Top tips for supporting struggling readers
Hear from leading voices from across the sector about how to support KS3, EAL and SEND learners to make progress with reading.
Reading doesn’t come easily for all children. In 2022, one in four children left primary school unable to read to the required standard and 250,000 children in the UK left primary school without acquiring the necessary literacy skills for secondary education. The impact of the pandemic, rising numbers of EAL and insufficient support for learners with SEND are just some of the factors contributing to the challenges facing learners today.
We know that if students see themselves as ‘real readers,’ they feel and become more confident, and more motivated, to read. This helps lay the foundations needed for cross-subject success at GCSE and in turn, supports their journey into further education and / or future career. But what can be done to help support this?
We’ve brought together leading voices from the sector to share their top tips on how to support KS3, EAL and SEND learners.
Deborah Maclaren, Director at LoveReading4Kids, shares her thoughts on engaging reluctant KS3 learners:
We believe that when a young learner finds the right book, a book that grabs them, that speaks to them and makes them feel like it was written for them - even the most reluctant reader can be transformed.
It's important therefore that we help them find their next or even first favourite book, their next favourite author, or their next favourite series. Inspiring a love of books is one of the best ways to prepare children for a lifetime of learning and to create readers for life. Here are my top tips on engaging even the most reluctant of readers:
- Surround your students with reading material, make it easy for the children in our lives to pick up a book, listen to an audiobook or take part in storytelling.
Make reading a part of the daily routine and don't worry about reading the same book again and again. It's perfectly normal that repetition helps build confidence. And we promise they will move on to something else eventually.
Be a model reader. Are you reading? Young learners seeing you reading for pleasure is a really critical part of the puzzle. It's not a chore. It's about relaxing and enjoying reading whether it's a book, a magazine or a newspaper.
Are you reading the same books and sharing your favourites with your learners? Discuss and share your thoughts on books and narratives to support engagement and enthusiasm with your students.
Where possible, let them choose the books that appeal to them. None of us like being told what to do. Reading is no different. Support the children in selecting books that interest them, that speak to them.
If fiction isn't their thing, surround them with inspirational information books. Graphic novels, verse novels, poetry. Find books that engage them and align with their interests.
Find their favourite format. Don’t forget audio. Ebooks are a convenient way of children being able to read on devices. Let them choose the format that fits their mood, or their preference, it can be really adapted to the individual's specific needs.
Encourage your students to read whenever they can! Show them how easy it is to get lost in the world of a book.
Soofia Amin, Assistant Headteacher and Specialist Lead in Education for Multilingualism, shares her advice for supporting EAL learners:
There are lots of great ways to support your EAL learners, both at home and in the classroom. Ensuring that your pupil and their family understand that their home language is valuable is a great start! This will empower your pupils by giving them time to make connections in their reading with their home language, building on their existing knowledge to acquire a new language. Creating glossaries, reading aloud with peers or teachers and planning a variety of tasks to engage them with their target language, we can often see a real positive impact around reading.
Learning to read in a new language can take time and needs support! Here are some of the things you can do to help your EAL learners engage with reading:
Look at ‘pre-reading’ tasks. Give your learners the text before the next lesson as a homework task, this can help you identify and flag language and content that may be unfamiliar, this will also support their understanding of the text as they have time to unpick and discuss content in their home language. It can also be helpful to look at the front cover, title and talk to your learners about what they already know about the book or topic.
During reading, look to introduce and reinforce vocabulary using group learning; pair EAL learners with confident readers for reading and listening exercises, challenge pupils to build visual aids (timelines or family trees) and encourage group word meaning discussions.
Give them time to unpick and discuss themes in the text/story by pairing them with a pupil who shares the same home language. Allowing them to share thoughts and ideas in their home language will engage them in reading and help them discuss ideas they may not have the English to express yet!
Introduce activities relating to the text genre; get students to pick out language in texts (verbs or adjectives) or highlight key vocabulary (people names, events, places). Alongside this, true or false questions are a simple way to encourage learners to use evidence in the text to work out the answer.
Record text so that EAL learners can listen to it several times - this can be useful for older children who may be able to read fluently in their first language, but need practice reading in English. This can also support students who are more reluctant or self-conscious when reading English.
Use fun ‘post-reading’ tasks to your advantage; using hot seating, EAL learners can draw on gestures and use conversational English to communicate their understanding.
Broaden their learning experience with creativity - get students to invent new endings, new characters and even new stories.
Sam McFarlane, Education Officer at nasen, provides their recommendations for supporting students with SEND:
Engaging students who experience difficulty reading can be a challenge, and may feel like a hard slog for both student and teacher. A variety of reasons, ranging from difficulties unlocking the words, through to the demotivation of not being able to understand what the words mean, can prevent students from accessing the many benefits of developing reading skills particularly those who may have SEND.
Investing your time and effort in motivating and encouraging learners with SEND to read is hugely rewarding. Here are some tips to help:
Prepare for the read: Go through the text or books with your reader before they read independently. Draw their attention to unfamiliar or tricky words, so they don’t have to guess them, as this can impact their comprehension and risk them becoming demotivated.
Readability of text: Your reader should be able to confidently access at least 80% of the words. If your reader is making more than five reading errors before they finish the page, the book is probably too difficult. When choosing a book, consider font size and style; larger fonts can be helpful, and a sans-serif font is clearer. Also, consider word and sentence complexity, shorter sentences are usually good for lower ability readers, as are words with fewer syllables.
Make the content interesting: Have a range of books that your reader can choose from across a variety of genres, fiction and non-fiction. If your reader is interested in the content, they are more likely to engage and persist with reading, even when this is challenging.
Develop understanding: Talk to your reader about what they have just read: do they understand the text? Can they summarise and predict what happens next? Developing good comprehension skills is very important, not only for reading fluency and general learning, but also to foster an enjoyment of reading.
Voice recording: Record your reader reading a familiar story aloud, and then listen back to it together. Record your reader in stages, and play back the recordings to show the progress they have made. Hearing themselves read can be powerful for struggling readers to develop a sense of confidence and see themselves as readers, plus voice recording has the added bonus of being fun!
These tips are just some of the ways you can inspire children of all abilities to take a step forward in their life-long reading journey and will, we hope, support your own creative and innovative solutions to encourage reading amongst KS3, EAL and SEND learners
For those that require additional support, ourRapid Plus series has been developed alongside Dee Reid, founder of Catch Up, to support KS3 struggling, EAL, and SEND readers. It's independently proven to more than double progress in just a few months, helping students to feel more motivated, with teachers reporting growth in confidence across all of their subject.
Find out more about how Rapid Plus could help your students here.