‘Max’: The boy who could decode but couldn’t read well.

One of my reading ‘helpers’ was a nine year old boy. Let’s call him ‘Max’. He wore a polite smile and freshly ironed clothes as he approached my table at the back of the village school dining room. We both sat on green stackable chairs, amid the clatter and banter coming from the kitchen on the other side of the wall. Max’s reading was well-organised.

He could break words down into their sounds and then synthesise the sounds back into whole words. His attitude was always positive and he maintained a strong level of focus from the first to the final word of the passage. I admired his resilience, as I could tell that Max wasn’t getting much out of effortful reading. The comprehension questions showed that he was quick at finding the key word of the question and then reading aloud the sentence that included the key word.

The school was supporting my research and Max was in a lower attaining reading group that took part in my rhythm-based intervention for ten minutes, once a week. It was delivered by the music lead (who was an art teacher by training), and she'd said she was willing to ‘give it a go’.

Six weeks later, when I heard the Year 5 children read the same passages again, Max had read with expression, and had internalized the storyline. When I asked him the comprehension questions, he knew the answers immediately without referencing key words and he even provided his own opinion as well.

It was delightful so see that ‘Max’ was reading well and not ‘pretending’ to enjoy his reading. When the headteacher and teachers heard the contrast in the children’s reading, they remarked not only on the change in Max’s fluency, but also on the sudden uptick in his ‘academic potential’. The children’s trajectories now pointed upwards. What was going on?

What is a rhythm block?

To explain the changes I’ve seen in children’s reading since first undertaking the research, 25 years ago, I’ve been exploring the notion of ‘rhythm blocks’.

A rhythm block is a specific and observable barrier to reading well, even when the teaching of early reading is good and there are no problems with the child’s hearing and vision. Later in this post, I outline five ways to spot a rhythm block in a child’s learning behaviour, but if you are curious about the children in your class, I’ve created light touch rhythm-based games, designed to build cohesion and gently identify the children who have rhythm-related blocks in their reading. Click here.

A rhythm block disrupts the timing of language processing. We know that language processing is effortful when the thing is off. A presentation delivered without pace is hard to follow. A joke delivered without timing falls flat. Timing in language supports prediction. Predictive processing sharpens sensitivity to perceiving the sounds of phonemes, the stress in syllables, and even the subtle relationship between the sounds of phonemes and the syntax of language.

A rhythm block affects the coordination and the integration of language processing in two ways: (i) assimilating the information on the page and (ii) anticipating what is coming up in the reading.

Really, these are two drivers of the same virtuous spiral because better assimilation leads to better anticipation which leads to better assimilation and the rhythm of the spiral becomes self-sustaining. This is the key to understanding the role of rhythm in reading well.

If a rhythm block represents such an impediment, why haven’t we heard about this before?

Why reading well requires social and emotional learning

The reliance on the deficit model has distracted us from the effects of social and emotional learning. We know that our classrooms are more diverse than ever and that teachers are expected to manage growing numbers of identified and suspected learning differences among children, as well as a range of discrete social and emotional challenges that include neurodiversity, immigration, exposure to trauma and inequality.

Our education system has for decades relied on deficit models to label children with learning differences. This has always been justified as a means to multiple ends - the ends being privileged access to learning support, often across the curriculum and reasonable adjustments in examinations. However, the number of children waiting for assessment and needing individual support, coupled with the move towards a more inclusive approach to education means that we need to think in a new way.

In my opinion, the present understanding that we have of neuroplasticity and the main brain networks promises a far more plausible way to conceptualise learning for classrooms that are diverse in so many ways. The ‘whole child’ can be considered within a perspective that places the role of the brain's salience network at the core of social and emotional learning.

This lens on learning has impacted the way I view my rhythm-based approach to reading. Reading well is a form of social and emotional learning. The self-sustaining virtuous spiral of assimilation and anticipation that I mentioned earlier may accelerate and strengthen, because of the emotional re-enforcement that the experience of inclusive education of the 'whole child' would offer.

While we wait for policies and practices to catch-up with a ‘whole-child’, social and emotional learning lens, let’s consider the five visible signs of rhythm blocks and how they intersect with social and emotional learning.

5 Visible signs of rhythm blocks

A rhythm block is more likely to exist in a vigilant state of a watchful child who feels they must look out for a potential threat in a fine edit of the present and brace against perceived or imagined potential threats. The alternative state involves future-oriented attention in which the child is curious about what is about happen in their social world and this known as a rhythmic state.

We may infer that rhythm blocks originate as social emotional learning in some form, and also reason that exposure to rhythm may move the attention system from a vigilant to a rhythmic future-oriented state.

Weak phonemic awareness

When a child with a rhythm block is confused about phonemes, they are missing the details in the smallest sounds of language. One five year old child I worked with thought the initial sounds of brown and green, /gr/ and /br/ were so ‘similar’ that they even merged into one muddy color called ‘grown’.

It is as if they have been given an incomplete set of lego and yet we still expect them to make sense of the kit and to create the same design as everyone else. What we see, is that these children adapt their use of language to reflect the sounds they think they are working with.

