16th June 2025 - Helping ‘can’t read’ so ‘won’t read’ pupils become ‘can’ and ‘do’ readers
I’ve been a Catch Up® Accredited Trainer for a long time, but last year I volunteered to work with three Year 4 pupils in a small rural primary school for six months. That experience made me realise afresh what a brilliant intervention Catch Up® Literacy is and how it really does ENABLE struggling readers to make the journey to become ‘can’ and ‘do’ readers.
What follows is a commentary on my experience in which I try to give you a taste of the ‘before and after’ picture of the children’s progress, but also a reflection on the characteristics of the intervention that support struggling readers to achieve more than double the progress of typically developing learners!
In a nutshell, it’s the design of Catch Up® Literacy that makes it such a powerful intervention and promotes a ‘can do’ culture. As you will know, it is underpinned by SOUND THEORY AND RESEARCH and was created around an action research project by Bentley and Reid (1995) which investigated the most effective use of one-to-one time with struggling readers. It is based on extensive research into the teaching of reading and writing: Bentley and Reid (1995); Peters and Cripps (1978); Stanovich (1980); McNaughton et al (1981); Wheldall et al (1987; Medwell (1991); Clay (1991); Goswami (1994).
Certain features of the design immediately spring to mind and these include: one-to-one support, tight structure, short and regular sessions, use of books at an appropriate age/ability/interest level, attention to both accuracy and comprehension, based on precise identification of needs, reading linked to writing and vice versa…I could go on and I’m sure you will be able to add to this list, but I wanted to explore how the children I worked with recently became participators in their learning, how they were able to reflect on the strategies they used when reading and how they changed from ‘can’t’ to ‘can’ readers!
I must admit to feeling anxious at the start. I’d delivered the intervention to both primary and secondary children before, but that was a long time ago! Would I be able to remember the details about how to deliver? Would I be able to make a difference?
My first task was to study the training booklet and online Literacy E-File and these became my constant companions and points of reference. I’d advise anyone delivering Catch Up® Literacy for the first time, or coming back to it after a break, to refer the online Literacy E-File. It is a rich resource of guidance that will strengthen and deepen your delivery and give you an insight into why the intervention is so ENABLING.
‘Before and after’– working with Louis, Ava and Freya – Year 4 pupils identified by the school as struggling readers.
Assessments for Learning
I really enjoyed carrying out the
Reading interviews and I deliberately didn’t rush the process. I made a point of saying something like, “Now I must make sure that I write down what you’re telling me correctly.” I wanted to set the children at ease and let them feel they were partners to be listened to in a shared and trusted relationship. I didn’t want them to feel that Catch Up was something being ‘done’ to them, but that they were participants who had their own voice.
The
Reading interview provides insight into the child’s attitudes, experience, interest and feelings. Both Louis and Ava told me that felt scared and shy about reading aloud, while Freya told me that she preferred reading “in her head” to reading aloud. She also told me that she didn’t like reading long books as she felt that she was slow at reading and understanding (comments which her teacher has also made about her). I extended the questions to find out about interests, hobbies and the sort of books or authors the children like and then used the responses to guide book choices later on.
While
Catch Up® Literacy is primarily described as a reading intervention it also provides ‘ideal opportunities to use talk to foster and deepen learning’. This quote comes from a blog, “Talking about Catch Up” by Dee Reid. You can find this on the Catch Up website and it demonstrates how discussion and talking to learn is a thread that runs through every part of the intervention.
Some of the results of the assessments surprised me. Both Louis and Freya had very low scores for alphabet knowledge – they identified the sounds and not the letter names and this had implications for Linked writing. The children would not be able to use the irregular word route when it came to Linked writing so it was a priority to set a short term target for improving alphabet knowledge.
It was fortunate that a teaching assistant was able to work with the children on extending alphabet knowledge outside of the sessions. It meant that I was soon able to share successful progress by retesting the children on the letters they didn’t know before. The summary sheet at the back of the pupil booklet is such a good tool for children to see their progress. I was able to say to Ava and Louis, “Look, when we started you knew 12 out of 26 letter names and know you 26. That’s great!” Sharing achievement on a short term target quite early on, sets the pattern for helping the children reflect upon their small steps of progress and start to feel what it’s like to succeed. Such reflection is very motivating and, of course, the record sheet for the individual session also provides a regular opportunity for focussing on what went well.
