Rhythm for Reading is a rhythm-based reading intervention for lower-attaining readers, developed by Dr Marion Long. Children take part in small groups of five to ten and learn to read simple musical notation in time with specially composed music, in ten weekly sessions of ten minutes. It is delivered by trained teachers, and supplements and extends a school’s phonics and reading programmes.

Imagine for a moment being contacted about a collaboration by a special school for students with moderate and severe learning difficulties. The school is acknowledged as among the best of its kind in the country; it was such a privilege to be invited to collaborate in an exploratory project. The aim was to find out whether a rhythm-based intervention could support students with severe and moderate learning needs, following years of excellent phonics and reading teaching.

We started the project in January almost 10 years ago and I made the six-hour round trip every Wednesday. We built review meetings into the bespoke project at six-week intervals and the school monitored pupil progress and, using their data systems and expertise, we determined the shape of the project as it unfolded.

The students, who ranged in age from 11-19 years, had varying learning differences, and were always delightful to work with. For the majority, there was no need to adapt the Rhythm for Reading resources. For the non-verbal students, I adapted the Rhythm for Reading programme slightly so that they were using their voices and exaggerating their facial muscles as they said or mouthed ‘ee’ and ‘oo’ in time with the music but without naming the musical notes (until the final weeks of the programme), when this became possible. This group also stood behind their chairs so that they could hold on to the back of the chair whilst moving in time with the music.

In the first review meeting I was surprised to learn that the school had already seen tangible progress in reading and learning in every group. One student had met his six-month July target to read a list of simple consonant-vowel-consonant words (for example, ‘mat’). In the first two Rhythm for Reading sessions this student had joined in with the group, but with a delayed response. Our emphasis on teamwork meant he naturally adjusted his response so that he was in sync with the group without being asked directly, as the key is supporting learning of every child in the small group simultaneously.

What does a Rhythm for Reading session looks like?

Many teachers and senior leaders want to know whether Rhythm for Reading can be delivered to a whole class. I can see the advantages. Obviously the person delivering the programme is the class teacher, though the tensions of whole-class delivery mean that the lower-attaining readers are expected to keep up with the rest of the class. Watch any video of a class performance and there are children treading water, whilst others take the lead and carry the group as a whole.

In Rhythm for Reading sessions, lower-attaining readers learn to master each task. The pace of sessions is brisk, but no one needs to be left behind because the focus is on teamwork. No one is first and no one is last. The role of the teacher is to glance across the group to assess whether they are in time and engaged with each micro task of each weekly ten-minute session. This level of detailed monitoring is not suited to a whole-class situation, and this is the principle reason for keeping Rhythm for Reading as a small-group intervention.

The pace of Rhythm for Reading is brisk and the music is energising. It ranges in styles from characterful and twinkly to very funky! The Year 7 pupils in inner London secondary schools thought the music was similar to their favourite video games. All of the Rhythm for Reading music was specially written by composer Eric Crees, who worked for many years with top film composers including John Williams. Eric played on the original soundtracks for the Star Wars, Harry Potter, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Trek and many others, as well as performing as Principal trombonist in top London orchestras, including the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and the London Symphony Orchestra.

Our aim in creating the music for Rhythm for Reading was that as well as carrying the special features that command and sculpt attention, it would bear repetition in a school, hold a high standard of musical integrity, enchant the children and spark their imagination.

For all of these reasons the majority of children leap out of their chairs when I collect them for their Rhythm for Reading session. Some have become so engrossed in their work, that they have to be nudged to put down their pencil and join the group.

Their friends run up to me saying, “please pick me for your group.”

A universal session planner sets out the aims and objectives of each session across the ten weeks. This applies to every year group. The only change is in the level of difficulty of the musical notation and the complexity of the musical tracks. The music for children aged 5-8 years is lighter and less complex, whilst older children work through these lighter tracks in the first three weeks and progress onto more complex and challenging notation.

The children learn to read simple notation in the very first session and do so with a backing track, and then after that teachers add layers of complexity by adding simple actions such as clapping and marching in time. The teachers are the key to the success of the programme as they hold the expectation for high-quality teamwork.

Why is musical notation is simpler than it looks?

Many people ask me why the notation that the children learn to read is all in the bass clef. There are so many reasons for this, but at the same time it doesn’t really matter whether this is notation or not. The key is the teamwork and to read something using rhythm. But as musical notation already existed worldwide and saved me inventing a new ‘code’ it made sense to use musical notes rather than coloured shapes or anything else.

