When a child reads accurately, but doesn't understand
Top Takeaways
Some children read a page accurately and take in very little in terms of understanding, or they provide their own interpretation of the text based on guesswork and prior experience. Nothing really identifies these children, and they are drifting along without the support they need to hold their attention on the text.
Aggregated data do little to illuminate a problem of this type. A child’s reading needs to be measured against their starting point, by a team committed to helping every child to read as well as they can.
These children do not show up in the data very well. An experienced teacher with a keen ear hears a lack of understanding beneath the enthusiasm and the creative stab at comprehension. The teacher’s acute eye sees past compliant behaviour that is primed to ‘fit in’, and this wise teacher is well-placed to support these children.
Hearing a new class read for the first time
It’s the first week back and you are hearing your new class read aloud in the lesson. Some relish the experience and you are delighted to hear that they enjoy projecting their voice, modulating their pace to accommodate the less familiar words, whilst keeping going. It’s obvious that they have understood the text. Emphasis falls with just enough weight to make the grammatical structures of the sentences easy for everyone to understand. The children whose hands are not really raised, but kind of hovering in a way that gives you permission to overlook them, tell you that they want to please, but not to read. Then there are the other hands that stay down, and the eyes that are shut tight. The body language says quite a lot about reading to the class.
Teachers must hear children in their new class read, and for some children the discomfort of that moment is enough to set off a pattern of self-defeating behaviour. The level of challenge has increased. Those who tried hard every day but didn’t properly access the curriculum last year are dismayed to realise that they have slipped even further behind and judge themselves for not being clever enough. Those who had decided to dodge the pain of self-defeat by trying to avoid the work realise they must double down on their tactics. It’s only week one. And then there are the children you almost don’t notice at all.
Why accurate readers don’t show up in your data
The quieter children in the middle of the attainment range may turn in on themselves. Some compensate for not being 'clever enough' by being nicer, kinder and more helpful than they were last year. I’ve formed the impression that some turn their efforts inward, trying to be less conspicuous, such is the extent of their self-blame. It becomes possible for them to ‘disappear’ in one way because they passed the phonics check and their accuracy scores stay broadly within age-expectation. They have read every day since they started school, learned their spellings and tried to succeed with their times tables. Most of the time, their scores have been unremarkable, but as the level of challenge rises, these children realise that their basic reading skills are becoming more exposed.
Turning inwards takes constant maintenance, and it distorts who they really are. It prioritises survival in a situation where they feel they do not belong. It also diverts attention away from ease in reading in the same way that a tense child cannot learn to swim until they are relaxed enough to allow the water to support them. This negative spiral can grip children who feel a general sense of shame in the classroom and for feeling that they are not enough.
These children have been in school for years and have read to colleagues many times. It is obvious that their reading is not fluent or flowing. They read to comply with expectations, but for no other reason. To make matters worse, their reading has become performative to show how hard they are trying. There’s a phrase, ‘barking at print’, which captures the effort and willingness to read, as well as the lack of flow and fluency in the reading. For some children, performative reading is more convincing as they can make it sound smooth and continuous. Even though the shapes of sentences are in place, a lack of understanding means that these children are not yet reading well.
Why average progress scores obscure these children
An educator is more interested in the trajectory of an individual child than the aggregated scores for groups of children. This is because an average across children with very different starting points describes no one. In my experience, children from the same classroom begin the Rhythm for Reading programme with a wide range of starting points. For example, there are children with weak phonological awareness and a reading accuracy age around 6 years. This is below their chronological age (and is not a reflection on the strong phonics teaching in the school). There are many children in the same class who passed the phonics check and are reading at or above expectation. Some of the children who take the Rhythm for Reading programme are not yet reading with ease, fluency or understanding, even though their reading accuracy age is appropriate and not giving any cause for concern. However, their teachers are keen for them to read as well as possible so that they can access the KS2 curriculum.
What ten years of before-and-after data show
I continued to assess children taking part in Rhythm for Reading year after year to learn as much as I could about the role of rhythm in supporting lower-attaining readers. I had seen patterns playing out in the data that pointed to distinct levels of improvement at the end of the ten-week programme. These show what is happening at three different stages of reading development. The only way to distinguish between them is the baseline reading accuracy age.
