11/18/2024

What is Scarborough’s Reading Rope?

Students must successfully thread together eight discrete skills to grow into fluent, skilled readers. Should they experience weaknesses in one or more of them, they might have difficulty developing the decoding skills, vocabulary, and background to fully grasp what they’re reading. 

Teachers can use the concept of Scarborough’s Reading Rope to pinpoint where students are struggling and target intervention accordingly. Hollis Scarborough, Ph.D., introduced the concept of these intertwined skills in her design of Scarborough’s Reading Rope. An early language development researcher, Scarborough used the rope to describe the many strands that make up skilled reading and its connection to later literacy. Using pipe cleaners to demonstrate the interconnectedness and interdependence of reading components, Scarborough described the complexities involved in learning to read. Her evidence-based research is one of the frameworks supported by the science of reading.

The strands of the Reading Rope are divided into two sections: Word Recognition (phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition of familiar words) and Language Comprehension (background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge). Together, these two sections produce a skilled reader. Each of these strands in each section is dependent upon one another.

In Scarborough’s Reading Rope, Word Recognition is a combination of:

• Phonological awareness
• Decoding
• Sight recognition

Of these three, Scarborough proposed decoding is the element that ties everything together. A student's ability to decode words begins with their understanding of the language sound system. Then, it moves to their knowledge of the writing system through understanding phonology, orthography, and morphology.

Language Comprehension is the other necessary component of reading comprehension. It makes up the top half of the Reading Rope. Language comprehension requires the combination of:

• Background knowledge
• Vocabulary
• Language structures
• Verbal reasoning
• Literacy knowledge

While the skill components in the Reading Rope differ slightly from other science of reading theories, such as the Five Pillars of Reading and the Simple View of Reading, each strand illustrates a fundamental part of a Structured Literacy approach.

Lower Strands: Word Recognition

The Word Recognition, or lower strands of the Reading Rope, is foundational to reading fluency and requires students to process written words automatically and effortlessly. The three strands in Word Recognition include phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition.    

Phonological Awareness

When students develop phonological awareness, they begin to understand spoken words are made up of sounds and blends of sounds in language. Children may not be aware of these sounds when they learn to speak, but to read, they must associate spoken sounds to letters, and, later, words on a page. When students develop phonological awareness, they can learn letter-sound correspondence and blend sounds together to form words.

Decoding

Decoding refers to the process of linking spoken sounds to printed words or letters on a page. Students can’t decode words until they understand the English language sound system and alphabet through an understanding of phonology, orthography, and morphology. The ultimate goal of teaching students how to decode is to help make reading automatic. Decoding has gained more attention as the science of reading movement has illuminated the role of word recognition in early literacy acquisition. 

Sight Recognition

Sight recognition improves reading fluency and efficiency, according to The Digital Promise. When students can recognize irregularly spelled words that do not follow regular spelling conventions, they can better pronounce and understand the meaning of those words without struggling to decode them. Also known as orthographic mapping, sight recognition refers to a student’s ability to recognize and permanently store words. 

Students acquire orthography by learning frequently recurring patterns required to match sounds to letters or groups of letters. As they become more experienced readers, they learn syllable types, the major syllable division matters in English, and ultimately begin reading grade-appropriate texts aloud to build fluency skills.     

Upper Strands: Language Comprehension

The upper strands of the Reading Rope refer to the components of language comprehension that work in tandem with word recognition skills to develop skilled reading. These strands help readers understand the meaning of a text after they decode the words that comprise them. While the lower strands focus on the technical aspects of reading, the upper strands focus on deriving meaning from what is read through background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literary knowledge.

Background Knowledge

The more students know about a subject before they read about it, the easier it is for them to derive the meaning behind a text. Background knowledge, or what students already know about topics such as plants, the weather, or a historical figure, impacts their understanding of what they read. Students reading about Benjamin Franklin’s discovery of electricity will get a lot more meaning out of the text if they understand the concept of electricity in general. By including reading materials in the context of the rest of their curricula, teachers can teach reading concurrently with science, social studies, or math topics. This helps students learn from content-rich texts and improve literacy skills simultaneously.

Vocabulary

Students can’t understand what they are reading unless they know the meaning of the words in a text. In some cases, new readers skip words they don’t know or attempt to read them without fully understanding them. By increasing their vocabulary knowledge, students can read and enjoy a wider variety of books. If they have to pause frequently to determine a word’s meaning, they’re more likely to lose interest in reading. Students develop their vocabulary knowledge both orally and by reading. Teachers can practice vocabulary with their students by making word learning a part of their everyday classwork.