Children in KS2 want to learn to read musical notation. It’s a skill that they associate with being smart and they often tell me it helps them to join in with class music lessons for the first time. Music educators are keen on child-centred music teaching and in most music rooms, there are posters showing mnemonics for note values such as ta and ti-ti. There are also mnemonics for learning the names of notes, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (or Football or Food). This is fine for the majority of children who are able to process and retain this kind of information as a means to an end. However, lower-attaining readers are more likely to conflate the ‘ta’ and ‘ti-ti’ and to use all their resources on the mnemonic, if they can remember it.

In Rhythm for Reading we do not attempt to cover all the notes. Instead we just use a handful of musical notes and master these in different rhythmic patterns, within high-quality musical compositions and using a sequence of tasks that has been the subject of a five year research project at UCL’s Institute of Education. The language we use is direct and unambiguous and relevant to everyday life. For example, instead of referring to the parts of musical notes as ‘heads’ and ‘stems’, we call them ‘blobs’ and ‘sticks’. The rhythmic aspect is also communicated using very simple language. Instead of talking about one beat and subdivisions of a beat, we refer to ‘long’ (a single beat) and ‘quick-quick’ (each being worth a half beat). So, children understand that two faster-paced notes are simply ‘quick-quick’. There’s no need to labour the point. We can get on with reading in time with the music with ease and fluency.

Does Rhythm for Reading work in special schools?

I was intrigued to see that the students in the special school were able to access the Rhythm for Reading programme, albeit across fifteen weeks, rather than ten as is standard in a mainstream school. And at the end of the fifteen weeks, the student I mentioned earlier was able to read paragraphs of text. The interesting fact is that many of these students (with moderate and severe learning difficulties, and many of whom were neurodivergent) had been trying to learn to read well for many years. In fact rhythm was so helpful for them that the leadership team published an article in the Editor’s Tried and Tested column in ‘Special Children Magazine’, published by Optimus Education in 2017.

Do teachers need to be musicians to deliver it?

Obviously, the project in the special school was bespoke and I made the journey to deliver Rhythm for Reading in person and for me this was an opportunity to participate in a process of deep learning and reflection alongside the expertise of the SEN team. Each group of students took part in the sessions with a teacher. All of the teachers learned to read notation and participated fully in every task, even though they’d not read music before and did not see themselves as ‘musical’. But they enjoyed music in their own way.

This is all very well, but can a non-specialist teacher deliver the Rhythm for Reading programme? This was the main question in the final stage of my PhD 22 years ago. My focus was on exploring whether rhythm made a difference to reading or not and what the underlying mechanisms might be. There was little available knowledge about rhythm as an intervention at the time and this was before neuroscience really took off. The application of this research would only become a possibility in the future if I asked a teacher to deliver the intervention. I was very fortunate with all the support that I received for my research. I would invite schools to take part and they were so generous in hosting the work.

Schools close to my local area (Bedford) volunteered to deliver the programme. I shared the delivery of the programme with an art teacher in one school and with a group of teaching assistants in another school. None of the teachers were able to read musical notation before taking part. I taught them to read simple notation fluently and left the resources with them. I kept in touch with the teachers and each week the teaching assistants were unavailable but the art teacher said the sessions were going well. The art teacher modified the delivery so that she pointed at the notation as the children read it, and kept the pace of the weekly session flowing. She said, “It’s intense. I think five minutes is enough.”

What does the research show about Rhythm for Reading?

The end of that part of the PhD project became an article that went through peer review and was published in Research Studies in Music Education (Long, 2014). I tested the children’s reading before the October half term and then again at the beginning of December. The children made statistically significant gains in reading accuracy and comprehension, and for some in reading-rate age as well. The aim had been to explore whether this approach would work when delivered by a teacher who had not received formal musical training. For this reason, the design was what researchers refer to as ‘repeated measures’ which means that the before and after assessment scores were compared, rather than making a comparison with a control group.

However, as I used a standardised assessment, the scores were also compared against the hundreds of children of the same age and reading level who comprised the normative data of the assessment (Neale Analysis of Reading Ability, Second Edition). This gave a benchmark for the children’s progress: hundreds of children matched on age and reading level, against whom their gains could be measured. As an added level of rigour, the data were audited by an experienced teacher.