I have seen this pattern in schools across the UK, and in pupils of different ages. Children who start with a reading accuracy age around 6 years or below tend to gain most in phonological awareness, particularly blending. Children who can already decode tend to gain most in comprehension. And a third group sits midway between these, with a baseline accuracy age around 7 years, and their gains fall between the two other groups. And a school that administered a different reading test found a similar pattern in their data.
"Rhythm for Reading has had a major impact on the reading skills of our students. There are lots of reading programmes available, but this is definitely one of the best ones. The students have really engaged with the activities; it makes learning fun as well as having a profoundly positive effect on their learning." Executive headteacher
"Just a little bit of feedback from today. The ladies loved your sessions and are buzzing about the possibilities. They can't wait until next week! So thank you!" Assistant Head
"The programme was run as support for the school's lower ability readers in Year 7 & 8 and not only engaged those students in further reading, but made a clear difference in their reading ages. Since running the sessions at our school, over six local primary schools have engaged in the programme." Assistant Head
Five things worth listening for when a child reads aloud
Are they anticipating what is coming up next in their reading or are they holding tension and bracing for the next tricky word?
To what extent are they able to combine precision at the front edge of consonants and assimilate contextual cues, or are they just guessing words based on their overall shape?
Are they able to move beyond word-by-word decoding and connect their words into sentences and phrases?
When fluency appears to flow, are there natural pauses and hesitations to accommodate words that are less familiar within the ongoing sense of the passage, or are they racing ahead, and either substituting or omitting those words?
Are they self-correcting when a sentence stops making sense?
How to track reading fluency in your class
If you’d like a more systematic way of recording this, you are in the right place. These children need to feel noticed and they need light-touch support to help them overcome the barriers they are experiencing with their reading.
Join me for a free live webinar on Thursday: How to Track Reading Fluency. And I’ll be sharing the data I mentioned earlier. Save your place on Thursday’s webinar
Try the Reading Fluency Tracker: free, five minutes per pupil, no scoring. Download now if you want to try it out before Thursday. Download the Reading Fluency Tracker
FAQs
Which children benefit most from a rhythm-based approach?
Children aged 5-15 who are lower-attaining readers and those who are no longer making expected progress against their baseline experience gains in reading. Children who appear to be making good progress but are not able to focus their attention in class also benefit from this programme.
How is this different from a fluency intervention?
Most fluency interventions work on speed and accuracy, often through repeated reading of the same passage. Rhythm for Reading works on a more foundational level. Rhythm shapes how children anticipate sound, which applies to speech, reading fluently and knowing what is coming up next in their reading. The programme is delivered as a small-group intervention and teachers notice the children becoming more settled alongside the changes in their reading.
Does this replace phonics?
No. Rhythm for Reading is an intervention that supplements and extends a school’s systematic synthetic phonics programme. Rhythm complements phonics. Rhythm for Reading targets some children for whom strong phonics teaching wasn’t enough and who need extra support with phonological processing, decoding, fluency, comprehension and attention.
My children have good reading ages. Is this still relevant?
Yes. In my experience, pupils who are reading accurately without taking in the meaning are often the ones whose comprehension changes the most over the 10 weeks. One headteacher, looking at the follow-up data for a pupil whose reading ages had been in line with their chronological age at baseline, remarked on how much academic potential that child had. A score in line with expectation tells you a child’s reading is not a cause for concern. It doesn’t tell you what that child could do.
Ofsted’s updated inspection materials refer to progress from starting points. How does this relate?
A starting point is where a child was before you did anything. For an intervention, that means assessing before it begins and again at the end, so you can see what changed for that particular child rather than for the group. This is why I report outcomes by baseline reading age: a child who begins with an accuracy age of 6 years and a child who begins with an accuracy age of 8 years are on different parts of the reading journey and an average score masks the differences between them.
In my experience, schools are in a stronger position when they track progress before and after an intervention. I also track progress in the schools I work with in person. This is a form of triangulation that strengthens rigour around using an intervention to support reading fluency and comprehension.
Can I see your outcome data?
Yes. I am sharing outcome data in my next webinar as part of a professional discussion and you are welcome to join. Save your place on Thursday’s webinar
What if I want to look at my own class first?
That is an excellent place to start. The Reading Fluency Tracker is free, takes five minutes per pupil and needs no scoring. You can use it in your own classroom in the first week back without committing to anything. Download the Reading Fluency Tracker
