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Reading

The CYP has difficulties around reading which affect their learning across the curriculum.

Provision and/or strategies: approaches, adjustments and specific interventions expected to be made by settings according to the ages and stages of the CYP

Universal

  • Ensure staff understand that reading development begins at birth with oral language development.
  • Ensure staff understand the pre-requisite skills needed for reading and how to teach them.
  • Ensure staff understand how to teach and develop the word reading and comprehension skills needed for skilled reading.
  • Plan the curriculum so that the development of early literacy skills focuses and builds on:
    • Exposure to language-enriched environments (play, quality books, songs, rhymes, rich vocabulary and storytelling).
    • An interest in books, a wide vocabulary and awareness of print.
    • Phonological skills (synthesis and segmentation).
    • Positive motivation to read.
  • Ensure high-quality reading teaching includes:
    • Developing oral language (speaking and listening) skills
    • Explicit vocabulary instruction
    • Systematic phonics instruction (as age and need appropriate)
    • A balanced approach to teaching both decoding and comprehension skills
    • Developing reading fluency
    • Explicit teaching of comprehension strategies through modelling and supported practice
    • Disciplinary literacy - reading and literacy skills are taught and applied across all subjects
    • Post-16 note: phonics may still apply for learners with gaps.
  • Continue developing fluency, vocabulary and comprehension at all stages.
  • Ensure reading demands are explicitly taught within subjects (disciplinary literacy).
  • Adapt the presentation of written materials to make them accessible (e.g. font size, spacing, bullet points, diagrams, colour coding).
  • Use clear and concise text and consider alternatives (e.g. coloured backgrounds where helpful).
  • Ensure seating allows clear access to teaching (e.g. board, modelling).
  • Put in place the following adaptations:
    • Allow learners the right to pass (e.g. not reading aloud).
    • Offer audiobooks and alternative formats.
    • Check suitability of text (aim for ~90-95% accuracy level).
    • Use paired reading to support access to more challenging texts.
    • Provide access to assistive technology (e.g. text‑to‑speech, reading pens), with explicit teaching to build independence.
  • Support independence in accessing complex texts required for further education, training or employment.
  • Further information/ resources can be found here:

Targeted

  • Ensure literacy interventions for CYP with cognition and learning needs are individualised, structured and responsive, focusing on each learner's specific strengths and needs.
  • Deliver interventions through small-group or 1:1 support where appropriate.
  • Use explicit instruction, including clear explanations, modelling, guided practice and opportunities for independent practice.
  • Provide frequent opportunities for repetition and consolidation and monitor progress closely to adapt teaching as needed.
  • Review and adapt interventions regularly to ensure progress.
  • Focus targeted support for word reading (accuracy and fluency) on developing decoding, automaticity and accuracy.
  • Provide phonological awareness interventions that develop the ability to hear, identify and manipulate sounds in words, and to blend (synthesise) sounds when reading.
  • Teach systematic phonics focusing on the most frequently occurring grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs), using a structured and cumulative approach with regular review.
  • Access further guidance about teaching phonics through resources such as:
  • Teach learners to self-correct when decoding leads to an incorrect or non-word pronunciation, strengthening the link between decoding, spoken language and meaning.
  • Develop sight vocabulary, particularly for high-frequency irregular words, using structured approaches such as Precision Teaching.
  • Develop reading fluency through repeated reading, modelled reading and structured practice.
  • Deliver comprehension support through structured, explicit teaching.  Begin by developing oral language skills and ensuring secure word reading accuracy and fluency, as these underpin comprehension.
  • Teach specific comprehension strategies using approaches such as reciprocal teaching.
  • Develop skills in inference, summarising, clarifying, predicting and questioning.
  • Support understanding of vocabulary in context, language structures, and the syntactic and semantic complexity of texts.
  • Teach and reinforce vocabulary knowledge explicitly across contexts.
  • Develop higher-order thinking skills, including reasoning, critical thinking and the ability to retrieve and use key information.
  • Build topic and background knowledge to support comprehension.
  • Support the generalisation of skills into meaningful contexts by using real books and connected texts, including approaches such as paired reading.
  • Access training and professional development where possible, such as:
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