Supporting the National Year of Reading 2026
Teaching children to read is a complex process. Turning words on a page into meaning and understanding and with it the desire to read for pleasure is something that takes time, patience and a number of different strategies.
Why comprehension is important
In 2018, Castles, Rastle and Nation wrote in Ending the reading wars: Reading acquisition from novice to expert are very clear that “decoding and linguistic comprehension are both necessary, and neither is sufficient alone. A child who can decode print but cannot comprehend is not reading; likewise, regardless of the level of linguistic comprehension, reading cannot happen without decoding.”
- Guided reading
- Reciprocal reading
- Repeated reading / close reading
- Shared reading
- Assessment
- Striving readers
- Advanced readers
- Whole-class reading
