These frameworks therefore lead us to organise and prioritise the components of our literacy program in different ways. Selecting a model matters, because it effects how teaching and learning is planned, organised, and sequenced in the primary classroom. It impacts on the cognitive and social demands of learning to read and write, and has to serve our needs as teachers, as well as the needs of every child in our class.
This PETAA Paper is written for education students and early career teachers. It has one simple purpose: to look at some of the most familiar models of reading, view them from the perspective of the broader context of language development, see how they fit with each other, and work out their strengths and limitations. In other words, we are ourselves developing a schema that helps us to make sense of these sometimes-confusing models, and know what gaps still need to be filled.
The paper reflects the content of Chapter 2 of PETAA’s recent publication The Alphabetic Principle and Beyond (Cox, Feez, & Beveridge, 2019) which is priority reading for a depth of understanding about phonics and spelling.
The five reading or literacy models listed here have been selected because they are familiar in the Australian education context. They are:
Gough’s simple view of reading (Gough, Juel, & Griffith, 1992; Hoover & Gough, 1990)
The Big 6 of reading instruction (Konza, 2010; 2014)
The Scarborough (or 'rope') model (Scarborough, 2001)
The three cueing systems (Clay, 1979; Goodman, 1970, Smith, 1979)
The four resources of the literacy learner (Freebody, 2019; Freebody & Luke, 1990, 1999).
The description of each model will include the following:
- How it came to be
- What it does
- Affordances and constraints (how it might help, and the limitations of the model)
Reading and writing of written texts are only one way that we communicate through language. Before we address each model in turn, it is important to understand how they fit within the broader concept of language, using the functional model of language which is the foundation of the Australian Curriculum: English (ACARA, 2016).