Thread by @Suchmo83

When it comes to reading in primary school, by far the most important question teachers and school leaders need to ask themselves (beyond phonics) is this:

How much time do the children actually spend decoding text?

I see lots on inference, summarising, etc, and this is...

...all useful stuff, but I suspect nothing is as important to outcomes as how much time children in your school actually spend accurately decoding text, either aloud, silently or guided in some way. This is the foundation upon which the rest of their reading will be built...

...and it is a question that receives far too little attention in my experience.

Many reading approaches seem to unintentionally mirror the KS2 SATs with roughly 25% time spent decoding & 75% time spent discussing/answering questions. Kids (especially in Y2-Y4) need to spend...

...lots of time each day developing their orthographic mapping by decoding text. Many kids get this necessary decoding time outside school and so reading sessions that prioritise answering questions are fine for them. Many others, however, rely on the time spent decoding in...

...school and if they only spend, say, 30-40 minutes *per week* decoding then they simply won't be processing enough text to reach an appropriate level of fluency as early as they should. (Naturally, if your reading sessions focus mostly on discussion and question answering...

...but your kids do *lots* of decoding across the rest of the curriculum, then this is fine too). Fluency practice, comprehension strategies, understanding of anaphora, etc, are all very useful. Nevertheless, beyond phonics, the most important thing for school leaders...

...to consider with regards to reading in their school is how much time the kids spend accurately decoding text.