Experts on reading interventions over here!

[aroomofherown]

I need to implement an effective reading intervention at my school for students who are delayed in their reading at secondary, so not too babyish in content. Can either be small group or one:one.

What would you advise and why? Anyone able to point me to any research?

I an't help as KS1 trained but have you posted this on primary as well? If not try that. There should be 1 or 2 posters that can help you there. Probably maizieD is your best bet.

Ok thanks - I'll try that.

Try special needs section as well, but depends on child what work best , small groups , or one to one .
Each has had varying levels of success , loads depends on child there interest and for long and often you plan on doing this intervention for .
There no hard fast rule that is magically going to make a child read better, but especially in secondary school , teenagers need to feel that there getting something out of it .
So going though sounds and blending is important but turns them off more than encourages them as they feel stupid . Doing this type of work would have to be strictly one to one basis , not to alienate them .
Why don't you ask a sample of the teenagers that your looking at putting this intervention in place for what they want , how they like to be taught .
You can use e readers , making words larger , less on a page to not discourage them , change font .

Hi homework, thanks for your response. I like to think the relationship with the student is something I'm quite good at, and make them feel supported and encouraged and I try to make it fun. However, I do some 1:1 interventions at the moment but we have a larger cohort who are behind in reading and I'm interested in trying to find out interventions that are known to be effective so that I'm not wasting their time.

I do Toe By Toe with a few students (individually) at the moment but most of our students are beyond that, but still behind where they should be, both in decoding and compehension.

DD's secondary has a lot of students coming in with below average reading. They use Read Write Inc with yr 7s - with several sessions put aside for it each week.

Thanks Takver will look into that one

I think 'Fresh Start' is the Read Write Inc program that's aimed at year 5 upwards. Not 100% certain on that. Should cover gaps in phonics knowledge and comprehension.

As it happens I have just attended a talk at DD1's school, part of which covered their English intervention program. They seemed very pleased and proud of it and said it works really well. I didn't pay massive attention to the details but it sounded good.
It included:

• withdrawl from MFL lessons for extra English
• one of those lessons being reading
• books suitable in content for secondary school kids but at easier reading
• points gained per book read, individual targets
• online quiz after each book, to get the reading points you had to get 85% right, prizes for 100% right

It isn't their own scheme but they seem to think it works very well.

If you PM me I'll send you the name of the school. For some reason my message poster seems to be broken.

What ClayDavis said. Workbooks are reasonably priced, but you need the manual, charts and cards too.

Right thank you - a quick look on Amazon suggests Read Write 'Fresh Start' is not expensive.

How effective is it?

If it would be helpful I could pm you the name of dd's school - they have something like 44% coming in with reading age 9.5 or below, hence the focus on reading catch-up. They might be happy to share info? I'm pretty sure as above it is Fresh Start they use.

Anecdotally friends with dyslexic / other ALN dc have been very pleased with their success in school.

Pretty effective if you do it frequently (several times a week) and according to the training OUP gives.
Supplement with high interest low reading age books, and get someone (6th formers?) to listen to their reading often.

Marking place for ideas - v useful thread, thanks!

Sorry a room of her own , I wasn't trying to sound patronising , just really saying what my son would say , who had various reading interventions .
Yes his reading has improved but never to level it should be for his age , he's found it embarrassing to be taken out of other lessons
The dropping French to do extra english was one he liked , wasn't doing very well in this and was going to fail massively anyway , so liked that he could quit it.
Half hour before school starts of small group for four reading and playing word games , with spelling / recognition / comprehension .
Hour after school working on English lesson with his English teacher covering where he gone wrong , misinterpreted the text .
( which was hard as covered some text that was way above his reading ability , but head of dept that every child covers unless in the unit ) even his english teacher thought this total unpractical . She had about ten/ twelve students in her class that she covered this with .
He's done toe to toe ,success maker and various others though his time in school.
He still struggles with reading as much as it's improved , but hates it and will not pick up a book and read for enjoyment . Yes we lucky that he's had so much help , but he always worked hard , made progress and continues to give 100% effort , despite this being the subject he struggles with massively in school .
There a loads of different intervention out there you can try but each child is an individual and one may work for some and not others , so not one thing that you can buy and use that's going to work with every child you try it on.
If you find something great please let me known , as an area that always trying to improve further to make life easier , cause once your reading is good all other subjects will improve as well.

homework not taken that way! It's frustrating isn't it, when despite loads of intervention and hard work a child still struggles. You have some good ideas there, will think hard about which kids I shall try and get in early (oh ha ha, maybe the younger ones might still be up for it)..

One last thing , if you can get them to develop a love of reading then over time there reading will improve to some extent with age and maturity .
Hardness part is getting them to develop a love of books , when I was a kid you escaped into a good story , now kids escape into computer games.

The Hackney Lit programme has great results and I believe is about to publish the results of a year long trial across the country. It is quite staff heavy but very, very effective at giving pupils the ability to read at a high level quite quickly.
Accelerated Reading works quite well but is not as in depth with the skills it develops.

At ds 's school, they have a scheme where volunteers come in to listen to individual children read. They choose children who are 2- 3 years behind where th should be, and the volunteers spend a lesson a week with them (a complicated system is worked out so they don't miss the same lesson every week).
I spend some of the time listening to the child read, some time reading aloud myself and some time playing a word game- Bananagram is a good one. It's ties in to Accelerated Reading, so the kids can do online quizzes on th books they have read, which some of them love.

It had a significant impact on the reading ages of the guinea pigs last year- it was the brainchild of a particular TA - but the impact was so noticeable that the Head has backed attempts to get more volunteers this year.

The scheme teen describes is called accelerated reader - my school uses it too!

There is a program called units of sound for spelling and reading that my year six children have progressed on. It has no pictures Tec so is quite age neutral. The British dyslexia association make it. It's only one of the pieces but I've had good results and it's not very expensive.
Catch up reading is a one to one that you can train lsa s in an is cheap an effective so a good add on if you are thinly spread. About three hundred for training and resources, again a charity and age neutral. The scheme ha levelled hundreds of books.
I'm a small school so these are the budget options that work but in being simple they are less babyish. If possible less time one to one is Bette than group time.

Oh and I back the volunteer comment, we have lots to provide that one to one time. I produce colour coded levelled questions by af focuses for them to ask children at the end of sessions, I would email these I you want. I also Send them to parent who often feedback they don't know how to talk a about books together beyond the early years.

Oh my goodness Upside - are those questions tailored to the book or are they generic? That sounds like a lot of work!!

I haven't read the whole thread but I have dyslexic DSs. I've tried all sorts, including Toe by Toe which is dreadfully boring. Wordshark has worked wonders and it is suitable for all ages. It has subject specific word lists for secondary too. It is about letters, sounds and spellings and has good games in it so that kids can get to know how words are made from different letter combinations and sounds. Obviously, you need to read books too but this is really good at improving skills.

In terms of books themselves, the publisher Barrington Stoke does books with subject contents older than the reading age - so a teenage book might have a age 7 RA.

I was going to suggest Toe by Toe but I agree it is a bit boring sometimes.

Would Nessy be too babyish? It has made the biggest impact levels wise on our KS1 children who are not secure in Phase 3/4/5.

Also, not really a scheme but something that has helped our chn is making them their own sound mats, you can get them on twinkl and then change the pictures so they are more meaningful to the children, eg instead of a pic of a goat for the digraph 'oa' they would draw a picture of a coat.