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I’ve spent 25 years studying the neurocognitive processes in reading, and thinking about how they relate to instruction. I wondered what I could learn from ‘Closing the Reading Gap’ by @HuntingEnglish a leading voice in the world of English teaching. Quite a lot. THREAD 1/
The book does a good job summarizing the foundations of reading science; e.g. @HuntingEnglish explains why we make such a “fuss” over phonics, and asks whether the rationale for the phonics check has been properly explained to parents (and I would say, teachers) 2/
It describes the challenge of building fluency, and the need to support this by choosing ‘Goldilocks texts’ (not too hard, not too easy, just right). Seems obvious, but I hadn’t thought about the knowledge and skill required to do this for 30 children of varying ability 3/
I had also not thought about how loaded our texts are with figurative language and idiom (e.g. the die is cast, worth one’s salt). I’ll hazard a guess that the powerful NLP models are pretty bad with this type of language; interesting problem for children’s learning 4/
Moving on, @HuntingEnglish brings to life the multiplicity of skills required to understand different forms of text, and at speed. The vast knowledge requirements; background knowledge, word knowledge, genre knowledge, knowledge of language 5/
Pupils need this knowledge to become successful readers; and they build this knowledge through access to text. The perfect environment for Matthew effects. The provision of a rigorous, knowledge-rich curriculum really should be considered as a basic equity issue. 6/
The use of questions to support comprehension is well understood. But @HuntingEnglish breaks down how different types of questions support different forms of understanding. Wow, it’s really hard to come up with these questions; need knowledge and skill to do it well 7/
The part on reading in different genres and subjects was fascinating. I had never thought about how much variation there is across different forms of text material, and how much we use meta-cognitive strategies to prepare ourselves. Would love to do some work on this. 8/
It’s hard to see what could be more important for schools than to ‘close the reading gap’. Fortunately, @HuntingEnglish provides a whole range of practical strategies to identify and support struggling readers, and to grow a culture of reading. 9/
The book ends not by rattling off the stubborn PISA figures around low literacy, but by talking about the “countless infinitesimally small losses” of a single child struggling each day in school with her reading. This is why we’re here, my friends. 10/
Now for a few reflections. 11/
The book echoes my own work with @annecastles and @ReadOxford on ending the reading wars. There is a science of reading; it is a vital part of the multiplicity of factors that contribute to reading success. I learned a lot about those other factors from this book 12/
The book shows how important schools are for closing the reading gap, but also illustrates just how far we have to go in getting the relevant knowledge and skills into every classroom. But do we actually study this? Do we know where we are and how far we have to go? 13/
This report by the National Council of Teacher Quality (USA) makes for sobering reading https://www.nctq.org/dmsView/NCTQ_2020_Teacher_Prep_Review_Program_Performance_in_Early_Reading_Instruction ; 40% of teacher training textbooks found to be inadequate, and still, a third of teacher training programs do not address phonics (USA). 14/
Finally, this book really shows the value of working together. It is gratifying to see how much @HuntingEnglish was influenced by our work on reading science. But that work was deeply informed by our understanding of teachers’ experiences, and we still have much to learn. 15/
Thank you for writing this fascinating book, @HuntingEnglish . I’m going to be reading it a second (and maybe a third) time, and I’m looking forward to thinking deeply about how these insights can inform reading science going forward. End
