Literacy Interventions: Phonics, Reading Fluency And The Universal Offer For All

 Nora Afraoui

We can agree that one of the most crippling barriers to learning, that a child can have, is being unable to read at the expected reading age for their chronological age. This barrier infects every lesson and every effort to learn for children with poor reading skills. Typically, a child with poor reading skills goes on to develop disruptive behaviours, to hide their lack of understanding, or the child goes on to develop a facade of nonchalance: the likes of which include sleeping in class and complete disengagement with learning. To no surprise, weak reading skills are strongly linked to internal truancy (truanting lessons) and poor school attendance overall.

Where does one start when exploring effective literacy interventions? 

We can start with addressing the vocabulary gap. Unfortunately, some students have not experienced the joys of being read to effectively at school on a regular basis. Adding to this, some students have not been read to at home. Some students have not had the chance to practise their reading at home from a young age. The old mantra of ‘read for just 10-20 minutes a day’ is one that some parents/carers can’t commit to, for a variety of reasons, and in turn this lack of reading translates into a gap: not just a vocabulary gap but a phonics and a reading fluency gap too. However, it is important to point out as mentioned in the Oxford Language Report that “language variation in children is a complex issue and it is therefore impossible to attribute it [the vocabulary gap] to one specific cause.”

How can Secondary schools support children with poor reading skills?

We can welcome the government’s latest decision to provide mandatory reading tests in Year 8. Bridget Phillipson understands that identification of our weakest readers is something that must happen in every school to enable successful interventions. These statutory assessments will help us to address children’s reading gaps from phonics (decoding issues) to fluency and reading comprehension issues. I question why the tests are delayed until Year 8. Is it due to children’s transition into Secondary and the pressures that brings? Surely, we need to check children’s reading gaps in Year 7 as soon as possible to start tackling them effectively? Either way, in order for us to plan and implement effective reading interventions, we need reliable reading data.

Now for the planning and implementation of effective literacy provision for reading.

Several schools have rolled out successful reading interventions along the lines of Form Time reading: a year group reads the same text for a series of weeks with reading comprehension questions planned in advance for discussion. This Form Time reading does encourage students to recognise that reading is not something we only need for English lessons. It helps teachers  recognise that every teacher is a teacher of literacy. Form tutors grapple with their own reading skills as they lead students through the given text. However, issues with this form of intervention include: the expertise of the teacher, their own confidence, their own attitude towards reading and form time pressures. This highlights the importance of literacy leaders training their form tutors on how to deliver effective form time reading sessions. Once form tutors are trained in-school typically the quality of form time reading improves.

As effective as form time reading may be, in allowing students to have some golden reading time, it does not address the root cause of weak reading skills.

Phonics

Phonics screening checks are essential in identifying students who have not been able to develop the fundamental letter sounds knowledge to decode words. At our school, we use NGRT tests and then decide on which students need to have a YARC test to identify whether their underlying reading issue is a phonics based one or a reading fluency issue.

Sounds Write but it has proven to have a positive impact on our students who struggle with their phonics knowledge. An alternative to Sounds Write is Read Write Inc. Some schools train their Teacher Assistants on how to run phonics sessions for small groups of KS3 students every week. These sessions should be taking place in every Secondary school for students with phonics knowledge gaps.

Reading Fluency

Once a child establishes a solid understanding of phonics, they might struggle with reading fluency (the ability to read a sentence without having to stop and decode each letter/word slowly) or as Alex Quigley has called it the flow of reading.

The precise definition is: “Fluent readers can read accurately, at an appropriate speed without great effort (automaticity), and with appropriate stress and intonation (prosody).”

EEF Guidance Report on ‘Improving Literacy at Key Stage 2 (p19)

As a result, some Secondary schools run reading fluency interventions two or three times a week. For instance, at my school we run reading fluency intervention for KS3 students led by trained Year 10 readers. These sessions typically take place during form time and students use the DIBELS reading resources as their reading texts. This form of intervention has also had a positive impact on our students’ progress. The intervention relies heavily on training your Year 10 students on how to lead reading fluency intervention effectively for KS3 students.

Literacy interventions: a multi-faceted approach

Jennifer Webb has shared the incredible positive impact of having a multi-faceted literacy intervention across her school’s Trust. Jennifer explains in her Carlton Academy Trust post how “Students completing Lexonik – literacy at the speed of sound Leap phonics intervention have made ???????? ????????????????????????’ ???????????????????????????????? ???????? ???????????????? ???????????????? ????????????????????????!”.This has worked for Jennifer alongside her use of the Faster Read project.

There are some incredible reading intervention online platforms such as Bedrock, Lexonic and Reading Plus. It’s time for the government to subsidise the cost of these provisions for schools so that more schools can provide effective multi-faceted reading interventions both online and offline. This will help our children improve their behaviour and attitude to learning as a result of their access to the essential life skill of reading.