Best practice in the teaching of initial reading

Key issue addressed by the study The study examined the practice of 12 successful schools to illuminate effective practice in teaching children to read

Keys to the schools’ success All 12 schools were passionate in their belief that every child can learn to read used an intensive and systematic approach to teaching phonics provided consistent, high quality teaching developed their pupils’ oral language skills assessed pupils’ progress regularly had effective leadership and management of the school and literacy

A common approach to teaching phonics The key features were teaching children letter-sound correspondences in a clearly defined incremental sequence to blend phonemes in order all through a word to read it to segment words into phonemes to spell that blending and segmenting are reversible processes

High quality teaching of phonics In all 12 schools both teachers and teaching assistants knew the sequence in which sounds should be taught knew the ways different resources should be used observed and assessed children’s understanding and progress minutely ensured active participation and productive, enjoyable learning

An example of quality phonics teaching One teacher used a toy donkey to introduce the ‘h’ sound – she said he was puffing /h/h/h/h/ because he had been running and jumping asked the children to say the sound (huffing on their hands) and draw it in the air (explaining how) asked the children to help her to sort a bag of items into those beginning with ‘h’ and those not noticed when a child focused on the ‘s’ sound at the end of ‘horse’ rather than the ‘h’ sound at the start and helped him to hear where the two sounds occurred

The importance of developing the children’s oral language skills Because the children often started nursery with poor oral skills and vocabulary, staff invested time in developing these skills too Staff, for example, asked the children to match the sounds of instruments join in with the rhyming words when reading aloud from books discuss the meaning of words and think of alternatives

Forms of assessment and monitoring Assessment and monitoring took many forms, including ‘reading milestones’ (identified through teachers’ experience) that children needed to achieve by certain points in order to be on track ‘objectives sheets’ used to set targets for pupils and for teachers to teach to assessment tools provided by published schemes which fed into planning

The outcomes of assessment The principal use of assessment was to form teaching groups based on attainment or to inform accelerated promotion All the schools recognised the importance of identifying pupils falling behind early on and then supporting them in small groups or individually in order to get them back on track

The importance of quality school leadership All the headteachers made the teaching of reading the core purpose of their school appointed an effective literacy subject leader/manager built cohesive teams and confident staff led through demonstration, monitoring and dialogue invested heavily in training and CPD for teachers and teaching assistants in phonics

The importance of staff training and development All 12 schools felt staff training and development in phonics teaching promoted accuracy, consistency, knowledge, skills and understanding training was in-house and often included peer observation some staff were sent for training by the provider of the phonics scheme they were using

Quality leadership by the literacy co-ordinator The best literacy co-ordinators were knowledgeable about the school’s reading and writing programme knew the strengths and development needs of all staff involved in teaching phonics tracked individual children’s progress in reading and writing monitored implementation of the phonics programme through focused observations provided feedback on the observations

Who were the children in the study? Children in nursery, Foundation year, Year 1 and Year 2 classes at 12 schools The school populations represented a spectrum in terms of ethnicity and socio-economic backgrounds

How was the information gathered? HMI inspectors visited 12 schools during October 2010 and observed over 100 sessions All 12 schools had been judged previously as outstanding and had achieved above average results in reading The schools set the agenda for the visits – they were simply asked to show how they taught children to read

How can teachers use the evidence in this study? The study showed the importance of ongoing professional development for enhancing teachers’ and teaching assistants’ teaching of phonics, of which peer observation played a part Could you and a colleague get together to observe each other taking a phonics session and give each other feedback on it afterwards regarding, pace, level of challenge, the approaches used (e.g. mini whiteboards and paired work) and the effectiveness of them etc? Could you involve teaching assistants in observing and giving feedback on phonics sessions?

How can school leaders use the evidence in this study? The study showed the importance of assessing children’s progress in learning to read and identifying those who are falling behind early on Would your colleagues find it helpful to work together to produce a series of reading milestones by which to assess their children’s progress? Could you set up regular team or whole-school staff discussions to help staff identify rates of progress and consider how they could best help those children who are falling behind?

Follow-up reading Study reference: Ofsted (2010) Reading by six: how the best schools do it The report is available from: www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Publications-and-research/Browse-all-by/Documents-by-type/Thematic-reports/Reading-by-six-how-the-best-schools-do-it

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