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Rhythm for Reading
Rhythm-based online CPD for school leaders and teachers who want structured support for lower-attaining readers
Help children strengthen phonological awareness, develop reading fluency and deepen comprehension so they can see themselves as readers who belong. Created for Reading Leads, SENDCos and Senior Leaders who want high standards in reading for every child.
Reading fluency is not speed. It's coherence.
When a child reads with ease and expression, fluency and meaning come together.
Some children can decode accurately, yet still find it hard to carry meaning across a phrase, sentence or paragraph. Their reading may sound hesitant or word by word, their attention may drift and comprehension can feel fragile.
Rhythm for Reading works alongside strong phonics teaching. Through a structured sequence of physical rhythm-based activities set to music, teachers help children build the attention, anticipation, phonological awareness and fluency that reading requires.
Within a few weekly sessions, as sensitivity to rhythm builds, teachers begin to notice a difference: more expression, steadier attention and growing confidence.
Real results in Key Stage 2 classrooms
“Children that were reluctant to pick up a book, reluctant to read, reluctant to do anything around reading see themselves as readers, want to read and start enjoying reading!"
Lower Key Stage 2 Phase Lead Teacher
Discover how Rhythm for Reading helps teachers strengthen phonological awareness, reading fluency and comprehension through purposeful rhythm and music activities.
For School Leaders
High standards and inclusive practice, delivered through a structured programme that supports lower-attaining readers.
Helps schools identify pupil needs early and provide targeted small-group support
Supports inclusive mainstream practice and aligns with DfE expectations for adaptive teaching
Developed through doctoral research at UCL's Institute of Education and refined over more than ten years of school-based outcome data
Strengthens reading fluency without adding pressure to staff workload or disrupting fragile early reading progress
Helps schools prepare for the proposed Year 8 reading assessment
Reading fluency depends on more than speed and repetition. For many children, the barrier is attention. My research explores how rhythm can help steady the focus that coherent reading requires.
Inhibitory control is the ability to filter out distractions and focus on what matters. As children learn to narrow their attention, the sounds of words can become clearer, helping decoding, language and comprehension to work together more smoothly.
Rhythm for Reading uses carefully structured musical activities to support inhibitory control, anticipation, continuity and cognitive flexibility. This helps reduce pressure on working memory and gives children a greater sense of ease as they read.
When attention is scattered, decoding and comprehension can struggle to connect, even when phonics teaching is strong. Rhythm for Reading works alongside phonics to support this often overlooked foundation for fluent reading.
For school leaders seeking improved reading outcomes while protecting inclusion and staff well-being, the programme offers a structured way to help children develop fluency with greater stability, confidence and enjoyment.
Inclusion without constant escalation
Many struggling readers lack stability, but not effort. When timing and anticipation are fragile, reading is cognitively exhausting. Children may appear disengaged when in fact they are working harder than others. Rhythm for Reading strengthens inhibitory control and supports the early identification of need - reducing reliance on later referral and helping schools meet the White Paper's expectations for inclusive mainstream schools.
Protecting fragile early gains in fluency:
Sometimes children are encouraged to accelerate their pace of reading at the expense of assimilation. If inhibitory control is weak, working memory is strained and this affects the development of fluent reading. Rhythm-based sessions build inhibitory control, strengthen attention, and support working memory capacity, protecting the conditions that fluency depends on.
Supporting professional judgement:
Teachers often notice subtle shifts in children's fluency before they appear in formal data. The Reading Fluency Tracker supports this level of professional noticing, helping teachers document changes in prosody, expression and engagement without reducing complex progress to simple metrics. As schools prepare for the proposed reading assessment in Year 8, this kind of formative evidence strengthens accountability while respecting teacher expertise.
Reducing workload whilst strengthening practice:
The programme is designed to fit into the work of the school: short weekly sessions, structured lessons, minimal preparation, ongoing coaching support. Rather than adding complexity, the approach strengthens coherence, which is what struggling readers need most and what the government's vision for adaptive teaching demands.
When fluency sounds right, but understanding doesn't follow.
I'm Dr Marion Long, a researcher, a former SENDCo and a professionally trained cellist. These three parts of my career converge on two questions:
Why do some children still read word-by-word?
How can rhythm help them to read with ease, fluency and understanding?
Most fluency frameworks focus on speed, accuracy and expression. Some include punctuation. These are conventional indicators. Beneath them, fluent reading depends on the deeper structures of language, and on the real-time integration of decoding with comprehension. When this is unstable, we see this:
Comprehension only happens after reading aloud.
Attention is intermittent or sparse.
