Lyndsey Lewis, headteacher at St Mary’s and St Thomas CofE Primary School, St Helen’s, said: “Since implementing the SHINE project, ‘Are You Really Reading?’, across our school, we have seen a really positive impact on reading progress, attainment and attitudes for our pupils.”
At the school, pupils’ scaled scores from their final Key Stage 2 reading tests were above the national and local average by “a considerable amount”.
Lyndsey added: “Children at St Mary and St Thomas are highly engaged in the strands from the project. They speak confidently about each of them and can effectively apply them to their learning.
“This tool has been an excellent way to develop their technique in writing extended answers to multi-mark questions. We believe this is excellent preparation for their transition through to Key Stage 3 as the discipline requires higher-order thinking skills and ensures that children are working analytically with texts.
“We have worked hard this academic year to roll out the project across the whole school, right through to our early years provision. The feedback from staff and pupils alike has been wholly positive.”
Half of pupils at St Mary and St Thomas are disadvantaged, and the school has tracked the impact of the programme on these pupils, with the data showing an improvement in reading for both progress and attainment.
Lyndsey said: “Children have made huge steps of progress from their starting points using the strands and to further this impact, we have even invited families into school for learning sessions to share some of the resources so that they can be utilised in the home too.
“For example, many parents and carers have been provided with emojis, timelines and prompts for each strand so they can use these strategies when discussing reading books with their children at home.
“It has been a useful tool to engage hard-to-reach parents or those who may find it difficult to know how best to support their children in their reading journey. An abundance of positive feedback has been received regarding this and this is something we plan on including in our transition resources for new starters too.”
She added: “Thanks to the high-quality professional development opportunities provided by the project, our school staff are all very confident in delivering the strands. The project is highly accessible and can be used in whole-class teaching, guided reading carousels and even reading interventions.
“Learning assistants have commented that the strands are excellent practical tools that enhance the support they provide children in reading sessions.”
Year 5 teacher Chris Jones said: “In my opinion, pupils’ confidence, attainment and attitude have all improved within reading through accessing the SHINE project through a consistent approach of prioritising the key reading skills and embedding the necessary teaching skills in order to develop as a reader.
Year 6 teacher Keiza Richardson added: “The children who are currently in Year 6 have been using the strands regularly in their reading lessons for several years now and the impact on their engagement, confidence and progress with reading is clear to see.”
And Year 6 teacher Lizzie Dean said: “Since embedding all the strands into our reading comprehensions, children have made brilliant progress. This, we have found, is particularly the case in relation to generating inferences from a text and finding evidence to support their reasoning. The children enjoy using the SHINE strands to support their learning, and they provide a range of opportunities for children to be creative, especially when summarising the text using hashtags.”
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1 Are You Really Reading? consists of 5 ‘strands’ which can be used with fiction; non-fiction; poetry and song lyrics:
TIMELINES: Using timelines as a visual tool for students to record 5 key events from the text, helping them develop a chronological understanding.
HASHTAGS: Summarising what’s been read using hashtags. This approach encourages students to create short, 6-word or less summaries with a focus on creativity, wordplay, and references to popular sayings or song lyrics.
EMOJIS: Inferring characters’ emotions using emojis and providing evidence from the text to justify their inferences. This strategy promotes emotional intelligence and self-expression while honing the skill of identifying feelings in the text.
MOST IMPORTANT ELEMENTS: Identifying the top 5 significant events or themes from the text. This method sparks engaging discussions among students, as they compare similarities and differences in their choices, leading to a shared reading experience.
SCAFFOLDING: Summarising impressions of chunks of text. Students support their answers with evidence from the reading material.
2 Greater depth means a child has mastered the learning expected for their age and is, therefore, able to delve into it in more detail
3 A progress score is the difference between the actual scaled score achieved by a child and the national average score achieved by children in the same prior attainment group.