‘Twas brillig and the slithy toves…

“Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll. This is one of my my favourite poems, one which I remember distinctly from my own schooling. I remember being fascinated by the unusual vocabulary and enjoying how the poem bounced along. The poem was created long before it was published in “Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there”. The first verse was also made up years before the rest of the poem. The first stanza of the poem originally appeared in an 1855 edition of Mischmasch, a periodical that Carroll wrote and illustrated himself as a boy, for the amusement of his family. Carroll called it “Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry”. The meaning of the words was a little different from those in “Through the Looking Glass”.

We know that learning to read is important. Research shows that people without good literacy skills do worse in education and are more likely to be unemployed or even suffer from health and relationship problems.

There are numerous studies about the way in which children learn to read. Many discuss the importance of the child’s early environment: those experiencing a vocabulary-rich home and a childhood full of stories and nursery rhymes are more likely to succeed at reading than those in environments with limited vocabulary and less exposure to books in the formative years.

As fluent readers, unless we come across a new word or a difficult concept, we are mostly unaware of the process to comprehend and make sense of what we read. This is why it is vital that we recognise the stages of reading development, are aware of the skills needed to comprehend and understand the importance of comprehending what we read. The importance many schools have placed on decoding is evident; the same level of importance needs to be given to children’s ability to understand what they read. At Yateley Manor we want children to do more than just “bark at text”.

If you read the passage below, despite not understanding the content, it is likely that you will be able to read every word because of your ability to decode.

'Sporandic is an emurient grof with many fribs; it floops with corite, an olg which cargs like lange. Corite grinkles several other tarances, which garkers excarp by glarcking the corite and starping it in tranker-clarped strobs.'

Now answer these questions:

1. What is sporandic? 2. What does sporandic floop with? 3. How do garkers excarp the tarances from the sporandic?

You will have answered the questions correctly but will have no idea what the passage is actually about. This is something that we need to be aware of when teaching children to read; even though a child can confidently decode and answer simple retrieval questions, it does not mean that they understand what they are reading. We can answer basic retrieval questions due to the grammatical structure of the English language. Our knowledge of grammatical structures means that we can automatically identify “sporandic” as a noun, despite not knowing what it is. The same goes for verbs like "floops" – we know it is some sort of action. Whilst we have no idea what type of action, we know it is some sort of action because of the grammatical structure the passage follows.

The problem in understanding becomes apparent when we begin to ask questions that require our ability to infer, connect ideas and offer opinions.

Look at the passage again and answer these questions:

1. Using your knowledge of emurient grofs, why is sporandic classed as this? 2. In your opinion how does sporandic floop? 3. Do you agree with the author? Why/Why not?

You will see that having limited knowledge of word meaning will, eventually, impact on understanding of the text. Comprehension is not a single process, but is made up of a number of processes. The reader needs to understand each word and the context in which it is used to understand the text. Apparently almost 70 per cent of commonly used English words have more than one meaning. This has obvious connotations when children are developing their ability to read for understanding; children’s ability to infer will improve as their vocabulary improves. This is due to the increase in connections within the neurological pathways. In teaching a child to comprehend, the adult’s own pre- reading of the text is essential. Identifying vocabulary that may be unfamiliar in order to teach children any key vocabulary that they may not have come across is an essential way of helping children to understand what they are reading.

After reading the the sentence, you are now aware that the the human brain often does not inform you that the the word ‘the’ has been repeated twice every time.

Robert Upton

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