How to Gain Greater Depth in Reading

We recently held a Webinar hosted by Ross Morrison Mcgill of Teacher Toolkit for our friends and colleagues in Coventry. He was joined by Julia Hurt and Mitesh Patel from Broad Heath Primary, as well as our LbQ Primary English Advisor, Kate Wilkinson-Brindle.

The topic was how to get pupils to greater depth in reading. The discussion was lively and engaging, and our hosts and guests detailed the different ways in which they have been trying to meet the Coventry School Improvement Strategy’s objective to “increase the proportion of pupils achieving expected standard in reading”.

Everyone’s insights were interesting, insightful and illuminating. Here are the highlights of what we learned.

Early Reading is integral to making confident readers

Mitesh Patel mused that starting early was paramount for the creation of engaged and avid readers. Instilling a habit of reading in a child’s early life can lead to a lifelong love of reading. Broad Heath Primary proactively works with the parents of their pupils to encourage a reading routine at home, giving their children the best chance at gaining greater depth in reading.

Provide as much breadth of reading as possible

Whether it be a recipe, the back of a cereal box or a online blog, exposing children to different forms of texts broadens their vocabulary. There is always something for them to read, no matter what the situation!

Attainment gaps are wider because of the pandemic

Ross from Teacher Toolkit posed the question: “Have the attainment gaps got wider because of the pandemic?” The answer from Broad Heath was “yes, the attainment gaps were wider, especially with greater depth children who had not put the valuable time in online”.

This particular problem is caused by a number of varied factors, such as the ‘digital divide’ between disenfranchised pupils and their classmates, as well as quality of remote work assigned to them and family support. Broad Heath learned their lessons from the first lockdown, though, and they were prepared to tackle these issues head on in the future. They found that children worked better with an adult in the room, so they conversed constantly with parents to instill a routine of learning at home that suited everyone. As well as this, they found that live teaching online, as well as using LbQ, maintained standards as the children were more likely to be engaged like they were in the lesson.

Snow days are a thing of the past!

Julia Hurt said that they are fully prepared for the next snow day that comes their way. Lessons learned from the pandemic mean that there will be less sledging and more remote learning! Unlucky for some!

We're here to help!

Engaging early age readers with a broad range of texts is key, and LbQ is here to help.

Our reading Question Sets contain a range of original texts that cover genres such as biographies, comedy, myths, classic fiction, poetry and science fiction. Each text has 3–4 corresponding Question Sets with differing questions: Pre-Read, Retrieval, Inference and Features.

Whether it be a biography about David Attenborough or Beatrix Potter, a tale of adventure in space, or even a fantasy story about an Ice Dragon called Arjent, our range of texts will have something to interest every pupil and encourage greater depth in reading!

Read more about our reading sets here, or you can take a look at our full range of reading texts here.

If you want to watch a full recording of the webinar, click here.

Together, we can make a generation of avid readers who love to read. Keep an eye on our socials for more insightful webinars in the future!

** – Team LbQ**