Industry news
As a teacher and CEO of a literacy company, I read with interest the article by Sian Griffiths in the Sunday Times, entitled Pupils starting secondary with a reading age of six and the comments made by Sir Michael Wilshaw.
It’s an incredibly well-written piece, which portrays the truth of the experiences and existence of students, teachers, and schools across the land, but I’m so tired of the doom and gloom.
Every time I open a newspaper, or turn on the TV, I’m faced with a repeated rhetoric of how horrendous the situation is with student reading developments, and the national ‘crisis’ we’re in but never offered a solution. Yes, a percentage of students are entering secondary school, aged 11, and with a reading age as low as 6, but what’s the solution? If this is our reality, how do we get out of it?
Reading for pleasure
This is utopia. People choosing to read and hiding away with a good book. But, if you’re dealing with the mechanics of reading, you’ll never develop a love of reading.
A love of reading comes from automaticity and fluency and if you don’t have this, then how are you going to get pleasure from reading? Robotic, stilted reading is painstakingly slow, so for students who still read in this manner, it’s a real chore rather than a pleasure. Students need to learn their sounds at speed, repeating the process to aid automaticity, whilst also learning how to unpick meaning and comprehension from vocabulary.