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Due to an estimated one third of every Year 7 class in Wales requiring additional support – a higher proportion than in the rest of the UK – CAL:ON Cymru (the Centre for the Advancement of Literacy: research-led Outcomes and Nationwide Change Wales) is creating an evidence-informed literacy programme for secondary schools (Years 7–11). The biggest areas of concern are focussed around vocabulary knowledge and comprehension skills – particularly higher-order thinking, rather than a straightforward decoding void. To that end, Read to Learn is an intensive, one-term, whole-class solution providing discrete vocabulary and comprehension skill development to help close the knowledge gap which is threatening access to the Secondary specialist curriculum. Progress for all will be at the heart of the programme – from those who struggle with literacy the most, to those who need to be stretched.

The Challenges

There’s a need – if Read to Learn is to be effective – to gain a real understanding of adolescent readers, the specific challenges they face, and the drivers that motivate them. Frustrated, disengaged and disenfranchised; this cohort needs more reasons to read and access to age-appropriate, meaningful, engaging texts. This we know. However, these needs are bound up within a complex secondary context, where the literacy challenge is greater and the fundamental skill development lesser. If the core skills aren’t in place by Year 7, there’s little capacity to catch up and the knowledge gap widens. Indeed, the deficit of vocabulary and comprehension skills is being seen across the board at Year 7 and it stretches all the way up to GCSE. There’s no shortage of need, but there is a shortage of programmes that respond directly to that need and to the science around reading more broadly.

The Solution

With that in mind, Read to Learn strategically supports the following evidence-based approaches to language acquisition for older students:

• word study (phonology, morphology, etymology, syntax, semantics, and context)
• fluency (automaticity and pace)
• vocabulary (word consciousness)
• comprehension (higher-order thinking skills and metacognition)
• motivation and engagement.

Each approach is co-dependent on others: comprehension relies on fluency, fluency relies on vocabulary knowledge, vocabulary knowledge relies on comprehension. They are intertwined with each other and failure to recognise that undermines the effective older-learner reading resource. Read to Learn aims to develop the skills concurrently, offering a robust, holistic approach with specific instruction for each domain.  

Read to Learn uses the flash fiction format to negate any possible preconceptions about reading. The format captures a moment in a larger untold story – each text jumps straight into the action and remains open-ended, not only providing gripping, dramatic texts that can be read in one sitting, but enabling high-level text talk. The genres range widely from whodunits to non-fiction, including texts that address topics around neurodiversity, consent and sexual identity, ensuring that learners have access to content that’s relevant, meaningful and relatable.

Supported Differentiation

However, not all learners have the same ability – secondary schools face a wide range of abilities, often within one class. Therefore, diagnostic-driven differentiation is central to the reading and writing components of the programme. Read to Learn offers four distinct reading stages with bespoke texts and teacher guidance written for each stage. While the texts are incrementally challenging in terms of vocabulary, length, syntax and theme, the teacher notes provide decreasing amounts of scaffolding as learner competency improves, demanding an increase in independence. The teacher support is written with an understanding of the potential lack of language-acquisition expertise amongst professionals in the secondary sector (even for English specialists).

Oracy at the Core

The class is brought together through a sustained, structured, read-aloud component – led by the teacher, which is designed to increase vocabulary exposure and formalise a central theme of oracy. With listening comprehension exceeding decoding ability, this offers higher-order thinking skill development with fewer distractions. With such a clear impact on vocabulary and comprehension, oracy has a fundamental place in the English secondary curriculum, but it can be challenging to develop in a coherent and systematic way. Read to Learn provides a framework for discussion and analysis, both within the shared reading context and through the application of the Reciprocal Reading Model. 

For the Love of Reading

While all these factors help to build a strategic, effective reading initiative, successful reading resources need a motivation factor at their heart – because what good are reading skills if there isn’t the content within which learners really want to apply them? A positive reading experience should be the ultimate outcome of Read to Learn, because if we’re to have any significant, sustained impact, we need to change the adolescent perception of reading, specifically for those who have struggled to feel part of that world.