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Literacy

Frameworks and research behind literacy

Good literacy teaching rests on a handful of big ideas about how children learn to read, write and use language. I've gathered the frameworks and the research behind them here, so you can see where our practice comes from and explain it with confidence.

The Simple View of Reading 5

Reading comprehension is the product of decoding and language comprehension, so a reader needs both, and a weakness in either one limits understanding. Philip Gough and William Tunmer proposed it in 1986, and Wesley Hoover and Gough set it out more fully in 1990.

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Scarborough's Reading Rope 3

Hollis Scarborough's picture of skilled reading as many strands, some for word recognition and some for language comprehension, woven together and strengthened through teaching and practice.

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The Language House 5

Pamela Snow pictures language and literacy as a house. The solid ground is the warm, responsive relationships of a child's first two years, and the foundations are the oral language built across the first five. Two walls rise together and hold each other up, with reading, writing and spelling on one side and the language skills for getting along with others on the other. Social and emotional wellbeing and social cognition form the rafter, and the roof is a young person's way into further education, training and work.

Explainer

Learn

Building the language house (opens in a new tab)

Spelfabet · About 9 minutes · Australia

A short video on building the language house from Spelfabet, the site run by Australian speech pathologist Alison Clarke. It runs for about nine minutes.

FreeOpens at youtube.com

Research

SOLAR: The Science of Language and Reading (opens in a new tab)

Pamela Snow · 2020 · Open access · Child Language Teaching and Therapy

Pamela Snow's paper proposing the Science of Language and Reading framework, which places oral language at the centre of learning to read. It sets out her Language House in full.

Opens at doi.org

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The Writing Rope and views of writing 12

Joan Sedita's Writing Rope sorts the skills of writing into five strands, which are critical thinking, syntax, text structure, writing craft and transcription. The Simple and Not So Simple Views of Writing explain how handwriting and spelling, composing and self-regulation share a writer's limited working memory. For teaching writing day to day, see Writing.

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The Big Six and the five components 5

The National Reading Panel named five components of reading instruction, which are phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Deslea Konza added oral language and early literacy experiences to give Australian schools the Big Six.

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Understanding the reading process (opens in a new tab)

Deslea Konza, for the South Australian Department of Education and Children's Services · Research into practice paper (PDF) · 2010 · Australia

A short, readable paper that pulls the big reading reviews into six components, from oral language and phonological awareness through to fluency and comprehension. Good pre-reading for a staff meeting.

FreeOpens at ecu.edu.au

Listen

066 Literacy and the Big Six (opens in a new tab)

Education Research Reading Room · with Lyn Stone

Educational linguist Lyn Stone discusses literacy instruction and the Big Six components of reading, with plenty for teachers wanting a clear overview.

FreeOpens at ollielovell.com

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How word reading develops 8

How children move from sounding out to recognising words instantly, including Ehri's phases, orthographic mapping and what brain research shows. For teaching it, see Phonics.

Read

Beyond Memorising Whole Words (opens in a new tab)

Jen O'Sullivan · Substack · 2025 · International

Explains why skilled readers recognise words through orthographic mapping rather than visual memory, and the role of phonemic awareness and phonics in building that store of words.

FreeOpens at readwritejen.substack.com

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Syntheses of the field 27

The major reviews, inquiries and reports that pull the reading research together, from Australia's 2005 National Inquiry and England's Rose Review to Ending the Reading Wars. Structured literacy sits here too, meaning explicit, systematic and cumulative teaching of how language works, from sounds and spellings through to word parts, sentences and meaning.

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Read

Introduction to the science of reading (opens in a new tab)

AERO · Explainer · 2023 · Australia

AERO's overview of how children learn to read. It introduces the Simple View of Reading, Scarborough's Reading Rope and the core reading skills, and explains why explicit, systematic teaching matters.

FreeOpens at edresearch.edu.au

Research

How the Science of Reading Informs 21st-Century Education (opens in a new tab)

Petscher, Cabell, Catts, Compton, Foorman and colleagues · 2020 · Open access · Reading Research Quarterly

Twelve researchers from the Florida Center for Reading Research sort the claims made for the science of reading into those with compelling evidence, promising evidence and little evidence. Free on PubMed Central.

