Maddy Barnes: Helping children to REALLY read
Unless children experience reading as something meaningful and enjoyable, they are unlikely to choose to do it.
2026 is The National Year of Reading, an opportunity for everyone to rediscover the joy of reading and make it part of our everyday lives. But decoding words – which most schools focus on – is not the same as reading for meaning, and unless children experience reading as something meaningful and enjoyable, they are unlikely to choose to do it.
Reading should be a daily routine for children – have your breakfast; go to school; have an after-school treat and read a bedtime book. Yet for too many children, the bedtime book part is not happening. When we look at data from the National Literacy Trust, we find that KS2 pupils and teenagers are also not picking up books. Children’s publishers are producing some of the finest literature for all age groups, yet our target market is not biting…
Why are they not reading?
Fluent readers are automatic, accurate and read with prosody (using the right rhythm, tone, and pauses). Once a reader has automaticity and accuracy, they free up cognitive capacity to comprehend and therefore read with prosody because they are understanding what they read.
Too many primary school children are automatic and accurate, but the book stops there… they are not reading for meaning and therefore do not fully understand what they have read, so they choose not to do it. If something is not fun, why would you do it? Reading without understanding can hardly be pleasurable.
Why are they not reading for meaning?
There are many skills involved in reading. However, decoding and comprehension are the two major components. For too long, the emphasis has been on decoding. Schools are required to have a validated SSP programme; Ofsted assesses a school’s fidelity to its phonics programme (which means pupils reading decodable books that only contain words with the sounds they know); and Year 1 pupils sit the national phonics screening check.
Although the National Curriculum does not give more status to phonics than to comprehension, the phonics screening check in Year 1 has inevitably swung the balance. The EYFS curriculum also states that both word reading and comprehension should be taught alongside each other. However, Ofsted’s recent Building Strong Foundations report recommends that our youngest pupils secure fluency in phonics before developing comprehension skills. This may mean that, for some of our hardest-to-reach pupils, they may not encounter The Gruffalo, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, or We’re Going on a Bear Hunt for some time…
What happens when they score 32+ out of 40 – passing the phonics screening check?
My recent visits to schools, and the valuable pupil voice collected from pupils in EYFS through to students in KS4, have exposed some rather concerning findings. Many of our youngest readers, who have cracked the phonemic code by passing the phonics screening check, do not have many – or any – other strategies when they come across an unfamiliar word. Their default setting is to sound it out. If that doesn’t work? Ask a friend or skip it.
More worryingly, many KS2 pupils demonstrated how they skip words when reading texts about the length of a KS2 reading test extract. This helps explain why almost 30 per cent of Year 6 pupils do not meet the age-related expectations in their reading tests.
When I first trained to be a teacher, we had keyrings and bookmarks listing a wide range of strategies that pupils could try if they met an unfamiliar word – and pupils used them. Where are they now?
What’s happening at KS3+?
Once a Year 6 pupil steps into Year 7 territory, reading changes significantly. Disciplinary literacy becomes essential, as students read much more non-fiction than they have encountered in primary school. Alongside this, they are expected to understand how to read in different disciplines and recognise that “reading like a historian” is different from “reading like a scientist”.
This is a challenge in itself and unfortunately too many students are not getting the grades they deserve across the curriculum due to weaknesses in reading skills (this is usually their comprehension and summarising strategies rather than phonics).
So, what’s the solution?
‘Are You Really Reading?’ (AYRR) is a toolkit made up of five strands that can be used from EYFS all the way through to KS4. AYRR is not a scheme but can enhance any reading provision already in place in any setting. The same five strands are used throughout; the only variable is the text chosen to teach with.
Although AYRR was not designed to impact test technique, both our primary and secondary external evaluations from ImpactEd show that pupils and students who use AYRR perform better in their tests, including in measures of progress.
How do these 2 quotes resonate with you?
The Year 6 pupil has been using AYRR strategies since Year 4 and talks very differently about his experiences as a reader.
The Year 10 student passed his KS2 reading test and started secondary school as an age-related reader. However, it was only identified in Year 9 that although he can read – he can decode – he does not yet have the transdisciplinary skills to read as a historian, and he will be penalised for this in his history GCSE.
I think we would all agree with him… that is unfair.
So, are you going to GO ALL IN?
Children should be talking about books – enjoying initiatives like National Storytelling Week each February. They should spend time being read high-quality books repeatedly so that they form relationships with them and develop a voice when discussing them. Reading again and again is also one of Ofsted’s key findings.
Children and students should be excited by books and encouraged to make connections, rather than focusing solely on copying a word that means “brave.”
If we really want children and young people to choose a book over a screen and make reading part of their daily routine, then we must ensure that they can really read – because simply decoding words is not enough and it is meaning that makes reading worth returning to.
To find out more about Are You Really Reading?, see areyoureallyreading.co.uk
Maddy Barnes is Executive Director of English at The Three Saints Trust and co-founder of Are You Really Reading?