in the reader’s mind and provide the background information for a deeper and more satisfying understanding of the new chapter.
Text-to-self connections enable a reader to feel personally invested in a narrative. This might happen because the details in the text are similar to the reader’s own day-to-day, or perhaps even their imaginary life. How many children wish that they could fly and then feel connected to their favourite superhero? Even more importantly, some children may discover lifelong fascinations or passions through making text-to-self connections during reading.
Text-to-self connections also make the text believable. Even if the book is futuristic and seems unreal in many ways, human experiences such as danger, love, hunger and even boredom can spark text-to-self connections.
Text-to-world connections provide the reader with a sense of time, place and context. For example, many of the Rosie and Jim stories start with ‘One sunny day….’ which would always be followed by a description of where in the world Rosie and Jim were, as well as why they were there. Even very young children can discuss these text-to-world connections when parents are reading to them.
Both older and younger children can benefit from text-to-world connections by linking new to existing knowledge. This opens up into a powerful learning pathway because the children experience reading as rewarding and intrinsically motivating, which is why many develop a thirst for learning.
Text-to-world connections also show the reader how things work.Take for instance, the difference between rubber balloons that children can blow into, versus helium balloons or even hot air balloons. In a text about these different types of balloons, the reader might already have a text-to-world connection, as well as a self-to-text connection about ordinary ‘birthday party’ balloons that can be inflated at home. The reader’s text-to-world connection expands very quickly as they learn that helium balloons contain a gas that is lighter than air, and that this gas causes the helium balloon to disappear up into the clouds if released into the air outside. The text-to-world connection develops even further as the child reads that large hot air balloons work by heating the air with a controlled flame to make it rise to such an extent that it can carry people in a basket below.
How can I support reading comprehension through these connections?
In early reading there are many different ways to support the development of reading comprehension, such as taking turns to read aloud, talking about what was read, extending vocabulary by introducing new words in context and drawing attention to different letters and sounds.
Here are some effective ways in which adults can support children’s early reading before, during and after the reading activity.
Before reading the text, ask questions about the title, the author and the book’s cover. Help the child to think about similar texts they may have come across - perhaps by the same author or on the same topic or featuring the same character. The illustration is likely to show the context for the story and this is similar to something the child may have already experienced.
During reading, check with the child that they are making connections with the text. Help them to monitor the messages in the text by discussing the meanings of key words and probe their text-to-self connections by asking them how they may feel in a similar situation.
After reading, ask the child further questions about the text to help them find deeper connections with their understanding of the setting. This may involve talking about the characters’ intentions and feelings and what might happen in the next chapter. They may even want to think about an alternative ending.
What are word choices?
Word choices are the child’s solution to decoding - the words that ‘best fit’ the relationships between letters and sounds, the context and the grammatical structure of the sentence.
When a child is connected to the text, word choices are made more quickly and effectively. So a ‘text-to-world’ connection would allow a child to select ‘circus’ rather than ‘circle’, especially if the main characters in the story were, for example, acrobats.
Word choices based on connections to the text are also informed by the development of the text. Using likelihood to make word choices, based on connection to the text, is very different to a fundamental strategy of guesswork, in which children are usually correct between ten and twenty per cent of the time.
What is prior knowledge?
Prior knowledge is what the child already knows before reading the text. Prior knowledge develops every day of our lives and is more easily accessed when we feel relaxed and yet alert.
Children pick up prior knowledge through conversations as well as through media such as books, television, games and the lyrics of songs.
Even if a child has never been to the circus, they may have seen one on television, heard about another child’s visit, or even sung the song about ‘Nelly the Elephant’ (who belonged to a travelling circus).
What are the main things to consider in relation to reading comprehension?
Here are some tips, if a child makes an inappropriate word choice:
It’s a good idea to stop reading and talk with the child about their connection with the text.
It’s unhelpful to say, “That’s nearly right”. Instead, say, “Hang on a moment! Let’s think this through”.
If you notice that the child frequently misses the ends of words, (also known as ‘suffixes’), this does not mean they are being careless! It means they are not processing the deeper grammatical structures of the text and may need support through a reading intervention that deepens their level of engagement.
Please see below where I’ve linked to related blog posts for further information about this.
Did you enjoy reading about the different types of connection that support children’s reading comprehension?
says Naval Ravikant - a leading investor in the world of tech giants.
Yes, an appetite for absorbing the detailed content of a piece of text does lead to slower and closer reading. In fact, fluent reading is likely to vary in pace depending on the style of the writing. It’s a bit like driving in traffic. For conditions that demand sharp focus and concentration, we slow our driving down. Likewise, when we have more favourable conditions, we can drive with greater ease and enjoy the journey more. But no matter what the conditions are like, we don’t become reckless. We don’t lose control of any part of the driving. Let’s discuss this in relation to early reading, the development of reading fluency, and how it is taught.
Is it better to read quickly or slowly?
The most proficient readers adapt their reading skills to match the text. In other words, being able to dial the reading speed up and down is a strong indicator of emerging reading fluency. Schools ensure that all children become confident fluent readers, so that every child can access a broad and balanced curriculum. Fluent reading underpins a love of reading and is an important skill for future learning and employment and it also enables children to apply their knowledge and skills with ease.
