Christopher Such

I personally hope that people continue to buy The Art and Science of Primary Reading not only because it raises money for a great cause but also because the two Christopher Such books on reading are complementary and both are great. open.substack.com/pub/markgood...

Thanks!

Cheers, Alex.

It would be remiss of me not to add that The Art and Science of Teaching Primary Reading has since been superseded by a much more useful book, Primary Reading Simplified.

While this might be the last significant amount, I will ensure that all royalties continue to be donated.

Below is the receipt for this year's donation.

Thank you again to everyone who bought a copy.

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This year's royalties for The Art and Science of Teaching Primary Reading have arrived (£5477.65).

As promised, this money has been donated to Malaria Consortium.

This brings the running total donated (with Gift Aid) to about £57,000 in four years.

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YouTube video by Christopher Such The Reading Map - A Primer

Following a few requests from teachers and school leaders, I've made a short video on the key ideas that I think teachers (and parents/carers) need to know about reading development, based on my reading concept map.

youtu.be/JvtUxB5WM1k?...

Thank you, Jon. This means a lot coming from you.

Everyone working in primary schools wants to raise standards in reading. For me, the best starting point is Primary Reading Simplified by @suchmo83.bsky.social. It's superb and covers everything, with phonics, fluency, comprehension and RfP all being explored.

A huge thanks to author and reading expert @suchmo83.bsky.social who led an inspiring virtual session on Wednesday afternoon 💻

📖 Chris explored what should follow phonics in the reading curriculum, sharing evidence-informed strategies to support effective and engaging reading lessons 🎓

More👇

I'm biased, but I think almost any assessment has a chance of leading to problems if teachers and school leaders don't have a sound grasp of reading development. And in my experience, I'm not sure it is common secondary school to have this understanding. (It's not even *that* common at primary.)

For example, imagine being a Y9 pupil who still needs support with reading difficulties. Are schools going to prioritise resources for this sort of pupil? Or are they incentivised to focus entirely on Y8 and Y9.

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Personally, I'd rather see something like an alteration to the GCSE English Language papers to include a reading comprehension component. This would provide a measure for Ofsted to judge schools by without adding an extra assessment at a slightly odd time.

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My fear is that making reading fluency a target could lead to issues with this that are counter-productive, not to mention the potential issues of schools teaching fluency in a way that attempts to game assessments in counterproductive ways (depending on the test's structure).

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My biggest worry though is what happens to teaching when oral reading fluency becomes a measurable, accountability-linked goal.

I've lost count of how many adults will profess that they were terrified of reading aloud in school because of pressurised experiences.

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Also, to the best of my awareness, there isn't really a robust way to measure reading fluency of those with issues relating to speech dysfluency. I don't think, for example, that eye-tracking software is yet up to the task.

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Oral reading fluency assessments are usually done on a 1:1 basis. Voice recognition technology might assist with administration, but I still can't imagine secondary schools doing 1:1 assessments with every pupil.

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I'm interested in how they intend to assess fluency. There are programmes out there that do comprehension assessments and then essentially pretend that fluency can be determined from this. I hope it isn't something like this. However, alternatives have challenges.

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Like Arteta, I am perhaps a little too defensive.

In short, Arsenal are probably as well set up as any team in European football to compete for the next 3-4 years, which feels like quite the opposite of 'now or never'.

I vividly remember seeing the same 'now or never' argument about the 22/23 season and the 23/24 season, and yet somehow there's always another season and another opportunity.

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My point is that Arsenal probably have a 30-40% chance of winning the league this season, and the only reason that would significantly drop the following season (and the one after that) would be if they were stupid enough to sack Arteta.

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It's perfectly possible that they get some terrible luck with injuries (see Odegaard setting a record by going off injured three PL games in a row) and fall short again.

Would anyone be surprised if Haaland drags City to 90 points somehow?

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Why? Their best players are all on long-term contracts and entering their prime years. The exception is Saka, and he's almost certain to sign on.

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Thank you, Mark. I really appreciate it. I'm going to make more of an effort to post stuff on here in the coming months.

Yep. As I say, I think it's perfectly sensible for schools to be embedding pacy reading into their schools day, but it would be great to get some robust research to back it up.

But I've also read enough literacy research to be cautious in interpreting any single, unreplicated study with no effective control group that has results that appear too good to be true (for relatively weak readers, at least).

Again, a central message of my work with schools is that sheer quantity of reading experience is an underrated aspect of reading instruction efficacy, so I am incentivised to just accept the apparently remarkable results of this research.

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Here is a study which apparently demonstrates readily achievable, remarkable progress for struggling readers with aspects of the study design that currently only allow for cautious interpretation... And six years after publishing there is no attempt at replication with a proper control group.

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I also can't help but find it odd that there has been no attempt at replication by the researchers involved given how dramatic the results appear to be.

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