Reading Plus: Content Library with over 1,300 texts

Reading Solutions UK is dedicated to providing students with a diverse content library depicting a wide range of experiences, celebrating the diversity of people and cultures, and meeting their emotional and academic needs and interests.

It is important students have the opportunity to access information and topics outside of their norm. Not only does it help them learn, develop and grow as people, but providing children with a breadth of knowledge increases their chances of accessing tricky texts in Reading SATs papers by improving their cultural capital.

“Very often, the SATs texts relate to experiences that children haven’t encountered. Reading more non-fiction expands their worlds and opens their minds to new knowledge and understanding.”

Sarah Uden, Vice Principal at Folkestone Primary Academy

Texts on the Reading Plus programme

The quality of rich and engaging texts on Reading Plus is continually assessed to provide students with a holistic reading experience. Over 1,300 informational, fiction, and non-fiction texts are available for students to self-select. All texts are age-and level-appropriate.

Reading Plus provides an extensive library of engaging informational and literary selections that support instructional objectives through student-centred learning. Your students will experience an extensive library with the highest quality, integrity, and diversity standards.

Levelled texts and comprehension tasks

Reading Plus offers qualitative and quantitative measures to ensure students read texts appropriate for their reading abilities.

Each text includes rigorous questions in various formats to test comprehension skills. Critical year-appropriate academic vocabulary is seamlessly incorporated into every text. Students advancing through the programme encounter a staircase of steadily increasing vocabulary complexity and sentence length, ensuring they engage with appropriate texts for their reading ability.

The programme has 14 levels, and students can progress through them. The readability level on Reading Plus ranges from Year 2 to GCSE.

For students reading below grade level, the programme’s content enables struggling readers to build efficiency at lower readability levels while reading about topics that respect their interests.

The Reading Plus Vocabulary (ReadAround)

The Vocabulary Component on Reading Plus contains words selected through extensive analysis and research, because we understand that vocabulary acquisition is an essential element of reading growth.

When using Reading Plus, students engage with and master vocabulary in the Vocabulary Component, and then encounter those words in their Reading (SeeReader) selections.

Reading Plus features 12 levels of vocabulary tailored for students. These words encompass highly valuable, cross-curricular words that aid in unlocking the meaning of complex texts. Critical, year-appropriate, academic vocabulary is seamlessly integrated into every text within the programme. As students advance through the programme, they encounter a gradual increase in both vocabulary complexity and sentence length.

Students master words through activities such as matching a vocabulary word with its synonym, selecting sentences where it is used properly, and completing sentences with members of its word family.

For a student to truly understand a text on a deep and meaningful level, they must be secure in two areas: background knowledge and vocabulary.

These skills are crucial in end of year exams like SATs and GCSEs where, if a student doesn’t recognise the vocabulary used or have the ability to use context clues to figure it out, they will be locked out from comprehending the text and gaining marks.

“Our pupils have a very low cultural capital, and when Ofsted came to visit, they liked Reading Plus because the texts broadened pupils’ understanding. They offer viewpoints of different places in the world, varying topic matters, and traditional stories.”

Hannah James, English and KS2 Lead at New Road Primary

The programme offers texts that are “mirrors” and “windows”—an approach advocated by scholar Rudine Sims Bishop, widely regarded as the mother of multicultural literature. Through reading texts in Reading Plus, students have the opportunity to see themselves and their lives reflected in the selections they read and gain an understanding and appreciation of experiences different from their own.

The content editors responsible for texts on Reading Plus look specifically for “content that respects and reflects the experiences and cultures of all children, especially those who have been historically underrepresented.” – Randi Gelfman Bender, Chief Content Office at Dreambox Learning (owners of Reading Plus).

Examples of text selections on Reading Plus