Language Structures

According to the Literacy Engagement Action Project at George Mason University, students must grasp several concepts to understand language structures. These include syntax (the order of words) and semantics (the meaning of the text). Syntax refers to the rules governing the arrangement of words in sentences to convey meaning, including grammar and sentence structure. Semantics refers to the meaning of words and sentences, including vocabulary and context. Readers continue to build skills in both areas as they encounter more challenging texts.

Verbal Reasoning

Scarborough’s Reading Rope defines verbal reasoning as the understanding of the ways words can be used literally and figuratively. Students use verbal reasoning to decipher the meaning of metaphors, analogies, idioms, and other types of figurative language. For example, students must understand that the metaphor “my home is my castle” doesn’t necessarily mean the protagonist in the story lives in a castle. Likewise, they must recognize the simile “sick as a dog” refers to someone feeling ill.

Literacy Knowledge

Literacy knowledge refers to understanding a book's parts, including how its Table of Contents relates to the book, the difference between fiction and nonfiction, and an understanding of different genres—including poetry, fantasy, or biography. Teachers can build students’ literacy knowledge by exposing them to diverse texts.

How is the Simple View of Reading Connected to the Reading Rope?

A Structured Literacy approach teaches skill components identified by the National Reading Panel in an explicit, systematic, and responsive way that effectively helps all students learn to read. Scarborough’s Reading Rope is one view of literacy acquisition, similar to the Simple View of Reading (SVW).

Philip Gough and William Tunmer (1986) developed the SVR formula to show how word recognition and language comprehension lead to reading comprehension. The equation shows that neither of these concepts is sufficient on its own—a lack of understanding of one concept could lead to overall reading failure. This is why it is so important for students to develop both concurrently. 

Both the Simple View of Reading and the Reading Rope show that for readers to understand what they are reading, they must be able to read automatically—or recognize words by sight. When students develop automaticity, they can more efficiently derive the meaning of a text.

How Can Teachers Use Scarborough’s Reading Rope?

Teachers can use the components outlined in the Reading Rope to inform their curricula and teaching practices. By including explicit instruction in reading skills ranging from phonemic awareness to vocabulary and semantics, teachers can ensure all students have the opportunity to develop into fluent readers. Following the Reading Rope framework, teachers can more easily identify where struggling readers may need additional instruction. 

For example, a student may be good at decoding but have difficulty making sense of a text. The teacher can offer targeted interventions by identifying which language comprehension strands the student struggles with (vocabulary or background knowledge, for example), saving time, and providing the specific support the student needs. 

How Can the Reading Rope Help Students With Learning Disabilities?

“Reading disabilities may stem from the learner’s weakness in, or delayed acquisition of, some kind(s) of underlying knowledge and skill that are known to contribute to successful reading development,” according to Scarborough.

The Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity reports dyslexia affects up to 20% of the population and represents up to 90% of all people with learning disabilities, making it the most common of all neurocognitive disorders. Students with dyslexia often have difficulty reading aloud, guess when they cannot read unfamiliar words, and are slower to master reading skills. Despite the commonality of dyslexia, many people with this learning disability have never received a diagnosis nor participated in reading intervention programs. 

The strategies identified by the science of reading help all children; those with dyslexia, those who struggle to learn to read, and those who do not struggle to learn to read. By guiding new readers through the mechanics of reading—including sound-letter correspondences, decoding, synthesizing, word recognition, fluency, vocabulary, spelling, and comprehension—all students receive the instruction they need to become competent readers. Reading programs rooted in the science of learning address the unique challenges learners with dyslexia face, ensuring they receive tailored instruction that meets their unique needs. 

Structured Literacy programs, such as Lexia® Core5® Reading and Lexia® PowerUp Literacy®, accelerate the development of literacy skills for students of all abilities, helping them make the critical shift from learning to read to reading to learn. Core5 follows an Adaptive Blended Learning model that offers explicit, systematic, and personalized reading instruction for pre-K–5 students. Adolescent students using PowerUp benefit from a targeted approach that allows them to develop the reading and critical thinking skills necessary to meet the demands of a secondary curriculum and beyond.

With a knowledge of the science of reading and frameworks like the Reading Rope, teachers can develop focused strategies to ensure all students—especially those who have or may have dyslexia—become confident readers. 

No theory replaces a skilled, knowledgeable teacher, but having the right tools and resources makes a difference. Discover how evidence-based resources can support your reading instruction.