School closures have had a huge impact on children’s learning and development. The EEF have published a study comparing two sets of results from standardised tests, one from 2017 and one from 2020. They have found that children’s reading were significantly lower in 2020 than in 2017, they have surmised this is likely due to the school closures and missed learning. Due to this, we as a school have decided to prioritise bridging the gap for year 2 readers. Children will work in targeted one to one or small groups with a teacher.

It has been identified, in the research mentioned above, that the disruption has had the greatest effect on children who were still in the early stages of learning to read. Therefore, within their interventions children will focus on early reading skills, such as:

• Recognition of sounds and teaching new sounds if necessary.
• Being able to spot special friends in words.
• Practising chunking and blending multisyllabic words.
• Building up a bank of core words they know automatically when reading.
• 1:1 book shares with a focus on reading fluency.

We know that through targeted interventions children will be able to have learning opportunities tailored to their needs, helping them make accelerated progress.  

Please look at our reading pages: Reading, Phonics, Additional Reading year 1, Additional Reading year 2, and our Reading Resources page for more information about how we teach synthetic phonics and reading. There are lots of ideas about how you can support your child throughout this journey.