Most people with an interest in education agree helping children learn to read and write is one of the most important goals of education.
While most children learn these essential skills well in England, there are too many who don’t meet the necessary standards and who struggle with reading. Not only is this a distressing experience for these children but it limits their chances to succeed in their education.
The outcomes of statutory tests of reading in England show that despite more than a decade of increasing pressure to adopt narrow models of synthetic phonics, nearly 25 per cent of children each year are not meeting the expected standards for reading when they finish primary school.
About 4,500 children each year are at the bottom of the assessment distribution, with a worrying proportion not even achieving a score at all.
England’s 2014 national curriculum states that if children have not learned to decode words when they start year 3, then the synthetic phonics approach should be intensified: “As in key stage 1, however, pupils who are still struggling to decode need to be taught to do this urgently through a rigorous and systematic phonics programme so that they catch up rapidly with their peers.”
Schools should have confidence to change their approach
The problem with this approach is that if children have had between 190 hours and 380 hours of discrete synthetic phonics during their first two years of the national curriculum, but they still can’t decode, then perhaps a different approach should be tried.
Our new research shows an evidence-based new way forward for helping children with reading difficulties.
Step one is for schools to have the confidence to change their approach if it is not working.
It has become clear from research that explicitly addressing children’s motivation for reading as part of teaching them is vital.
One way to do this is through the selection of the best books written for children; real books that will engage children in powerful storytelling, non-fiction writing and poetry.
Educators must assess children’s motivation, including finding out about their interests. Another component that has been shown to work is teaching writing to help reading (and vice-versa).
Reading comprehension should be integrated
Reading comprehension is another vital component. Instead of leaving this until after phonics teaching, it should always be integrated as part of effective teaching of phonics and reading.
Our research shows teaching about the alphabetic code is still done in a structured way, but it is contextualised through an emphasis on the real purposes for reading and writing.
The importance of integrating components such as reading comprehension applies to the teaching of all aspects of reading. For example, the word ‘guessing’ seems to have taken on a negative connotation through a link with reading ‘cues’.
When children are rightly encouraged to use their knowledge of how phonemes are represented by letters to decode words, the next step requires them to guess.
Checking if words make sense
The sounding-out of the word requires children to guess what that word might be – and might mean – based on their knowledge of words in their oral vocabulary. It requires them to check if that word makes sense in the context of the sentence they are reading.
This kind of guessing, or hypothesising, is an essential part of reading, because reading is the process of understanding the meaning of texts.
The final point we addressed in our research paper is whether teachers in England are already using multi-component approaches to helping children with reading difficulties. We surveyed 133 experienced teachers including special needs teachers and co-ordinators.
Some teachers said that they would move away from synthetic phonics if they were not working. However, about 20 per cent of the respondents said they would continue with them even if they were not working, consistent with the national curriculum policy quoted earlier in this article.
England’s recent national curriculum review did not recommend any changes to policies on teaching reading. Our research shows that there are things that should be changed based on the most up-to-date research evidence.
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