Finham welcomed back Christopher to this week. About 80 colleagues from across the region from across primary and secondary phases to discuss how to improve our way of teaching students reading.

He is the author of The Art and Science of Teaching Primary Reading and Primary Reading Simplified. He is an experienced teacher, school leader and consultant, who delivers professional development for schools, trusts and ITT providers on the subject of evidence-informed reading and curriculum development. He also works part-time as a member of Ambition Institute’s learning design team where he co-designed their NPQ in Leading Literacy.

What stood out was the need to expose pupils to as many different texts and opportunities as possible so that they can better understand inference and make predictions. (Like behaviour, unless we teach students how to behave, we are assuming they have an inherent and basic knowledge of the rules around behaviour). In reading comprehension, if students do not have a basic knowledge base for the world around them, then there is little point in teaching them how to infer or predict as they simply just lack the building blocks to demonstrate that skill.