Research School Network: Using modelling to develop children’s reading behaviours At Alexandra Park Primary School Developing active, independent readers

Developing a highly skilled, independent reader who is able to read to learn and wants to read for pleasure is a challenge that every teacher faces. We were finding that even with high quality phonics teaching and a broad and balanced approach to reading instruction, we still had children in KS2 who were not active in their reading. They could read all the words on the page but struggled to talk about what they had read. As a school, our approach to teaching reading has been a continuous journey, using the recommendations from the ​‘Improving Literacy in KS1 and KS2’ guidance reports.

However, when exploring in more detail, including observations and talking to the children, it became evident that they did not have the required learning behaviours, or reading behaviours to enable them to be successful readers. Using the Metacognition and Self Regulation guidance report, we then explored how to develop the children’s metacognitive strategies for reading.

These behaviours are now explicitly taught and modelled through extended reading sessions of a whole class text. Using an annotated copy of the text, teachers stop at key moments to verbalise their thought process. This might be to clarify, summarise or predict. The children are engaged in a high-quality text and are exposed to all the strategies an expert reader employs. As reading lead, this requires a lot of modelling to other staff members to ensure that this doesn’t just turn into a regular, extended story-time. It takes skill to know when to stop and linger on a point in the text and when to keep the flow of the story so as not to lose the interest of the children.

While this approach is still in its early stages, we are now starting to see ​‘traces’ of these strategies being applied by the children and children talking more confidently about what they have read. We are now starting to see a positive impact on progress and attainment for children in the year groups where this has been first implemented. We will continue to develop and monitor this approach as we scale up the project through school.

Hayley Wood, Research Lead and Assistant Director of Alexandra Park Associate Research School

Dave Seneviratne, Reading Lead