Ahead of this year’s Win Reading Plus Christmas Poetry Competition, we caught up with last year’s winners from Hedworth Lane Primary School to see how Reading Plus has impacted teaching and learning over the last year.
Michelle Watson’s Year 5 class were awarded the Reading Plus programme after her student, 10-year-old Isabella Mowatt, won the annual competition with her amazing poem titled ‘What Christmas Means to Me’.
Since winning Reading Plus, Michelle has seen countless improvements in her students’ reading abilities. It has also been instrumental in getting students back on track after the pandemic. She tells us:
“Having a Year 5 class on the back of the Covid-19 pandemic was tricky. We had a real mix of levels and abilities within the class. Some children were slow readers. Some were faster, but their comprehension skills weren’t as developed. Winning the Reading Plus competition was great as it allowed me to set students away on the programme while I worked with smaller groups to target children individually.”
Not only does Reading Plus allow Michelle to delegate her time effectively within her class to meet their individual needs, but she can also trust that while she’s focusing on specific students, the programme delivers the same customised learning experience to the rest of the class. She continued:
“I was confident I could set the children away, knowing that this was developing their comprehension, fluency, and stamina skills. The Guided Window is a really useful tool to help with the children’s fluency and helped to develop their confidence. Reading Plus also identifies the children’s individual areas for development, so it is excellent for understanding the specific needs of each child.”
Alongside all the benefits of learning, Michelle was thrilled at the students’ attitude towards Reading Plus. She explained:
“The children really enjoyed the selection of comprehensive texts and being able to self-select what they were reading. They loved telling each other about the facts that they had learned.
“I highly recommend Reading Plus to other practitioners trying to develop children’s comprehension skills and promote reading for pleasure”.
