Last week, I had a catch-up with our US literacy expert, Dr. Alyssa O’Rourke. We talked about many things regarding the new Teach Your Monster to Read game, but this struck me as something I’d have to share. So read on for some absolutely fascinating stuff on how, evolutionary speaking, learning to read is actually a very difficult skill. 

First, let’s introduce Alyssa in her own words: 

“I’m Alyssa O’Rourke, and I received my doctorate in applied child development with a concentration in clinical developmental psychology from Tufts University, The Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development. In graduate school, I had the opportunity to work with Dr. Maryanne Wolf (one of the leading researchers in the field of dyslexia) on a large-scale intervention study in three cities comparing different reading intervention programs. For the past two decades or more, I’ve worked in clinical research and implementation roles related to dyslexia, learning disabilities, literacy, and the Science of Reading. I am currently a Fellow at the Science of Reading Center at SUNY New Paltz.”

Alyssa defines The Science of Reading as “all of the accumulated scientific research to date that tells us about reading, and can inform our practice; it doesn’t talk about any one curriculum, or any one particular method.” 

Alyssa also defines it more biologically:

“I think of the Science of Reading as the body of research that informs practice related to how the brain is repurposed for learning to read, because our brains weren’t originally used that way. We were wired to speak, and reading is something that came much later in evolutionary terms.”

Alyssa goes on to explain that the parts of our brain that were used to identify objects are repurposed when learning to read,  for mapping sounds to letters. So that’s why some children can find it very hard to learn – it is not a natural phenomenon.

Skilled readers typically store words through a process called orthographic mapping, which is connecting sounds to letters. The goal is for all words to be recognised instantly without having to be sounded out each time. But this word recognition is only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to reading comprehension (the ability to understand and extract meaning from print).

Alyssa explains that according to the theoretical model, ‘The Simple View of Reading’ (Gough and Tunmer, 1986), there is a process for decoding (word recognition), multiplied by language comprehension, which equals reading comprehension.

 “So there’s the decoding piece, which is mapping sound onto print. And then there’s the language comprehension piece, which is making meaning of words and eventually sentences. So, kids come to school already with oral language, and that is the basis for them to start learning letters and sounds in print. And those together are just inextricably linked, so we must always be thinking about both of those components that go into reading.”

Alyssa and our team started integrating this theory as soon as possible in the new game.

“This version, we’ve really strived to think about meaning as early as possible. As soon as a couple of sounds are put together to make a word that a child can decode, we give them meaning by incorporating images and visuals.”

Thinking about these two crucial components of Reading Comprehension, I asked Alyssa what advice she would give parents to support reading at home: 

“Having a strong home literacy environment is a huge factor in shaping children’s long-term reading development.

She continues… “First, reading comprehension is built on a strong oral language foundation. This begins even before birth when hearing sounds in the womb. Having conversations and talking about children’s daily lives, learning new vocabulary, asking questions, playing with language, singing, and nursery rhymes all play a role. Children benefit when reading is a part of the family routine, modelled by adults, associated with connection and enjoyment. Read-alouds are an essential tool for children, even when they have begun to read independently, to build vocabulary, background knowledge, and listening comprehension, and a love of reading.”

So there you go. The process of reading doesn’t actually come naturally to us humans. In fact, the earliest forms of writing we know about date from around 3400 – 3100BC. So in the grand scheme of things, reading and writing are relatively new kids on the block. Luckily, we have experts like Alyssa to help us understand how humans learn to read best!