What can you see? How do you read?

My Focus: 

I want to find out if concentrating on teaching decoding strategies will raise the achievement of readers who have reading ages well below their chronological age.

The Students: 

I am working with 18 students who are in Years 7 & 8, aged 11-12, who are reading between 2 and 4 years below their chronological age. They are in 3 groups. One group works with me for 35 minutes 4 days per week. The other 2 groups have 30 minutes 3 times per week.

The Beginning: 

We have hardly got underway, as this intervention only started last week and then there has been whole school testing going on, often in our time slots, on several days. I have been doing my own testing to find out if they can record initial sounds in unknown words and identify short vowel sounds in 3 - letter words. None of the students have been able to do this with 100% accuracy although 3 students have come very close.  

Next Steps: 

We have begun by practising reading and writing simple words that 'follow the rules', and by playing reading games I have made.