The September reading challenge

Every September, children return from the summer break, sit down to read, and what you hear is not what you wanted. They’ve regressed and getting them back into the swing of reading and learning takes time. The advantage of benchmarking early is that the lower attaining children can be targeted right from the start, but is this the most reliable use of an assessment?

More to the point, which pupils and which intervention, should get priority?

Why assessments don’t tell the full story

Any assessment is imperfect in terms of its ‘face validity’ because no test offers a pure metric that measures only what it intends to assess. For example,

• If children are not allowed to reference the text in a reading comprehension test, the final score represents working memory to a larger extent than reading comprehension.

• Other factors impacting test scores include: sensory impairments and executive functions (cognitive control) the physical environment (light, noise, distractions) hunger, anxiety, or challenges in the child’s background.

Environmental factors have an impact on executive function and a child’s ability to access meaning whether on the page or when taking instructions from a teacher.

Fast but not fluent, versus slower readers

The more nuanced question is whether pupils who move quickly through the text, naming words at pace require support.

For them, the story never emerges. Ask them a question, and their silence says everything.

Others read more slowly, hesitating, stumbling over words. The pace is different, but the outcome is the same: comprehension isn’t happening. Do you target the faster-paced or the slower paced readers, given that resources are stretched? Or do you wish you could find one intervention that supports the needs of both groups?

It seems counterintuitive, because of the difference in pace and accuracy, but both problems involve a lack of automaticity and this is why they can be supported by the same approach.

Why speed alone isn’t fluency

It is logical to assume that faster reading boosts the development of fluency. But naming words at speed and building a narrative from text are two very different things.

• Naming words at pace requires effortful control.

• Building a flowing narrative uses language processes that feel natural and can be sustained with ease.

• Reading with ease is what we recognise as fluency. It’s enjoyable for children. We hear it when prosody emerges: the rise and fall of their voices mirroring grammar, their reading expressive, alive, and connected to meaning.

The role of executive functions in reading

This is where executive functions (EF) matter.

• Working memory is consumed when decoding is effortful; it cannot simultaneously support comprehension.

• Inhibition helps readers avoid miscuing, slowing down when needed.

• Cognitive flexibility allows them to keep going through irregular or ambiguous words, using context to predict and anticipate.

When EF are overloaded, pupils remain stuck in the 'fast but not fluent' pattern. They may look and sound impressive on the surface, but the deeper work of comprehension never begins.

Professor Adele Diamond, (2020) defines executive functions as:

“A family of top-down mental processes that make it possible for us to pay attention and stay focussed; reason and problem solve; exercise choice; discipline, and the self control to avoid being impulsive, rash or reacting without thinking; see things from different perspectives; mentally consider alternatives, see how different ideas or facts relate to one another, and reflect on the past or consider an imagined future; and flexibly adjust to change or new information. (Jacques and Marcovitch, 2010; Diamond, 2013; Zelazo et al., 2016)”

Why this matters in September

When children are not reading with automaticity, they are not reading for pleasure and this is why the summer holiday often widens the gap in reading attainment.

Although children who read quickly without comprehension may sound secure, they are at risk of starting the new academic year unable to access the curriculum. Without intervention, the gap only grows wider as the term progresses.

The challenge for schools is that early intervention always matters, but particularly if resources are stretched and certain children are more likely to miss out on getting the support that they need.

Rhythm as the bridge to fluency

There is one approach that works with executive functions directly: rhythm. Rhythm helps to organise the deeper structures of communication in every species, including human language.

Sensitivity to rhythm can be cultivated in early infancy, but also at school. Fundamental aspects of reading development are supported by sensitivity to rhythm.

• Sharpens perception at the onset of sounds,

• Strengthens working memory,

• Facilitates automaticity.

Sensitivity to rhythm also enhances awareness of the stream that carries the grammatical structures through language and creates a pathway into fluency, especially for pupils who decode without meaning, or who are disaffected by reading and for pupils whose reading challenges begin earlier because weak phonemic awareness leaves them stuck at the very first stages of learning to read.

Developing sensitivity to rhythm is an approach that works with executive functions themselves. Just ten minutes a week of rhythm-based practice can begin to galvanize fluency. Within three weeks, change is visible.

Reflecting for a moment

Which interventions have you already used that will help pupils who read fast but do not engage with the meaningfully with the text, AND also those who are slow and effortful when they read?

Rhythm supports executive functions that underpin faster and slower readers - yes both groups.

If you are weighing up options for your literacy priorities this term, join my live session, where I’ll show how rhythm works with executive functions to unlock fluency.

Next live webinar on Thursday at 7.00 PM. ‘Executive functions and reading: Unlocking hidden barriers in the new term’.

Join here

References

Diamond A (2013). Executive functions. Annu Rev Psychol 64: 135–168. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143750.

Diamond, A. ‘Executive Functions’ Handbook of Clinical Neurology, Vol. 173 (3rd series) Neurocognitive Development: Normative Development A. Gallagher, C. Bulteau, D. Cohen and J.L. Michaud, Editors https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-64150-2.00020-4 Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Jacques S, Marcovitch S (2010). Development of executive function across the life span. In: WF Overton (Ed.), Cognition, biology and methods across the lifespan: vol-ume 1 of the handbook of life-span development. Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, pp. 431–466.

Zelazo PD, Blair CB, Willoughby MT (2016). Executive function: implications for education (NCER 2017–2000). National Center for Education Research, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC.