Reading and Literacy
Reading and Literacy tests how readers develop word recognition, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and disciplinary literacy, and how teachers assess and support adolescent readers. Expect frameworks such as the Simple View of Reading and Scarborough’s Rope, plus text complexity and intervention.
Core rules and concepts
- Simple View of Reading: reading comprehension = decoding × linguistic comprehension. Either factor can bottleneck comprehension.
- Scarborough’s Rope: word recognition strands (phonological awareness, decoding, sight recognition) intertwine with language comprehension strands (background knowledge, vocabulary, syntax, verbal reasoning, literacy knowledge).
- Comprehension: literal, inferential, and evaluative questions demand different evidence. Background knowledge and text structure strongly affect inference.
- Vocabulary: Tier 1 words are everyday; Tier 2 are cross-disciplinary academic words; Tier 3 are domain-specific. Morphology and context clues support independent learning.
- Fluency: accuracy, rate, and prosody-not speed alone.
- Text complexity: quantitative measures (e.g., Lexile), qualitative features (meaning, structure, knowledge demands), and reader/task considerations.
- Assessment: screening, diagnosis, and progress monitoring within MTSS/RTI.
Worked example
A ninth grader reads aloud accurately at 150 words per minute but misses inference questions. Under the Simple View, decoding is adequate, so the likely bottleneck is linguistic comprehension-perhaps vocabulary, background knowledge, or inference strategy. The teacher should build relevant knowledge and sentence-level comprehension, not simply assign more phonics drills.
Traps that cost marks
Equating fluency with speed; relying on a Lexile score alone; confusing Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary; teaching comprehension strategies as content-free routines; assuming older struggling readers need only decoding instruction.