How to navigate the LEAP website: English, Spanish
Resources for Tutors
Tutors can login to access learning modules and retrieve literacy resources.
Resources for Parents and Families
Parents and families can access literacy resources.
Resources for Teachers
Teachers can login to access learning modules and retrieve literacy resources.
The Literacy Engagement Action Project (LEAP) is a state-wide Virginia initiative to build literacy skills in K-12 students with a scalable, comprehensive program for teachers, students, and families. Content on our LEAP website is organized around Scarborough’s Rope (Scarborough, 2001), which is a useful way to picture the many parts of skilled reading. As you can see, reading involves many skills that are braided together, and most students will need explicit instruction to learn how to read proficiently. The rope is made of two key areas: Language Comprehension and Word Recognition. Students need plenty of opportunities to learn and explore in both areas: Reading requires solid understanding of language as well as specific skills to support word recognition. Missing knowledge in either of these key areas results in reading difficulty. Click on the skills strands in the model to read a short definition. Click through to visit pages with more detail, activities, resources, and links.
The strands within Scarborough’s rope represent the many skills that students need to develop in order to become skilled readers (Scarborough, 2001). Within the first core piece of the rope, language comprehension is built through background knowledge, allowing students to draw upon their knowledge of facts, concepts, and experiences to improve their understanding. In addition, the breadth and precision of their vocabulary allows them to understand a variety of words they may come across in their reading, while their understanding of language structures helps them to more specifically understand word parts. Students’ verbal reasoning, or the ability to understand inferences, metaphors, and other unspoken messages, allows them to build meaning beyond what is directly stated in their reading. Finally, students’ overall literacy knowledge of print and genres also helps them to build a general understanding of their reading. Within the second core piece of the rope, word recognition is developed through phonological awareness, or the awareness of syllables and phonemes within words. A students’ ability to decode using smaller word parts allows them to read a word bit by bit, while sight recognition allows them to recognize entire words at first glance. When all of these reading skills are developed through explicit reading instruction, these strands come together to make skilled reading increasingly strategic and automatic.