Centre for Education
Research and Policy
Read and succeed:
An evaluation of the Reading Quest programme
The Marie Clay Observation Survey is completed with each Reading Quest pupil
directly before and after the intervention in 2011/12. This assesses the extent
to which pupils understand concepts of print, their word reading and letter
identification skills, their ability to hear and record sounds, and their writing
vocabulary. A running record from a pupil’s current reading book also provides a
qualitative assessment of their reading, including the types of mistakes they make,
whether they self-correct, whether they repeat words, and what strategies they
use. Use of the survey enables us to assess which aspects of early reading are
specifically addressed by Reading Quest. Further details of the observation survey
are presented below.
What is Reading Quest?
Reading Quest is a programme for Year 2 children who are “cusp” readers – those who
are not quite at the expected reading standard for their age. Tutors work on a oneto-one basis with individual pupils, in 18 sessions over 6 weeks. Through a series of
structured games and activities, tutors teach a range of different reading strategies to
help pupils improve their reading and self confidence. The intervention aims to bring
the children back up to the level of their classmates and prevent them from falling
behind in the future.
The charity which provides the programme works primarily in seven primary schools in
Oxford, although other schools “buy in” the programme.
• Concepts of Print uses one of a
specially printed series of books.
It looks at whether the pupil
understands ideas such as what
words look like and how they are
read, the orientation of text, the
use of punctuation, the difference
between letters and words, and letter
order within basic words.
The evaluation aims to understand:
• progress or gains in children taking part in Reading Quest
• how Reading Quest is experienced by pupils, parents and teachers
• the way in which Reading Quest supports the development of reading.
Evaluation structure
The following features will be analysed:
• Within the seven Reading Quest schools:
• reading progress of the whole class
• reading progress of individual children taking part in Reading Quest
• teacher, pupil and parent perspectives
• Within three comparison schools in the same Local Authority:
• reading progress of the whole class
• Reading Quest tutor and management perspectives.
Measures and tools
All children in Reading Quest and comparison schools complete three different whole
class tests three times in Year 2 (November 2011, March 2012, and July 2012) and
once in Year 3 (February 2013). This will enable us to compare the progress of Reading
Quest pupils with other pupils in the same school and in comparison schools, and
compare the whole class achievement of pupils in Reading Quest schools with the
whole class achievement of pupils in comparison schools. It will also allow us to
understand which features of the school (such as class size) and/or children (such as
date of birth, ethnicity, English as an additional language, special educational needs, or
free school meals status) are associated with progress over time.
The tests
The Word Recognition and Phonic Skills (WRaPS) test presents a list of five “words” –
the target word is read out, and the pupil has to select and circle or underline the target
word in the list. There are 60 questions, with the words getting progressively more
difficult. Pupils’ recognition of common words (e.g. boy) and irregular words
(e.g. trouble) can be assessed, as can the type of errors that they make.
• Word Reading looks at whether the
pupil can read frequently used words
which they are regularly exposed too.
WRaPS Example
trubble
trouble
troubel
twouble
troble
During the Graded Word Spelling test pupils are asked to spell a list of 30 words with
increasing levels of difficulty ranging from “red” and “do” to “honest”, “million” and
“office”.
We have developed way of measuring pupils’ feelings about reading and writing, which
asks pupils about how good they think they are at it, how much they like it, and how
good they would like to be at it. Smiley/sad faces are used for responses, for example:
I am good at reading
Yes
A little bit
Not really
• Letter Identification judges whether a
pupil can read upper and lower case
letters of the alphabet, and whether
they use the sound or name of the
letter.
• Hearing and Recording Sounds
involves the pupil being read a
specific sentence and writing it
down. The emphasis is on whether
they record the sounds in the
sentence, rather than correct
spelling.
• For the Writing Vocabulary task,
pupils are asked to write down as
many words as they know, within a
10 minute time period. This activity
assesses the number of correctly
spelled words (a correctly spelled
word which a child spontaneously
reads as another word would not be
scored as correct, e.g. “lick” read as
“like”).
For more information please contact:
Jo Rose, at the University of Bristol on [email protected]
Kate Tremain at AQA’s Centre for Education Research and Policy
on [email protected]
www.cerp.org.uk www.bristol.ac.uk/education
No
Interviews with Reading Quest tutors, teachers, parents and pupils will explore their
experiences of Reading Quest and their views on any changes resulting from the
programme. Reading Quest tutors have been asked to distribute postcards to Reading
Quest pupils for them to fill in what they think of Reading Quest.
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