Research School Network: Reading Across the Curriculum – 30 minutes per day by Hannah Boag, Assistant Head Teacher Teaching and Learning, City Academy Norwich

Why does disciplinary reading matter at secondary school?

Reading at secondary school matters more than ever. Reading ability is a key indicator of social mobility, reading enjoyment is more important for children’s educational success than their family’s socio-economic status, and ​‘reading is actually linked to increased cognitive progress over time’ (Sullivan & Brown, 2013). In England, struggling to read is more closely linked to low pay and the risk of being unemployed than in any other developed country, including the USA (Literacy Trust, 2014).

A recent report (Renaissance Learning, 2018) suggests that progress made by pupils in primary school stalls when they transfer to secondary school and, from then on, the gap between students’ reading ability and their age grows wider each year.

Now we face a further challenge. The impact of the Covid lockdowns on reading ages has been well documented and must be tackled at a whole school level. The National Literacy Trust September 2022 report finds that pupils in Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 3 experienced the greatest learning loss in reading as a result of educational disruption. Even more worryingly, significant differences were found between pupils from more and less disadvantaged backgrounds. Less disadvantaged secondary pupils were two months behind expectations in reading by Autumn 2021, while those from disadvantaged backgrounds were 3.5 months behind.

We must act quickly, at a whole school level, to close the reading gap for our most disadvantaged pupils and mitigate the impact of previous school closures.

Ofsted’s recent report ​‘Now the whole school is reading’, published in October, highlights the problems children at secondary school face, as the curriculum places increasing demands on reading comprehension. Older pupils who struggle with reading comprehension do not catch up. One of the recommendations is for leaders to ​“make sure [support for reading] is part of a well-thought-out curriculum and a wider school reading strategy for all pupils to become proficient readers”.

30 minutes per day

We know that more reading time in school leads to higher reading attainment, but how can we increase the time spent reading a range of reading material as part of our school curriculum?

A study of the reading practices of more than 9.9 million students found that more than half of them read less than 15 minutes per day on average. The report analysed the link between engaged reading time and reading attainment, and found that ​“15 minutes seems to be the ​‘magic number’ at which students start seeing substantial positive gains in reading achievement; students who read just over a half-hour to an hour per day see the greatest gains of all” (Renaissance Learning, 2016).

As part of our wider reading strategy, and looking at this research in particular, we decided to aim for a simple target of five minutes engaged reading time in every lesson. This a manageable target for teachers, and would ensure all students were involved in a range of texts for at least 30 minutes throughout the course of one day.

This strategy stood alongside the work of the English team in developing students’ reading for pleasure, and targeted reading interventions provided by the English and SEND teams. We also have a form time each week dedicated to Drop Everything and Read (DEAR) – teachers read TO pupils, modelling fluency and supporting comprehension.

Training all teachers to be teachers of reading

We shared all students’ reading ages with teachers so that they could choose appropriately challenging texts with their students (always pre-teaching vocabulary). Staff looked at how they could enrich their subject with engaging stories or non-fiction texts, for five minutes or more each lesson. This could be as simple as reading a detailed maths problem out loud, or a story relating to a historical figure.

To make our ​‘five minutes’ count we needed to ensure teachers were confident in strategies they could use when using texts in their lesson.

A useful starting point for us was the EEF guide to improving literacy in secondary school, which recommends a disciplinary approach to literacy. Several useful strategies are explored in the guidance report, such as activating prior knowledge about a topic before reading a text; predicting what might happen; encouraging students to generate questions about a text; asking students to select areas that they would like to clarify; and giving opportunities for students to summarise what they have read.

All staff had CPD on supporting reading fluency. We looked at ways in which teachers could model fluent reading of a text, with students giving feedback on teachers’ fluency using the fluency rubric. We learnt how to use appropriate pace, expression, punctuation and phrasing in our own reading – all important features of effective prosody. After hearing teachers read a text, it is important for pupils to read the same text aloud with appropriate fluency. Another approach we looked at is repeated reading. This involves pupils re-reading a short text a set number of times or until they reach a suitable level of fluency.

For our ​‘five minutes’ and our form time DEAR sessions we designed a reading menu for teachers to use when thinking about activities they could use to develop reading.

As we continue to further develop our curriculum we want reading to be an integral part of the students’ experience, enabling them to encounter a rich and diverse selection of texts, both fiction and non-fiction. It is vital that reading is prioritised by everyone in the school to ensure that we close the reading gap for our students.

References:
- Sullivan, M & Brown, M, 2013 Social Inequalities in cognitive scores at age 16: The role of Reading (link)
- Literacy Trust 2014​‘Read on Get On’ (link)
- Renaissance Learning, 2018 What Kids are Reading (link)
- Cole, A, Brown A, Clark, C and Picton, I, September 2022 Children and young people’s reading engagement in 2022 Continuing insight into the impact of the Covid19 pandemic on reading. (link)
- Ofsted, 31^st October 2022 Guidance Report: ​‘Now the whole school is reading, supporting struggling readers in secondary school (link)
- Renaissance Learning, 2016, The magic of 15 minutes: Reading practice and Reading growth (link)
- Quigley, A and Coleman R (EEF), 2019 Guidance Report: Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools (link)
- Myatt, M, 2022, Using stories in the curriculum (link)
- Everett, R, (Unity Research School) 2022, Reading Fluency and Supporting Professional Development (link)