One reason why these children struggle with a phonics programme is because they perceive some phonemes as identical to others and cannot perceive them as different. Similar sounds become conflated, for example: /f/ with /th/ or /sh/ with /ch/ or /br/ with /gr/.

This rhythm block may have started with ‘glue ear’, or ear infections, or maybe there was too little exposure to language in the child’s infancy, but in a phonics programme, the key to this is that they struggle to perceive the distinctive front-edge of each phoneme with sensitivity.

The front-edge of the sound is where we hear rhythmic information with clarity. When a child places their attention at the front-edge of the sound, they become more sensitive to rhythmic cues and phonemic cues in early childhood and process language more efficiently.

And when a child is engaged in the virtuous rhythmic spiral of assimilation and anticipation, their attention automatically migrates to the front edge of the sound. This positioning means they are always refining their sensitivity to differences between smallest sounds of language.

Click here to find out more about rhythmic and phonemic awareness.

Stuck at the word level

We see a rhythm block at the word level: the words are read with accuracy, but they are monolithic, like tombstones. Each word lacks a connection with its neighbor and each word represents a disproportionate drain on the child’s cognitive resources.

This happens even when letter and sound correspondence is in place, due to dedicated, excellent teaching and unrelenting effort on the part of the learner.

Many children are given additional support. The main goal is to encourage them to read at a pace fast enough for the words to connect, jumpstarting the language processing system as if it were an engine.

Unfortunately, when reading becomes a performance, it moves further away from the natural, self-sustaining reading that is characterized by ease, and anticipation instead of effort.

Some children are even given passages to repeat until they have memorised them. The idea is to encourage them to experience the flow of the language, through familiarity as if this might bring all the layers of language processing together.

These old-fashioned approaches are presented as ‘simple’ ways to support children who struggle with decoding. 'Repeated reading' is an example of a strategy that is currently enjoying a resurgence, even though it was developed and published fifty years ago, with Carol Chomsky’s paper, ‘After decoding: What?’

We know so much more about neuroplasticity and the dynamics of brain networks that we can move forwards with a more inclusive, 'whole child' agenda that acknowledges the importance of social and emotional learning, particularly in reading.

Fluency without flow

We see and hear a rhythm block in dysfluent reading, as a child substitutes ‘gold’ for ‘glad’ without repairing the syntactic error. This happens when decoding has developed in the more familiar, higher frequency words. The less familiar words are guessed based on their overall shape and combinations of letters. Guessing is an important indicator because it points to the structure that processes the syntax of the passage being offline.

When children have been trained to read at a brisk pace, do they activate syntactic processing? Unfortunately, they don’t. This style of reading, without any variation in their tone of voice, and too little punctuation means that the syntax is glossed over. The reading goal is to keep going without stopping, as there are so many children who need support in a day. Without the ebb and flow of the natural rhythms of language, grammatical structures are not available to these children in their vigilant state.

Brisk decoding of familiar words becomes a trained performance that demonstrates efficient word attack skills, as understanding the text was never the goal. The fast decoder is also efficient when finding the key word of the question and this contrived form of ‘comprehension’ is an additional skill.

Superficial reading that is as fast as it is facile is a product of intensive training. Unfortunately, it adds an additional learning barrier to dysfluent reading. The child who performs during fast decoding is bracing against perceived reading failure rather than assimilating and anticipating the text with ease and understanding.

Even though the superficial elements of decoding are in place, they are not processed grammatically, because the subtle rhythmic cues in the lengths of syllables (rhythmic detail) are only available to children who read with natural automaticity.

Accuracy without meaning

'There's no point to it'. Children who say this know that they can read accurately, but realise that something is still ‘missing’, and that they are being left behind, unable to access the curriculum as their friends do, and that for them reading seems ‘pointless’.

A reader with a vigilant attention state, perceives their environment in tiny slices. These absolute segments of time trap the child in a ‘mobilized’ sympathetic state. This nervous state is the reason that their experience of the text does not flow, does not feel connected and is not assimilated as meaningful.

The reading comprehension deficit, in my opinion is a rarity. There are indeed children with a hidden disability that is specific to syntax, and it was obvious in a special school that a rhythm-based approach did not address this specific learning difference.

But for a larger proportion of children, a rhythm block impedes reading comprehension, even though their decoding is good.

In a conversation with a researcher specialising in reading comprehension, I asked whether the population he was studying with a ‘reading comprehension deficit’ could follow the plot outline of a soap opera and suggested he might investigate this.

In my experience, children with weak reading comprehension usually know exactly what is happening in a film or a TV programme, and what is ‘likely to happen next’. To help them, there are many non-verbal cues available such as tone of voice, facial expression and body language. When faced with the words on the page, however, the author leaves the reader to infer all of these cues unaided. When children move from a vigilant state to a rhythmic state, they become sensitive to these details in the language and can process the text as meaningful.

Weak attention in the classroom

If you have stayed with me to this point, you will be aware that children with a rhythm block are experiencing school as a threatening place. This may be because they carry their vigilant state everywhere with them. Perhaps, there are aspects of school that trigger this response in their nervous system.

