Research School Network: From Confusion to Comprehension in Key Stage 3 Reciprocal Reading as part of the tiered approach to Pupil Premium spending
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From Confusion to Comprehension in Key Stage 3
Reciprocal Reading as part of the tiered approach to Pupil Premium spending
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by Great Heights Research School: West Yorkshire
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Damien Mellor
Lawnswood School
Damien Mellor is Head of Faculty- English at Lawnswood School in Leeds. Lawnswood is an 11 – 18 comprehensive serving a diverse community, over 41% of pupils are eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) compared to the national average for FSM eligibility across all state-funded schools (primary, secondary, and special schools) at 24.6%. Lawnswood School aims to create an inspirational community of learning where they combine their ambitions for academic attainment with an emphasis on students’ moral, personal, social and spiritual needs, so that they may take their place as caring, committed, self-aware and confident members of society.
Young people who leave school without good literacy skills are held back at every stage of life. Their outcomes are poorer on almost every measure, from health and wellbeing, to employment and finance. Last year, over 120,000 disadvantaged students made the transition from primary to secondary school below the expected standard for reading. The educational prospects for this group are grave. If their progress mirrors previous cohorts, we would expect 1 in 10 to achieve passes in English and maths at GCSE.
A higher proportion of students begin Lawnswood with lower reading ages. In September 2024, 32.5% of non-disadvantaged students in Year 7 had a reading age below their chronological age compared to a figure of 47.9% for disadvantaged students. The same disadvantaged cohort had an average Key Stage Two reading scaled score of 103.5 compared to 105.4 for their non disadvantaged peers.
Our range of diagnostics help us to identify the reading barriers of our pupils. For some, this is a barrier that links to decoding who we support through Phonics based approaches but we also have a number of pupils who have good word recognition skills but they need further support with comprehension.
A core strand of our Pupil Premium Strategy is a focus on improving the Literacy skills of all pupils, and in particular our most disadvantaged pupils. As part of our tiered approach to Pupil Premium spending we have included Reciprocal Reading as part of our offer of targeted academic support. Recommendation seven from the Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools Guidance Report also highlights the need for high quality, structured, targeted interventions for some pupils that may require further support beyond access to high quality teaching across the curriculum.
Through a structured conversation, readers are introduced to, and become increasingly confident in using four key comprehension strategies to make sense of text: predict, clarify, question and summarise. Reciprocal Reading lessons are structured around the repeated use of a set of strategies; the group read short sections of the text independently and then discuss it as a group, building their understanding through dialogue.
Reciprocal Reading helps develop understanding through structured discussion, a typical lesson usually involves more discussion than it does reading. It may seem a slow process but, through the conversation readers make sense of text, putting their understanding into their own words, as well as learning an approach that can be used when reading other texts, or when reading independently.
Within our context, Reciprocal Reading is delivered as an intervention that is led by Teaching Assistants. To ensure the success of this, we have committed to ensuring that Teaching Assistants receive the required training so that they feel equipped with the knowledge and skills to deliver the approach.
As part of uniting the whole school around the importance of supporting pupils to overcome literacy barriers, we have also provided staff with training around the approach and examples of sessions. This has also provided an opportunity to discuss the core comprehension strategies and how these might be utilised across subject disciplines.
We had initially introduced Reciprocal Reading as of the Education Endowment Foundation trial, forty students were selected to be part of this with 20 receiving the intervention, the other students formed the control group. The results spoke for themselves…
Over an 8 month period:
-Intervention group: on average, 33 months progress in their reading age (NGRT)
-Control group: on average, 1.2 months progress in their reading age
The proven impact of this intervention means that we have continued to implement this for Year 7 and Year 8 students.
The Education Endowment Foundation funded an efficacy trial of Reciprocal Reading with independent evaluation. Children using Reciprocal Reading as a targeted intervention made +2 months’ additional progression in reading comprehension and overall reading compared to the control group. The intervention had an even larger positive impact with disadvantaged children eligible for free school meals.
Interested in taking part in an Education Endowment Foundation trial?
The Education Endowment Foundation are recruiting schools, colleges, and early years settings to take part in trials of other high-potential programmes. They are also subsidising programmes that have previously shown to have a positive impact on student attainment, so more schools can benefit. You can search your school, college, or early years setting to find out which trials you could join, and which subsidised programmes are on offer where you are.