In the early reading phase, children learn to remember what they’ve been taught and to integrate new knowledge into larger concepts. In other words, children learn to coordinate different streams of information. This is a bit like learning to drive (for an adult), because many different elements need to be coordinated and practised until these become second nature - such as:
selecting and operating either the brake or the gas pedal
steering the vehicle smoothly
communicating direction using the indicators
anticipating the speed of travel
aligning speed with changes involving gears and the clutch
monitoring what other vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians are doing on the road.
Fluent readers can:
read accurately and with appropriate stress and intonation
coordinate different streams of information very easily
access each channel of information with ease
read quickly, but adjust the speed of reading to suit the challenges of each passage
monitor the meaning of the passage as they read.
In early reading, children who approach reading fluency without undue effort have coordinated their eyes, ears and voices:
to appraise cues from pictures accompanying the passage
to apply short term memory in order to locate the information in the passage in terms of time and place (context),
to recall general knowledge from long term memory of how things happen (schema)
to recognise the shapes of letters (graphemes)
to discern the smallest sounds of language (phonemes)
to articulate the relationship between the letter shape and its sound.
to decode the words and to assign the grammatical function of each word in the sentence
to access the lexicon (a child’s ‘word bank’) in order to retrieve the most likely words to match the information on the page.
Some of these channels of information are processed subconsciously and therefore at lightning speed. For example, the child’s lexicon (word bank) supplies the word that is the best match to the information on the page. The streams of information that contribute to the retrieval of a certain word are:
word shape,
sounds associated with the letters,
context in short term memory
schema (background knowledge) in the mind of the child.
In the earliest stages of learning to read, as the child learns to processes information about letters and sounds, they do this relatively slowly and consciously, using the thinking part the brain. It’s important that children allow the knowledge that they acquire during phonics training to inform their recognition of words, because after a period of initial ramping up and practice, it’s vital that this skill becomes second nature and that the speed of processing rapidly accelerates.
Fluent readers can read quickly, accurately and with appropriate stress and intonation, which aids comprehension by freeing up cognitive resources sufficiently to focus on meaning. Therefore, after the children have achieved a secure knowledge of phonics, fluency becomes an increasingly important factor in the development of reading comprehension.
However, many children experience ‘bumps in the road’ when they’re learning to read. They may have some stronger and some weaker channels of information processing. If there are weaknesses in attention, phonological discrimination or visual discrimination, the child will not be able to coordinate the many different channels of information that contribute to fluent reading.
What is reading word-by-word?
Reading word-by-word typically occurs among the lowest 20% of children: those who most need to improve in their reading. They need to refresh their attention for each word, as even reading an individual word can absorb all of their focus and attention.
Their fluency will not develop alongside that of their classmates and they will fall behind unless they receive an early reading intervention. Some teachers of reading assume that the skill of segmenting and blending phonemes is necessary for reading fluency to develop.
Actually, many children remain stuck at the ‘sounding-out’ stage of reading and do not become fluent readers, even though they know the correspondence between letters and their sounds. For these children, it’s likely that their attention is weak, and they lack the cognitive control to coordinate the various streams of information processing that support reading fluency.
What is speed reading?
Speed reading is measured in terms of how many words a person can read in one minute. This is known as words per minute (wpm).
Speed reading has been associated with having a higher level of intelligence, because people who read quickly are thought to consume more information and therefore become smarter. This association between speed reading and intelligence has led some teachers of reading to believe that reading faster is necessary for the development of good reading.
If building reading fluency were this simple, children with fast reading speeds would not -
make accuracy errors
need to reread the text to answer comprehension questions.
Although speed reading might appear attractive as an idea, and it is likely that a good reader can read fast, reading fast in itself does not necessarily develop into good reading.
Conclusion
At the heart of this is a huge misconception:
If a child prioritises speed, they may learn to decode the print into words, phrases and sentences. But, they may not have engaged with the grammar of the text.
As discussed, encouraging a child to read for speed may do more harm than good. If a child is praised for reading fast, they are more likely to experience reading as unrewarding, boring, a waste of their time and pointless.
If a child is encouraged to slow down and to discuss what has happened in each sentence, they will engage with the text as meaningful, even if they struggle to read independently. This communicative approach shows the children that they are reading in order to learn. Therefore, interactions between an adult and a child that involve talking, reasoning and extending spoken vocabulary are highly valuable, and they have been found to have significant effects on the development of early reading.
When reading at home with their children, parents can easily adopt these communicative approaches. Reading aloud is a good way of developing vocabulary as well as expressive language skills. They might also encourage their child to notice punctuation, the development of the narrative and any dialogue in the text.
Click here to see the full list of reading fluency tips in the Reading with Fluency Checklist.
If you’ve enjoyed this post, and you’d like to find out even more about the development of reading fluency, keep reading….