Prosody sounds rehearsed or mechanical.
Gains in fluency are difficult to sustain.
If we only measure reading as a performance, we miss the deeper process that drives comprehension and long-term progress.
Discover how to measure coherence, not just speed.
How rhythm strengthens reading fluency
A rhythm-based approach
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Rhythm for Reading offers a research-grounded approach that strengthens fluency by stabilising timing and anticipation. Rhythm stabilises timing between perception, decoding and phrasing, allowing reading to become predictive rather than effortful.
In just 10 minutes a week:
⦿ Shared pace and timing stabilise attention
⦿ Rhythm in movement, perception and reading strengthens anticipation
⦿ The precision rhythm demands builds inhibitory control
⦿ Working memory has room to integrate syntax, prosody and meaning
As coherence improves, fluency becomes self-reinforcing.
Develop shared pace and timing in every session.
The techniques for building attention and fluency are demonstrated through the video lessons. For the first ten weeks, teachers co-teach with the video resources, following a carefully sequenced set of activities that has been researched and refined in schools since 2013. The Rhythm for Reading Roadmap provides a clear year-by-year curriculum that supports consistent progress.
On-going teacher support
This is structured implementation, not one-off CPD.
⦿ 30 weeks of professional development
⦿ weekly 30-minute co-teaching sessions
⦿ coaching check-ins for accountability
⦿ a shared framework for success
The programme is embedded via short coaching calls that keep everything on track. No overwhelm. No unnecessary extras. Each call draws on the session planners and reflection tools, helping teachers stay focused on progress and impact.
Evidence-based CPD for Teachers & Reading Leads
Aims and objectives are pre-built into the session planners, allowing teachers to focus on delivery and pupil progress. Teachers track development in:
⦿ Staying in time as a group
⦿ Coordinating rhythm-based actions
⦿ Reading with ease and fluency
This clarity helps identify next steps and adjust the level of challenge as needed.
Notice rapid changes in fluency, prosody & engagement.
Rhythm for Reading Online CPD is grounded in evidence with fluency at its core. The Reading Fluency Tracker is a simple companion tool that supports careful observation of prosody, engagement and emerging fluency over time. It records tricky words, three levels of fluency and attitudes to reading. Children can even add their own comments. Best of all, it only takes five minutes to complete.
In this webinar we record measurable progress in prosody, fluency and engagement in minutes and discuss how to deepen inclusive approaches.
Teachers see results fast: Changes that are difficult to quantify, but easy to recognise.
"All the students who took part in the project are now reading more fluently," as reported in Special Children Magazine.
Reading should feel easier and it can. In just minutes a week, this evidence-based approach helps children reset their focus, regulate their attention, and discover the joy of reading. Teachers begin to notice changes in confidence, flow and ease (often sooner than expected) - and with no extra preparation required.
A research-backed path to fluent reading
30 Weeks of CPD
A ready to use structure
aligned with your
reading curriculum.
Coaching & Support
Short 15-minute calls
to keep you supported,
confident and on-track.
Innovation that Works
See measurable
progress in reading
with just 10 minutes a week.
For teachers of the children who aren't yet reading with confidence and fluency.
Our reluctant readers suddenly wanted to read -it felt like magic.
“We’ve been working together for about ten years with Marion and the biggest thing that we notice with the children, is their change in confidence, seeing themselves as readers after just six weeks of doing the programme. Things that we’ve been trying to get to happen for two or three years suddenly click into place. Obviously for the academic side, the children’s levels do go up quite significantly, but from the personal point of view - just the love of reading - and the way that they want to read and see themselves as readers is quite special as well.” Lower Key Stage Two Phase Leader, Inner London
New insights for teachers and parents
Delve into evidence-based thinking that underpins the Rhythm for Reading approach.
When Rhythm & Phonics Collide
A child with weak phonemic awareness may struggle to detect the differences between sounds, but rhythm can sharpen auditory perception and phonemic awareness.
Finding Flow in Early Reading
Children who need the most support with reading fluency benefit most from the guidance of highly effective teachers. Discover how rhythm-based strategies can help them find their flow.
Rhythm & Comprehension
The natural 'sing-song' quality of speech comes to life when children read with ease, fluency and understanding. Explore how rhythm supports deeper comprehension.
If you're curious about what changes when sensitivity to rhythm becomes part of reading for the first time...
You're welcome to explore the approach further here.
Join the live webinar to find out how building sensitivity to rhythm helps children strengthen their attention, read with flow, and truly enjoy reading for the first time.
Discover how rhythm can restore focus, so that learning becomes joyful.
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