The Rhythm for Reading programme was created in 2013, once Eric had written the music and the resources were ready. Before offering it widely, I applied to the Education Endowment Foundation for a randomised controlled trial, because I could see its value as an opportunity to build on the research I’d undertaken already. The trial took place with Year 7 pupils (rather than Year 6 as suggested in my application) in six London secondary schools, in the final term of the school year. During the trial, five of the six schools were inspected by Ofsted, and the test format changed between baseline and follow-up. Two schools cancelled the tests at short notice. After I explained that cancelling would invalidate the trial, they agreed to go ahead, but only at lunchtime and as a voluntary activity for the pupils. In a third school, the wrong pupils were entered for the follow-up tests. My correspondence with the lead evaluator shows that this was discovered after the schools had broken up for the summer, and that the pupils from that school who took part in the trial sat the follow-up tests in September, some months after the intervention had ended.

The report states there was no significant impact overall on its main reading test, and the evaluators suggested the programme may be better suited to younger pupils. Evidence 4 Impact, at the Institute for Effective Education, later noted that the evaluation did not meet the quality needed to change the programme’s evidence rating of ‘not evaluated’. The full report is on the EEF website, and I’d encourage you to read it alongside what follows.

More recently, another peer-reviewed article was published (Hallam, 2019) on data collected during the EEF trial using the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability, Second Edition (NARA II). All the data was recorded onto handheld dictaphones during baseline and follow-up testing and the audio data and the marking was audited by an academic support teacher who supports students at the University of Oxford. These assessments were carried out by a team of eight undergraduates, trained in the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability, Second Edition, whom I managed. These data showed statistically significant gains in reading accuracy and comprehension when compared with the control group.

Is Rhythm for Reading right for your school?

This is a research-led reading intervention programme with a PhD and two peer-reviewed research publications behind it. You might be wondering whether it could work for your school.

I have delivered the programme in schools in each region of the UK apart from Northern Ireland and worked with lower-attaining readers in each school. These experiences have provided a lot of background information about the different types of facilities in primary, secondary and special schools and I’ve fine-tuned my understanding of what is required to deliver the programme effectively.

I imagine that what I learned would most likely apply to implementation of interventions more generally. So, to share this information, I have created the Rhythm for Reading 5-Day Implementation Plan. This is a self-paced mini-course that covers the practicalities of committing to Rhythm for Reading, building an implementation team, the three likely outcomes for lower-attaining readers on the programme and how the programme actually works. Lastly, there’s even guidance on deciding which format of the programme might suit your school and useful copies of letters to parents and FAQs.

I would be honoured for you to join me. Launch price £7.99. Explore the 5-Day Implementation Plan

FAQs

Do pupils need to know any music beforehand?

No. In fact one of the reasons that the notation is written in the bass clef is that it levels the playing field, with fewer children likely to have learned a bass clef instrument prior to starting the Rhythm for Reading programme.

Do teachers need to read music?

No. Teachers usually learn to read music alongside the children and walk away smiling at the end of the first session when they realise how easy it was.

Does it work alongside phonics?

Yes. Rhythm for Reading is designed to supplement and extend the excellent phonics and reading teaching already underway in the work of the school.

What happened in the EEF trial?

The trial took place with Year 7 pupils in the final term of the school year, during a period when most host schools were inspected by Ofsted. The independent evaluation found no significant overall impact on its main reading test. A separate peer-reviewed analysis of the same trial, using the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability, found significant gains in reading accuracy and comprehension compared with the control group (Hallam, 2019).

References

Hallam, S. (2019). Can a rhythmic intervention support reading development in poor readers? Psychology of Music, 47, 722–735. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735618771491

Institute for Effective Education. (n.d.). Rhythm for Reading. Evidence 4 Impact. Retrieved 25 October 2026, from https://www.evidence4impact.org.uk/interventions/982

Long, M. (2007). The effect of a music intervention on the temporal organisation of reading skills [Doctoral thesis]. Institute of Education, University of London.

Long, M. (2014). ‘I can read further and there’s more meaning while I read’: An exploratory study investigating the impact of a rhythm-based music intervention on children’s reading. Research Studies in Music Education, 36(1), 107–124. https://doi.org/10.1177/1321103X14528453

Neale, M. D. (1997). Neale Analysis of Reading Ability (2nd rev. British ed.). NFER-Nelson.

Styles, B., Clarkson, R., & Fowler, K. (2014). Rhythm for Reading: Evaluation report and executive summary. Education Endowment Foundation. https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects-and-evaluation/projects/rhythm-for-reading