Understanding the science behind reading and implementing the necessary strategies to help readers build a solid foundation is essential to establishing fundamental reading skills.
Reading can be broken down into two essential elements. The first element is word recognition, which is the ability to lift the right words off the page. Efficient word recognition presumes an understanding of how letters are used to represent sounds in spoken words and how those sounds can be blended together, pulled apart, and switched around to form new words. In order to become a proficient reader, it is important to be able to recognize words quickly and accurately.
The other essential aspect of reading is comprehension. To understand what they read, readers engage a wide variety of thinking skills so that they are actively constructing a mental model — the movie that you see in your mind when you read. For those of us who are proficient readers, it is something that we do automatically; we’re typically not even aware of it unless and until our comprehension breaks down. But many struggling readers don’t know how to activate those thinking skills and, as a result, they have difficulty making sense of what they read.
Developing readers can experience difficulty with word recognition, with comprehension, or with both areas. Happily, not only can difficulties in these areas be overcome, but with the right instruction, they can often be prevented.