The main point is that children in a vigilant state are splicing their environment into tiny slices which is due to their mobilized sympathetic nervous system state.

This is unsustainable and they may alternate checking for safety with ‘zoning out’ to allow their mind to drift and float freely between the more intense bursts of vigilance. The third likely behaviour is chatting, clowning and distracting others, because ‘zoning out’ leaves them ungrounded. Making contact with their neighbors is reassuring and helps them to feel centred again.

In terms of learning, the children with vigilant attention may be looking intently at your face as you teach, because they (i) need the non-verbal cues to assimilate your instructions and (ii) need to compensate for weak phonemic awareness as they lip read to fill in the gaps.

Their way of working is exhausting for them. It demands multiple strategies just to get through the day. Their vigilant attention, however can be reset using a rhythm-based approach. Even in special schools teachers have said to me that never before had they seen the cooperation and focus shown by the year eight boys with ADD and ADHD.

A more hopeful way to support lower attaining readers

So, as we watch the education system strain under long waiting lists, referrals and increasing numbers of children who are unable to cope with the thought of attending school, it is clear that throwing money at this situation may not help.

It is time to take lessons from neuroscience, which shows that genes respond to environments, and that brain networks are interconnected. It is time to think less about expectations and more about cohesion, both within the child and the classroom. As inclusivity becomes the new normal, and a new accountability emerges, schools are likely to adopt models of social and emotional learning.

It is my sincere hope that inclusive classrooms, where honouring the whole child is viewed as the most effective form of teaching and learning will become the norm. Being ‘labelled’ is not a trivial matter as I discovered in midlife.

I was identified with dyslexia at the age of 41 when a stressful situation at home affected my reading. One morning whilst at work, my vision changed. The centre of every word had a bunch of letters that were superimposed over each other. If I looked closely to try to decipher a word, the letters ‘jiggled’.

I was fascinated, but also knew that I needed immediate help, as reading had become impossible. My dyslexia assessment was done through a university. I did not tell the assessor about my academic background and PhD, but I was stunned by the verdict: that I would struggle to complete secondary level education.

Fortunately I knew who to consult and made the journey to Scotland to see a gifted behavioural optometrist. A pair of dark green lenses enabled me to read with ease. I wore them for three months, even at a conference where I was giving a presentation. The visual problem went away for good and I didn’t need them ever again.

What changed for ‘Max’ and what it means for your school

So, returning to ‘Max’, I am delighted that he and the others in the group of 18 had made wonderful progress in only six weeks. The largest gain of 36 months in reading comprehension age confirmed that reading well is a possibility for children who are perceived by schools to be lower attaining or under-achieving or not meeting expectation.

If we acknowledge that children bring to school a very broad range of social and emotional experiences, and meet each pupil as a 'whole child' from a unique background, we can start to cultivate their attention from an informed and new perspective. Rhythm does change brain state, as we know from using calming or energizing music to create the desired atmosphere - from the classroom to assembly hall, and the next logical step is to use it more deliberately to support children’s learning, especially their reading.

If you are curious and interested in learning more, I’ve created 10 light touch rhythm-based games, designed to build cohesion and gently identify the children who have rhythm blocks. Click here.

FAQs

What is a rhythm block?

A rhythm block is a specific, observable barrier to reading well that can be present even when early reading has been well taught and there are no problems with a child’s hearing or vision. It disrupts the timing of language processing so a child may decode words accurately yet still not read with flow or meaning. It shows up in five visible ways: weak phonemic awareness, being stuck at the word level, fluency without flow, accuracy without meaning, and weak attention in the classroom.

How is a rhythm block different from dyslexia?

Dyslexia is usually approached through a deficit model - a label that grants access to support and reasonable adjustments. A rhythm block is a different idea: it describes a disruption to the timing of language processing, often linked to a child’s attention state rather than to a diagnosis.

A reading comprehension deficit is a learning difference that affects the processing of written language at a structural level. A syntax-specific comprehension difficulty is rare, and cannot be addressed using a rhythm-based approach, but a far larger group of children read the hard way, because a rhythm block is getting in the way.

A rhythm block may exist alongside dyslexia and other learning differences, or on its own. A thorough assessment is appropriate when a child displays learning patterns consistent with dyslexia or other learning differences.

Can a child decode well and still have a rhythm block?

Yes - this is one of the most common and most easily misunderstood barriers to reading well. A child can sound out every word accurately, keep pace and appear to read well, but beneath the effort, the words do not carry meaning, and are perceived as disconnected and monolithic - like ‘tombstones’. Accurate decoding and reading well are not the same thing, and a rhythmic block is often the gap between them.

How do you help a child with a rhythmic block?

The aim is to move a child’s attention from a vigilant state into a rhythmic future-oriented one, where they can anticipate and absorb language rather than brace against it. Short, structured, rhythm-based sessions are effective, as shown in my work with schools and research with children reading below expectation. Rhythm addresses reading at the level of social and emotional learning and replaces effortful reading with ease and enjoyment.

References

Chomsky, C. (1976). ‘After decoding: What?’ Language Arts, 53, 288-296.