The Devon English team offers support for schools and settings in all aspects of reading from bespoke consultancy, and training to publications.
We have worked with HFL to develop a comprehensive Reading Fluency offer including Reading Fluency Intervention. Our Re-think Reading! materials are an exciting, engaging and flexible resource for teaching reading from Year 2-6.
Reading Fluency
Reading Fluency Intervention
The Reading Fluency Intervention is an evidence-based project by Devon Education Services and HFL, currently under EEF efficacy trials. It can be implemented in any year group from Y2 to KS3 and 4. This teacher-led, eight-week group intervention improves both fluency and comprehension, with consistently impressive outcomes from previous projects. Teachers will also learn to apply the strategies more broadly.
The programme includes:
- 2 hour online introduction and YARC assessment training session
- Full day of training from HFL for two staff members (one self-study module and two live sessions)
- 3 hour visit from an English team adviser for teaching support
- Mid-point and final review sessions (2x 1.5hr online sessions)
- YARC assessment materials, with marking and analysis by the DES English team
Reading Fluency Training
This professional development provides an opportunity to explore the place of reading fluency within the complex process of becoming an effective reader. The focus is on reading fluency within the reading curriculum for all pupils.
The event:
- Explores the research underpinning understandings about reading fluency
- Considers the place of fluency within the reading curriculum and its relationship to other strands of reading development
- Explores strategies for assessing, teaching and practising reading fluency
Read about Re-think Reading!
Re-think Reading! is a comprehensive resource to support the teaching of reading from Year 2 to Year 6 (with optional plans for Year 1). It contains detailed session plans, organised into a sequence of learning based on high quality texts: picture books, short stories, novels, poems and non-fiction.
Why choose Re-think Reading!?
- Can be used flexibly for whole class teaching, guided group teaching or a combination of teaching contexts.
- Teachers can construct bespoke curriculum pathways to suit school contexts, including all combinations of mixed ages.
- Written around whole texts to broaden children’s experience of literature and provide an authentic reading experience.
- Independent reading activities integrated into the sequences of learning, enabling children to explore more deeply, practise, and develop responsibility for enquiry into text.
- Builds reading skills, strategies and knowledge cumulatively and iteratively through practice in context with increasingly complex texts: ‘Pupils’ knowledge can be increased by wide reading across genres and subjects, by focusing on the knowledge they need to understand specific texts’ (The reading framework, DfE, 2023, p.117)
- Wide variety of approaches to support young readers to engage with each specific text. Plans are not formulaic. There are common elements (book introduction, strategy check, independent reading, respond to text, pre- and post-reading tasks) but the structure of each plan is determined by the reading demands of the text.
- Fosters rich discussion between children and with teachers as the primary vehicle for exploration of the text: ‘Pupils will become better at each of the assessed aspects of reading when they read, think deeply about, and respond to texts through discussion and in writing.’ (The reading framework, DfE, 2023, p.118)
- Additional training and adviser support available.
Supporting curriculum progression in reading
The Primary English team supports schools and English subject leaders with planning for reading progression across the primary years, and has produced a number of resources to help.
Our Re-think Reading! book list now presents titles ordered to roughly indicate increasing challenge over each phase (Year 1, Year 2, Year 3-4, Year 5-6).
Sample FREE Re-think Reading! plans
Year 2 reading plan: Finn MacCool
This is the traditional story of Finn MacCool, told using great vocabulary and with images that really support the understanding of the story.
Year 3 to 4 reading plan: The Penguin in Lost Property
A collection by these two poets Jan Dean and Roger Stevens featuring poems about all sorts of animals. Humour runs through the collection from the obvious to the more subtle, allowing children to enjoy poems that are easily accessible as well as those that are more challenging.
Year 5 to 6 reading plan: The Snow Queen
This is the Hans Christian Andersen version of the story which has archaic language and sentence constructions. It is freely available online to use in the classroom.