Reading Support and Intervention

MEA have been working with the FFT on our Reciprocal Reading provision and have recently been asked to become a ‘partner school’ for the company. We have worked hard to embed a robust and engaging intervention programme at MEA and during recent visits from the FFT team they have recognised the strong foundations we have created and have invited us to become one of their partner schools.

We were delighted to receive such recognition from the FFT who stated: “Your enthusiasm for Reciprocal Reading and incredibly robust intervention model for incoming KS3 pupils alongside your staff’s clear subject knowledge and passion for reading generally and Reciprocal Reading specifically I believe could be a great benefit to other schools to learn from.” Read more about our involvement and our case study below:

Manchester Enterprise Academy's Reciprocal Reading Provision

At MEA we have a robust intervention programme and firmly believe that all children can be supported on their reading journey. All children complete an NGRT screener test on arrival to MEA, which generates a reading age, and are tested every subsequent year to ensure that all children are reading in line with their chronological age. If any students’ results show indication of a reading issue we complete further diagnostic testing, using YARC, to assess whether there is a decoding issue, a vocabulary gap, a fluency issue or a comprehension issue. Students are then placed on the correct intervention programme in order to support their reading gaps and develop them into strong and confident readers.

Fresh start phonics is a programme that is designed to support students with decoding and blending sounds.  It will support students at word reading level revising set 1, set 2 and set 3 sounds to support students with segmentation and word recognition to read words accurately and more fluently. 

Who is it aimed at? The programme supports students who struggle to decode, and blend sounds and for students to have gaps in their phonetic knowledge. 

Delivery: The programme will be delivered to students on a 1:1 or a small group (2-4) in 30-minute sessions by specially trained staff. There are 4 sessions per week. This is a module programme with students completing baselines every 6-8 weeks. 

Research: EEF (2016),

Provider: Ruth Miskin Literac

Fresh start phonics

Fluency intervention is programme that is designed to support students with bridging the gap between decoding and comprehension.  It will support students to develop reading rate, reading accuracy and students’ ability to read more fluently. 

Who is it aimed at? The programme supports students who struggle with reading fluency, who may read at a slower rate and make errors when reading such as mispronunciation of words or omission of words entirely.  

Delivery: The programme may be delivered to students in a small group (4-6 students) in 60-minute sessions and will run over 8 weeks. The programme can also be delivered though English lessons with an adapted curriculum to teach content and reading through a fluency lens

Research: HFL fluency project (2024)  

Provider: Harts for Learning Education

Reciprocal reading is a programme that is designed to support students to understand ‘how’ to understand through explicit instruction. It supports comprehension of different types of texts through providing a set of strategies to access meaning. Reciprocal reading encourages pupils to talk with understanding about texts, develops an enthusiasm for reading and confidence to read independently. 

Who is it aimed at? The programme supports students who are confident at decoding but poor at comprehending.  

Delivery: The programme will be delivered to small groups of (4-8 students) in 60 minute sessions. There should be a a cycle of 8- 10 weeks 

Research: Palinscar and Brown (1987); Pressley, Lysynchuk and Vye (1990), EEF (2019) (2025) 

Provider: FFT

RR Intervention

Lexonik is a programme that is designed to support students to with word reading and support them in learning prefixes, suffixes and root words which will enable them to access and read more complex vocabulary. Students word on syllable segmentation, blending and the formation of words to improve knowledge and understanding. 

 Who is it aimed at? The programme supports students who are confident at comprehension but poor at word reading, decoding or knowledge of complex and ambitious vocabulary. 

Delivery: The programme will be delivered to a small group of 6 students in 60-minute sessions. The programme runs for 6 weeks and students must attend at least 5 of the lessons consecutively lessons to make progress. 

 Research: National Literacy Trust (2023, 2022)  

Provider: Lexonik

Lexonik