Last year, I stood in front of a room full of thoughtful, engaged adults and asked a simple question:
“What is reading?”
Hands went up.
“Empowerment.” “Freedom.” “Escape.” “Exploration.” “Learning.”
Beautiful answers. True answers.
But those aren’t what reading is.
They’re what reading does. They’re how it feels.
If we want to help our children become strong readers, we need to understand what reading actually is—at its core. Once we’re clear about that, we start seeing opportunities everywhere.
The Idea that Makes Teaching Reading Simple
Years ago, in a University of Virginia course on the foundations of reading instruction, I learned about something called the “Simple View of Reading.”
It’s not flashy. It’s not trendy. It’s not a program.
It’s a simple conceptual model that explains how reading works. I return to it again and again, because it gives me a clear picture I can hang everything else on.
Reading comprehension (understanding what you read) happens when two things come together:
- Oral language comprehension—understanding spoken words and ideas
- Written word recognition—being able to look at printed letters and turn them into spoken words (sometimes called “decoding” or “understanding the alphabetic principle”)
You can picture it like this:
Spoken Language × Written Word Recognition = Reading
Both parts matter. If either one is weak, understanding suffers.
Here’s the line I often share with parents:
Your child can’t understand anything in writing that they wouldn’t understand if you said it out loud to them.
Sit with that for a moment.
If a word like astonished or enormous or responsibility isn’t in your child’s spoken vocabulary, seeing it on a page won’t magically create understanding. Similarly, if they have never seen an armadillo or a microscope, sounding it out won’t get them far.
This means that if a child can perfectly sound out every word on a page but doesn’t know what those words mean, they aren’t truly reading. They’re reciting.
Reading happens when we know words in speech and in writing.
Why This Changes Everything at Home
Once you think about reading in these two buckets—spoken language and written word recognition—you see your day differently.
Conversations at breakfast build oral language.
Explaining what you’re doing while cooking builds knowledge and vocabulary.
Telling stories from your own childhood builds narrative skills.
Singing songs and nursery rhymes builds awareness of the sounds inside words.
Pointing to a stop sign and saying “S-T-O-P. Those letters spell stop” builds print awareness.
Noticing letters on cereal boxes or describing the straight lines and curves in an M builds familiarity with the alphabetic code.
None of that requires a special curriculum. It requires attention.
When you understand that letters represent the sounds we hear in speech—that written words are a code for spoken language—you see why rhymes, alliteration, and playful word games matter. They tune your child’s ear to the sounds inside words, which supports decoding later.
And when you understand that comprehension depends on spoken language, it never feels optional to spend time in rich, back-and-forth conversation with your child. It’s not “extra.” It’s foundational.
What’s more, all this doesn’t just make it easier to understand how reading develops. It makes it easy to seed literacy and teach reading at home, through everyday moments with your child.
Reading Is Rooted in Relationships
Reading grows through relationships.
Before a child can decode a sentence, they need thousands of warm, responsive conversations.
Before they can understand a story on paper, they need experience understanding stories told aloud.
- When you chat in the car …
- When you narrate bath time …
- When you laugh over a silly rhyme …
- When you answer their endless why questions …
You build the spoken language half of reading.
- When you trace letters with your finger …
- When you point to words as you read …
- When you help your child hear the /b/ sound at the beginning of ball …
You build the written word recognition half.
When those two parts grow together, comprehension follows.
Why I Love This Model
The Simple View isn’t earth-shattering. It’s not complicated. But it gives you a powerful mental image.
It keeps literacy from shrinking down to a single activity like bedtime storytime.
It reminds you that reading is the culmination of:
- Talking
- Listening
- Explaining
- Singing
- Playing with sounds
- Noticing print
- Connecting meaning to symbols
- Sharing books and stories
All woven together.
Understanding this matters from the beginning, as you lay the foundation for your child’s reading.
It also matters long-term, as you support your child’s development into a budding and then skilled and then better and better reader.
With schools focusing on phonics, decoding, and language comprehension, parents who understand this framework can better support and advocate for their children. You’ll recognize what your child’s teachers are asking them to do—and why.
A Simple Way to Start
Tonight, try this:
Ask yourself: What did we do today that built my child’s spoken language?
Ask: What did we do that connected letters to sounds?
You might be surprised by how much you’re already doing.
If you want one small next step, add one more back-and-forth conversation tomorrow. Or point out one word you see together and talk about its letters and sounds.
That’s it.
When you understand what reading is, you stop seeing literacy as something that only happens when you open a book.
You see it as something that grows all day long—through language, connection, and shared attention.
And that shift? That’s when you realize you’ve been teaching reading all along.
