What is the Simple View of Reading?
The Simple View of Reading is a well-established model for assessing reading ability. The DfE Reading Framework recommends that schools use it to identify whether children have difficulty with decoding or comprehension, as different kinds of teaching are needed for each.
Using LanguageScreen and ReadingScreen demonstrates that a school has a good picture of pupils reading and language abilities and can track their progress over time.
Children within the central box are within the normal range on both reading and language scores so are not of any concern. Children outside the central box have poorer (or better) scores than expected for their age and may warrant special attention.
- Normal reader
Children in the top-right quadrant are those with better than average reading and language scores and are not of any concern. - Poor comprehension
Children with scores in the bottom right quadrant have better than average reading scores but below average language scores. Some of these children will have a difficulty understanding what they read (reading comprehension impairment). Even if an adult read the text aloud to them, they would still have difficulty understanding. Children with speech, language, and communication needs or who speak English as an additional language might well fall into this category. - Poor decoding (Dyslexia)
Children with scores in the top left quadrant are children with worse than average reading scores but above average language scores. Some of these children will be dyslexic and have problems in decoding words. These children need to be taught to do this using individualised synthetic phonics teaching coupled with work to ensure they have adequate letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness skills. They will benefit from extensive reading practice. The books they can decode are likely to be below their level of comprehension. This means that they need to continue to develop their understanding through hearing and talking about books and poems and learning new vocabulary across the curriculum, along with the rest of their class, while their decoding catches up with the knowledge and skills they already have. - Generally poor reading skill
Children with scores in the bottom left quadrant have worse than average reading AND language scores. Some of these children will have significant problems BOTH in decoding words AND in understanding what they read. Although they have similar difficulties with decoding as the children in the top left quadrant, their limited language skills can obscure their poor decoding. These children will benefit from the same approach to teaching decoding as children with dyslexia, but in addition they require support in developing their understanding of spoken language using a programme such as NELI.
The Science of Reading: A Handbook (2022)
OxEd founders Maggie Snowling and Charles Hulme, with Kate Nation, edited the latest edition of The Science of Reading
Provides an overview of state-of-the-art research on the science of reading and presents recent advances in the study of reading and related skills.