The Science of Reading and Vocabulary Development
The Word Recognition level of the Science of Reading has gotten top billing for quite a while now: phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding, and orthographic mapping. While all are critical to learning to read, equally important is the Language Comprehension portion of Scarborough's Reading Rope. Both are needed for skilled reading.
During interactive read aloud, it is important to attend to those elements of Language Comprehension:
background knowledge
vocabulary
language structure
verbal reasoning
literary knowledge
Building background knowledge is one of the reasons why we at JOYcabulary tend to pair a nonfiction text with a narrative story. There are times when the nonfiction text should be read first so that readers will bring this new knowledge to deeply understand the meaning of the narrative. For example, in last year’s October book pairing, it may be wise to read Gail Gibbons’ book “Migration” before reading Beth Ferry’s “The Scarecrow.” Students will better be able to understand why Scarecrow was alone all winter and why the baby birds hatch in his chest.
Tier 2 words are often embedded in complex sentences, so don’t just pop out the word, but rather the entire sentence so you can examine its structure. Let’s look at this sentence lifted from Scarecrow:
Scarecrow cheers, pleased and proud,
but as he watches, Scarecrow knows
that he must stay and Crow must go.
Verbal reasoning comes into play when you unpack the meaning of the word heart in this complex sentence:
And he will love them from the start,
and they will grow up in his heart.
As you plan your read alouds, it may be helpful to keep Scarborough’s Rope nearby so you can weave the many strands together in an authentic manner.
