Reading Plus – Develop Y6 pupils’ fluency and comprehension

The Lowdown

Name

Reading Plus

In a nutshell

Online / Adaptive / Fluency development / Comprehension

Key Stage

KS2

Do you have concerns about pupils reading in Y6? Are you worried your pupils don’t have the reading speed and stamina to access the curriculum effectively?

Built on decades of foundational research in silent reading development, vocabulary improvement through contextual analysis, decoding practice, reading stamina, efficiency development, and comprehension improvement, Reading Plus supports pupils by addressing the hidden hurdle of inefficient silent reading.

Inefficient silent reading prevents the development of fluency, comprehension, and importantly, motivation.

Why fluency is important

Fluency is essential for reading a text correctly, with speed and expression. It’s what makes a narrative come to life, and leads to reading comprehension.

If a Y6 pupil is an inefficient reader, they will struggle to access the curriculum, which requires them to comprehend and analyse the text in great detail.

If the child continues to exhaust their working memory through visual navigation and word decoding, they will have little remaining brain space to devote to higher-order thinking skills.

These skills are required to comprehend and subsequently draw the inferences needed for the SATs reading paper and other forms of assessments.

“Many children reached age-related reading levels thanks to Reading Plus, and it made teachers more forensic in assessing reading. This year we achieved 90% in the Reading SATs (including two greater depth pupils)”

Kate McCabe, English lead practitioner at Stockbridge Village Primary School

Building fluency with the guided window

Reading Plus develops pupils’ stamina and fluency using a Guided Window system, which guides the reader’s eyes across a page of text.

This is done at a bespoke speed for each pupil. With this practice, pupils overcome non-fluent behaviours often seen in emergent readers, such as habitual re-reading and decoding words they already know.

This scaffold changes how pupils approach the text while gradually and effectively increasing the rate at which they can read it with good comprehension.

The impact on SATs

Using Reading Plus for 30 minutes, three times per week, over a minimum of eight weeks increases SATS reading paper results.

It does this by supporting pupils to confidently read more than 185 words per minute – the rate needed to complete the SATs paper, with enough time for quality responses, by improving their fluency and stamina.

Comprehension questions help pupils develop and strengthen the 20+ comprehension subskills critical for a deep understanding of complex texts.

Pupils will also read unfamiliar texts from topics outside their cultural context and with more challenging vocabulary.

“Thank you for all your support with Reading Plus this year. Y6 achieved 93% EXS and 43% GD, an increase from 63% EXS and 13% GD. They tackled the SATs paper with ease and excellent stamina”

Verity Lee, Assistant headteacher, Sunnyside Spencer Academy, Nottingham

Try before you buy

To demonstrate the impact of Reading Plus, Reading Solutions UK would like to offer you a free four-week pilot.

Bernadette Chernenko, English leader at St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, Castleford, says:

“Have you ever asked yourself, ‘How can I improve fluency in reading for a group of Key Stage 2 children?’ It can appear to be a hard nut to crack.

“There are so many things to consider – what is an engaging strategy? How can I allocate time to this? How can I see the impact of this and make the pupils feel successful?

“Reading Plus has answered all of these questions for me. It has proved an invaluable companion to the children in my class and an indispensable teaching tool in my journey towards the Year 6 SATs this year.”