Research School Network: An approach to reading for SEN learners. An approach to reading for SEN learners.

The Bridging Curriculum is an accelerated, bespoke programme for students with the lowest attainment at KS2. To be considered for a place in the group, students will be working significantly below the expected standard for their age (usually broadly equivalent to primary year groups 2 – 4). We will also have eliminated the possibility that their difficulties are due to an EAL need. The Bell Foundation has some really helpful guidance material on this. 

The Bridging curriculum is designed to specifically teach reading and writing as discreet disciplines rather than the traditional secondary model of English, where both reading and writing are tools with which to understand and respond to the curriculum. At our school, leaders determined that primary expertise would be advantageous in teaching these elements discreetly and so appointed me as primary practitioner. The need for schools to be inventive with their approaches is in direct response to the increased need and reduced support which is present in the system currently, as cited in the DFE SEND review of 2022. 

The Bridging Curriculum relies heavily on this primary knowledge and training. The aim of the Bridging Curriculum is for students to accelerate their skills in both Reading and Writing to enable them to complete GCSEs, having learnt to read fluently and communicate effectively through writing.

The Bridging Curriculum begins in Year 7 with a baseline test – usually a KS1 reading paper. This gives us an idea of the levels of student attainment within the new cohort. Then, if necessary, students complete tasks that increase in complexity: a student who comfortably passes the Y2 reading paper will be given a Y3 activity and if this is completed to a high standard, perhaps even a Y4 task. This, then gives the team and I an idea of the current working levels of the student.

Part of teaching in a primary setting is to become familiar with what a text looks like (in terms of common features) within each primary year group and the progression in reading complexity from one year to the next. As primary teachers often work across year groups to teach reading at different levels, primary teachers have an in-depth knowledge of the specific types of vocabulary and structures evident in texts suitable for different age groups or abilities.

With this in mind, I looked at a range of these areas in depth including: the length of and number of ideas within each sentence and the complexity of the clause structures. However, rather than each student in the Bridging Curriculum having a different text matched to their instructional age, each student is given an appropriately differentiated version of the same text. This, at present, does take a very long time to resource as each agreed and chosen text has to be differentiated manually and often into 3 or 4 different versions, each corresponding to a different primary level. Exploring how AI could help here is my next phase of evolution!

We are currently exploring how we can utilise AI systems to speed up the differentiated texts. We are always looking for people to work with us on this! 

To do this manually though, it was first useful to consider the expectations of different primary year groups in terms of writing output. Primary practitioners will be familiar with the process of writing moderation, for which resources exist describing the characteristics of writing at each primary stage. A text can then be cross-referenced with a list of characteristics for a given year group and then assigned a level. To differentiate a text downwards, we remove these features from the text. This is based on a WAGOLL way of working i.e. students can start to imitate what they read. From experience and internal evidence review, we found that most of the students on the Bridging programme have writing levels which correspond to their reading ages.

The texts used are also carefully chosen, to allow the students to continue their development as teenagers and moving into young adulthood, whilst remaining accessible in terms of reading complexity. 

We found that choosing texts which were accessible but irrelevant to their lives and emotional growth was counter-productive. For example, Anne Frank’s diary was chosen as a text for Year 9. Whilst the technical complexity of the text may have been altered here to allow for access, the complex and core ideas remain. Altering the vessel of transmission has not meant compromising on the ambition behind the curriculum or shying away from complex ideas. Another carefully chosen example is ​“Once” by Morris Gleitzman which is used to explicitly teach students about unreliable narration, whilst building on their knowledge of the Holocaust.

Professor Timothy Rasinski of Kent State University USA explains the importance of teaching reading fluency in his blog. This adaptation of text allows for fluency to continue to be developed and for children to continue to practise their reading skills and experience success. 

Students are given individual reading journals which contain selected extracts of a text – usually between six and eight, which is enough to get them interested in the book and hopefully inspire them to continue reading the text in their own time. Recommendation one of the EEF report focused on SEN in Mainstream settings recognises the importance of the systematic removal of barriers to ensure that students with SEN can access the curriculum. 

