At Philip Morant School & College, we recognise the fundamental importance of reading and reading fluency to provide students with a pathway to accessing their learning and understanding of the whole school curriculum. Reading fluency is defined as ‘the ability to read accurately, at an appropriate speed and with the right expression’ which is necessary for students to fully comprehend any material they are reading.
To support students’ development of reading fluency, wherever appropriate, teachers use questioning to activate students’ prior knowledge by making connections to build schema, pre-teach unfamiliar vocabulary while using an agreed approach to etymological exploration, and encourage students to make informed predictions. Teachers also model reading, promote academic oracy, and provide opportunities for re-reading before students are asked to create written responses.
Within Key Stage 3 students complete a library based reading programme that has been formulated to provide stretch and challenge to all students through a carefully curated selection of whole class texts that are linked to the current curriculum being provided within lessons, but also to the wider world in which we find ourselves today. This programme is grounded in the philosophy of promoting a love of reading by exposing students to a wide range of genres, writers and perspectives. Each text has been carefully selected with consideration to vocabulary, theme and context to ensure that we maximise these reading opportunities and expose our students to a wide range of words to prepare them for their future formal assessments. Within these lessons the reading fluency of each student is assessed during one to one reading opportunities which are graded using the reading fluency matrix. This data is reviewed termly to identify potential intervention opportunities and is then reviewed alongside the New Group Reading Test (NGRT) data to ensure that all students who require support are identified at an early stage. Interventions are bespoke to reading and reading fluency looking specifically at a student’s ability to break down and decode words using phonics, but also building to understand when intonation is required based on a deeper understanding of vocabulary and punctuation. Students are assessed on entry to this programme and on exit to identify if this support needs to be sustained or if the student is now able to access their learning without it.
All students in Year 7 and Year 8 are tested using the NGRT. Students who sit below national expectations, either in their reading age or in their assessment performance across the curriculum , are provided with additional support both inside and outside of the classroom. As all reading ages are made readily available on Go4Schools, teachers are explicitly aware of their students who may struggle to read new material fluently and, therefore, comprehend the content fully. For these students, teachers will use the nine principles more intensively, provide more scaffolded tasks, and model processes to develop their fluency and understanding.
For some students, a more intensive support programme may be required and these students may be enrolled on intervention programmes such as Talisman, this is a phonics book scheme for students who have received a score of below 85 on the NGRT. These groups also utilise ‘word aware’ to develop familiarity with key vocabulary that will benefit them across the whole school curriculum. In addition to this students may be identified for Lexonic Advance, which is a powerful literary intervention programme designed to rapidly improve students’ reading skills and vocabulary comprehension. All of our intervention programmes are designed to be small groups with opportunities for one to one support within these.