Literacy

Reading Rope

Try reading these words:

• Petrichor
• Defenestrate
• Vellichor
• Skeuomorph
• Paraprosdokian

What strategies did you use to figure out these words? If you managed to decode these words, did you actually comprehend what you have decoded? Can you tell someone else what these words mean. (Without the use of a dictionary!)

Reading is a complex skill the combines the decoding of text and language comprehension. In order to read competently, we must be able to complete both these skills simultaneously.

Although often referred to as the Simple View of Reading, Scarborough’s reading rope (shown below) demonstrates that Reading is in fact, not simple at all! Reading combines the mastery of a number of increasingly complex skills to develop word recognition and language comprehension.

For many of you, decoding the words above was not challenging however determining the meaning of those words will depend on your vocabulary, background knowledge, literacy knowledge of possible word bases, affixes, etymology, morphology and verbal reasoning. For example, to determine the meaning defenestrate you might know that the Italian word for window is ‘finestra’, ‘de’ means not, and ‘ate’ is a suffix which turns nouns into verbs, which is why defenestrate means to throw something out the window. If the word Petrichor was in a sentence such as ‘the petrichor following the rain brought back memories of my childhood’ you could use language structures and background knowledge to help you determine that Petrichor is the smell following rain after a long period.

So next time you are wondering why is my child finding this book so hard, remember that there is lots of complex skills in decoding and comprehending so that we can read for meaning.

Answers:

Petrichor - A pleasant, distinctive smell frequently accompanying the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather in certain regions

Defenestrate - To throw something or someone out the window

Vellichor - the feeling evoked by the scent of old books or paper.

Skeuomorph - an object or feature which imitates the design of a similar artefact made from another material.

Paraprosdokian - a figure of speech in which the end of the sentence is surprising, or causes the reader to reinterpret the first part.

Sarah Watkins

Acting Assistant Principal/Literacy Specialist