St Basil’s Catholic Primary School – Pathways to Read – Case Study

About the school: 52% PPG, Hough Green, Widnes

Number of classes: 12

Number on roll: 326

The Challenge:

We chose the mastery approach as our reading levels were below national and it was an issue in our school. We had other issues with the speed of children’s reading and children not accessing books at the level they should be at.

Mastery Approach:

Pathways to Read has had a significant impact on pupils’ reading at our school. Data has improved throughout the school with our data now being at national or above by the end of KS1 and KS2. The children thoroughly enjoy the units – especially the shared reading part – and love the variety of texts they are exposed to throughout the year. Many of the children have commented that they enjoy that they have the time to ‘finish’ a book because they are enjoying them so much. They also enjoy sometimes being able to have their text as their class novel to listen to their teacher read at the end of the day.

The Impact:

Teachers have become more confident in teaching reading skills and this has become more effective through a mastery approach and dedicating more time and variation to particular skills. The units help with teachers’ understanding of the reading skills and how to teach this – especially what is expected of some of the answers as the children get older. Although we do adapt parts of Pathways to Read to suit our children, teacher workload has improved due to having the units.

The Literacy Company had helped us to begin implementing ‘Shared Reading’ with other books before we started Pathways to Read and we therefore had an easy implementation of the units. The Literacy Company have been very supportive when we have needed assistance and advice on the units and we have had a consultant in a number of times to model Pathways to Read sessions to us and to observe our implementation of the units and give support for areas for development and next steps. The texts link brilliantly to Pathways to Write, which we also use, and have helped immerse children with different cross curricular links through their reading sessions – this is something that is really important for children in our school as many of them do not have the life experiences others have and this comes through books instead.

St Basil’s Catholic Primary School