Narrowing the Gap: Early reading intervention in Year 1 & Year 2

Wearing my SENCO hat, I strongly believe in the principle of early reading intervention. The alternative point of view, which is to wait to see whether a learning difficulty will ‘resolve itself’ over time is not backed by evidence. A proactive approach is needed, to narrow the gaps in social and academic development that exist when children enter primary school.

In 2013, a school asked me to adapt the Rhythm for Reading programme so that I could put in place support that was needed for a group of Year 1 and Year 2 children. They struggled with hearing phonemes and were not accessing their school’s early reading programme. Their school had already seen the impact of my Rhythm for Reading intervention programme on their key stage two children, so the leadership team were keen to extend its reach.

There is plenty of research evidence that has established the relationship between sensitivity to rhythm and phonological awareness in young children. A strong awareness of rhythm is a reliable predictor of phonological awareness, which in turn is a strong predictor of reading attainment (see Hallam, 2015, for a comprehensive review).

However, in the past twelve years that I have been doing this work, I’ve found that the most obvious barriers to learning for young children are as follows: fragmented attention, weak inhibition of impulses and a very short attention span of only a few seconds. Emotional insecurities are very common as well. As you may realise, children experiencing these particular difficulties are more likely to struggle with discerning and retaining the sounds of language.

Following the Rhythm for Reading programme, teachers say they have seen improved levels of attention and phonological awareness. How does this happen?

The most important adaptations that I made for the key stage one children involved developing simple, fast-paced team-building games which focus on sharpening the children’s responses in terms of using their ears, eyes and voices.

We can think of these games as metacognitive group activities for young children. The term metacognitive means that we are helping the children to become more aware of their own learning - but of course doing so in a playful and age-appropriate way. These activities help the children deepen and extend their attention span, because we play the games with music tracks that have been designed to nurture attention using rhythm.

Overall, this rhythm-based approach to reading makes it possible, in a few short sessions to support the children to such an extent, that they read music fluently and are able to inhibit impulses, whilst they enjoy working together as a team.

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REFERENCES

Hallam, S. (2015) The Power of Music - a research synthesis of the impact of actively making music on the intellectual, social and personal development of children and young people. International Music Education Research council (iMERC)