Dr. Hollis Scarborough invented the concept of the Reading Rope in the early 1990s to help parents understand the various skills their children needed to master to become proficient readers. 

Scarborough’s Reading Rope contains two main sections: Word Recognition and Language Comprehension. Each of these comprises several smaller strands. Woven together, these strands become the rope that represents complete skilled reading. All the components are interconnected and interdependent. If just one strand is weak, it affects the rope (and the reader) as a whole.