Thread by @TheReadingApe

Excellent question and apologies for not being clearer. Although silent reading is a relatively recent phenomenon- Latin was usually written in scriptio continua with no breaks between words making it easier to read aloud - it greatly speeds up reading rate.

https://twitter.com/tHE_zEEN/status/1362376470736359427

Oral reading reduces saccade length(how far the eye moves between fixations)and slows reading but this lengthens substantially with silent reading and most US college students read between 300-400 wpm(try doing that aloud).

As a result, the expectation is that children learn to read silently but if we can't hear hear children read, how do we monitor that they are actually reading? The NRP (NICHD,2000) concluded that unmonitored reading in the form of Sustained Silent Reading was not effective.

So, just letting children read without checking that they are actually reading is pretty useless (and why guided reading carousels were so ineffective) as a teaching method and having them all read aloud at the same time would result in cacophonous chaos.

'Leverage' therefore, is the purchase that we can bring to bear on the investment of students in the act of reading such that they have 'eyes and minds on text'. This has traditionally been done through comprehension questions that check that the content has been read.

This presented problems, particularly as 1. this may be a memory test 2. The child may have read the text but not understood it - which is perfectly okay if the child is developing orthographic skills. 3. The reader may not have sufficient discrete knowledge to make sense of it.

The most common 'leverage' approach is now @Doug_Lemov 's 'control the game' from his book 'Reading Reconsidered' where the whole class follows (pointing at the text as they go) with the teacher using myriad techniques to ensure investment. Worth checking out.

Hope that helps and even more apologies if you wanted a short answer...