Start with the reading process
When a pupil is struggling, it is more useful to identify the particular point at which the process breaks down than to describe them simply as a “poor reader”.
Observe the pupil reading unfamiliar words, familiar words and connected text. Notice whether they attend to all the letters, can say the relevant sounds, blend them in sequence, recognise previously decoded words more readily, and notice when a response does not make sense. This helps teaching target the mechanism that needs strengthening.
What to try in school
Keep teaching explicit, systematic and cumulative. Revisit previously taught grapheme–phoneme correspondences, model the target skill, practise it with carefully selected words, and then apply it in a short piece of connected text. The text should contain enough familiar code for the pupil to experience successful independent reading rather than needing to guess.
Use brief, frequent practice rather than occasional long sessions. Resources aligned with the school's systematic synthetic phonics programme could be useful, alongside simple sound cards, magnetic letters, phoneme frames and decodable texts. Where fluency is the focus, adult modelling, echo reading, paired reading and purposeful rereading could be useful.
A worked example
A pupil may read a familiar classroom book with apparent confidence but struggle when shown unfamiliar words containing graphemes they have been taught. Staff avoid assuming that the pupil has “forgotten everything”. They check whether the pupil identifies each grapheme accurately, blends from left to right and attempts the whole word rather than using the picture or first letter to guess.
Teaching then concentrates on the identified step. The adult models two examples, completes several with the pupil and gradually reduces prompting. A short decodable passage provides immediate application. Staff record independent accuracy and whether the same skill transfers to unpractised words.
Keep reading meaningful
Targeted decoding teaching should sit alongside rich experiences of books, vocabulary and spoken language. A pupil who cannot yet decode age-appropriate texts independently can still listen to and discuss ambitious stories and information. Separating access to ideas from the mechanics of decoding prevents literacy difficulty unnecessarily narrowing the curriculum.
Likewise, avoid using speed as the sole measure of success. Accuracy is essential, and fluency should develop from increasingly secure word recognition. Pressure to read faster can encourage guessing. When rate is measured, compare the pupil with their own previous performance and consider accuracy and expression alongside pace.
Listen to the pupil and family
Ask the pupil which parts of reading feel difficult, what they do when they meet an unknown word and which support helps without making them feel conspicuous. Their explanation may reveal that they lose track during whole-class reading, worry about being asked to read aloud, or can decode a word but forget its beginning before reaching the end.
Families can add useful information about reading outside school, including whether homework takes a long time, which books the pupil chooses and whether reading is becoming a source of conflict or avoidance. Share a small number of consistent strategies rather than asking families to recreate a full intervention at home.
Review whether teaching is working
Agree a small set of measures before intervention begins. Depending on the difficulty, these might include accurate reading of taught and untaught words, blending or segmenting performance, accuracy in connected text, number of prompts, self-corrections, or fluent rereading of an appropriate passage. Review errors as well as totals because the pattern often tells staff what to teach next.
If progress remains limited, the SENCo should review the assess–plan–do–review cycle and check that teaching has been delivered as intended and often enough. Consider speech and language, hearing, attention, memory, attendance and wider learning needs where relevant, while avoiding the assumption that one underlying factor explains every literacy difficulty.
What does the evidence tell us?
Evidence informing English literacy teaching supports systematic phonics, explicit teaching, purposeful practice and careful monitoring of progress. The Education Endowment Foundation also emphasises high-quality classroom teaching, targeted academic support and using assessment to understand barriers. For pupils with persistent word-reading difficulty, intervention should therefore be specific, cumulative and evaluated through actual reading performance.
The practical question is: “Which part of word reading is not yet secure, and what teaching will give this pupil enough successful practice to make that process more accurate and automatic?”
Further reading
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