Reading as Comprehension and Engagement: On the Limitations of Decoding
Without Animal Crossing and an expert mentor (both at the game and reading), Skylar could well have remained at the level of “going through the motions” of reading aloud.
About a year ago, a friend and I introduced my grandchildren to gaming; soon after I bought them a Nintendo Switch.
My granddaughter, Skylar, was immediately drawn to Animal Crossing because she loved that the game allows players to visit each other’s world. But the game also requires a great deal of reading so her initial experiences meant she had to play with someone who could read with comprehension to help and guide her.
Today, Skylar is starting second grade.
Recently, when Skylar was visiting, she immediately wanted to play Animal Crossing with my friend. As they played, Skylar was reading aloud incredibly well, only occasionally stumbling over words that would typically be classified as “above her grade level” (a concept I reject).
Despite Skylar’s ability to decode with speed and accuracy, we noticed something really important.
After reading through the text, Skylar would pause and ask my friend what she was supposed to do. Of course, the text in the game is designed to guide what the player does so my friend patiently explained that Skylar needed to re-read but pay attention to meaning (comprehension).
With that guidance and attention to the need to decode with comprehension and purpose, Skylar began to play the game with more agency (a few days later, she Facetimed my friend to continue having someone to mentor and guide her; in other words, she didn’t magically become an independent reader).
Skylar is 7 years old, my grandson, Brees, is 4 (about to turn 5 in a few weeks).
Watching them navigate gaming as well as learning to read is fascinating for several reasons.
First, Skylar clearly prefers communal gaming. Even as she is developing the ability to read with comprehension and engagement independently, she desperately wants to play the game with someone else.
Brees, who has chosen Minecraft as his go-to gaming, is a solitary gamer. While they were over for a pool day, Brees took a break and happily lay on a lounge chair playing Minecraft on his iPad.
Second, Skylar’s gaming and reading journey dramatically reveals the limitations of decoding — notably the danger of assuming that proficiency at reading aloud (words pronounced quickly and clearly) results in comprehension and engagement.
Here I want to stress that without Animal Crossing and an expert mentor (both at the game and reading), Skylar could well have remained at the level of “going through the motions” of reading aloud.
She didn’t hesitate to re-read and work toward comprehension so that she could fully engage in the game.
In other words, literacy is ultimately about autonomy, but it is also a profoundly important aspect of community.
During the Facetime session, Skylar was seeking a mentor to confirm the decisions she was making. Even though she was decoding with comprehension, she kept asking for confirmation that she was navigating the game the right way (or more accurately, a right way).
Before I go further, I want to stress that Skylar clearly has acquired some very powerful decoding strategies based in what most people call “phonics,” but when she is in the real world of gaming, she often comes to situations when those blunt decoding skills are not only inadequate but distracting from the flow of the complicated act of reading and acting on the comprehension.
I also want to stress that watching a 7-year-old play a reading-intensive video game complicates the simplistic and misleading faith placed in “grade level” texts. Like almost all real-world texts, Animal Crossing simply uses words (no concern for “grade level” and no “context clues”), often very common words mixed in with exact vocabulary that is uncommon.
Overly simplistic views of reading and vocabulary tend to conflate the “easy/hard” binary for vocabulary with “common/uncommon.”
Uncommon words that Skylar could not decode, and often has never encountered before, were not “hard” since with a mentor to pronounce and explain the word, Skylar very quickly adapted and with repetition in the game, those words became common to her (and thus, “easy”).
Finally, this experience with my grandchildren, at different stages of development and reading, helps personify some of the significant problems with the “science of reading” (SoR) movement that advocates for the “simple view” of reading and for systematic intensive phonics for all students.
Decoding is a necessary but small aspect of the reading, which ultimately must be an act of comprehension with engagement.
But the SoR movement also will fail our students because it centers systematic programs, silver-bullet thinking, and a misguided emphasis on decoding (and blunt decoding strategies).
However, what all students need and deserve are real-world experiences with and reasons to read.
Those experiences include activities too many people still stigmatize as “bad” for children — comic books, gaming, and even Lego.
Skylar as an emerging independent reader has had some wonderful traditional school experiences, and loving teachers. But her journey to reading is much larger than that, including her current fascination with Animal Crossing.
My beautiful and eager grandchildren are powerful examples that when it comes to teaching reading, nothing is settled and nothing is simple.
Reading is comprehensions and engagement, and as Skylar demonstrates, reading is about community, a shared purpose that is filled with pleasure and the joy of creating without a finish line.