Students usually have two focused reading lessons each week. In the first – depending on student need – the new extract is read to them or they read it individually. The group then engages in significant discussion about the events of the text and how it ties in to the story so far. A significant chunk of this lesson is taken up with retrieval of prior events and characters. Still during the first lesson, students complete up to 8 comprehension questions based on the text they have just read.

The questions are designed to challenge and stretch them in the following areas:

- fact retrieval from the text
- language comprehension
- inference
- comparison
- summary.

This kind of scaffolded approach is crucial to allowing students to develop independence. In 2021, the EEF identified four misconceptions of students with SEN and part of this focuses on the approaches that Teaching Assistants should utilise in their important work. We have adapted this scaffolding framework to influence our core approach. 

Whilst students at different levels are given differentiated texts, the questions remain the same. This allows all students to engage with the text together.

The second lesson of each week is an activity lesson based on that week’s text and builds on one of the aforementioned skills. Examples include:

- analysing pre-selected chunks of language from the text
- drawing a comic strip of the events (ensuring that judicious choices are made about which events to draw)
- drawing a setting with evidence labels
- creating a graph to represent a character’s emotions or
- writing extended predictions (or the next chapter) with justifications based on their understanding of the story so far.

At the end of each term, students sit a reading test in the style of the KS2 SATs paper. Each paper is aligned with the student’s instructional age and allows them to demonstrate their skills when presented with an unknown text. Students sit this test in exam conditions and where possible, we adhere to their access arrangements (extra time, scribe etc.).

If a student sitting the Y3 paper passes, their next reading journal will jump up a level to Y4, for example. The next term, the student will sit the Y4 test and so on. It is crucial to note here that progress is not often very quick – it is common for the Bridging students to jump one level per year without other significant intervention. 

For example, in the current Y9 cohort, looking at the cold data, only a third have made significant accelerated progress in the last 12 months, but it has been a gradual process over their three-year journey with us. Though, these children have not yet caught up with the expectations of their peers in chronological terms, the vast majority are now working on average two to three years above where they started, e.g. moving from year 3 to year 6 or year 4 to year 7.

As always, in education, there are limitations to what we can do as resources and personnel are finite. But there have been some significant gains seen when we mix interventions too. For example, a student who has met their Lexia Core 5 target hours or had a series of sessions with our primary reading specialist, makes far more progress than the individual components combined. Recommendation four of the EEF’s Guidance report focused on SEN in Mainstream identifies the importance of carefully selecting, and tracking the impact of, interventions. 

In the current Year 8 cohort, 75% of students have made significant and accelerated progress towards being KS3 ready, jumping more than one instructional year in the last 12 months. Many of them are now accessing KS2 SATs texts with support.

The Bridging Curriculum has been running for 2 full academic years. The first year was a fledgling format where pedagogies were developed and tested, followed by the 23 – 24 academic year with the current model of thinking being developed. 24 – 25 is the third year of the programme and we are extremely hopeful about what we will find.

Whilst there is only a small sample of student data to analyse, the results show that the reading strand is beginning to work. It remains difficult to project this progress forwards to Y11 success and work to bridge the gap between the Bridging Curriculum and mainstream subjects is ongoing. Equally, there are other barriers to contend with. Many Bridging students have a range of other factors and complexities which we have to support and address. How we address these additional barriers (such as poor attendance) is also an ongoing discussion which we are starting to build into our provision.

In the next blog, I will discuss how writing is taught discreetly in the Bridging Curriculum. Blog 3 will look at how the pedagogies developed as part of the Bridging curriculum can be used within the mainstream to enhance teaching for these SEN learners.

Further reading:

Rasinski, T., 2014. Fluency matters. International electronic Journal of elementary education,7(1), pp.3 – 12.

Culliney, M., Moore, N., Coldwell, M. and Demack, S., 2019. Integrating English: Evaluation Report.

Dobson, G.J., 2023. The 2022 SEND Green Paper and the SENCo: more evidence on demographics, qualifications and leadership status. British Journal of Special Education, 50(2), pp.219 – 237.

Davies, K. and Henderson, P., 2020. Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Schools. Guidance Report. Education Endowment Foundation.