The Scarborough Reading Rope is a visual representation of the different strands that make up the process of reading, with the metaphor of a rope being used to demonstrate how all of these strands work together to create a strong, cohesive whole. It was created in the early 1990s by Dr. Hollis Scarborough, a literacy researcher, as a tool to help parents and educators understand the various skills that are necessary for children to become proficient readers.
The Reading Rope is divided into two main sections: Word Recognition and Language Comprehension, each of which is further divided into several smaller strands. All of these strands are interconnected and interdependent, meaning that if just one strand is weak, it affects the overall strength of the rope.
As with the 5 Essential Components of Reading, we recommend taking a moment to assess your current instructional practices and materials to determine how you are addressing each strand of the Reading Rope. This will help you identify any gaps that may exist in your instruction. You may be pleasantly surprised by how much you are already doing to prepare your students for reading, but simply not aware of how these practices fit into the larger whole.
Montessori and the Science of Reading
Explore concepts and find evidence based activities to teach skilled reading.
Table of Contents
Language Comprehension
The Language Comprehension strands of the Scarborough reading rope help children make meaning from text.
Background Knowledge
Background Knowledge refers to what a reader already knows about a topic before they begin reading about it. This plays a big role in helping readers make connections and gain a deeper understanding of the text.
Self Assessment: How are you exposing your students to a wide range of information about the world? Do you have a rich “cultural” or “cosmic” curriculum or is this an area that needs more attention? What other areas of the classroom and children’s day help them develop concepts about the wider world in a developmentally appropriate way?
Vocabulary
Vocabulary refers to the words that a reader knows and understands. It’s important for readers to have an age-appropriate bank of vocabulary knowledge so they can make sense of the text. You will recognize this from one of the 5 Essential Components of Reading.
Self Assessment: The Montessori curriculum is particularly strong in exposing children to a wide vocabulary. Identify a few ways that you do this in the classroom.
Language Structures
This refers to the structure of a language, including the way words are arranged in a sentence and the meaning of different word combinations. Understanding basic sentence structure and having an age-appropriate comprehension of semantics is crucial for readers to be able to make sense of a text.
Self Assessment: This is an area that is particularly strong in Montessori toddler environments but can surprisingly fall through the cracks in the preschool classroom. Can you guess why? In the early childhood years language structures are learned through oral language and conversation and in the Montessori preschool classroom, oral language is sometimes sacrificed in order to prioritize independent and hands-on activities that are done alone. Are you providing enough opportunities for children to engage in conversation or is there too much silence in your room?
Verbal Reasoning
The ability to comprehend what one reads by using logic and reasoning is known as verbal reasoning. This skill enables readers to think critically about the text and consider not only the explicit information, but also the underlying implications.
Self Assessment: How are you providing opportunities for children to make connections between concepts, ask questions, make inferences, and explore topics?
Literacy Knowledge
This includes a reader’s knowledge of print concepts like a book’s layout, pre-reading skills like turning pages, and more advanced skills like navigating the text features of a nonfiction book to find information. It also includes concepts like genre and author’s purpose.
Self Assessment: This is another area that can easily fall through the cracks if the teacher assumes that this knowledge will be absorbed without explicit instruction. Some children, particularly those who have not been exposed to books since infancy will need to have this shown to them. If you’re not already including this information, think about how you can incorporate it into your story time or other activities with books.
Word Recognition
The Word Recognition strands of the Scarborough reading rope break down how readers understand the underlying phonetic code of the English language and apply it to their reading. This includes the ability to decode new words, as well as the ability to quickly recall words that have been seen before without needing to decode them again.
Phonological Awareness
Phonological Awareness encompasses the skills involved in recognizing and manipulating the sounds within spoken words and sentences. This includes things like creating and identifying rhyming words, hearing syllables, and phonemic awareness, which is the ability to recognize and manipulate the smallest units of sound (phonemes) in spoken words.
Self Assessment: Review the sound games section of your Montessori Language Album and determine which activities address this strand. Do you have enough activities and do you have a way of tracking how frequently they are presented?
Decoding
Decoding (or Phonics) is using the letters in a word to determine what the word says. It involves a reader’s knowledge of the alphabetic principle, knowing that sounds are represented by written letters/symbols, and combining it with phonemic awareness, to decode the word. While this is just one strand in the Reading Rope, it covers the entirety of how to break down the phonetic code in English. Literacy researchers are pretty clear that explicit and systematic instruction of the phonetic code is needed to help the majority of children. While some children will figure out the code on their own, most children need to be explicitly shown how.
Self Assessment: Review the sandpaper letters and reading lessons in your Language Album. Do you see a sequence of explicit and systematic steps for guiding children through the phonetic code of the English language? If not, has your school adopted an explicit sequence to follow?
Sight Recognition
The ability to recognize words by sight enables a reader to quickly identify words without the need for decoding each time. Through repeated exposure, the reader stores these words in memory, leading to improved fluency and accuracy in reading. This occurs through a cognitive process called orthographic mapping and is an important step in developing fluency. Until a reader hits this stage, much of their cognitive effort will go into the decoding process and not much will be left for gaining meaning from the text.
Self Assessment: Are you providing opportunities for children to have repeated exposure to decodable text so they can begin to see patterns and commit those phonetic patterns to long term memory? A word of caution, do not sacrifice the decoding strand for the sight recognition strand. Sight recognition without knowledge of the underlying phonetic code will not serve readers in the long run.