Opens at pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Listen

Systematic synthetic phonics

005 Phonics (opens in a new tab)

Education Research Reading Room · with Pamela Snow

Professor Pamela Snow, a psychologist and speech pathologist, discusses phonics and reading instruction, and how adults can draw accurate accounts from children and young people.

FreeOpens at ollielovell.com

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Reading science and classroom practice

Hard Words: Why aren't kids being taught to read? (opens in a new tab)

Emily Hanford, APM Reports · Audio documentary and article · 2018 · USA

Emily Hanford's documentary on what research shows about how children learn to read, why many educators do not know that science, and how one Pennsylvania district set about changing its teaching.

FreeOpens at apmreports.org

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096 Literacy policy (opens in a new tab)

Education Research Reading Room · with Jennifer Buckingham

Jennifer Buckingham compares literacy instruction and policy in the UK, Ireland and Australia, including curriculum, teacher education, assessment and inspection, and how these affect results.

FreeOpens at ollielovell.com

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Reading science and classroom practice

Sold a Story (opens in a new tab)

Emily Hanford, APM Reports · Podcast series · USA

Emily Hanford's investigative podcast on how children learn to read and why the research often does not reach classrooms. A second season looks beyond reading to teaching itself.

FreeOpens at features.apmreports.org

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Knowledge and comprehension 17

Why reading comprehension is not one general skill, and how much a reader's knowledge of words and the world shapes what they understand. For classroom practice, see Reading comprehension and text study.

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Reading Comprehension Is Not a Skill (opens in a new tab)

Carl Hendrick (The Learning Dispatch) · Substack · 2026 · UK

Drawing on new research and his own teaching, Hendrick argues that comprehension depends far more on knowing word meanings than on generic strategies, and makes the case for rich vocabulary teaching as an equity lever.

FreeOpens at carlhendrick.substack.com

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Why knowledge matters

063 Why Knowledge Matters (opens in a new tab)

Education Research Reading Room · with E.D. Hirsch

E.D. Hirsch, founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation and author of Cultural Literacy, makes the case for why shared knowledge matters in schooling.

FreeOpens at ollielovell.com

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034 The Knowledge Gap (opens in a new tab)

Education Research Reading Room · with Natalie Wexler

Journalist Natalie Wexler discusses The Knowledge Gap and her argument that building knowledge is central to reading comprehension in American schools.

FreeOpens at ollielovell.com

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Oral language as the foundation 9

Spoken language as the base that reading and writing are built on, and the Matthew effect, where early strengths or difficulties compound over time. For classroom practice, see Oral language.

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Oral language (Understanding the reading process, paper 1.1) (opens in a new tab)

Deslea Konza, for the South Australian Department of Education and Children's Services · Research into practice paper (PDF) · 2011 · Australia

Deslea Konza explains how oral language shapes later reading, with classroom strategies such as wait time, simpler teacher talk, think-alouds, shared story books and daily table talk.

FreeOpens at ecu.edu.au

Listen

Vocabulary and language

Ep 15 Vocabulary and Language (opens in a new tab)

Evidence into Action

Alex Quigley, Alex Reynolds and guests including Jessie Ricketts discuss vocabulary instruction and its connections to reading and the curriculum.

FreeOpens at evidenceintoaction.podbean.com

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Spelling and morphology 6

Spelling draws on language knowledge, not visual memory alone. Good spellers draw on sounds, letter patterns and meaningful word parts together. For classroom practice, see Spelling and morphology.

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How Words Cast Their Spell: Spelling is an integral part of learning the language, not a matter of memorization (opens in a new tab)

Malatesha Joshi, Rebecca Treiman, Suzanne Carreker and Louisa Moats, American Educator · Article · USA

Four researchers make the case that spelling is an integral part of learning the language and not a matter of memorising. The article downloads as a PDF from this page.

FreeOpens at aft.org

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