Standardised Reading Tests for Reading Accuracy and Comprehension
Results of the tests given before the sessions started, showed that Louis and Ava were significantly behind their chronological age for reading accuracy. Interestingly their scores for comprehension were much higher than those for accuracy, though still behind their chronological age. Freya’s showed that she was only 3 months behind her chronological age for accuracy, but 13 months ahead for comprehension! Not a typical struggling reader, I hear you say! Her teacher was concerned about her high levels of anxiety and the fact that she read books very slowly, so she thought that the one-to-one sessions would boost her confidence.
The repeat testing six months later demonstrated the following ratio gains where a ratio of 2 is evidence of good impact.
Accuracy – Louis 2.77 Ava 1.67 Freya 3.02
Comprehension - Louis 2.77 Ava 2 Freya 3.2
The results matched observations of the pupils’ growth in confidence in reading and enjoyment of books, increased scores on the Assessments for learning and progress through the
Catch Up® levels.
How did the children tackle the reading of unfamiliar words?
At the start, none of the pupils would even try to read an unfamiliar word. It wasn’t that they were uncooperative, they simply did not know what to do and were anxious about getting it wrong. For instance, Louis got frustrated and angry when he couldn’t read a word. He hated making mistakes. It made me realise that by Year 4 the sense of failure is very much embedded. After a month or so of starting Louis was persuaded to read the book which we had been using in the session to read aloud to the Headteacher. He was thrilled that he could do this.
Towards the end of the six months, when I asked Ava to explain to me what she did when she came across an unfamiliar word, she told me that would start of by thinking about the word, then try to see which bits were familiar and that sometimes she just got it! I noticed that she picked out phonemes to help her decode, self-corrected and chunked words into syllables.
Growth in understanding
The class teacher picked out the
growth in the understanding as the most significant difference she noticed since her pupils had been participating in Catch Up! She also noticed that they were enjoying books much more, that all three were much more willing to put their hands up in class, and that there were improvements in focus and concentration in class.
The children were able to transfer the skills and confidence they had developed in the sessions into the classroom setting. This was music to my ears!
I was thrilled by the progress all three made in comprehension. At the start, none of them made any attempt to look at the book for answers. They seemed to think that they just had to rely on recall or that the right answer must be out there somewhere in the ether, but they couldn’t find it. This finding prompted me to ask some questions that would require the children to look at the text. I’d say things like “Can you pick out any words on the page which show that Billy is scared?” I also realised that I needed to allow time for discussion and thinking talk within the 6 minutes when the child read and the text is discussed.
It was at this point that I found pages 101 -108 of the Literacy file were especially helpful. There is detailed guidance about how to model and support learning at key points. It is challenging to help children acquire deeper levels of understanding whatever level of reading they are at and this is especially true in the case of struggling readers when we ask them inferential questions. Their language may be very hesitant and tentative and they are likely to need supportive supplementary questions to articulate a response. This needs time and the best way forward is through discussion so they gradually learn to develop thinking talk. In Freya’s case I was confident that she could read accurately, but she was unable to articulate responses to questions and worried that she could not give the right answer. So I adapted the timing so that she spent less of the six minutes reading the book and more time thinking through her answers. Gradually, Freya became much more confident and was able to give very insightful answers in response to inferential questions.
In conclusion, my volunteering experience gave me a stronger appreciation of the ways in which
Catch Up® Literacy is designed to enable children to reflect on their learning and it was such joy to witness the change from ‘can’t do’ to ‘can do’!
For further information please see -
The Literacy E-File – online resource via your user account
Dee Reid’s Blog “Talking About Catch Up” which can be found on the website
www.catchup.org
The research on which
Catch Up® Literacy is based via the
bibliography on the website
Pauline Chater
Catch Up® Accredited Trainer for Literacy and Numeracy
