First, your child will be taught the most straightforward letters and the sounds they make. For example, they will be taught that the letter ‘m’ represents an mmm sound and the letters ‘oa’ represent an oh sound. Some schools also shared information on support strategies for individual pupils. This meant there was a consistent approach to how classroom teachers and support staff incorporated the learning from interventions with specialist teachers. Monitoring the impact of additional teaching and knowing what works The rationale for this work lies in the need for all pupils to leave school as successful readers and with GCSE English at grade 4 or above. It is essential for pupils to be able to read proficiently, so they can access post-compulsory education and participate fully in society. Our education recovery reports also show that learning loss as a result of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic is making reading a greater issue in secondary schools. [footnote 22] The Very First Reading Set from Usborne includes shared reading for an adult and child to enjoy a fun story together. The first book, Pirate Pat, uses only 8 letters to create the sentences that your child will read. And each book adds more letters to create more words to sound out together. secondary and primary schools HMI – to understand the current issues they find in schools and what might support inspection practice

A Beka Phonics Readers start very slow, and they only introduce six sounds at once. These are perfect for readers just starting out. The text is large and accessible for the youngest readers. For example, the Little Books your child can sound out:

Written language can be compared to a code, so knowing the sounds of individual letters and how those letters sound when they’re combined will help children decode words as they read. The strengths of this programme being it is very diagnostic, so is absolutely bespoke for every pupil on it.

A popular approach in Scotland, this method is associated with the teaching of reading in which the phonemes associated with particular graphemes are not pronounced in isolation. Children identify (analyse) the common phoneme in a set of words in which each word contains the phoneme under study. For example, teacher and pupils discuss how the following words are alike: pat, park, push and pen. Analogy phonics Investment in training gave all teachers a level of understanding and insight that meant they could help identify pupils who might need additional teaching, and could use specific strategies to help them in class. Specialist training and development for reading teachers also created a pool of expertise that staff could use for advice and help.However, this kind of teaching matched to need was described in only 4 of the 30 inspection reports we analysed.

We monitor through a combination of learning walks and lesson observations substantiated by data from interventions.

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Schools should use assessment to help identify whether problems are related to word recognition, oral language comprehension or a combination of these. [footnote 20] This research explores how some secondary schools use different types of tests for different purposes. It focuses on how they use diagnostic assessments to identify specific areas of reading strength and weakness, and how they match additional help to pupils’ individual reading needs.