Early reading was hit hard by the pandemic and in this coming academic year we’ll see a real focus on narrowing an attainment gap between stronger and weaker early readers. Although children are taught the phonics skills that they need to read well in school every single day, reading at home with an adult builds the foundations for strong progress. Every child needs to make strong progress to read well, to develop their confidence as well as their enjoyment in reading. Read on to start the new term with good reading habits and get a FREE downloadable Good Reading Habits Checklist.
What are good reading habits?
Good reading habits develop at home every time a child:
Opens their book bag and practises reading aloud
Talks about what they have read
Re-reads the books that match the phonics lessons at school
Practises grapheme-phoneme correspondence.
Good reading habits are easier to maintain, more rewarding and productive when:
Reading at home happens at the same time every day
The same parent guides and supports the child
Repetition and re-reading is encouraged, as this helps the child to develop resilience, a growth mindset and perseverance.
Choosing the same time of day, every day, creates a strong and consistent reading habit.
The best times to open up the book bag are either straight after school with a drink and a snack or, first thing in the morning before getting ready for school (set the alarm clock!).
How many minutes of reading are enough?
Reading at home is a bit like talking at home. It doesn’t need to be measured by time. Reading sessions can be spent talking about the pictures, the characters and the words in the book. By simply helping the child to enjoy reading, the time will fly by.
A child might need reassurance and plenty of encouragement to stay engaged with the book and to practise the words. And that’s absolutely fine! However, the main goal is to support the child’s reading skills. So spend at least ten minutes every day on reading and re-reading the words in the book.
Reading for ten minutes every day makes a real difference and builds up over time.
An early reading habit of twenty minutes every day has a powerful lifelong impact.
Parents who read at the same time every day with their child set them up for success at school.
Of course:
It’s not always easy to stick to new habits.
It takes devotion and determination to keep up the reading habit every single day.
And at the beginning of the school year, it’s easy to knock a new reading routine off track.
What gets in the way of reading at home?
Anything new, noisy or shiny will distract a child from reading. Good reading habits are easier to maintain in a calm, quiet and gentle atmosphere.
Parents can avoid interruptions if they:
Make sure that the child’s siblings have something interesting to do
Check all mobile devices are muted.
One of the biggest challenges at the beginning of the new school year is supporting children’s reading AND preparing food for the family.
What’s the solution?
Plan meals in advance - and this could also save money.
Cook in batches at the weekends and freeze the portions to save time on school nights.
Inevitable disruptions to good reading habits come around every year shortly after the beginning of term.
For instance, there are:
Invitations to birthday parties
Halloween costumes to plan and make
Firework displays to watch.
Is it okay to skip reading at home occasionally, when everyone is having fun?
No, it’s not okay because the effects of falling behind in reading impact the rest of the child’s schooling. And parents need to avoid making this very common mistake:
It’s very easy to slip out of a good reading habit into a disorganised one.
The pace of the early reading curriculum is very brisk and doesn’t ease up because of birthdays or other festivities!
Children fall behind very quickly if they are note reading at home every day.
Is an early morning reading habit the answer?
There are clear advantages, as an early morning reading routine:
Allows more space in the child’s day for after school activities, sports, and parties.
Before school can be very calming for children.
Encourages the child to arrive at school on time, with bags of confidence.
What are the three questions every parent can ask their child when they are looking at a new book?
It’s fun to ask these questions, as they will give the parent a sense of their child’s level of curiosity and connection with reading a particular book.
What do you think this book is about?
What can we see in this picture?
What do you think happens in this book?
What are the best ways to overcome challenges when reading at home?
A playful attitude, with parent and child ‘learning together’ helps the child to develop problem-solving skills and strategies, such as:
“Ooh, I wonder what this word sounds like?”
“Do we know the first sound of this word?”
“Let’s listen to what happens if we say it slowly together.”
Sometimes, a phonics-based approach, which focuses on the sounds of words is something of a barrier for parents, particularly if they themselves had struggled to learn to read. I’ve seen very successful workshops in schools called ‘Family Phonics’. These workshops not only break down parents’ fears around phonemes, but also help parents and teachers to build wonderful collaborations for the benefit of the children. And everyone wins because we want all our children to become confident fluent readers!
What is a reading diary for?
Many teachers and parents use a reading record or a reading diary. This records the number of times the child reads to the parent and the teacher. It’s a vital tool as it proves that at home and at school there is enough input to keep the children’s reading development on track. Remember to put a pen or a pencil in the book bag to make it easier to make updates every day.
Are rewards for reading a good idea?
Many parents and teachers use star charts or stickers to encourage desired behaviour from children. However, reward systems are more powerful when they are reserved for unexpectedly good behaviour. Reading is a necessary life-skill. It’s like brushing your teeth. It should be part of the daily routine.
The closeness between the parent and child whilst reading at home IS an important factor. But there are also many invisible rewards of good reading habits that last a lifetime:
Stronger communication and language skills
Development of critical thinking skills
Improved focus
Improved memory
Development of empathy
Growth of vocabulary
Development of reading comprehension skills
Development of connections between different books, stories and ideas
A love of reading for pleasure and an appreciation of authors’ writing skills.
