Find out how Reading Plus quickly became an integral aspect of Crookesbroom Primary Academy’s reading offer

David Longley, Head of Academy at Crookesbroom Primary Academy, shares with us how in a short period, Reading Plus has motivated reluctant readers and has improved pupils’ fluency, comprehension skills and vocabulary.

Why Reading Plus?

We were looking for a programme to complement our whole class reading sessions and were keen to discover a solution that could support us in developing fluency and language development.

Reading Plus had been used successfully in another academy in our trust so after a free trial with our Reading Development Consultant Jonny, we went on to purchase a licence from the impact we had experienced.

It also matched the aims of the academy in developing comprehension, fluency and language development.

An easy implementation process

The training and support we received from Reading Solutions UK meant that the teachers could quickly implement Reading Plus with the children. Follow-up support from their Customer Support Team allowed the teachers to deepen their knowledge of how to use the programme to best support the children.

Do your pupils enjoy using it?

The children love Reading Plus. Many choose to use the programme in their breaks and lunchtimes. They are keen to achieve combos, targets and next levels.

Reading Plus is simple for the pupils to use. It has a wide variety of texts to choose from in order to keep them interested.

Identifying areas of development

The baseline assessment data and further reporting through Reading Plus have identified areas for development that can be addressed during the whole class reading sessions.

Although reading engagement levels were fairly high previously, in a short period since using Reading Plus, engagement levels have improved – particularly with the reluctant readers, which mainly consisted of boys.

Developing reading fluency

On returning to class teaching after lockdown, teachers noticed a decline in pupil’s reading fluency across the school, however, weekly timetabled Reading Plus sessions are already making an impact on improving pupil’s reading fluency.

Proven results

Reading plus is quickly becoming an integrated aspect of our reading offer to pupils. In the few months we have used the programme, it has proved to develop their fluency, comprehension skills, and widen their vocabulary.