Reading is a skill that is very complex. It is made up of multiple components that be integrated together, otherwise reading comprehension is not achieved. As seen below in the Scarborough Rope Model and Simple View of Reading Model, reading comprehension is the final product after students have first mastered decoding, print concepts, phonological awareness, phonics word recognition, word knowledge, background knowledge, academic language, academic vocabulary, inferential language skills, and narrative language skills. Students then can use these skills together to accomplish a full reading comprehension.
Scarborough's Rope Model:
Simple View of Reading Model:
Dyslexia, according to the International Dyslexia Association, can be defined a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. Intervention for this reading difficulty must be targeted on the foundational skills required for good word recognition, including phonological awareness, phonics, and rapid recognition/decoding of familiar words.
TheNational Reading Panel examined whether PA instruction was significantly better than alternative forms of training in helping children acquire phonemic awareness and enabling them to apply this skill in their reading and spelling. They found that teaching children to maipulate phonemes in words was highly effective across all literacy domains.
Research has identified poor phonological awareness as a risk factor for dyslexia. Intensive phonological awareness instruction can be very helpful for many readers with dyslexia. Many readers also struggle with the development of fluent reading. This difficulty has been linked to poor ability in Rapid Automatized Naming, which is the ability to quickly name familiar objects on a page, such as objects or numbers but most significantly, letters. Fluency instruction, such as repeated readings, speed drills can be helpful in improving fluency, however, this challenge is often more difficult to remediate than reading accuracy. The reading models above are helpful in understanding the foundational skills affected by dyslexia.
Resources:
More information on dyslexia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zafiGBrFkRM&feature=emb_logo
Decoding strategies: https://www.weareteachers.com/5-effective-strategies-for-teaching-decoding-skills/
https://learningattheprimarypond.com/blog/how-to-teach-decoding-strategies-to-struggling-readers/
Decoding to Fluency: https://www.readinghorizons.com/reading-strategies/decoding/4-steps-from-decoding-strategies-to-reading-fluency