Pupils Who Can Read Well but Understand Very Little
New programme helps children who have mastered phonics but struggle to comprehend
Teachers may be overlooking pupils who can read words out loud but do not understand their meaning. The increasing use of phonics in schools has helped children to decode how to say words, helping them to recognise the letters c-a-t and say “cat”.
But academics at York University are concerned that pupils’ ease at reading words out loud may mask those who have difficulties with comprehension.
Charles Hulme, professor of psychology, said: “These children are largely unrecognised in typical classrooms because what most people, including most teachers, understand by reading is being able to translate print into sound, to decode. Plenty of poor comprehenders are fine at reading something out loud, so teachers think they have adequate reading skills. But if you ask the child, ‘Why was John upset?’ they will look at you blankly or give you a fairly bizarre answer.
They are doing their best but they have a poor understanding of what is in the text.”
Professor Hulme, together with colleagues Paula Clarke, Emma Truelove and Maggie Snowling, have been testing different approaches to help eight-year-olds who struggle to understand words.
Their trial screened 1,000 children in 20 primary schools. In each class, eight pupils were chosen who showed the biggest discrepancy between reading aloud and reading with understanding.
The children were then assigned to one of four groups: they would either get help with spoken language; reading; both oral and reading; or were in the control group.
Every group had three 30-minute sessions a week with a teaching assistant for 20 weeks.
The oral language group were taught the meaning of words by having passages read to them; they would then discuss them and make up their own stories.
The text comprehension group were given help in reading texts and were shown how to make inferences from them and write stories. The combined group had elements from both programmes.
Professor Hume said all the programmes worked better than the control; the text intervention had the least impact; the oral group was slightly better, and the combined approach had most effect. He stressed that the statistical difference between the three interventions was not reliable but, he said it was encouraging that research had shown it was possible to help pupils who could decode words but not understand them.
Brayton Junior School in Selby, North Yorkshire, was among those which took part in the pilot, which was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Gloria Beecroft, its headteacher, said: “I noticed the difference within a term, particularly in children’s writing and their participation in class dicussions.”
Details on Read Me, the York Reading for Meaning Project, are at: www.york.ac.uk/res/crl/readme.html
Source: Times Educational Supplement, UK
http://www.tes.co.uk/2628549
