Do banded books make for poorer readers?

In schools across England, many pupils are being assigned simplified books from schemes designed to help them practise their reading.

Sometimes called “banded” books, or levelled readers, these packages “level” texts by colour and by difficulty, matched to children’s reading age and stage. Much of the reading practice occurs at home with parents and families.

The use of banded or levelled schemes is widespread in Years 1 to 6. A recent Teacher Tapp survey found that 83 per cent of teachers were using them.

The idea is that by giving children books that are comfortably matched to their skill level, this helps them to make gradual progress to more complex texts.

But could relying too heavily on “easy” reading be holding pupils back?

In recent years, English children have done well in international reading assessments, with England placing fourth for reading attainment in the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls).

Yet there is a growing discrepancy between our strongest and weakest readers. Not only that, but the much-heralded gains from the Year 1 phonics screening check have not led to equivalent gains in key stage 2 or at secondary school.

A quarter of children in England still don’t meet the expected standard for reading by the end of primary school.

So what is going wrong?

The problem with banded books

There is clearly a disconnect between early reading outcomes and the way progress flattens after early phonics gains - and banded books might be part of the problem.

These schemes are not without benefits. They seem to offer short-term success, and many teachers like that they provide clear structure for progression, in a similar way to decodable books for phonics.

But while decodable books offer targeted practice in early decoding, readers then need to develop deep reading comprehension. This demands a broader array of reading experiences. Limiting what children read can make it harder to encourage them to pick up the complex texts that will provide this comprehension and fit well with the curriculum.

In his recent book, Levelled Reading, Levelled Lives: how students’ reading achievement has been held back and what we can do about it, Professor Timothy Shanahan sets out his concerns about banded books.

Shanahan, who is a well-respected voice in literacy circles, challenges the notion that all pupils should read easy texts. Instead, he argues for more challenging texts being well-scaffolded by teachers to support every pupil to succeed in reading at age-related expectations and beyond.

He speculates that levelled readers may kill children’s motivation to read, and sets out some of the key problems with these texts.

Firstly, he argues, the readability estimates used to calculate the book level have considerable scope for error - as do any judgements about a pupil’s current reading skill.

By controlling the language of books, we may also be offering the illusion of reading progress. If children are routinely given easy books with comprehension questions that don’t stretch or challenge, this may unnecessarily slow their rate of learning.

This applies to digital reading programmes, too. If we are not careful, reading becomes procedural, and focused purely on “levelling up”, with little consideration for children’s personal interests and deeper understanding.

However, this is not to say that we should simply “throw kids in the deep end [with difficult texts] and hope they’ll swim”, Shanahan argues. Instead, he proposes that teachers “replace the student-book matching fetish with instruction aimed at enabling kids to read harder books successfully”.

How to scaffold complex texts

What would such instruction look like?

Research shows that when teachers support pupils to practise their reading fluency, it gives children the confidence to tackle more complex texts. If a child finds a passage tricky, reading it aloud two or three times, accompanied by rich talk about the meaning of the text, can improve their capability for comprehension.

In addition, paired reading can transform pupils’ perceptions of their own reading level and capabilities. Research studies have shown that when paired with a stronger reader for daily reading practice, a weaker reader could read and engage with text “two levels” above their typical year group-level text.

Given these findings, why do we lower the bar by largely limiting pupils to reading easy books with parents at home or with their teacher in class?

What is clear is that teachers would be better off focusing on adapting their teaching to better scaffold pupils to make progress, rather than limiting the texts available to children. We need to build pupils up to complex reading challenges, not lower the bar with simple vocabulary and shortened sentences.

If we want pupils to tackle unfamiliar and challenging topics, one option is to get them reading related texts. For example, the ability to more easily make sense of an ambitious text about the Great Fire of London or tectonic plates can be unlocked by first asking children to read two or three shorter and simpler, but related, texts. The big ideas will overlap and link together across the texts, while essential academic vocabulary will be helpfully repeated.

Supporting pupils to talk about texts is also an important part of the process. Teachers can sometimes overload classes with Sats-style comprehension questions about everything they read. Instead, they should reclaim the subtle art of shared reading, using well-chosen strategies to help struggling readers to make sense of even the most demanding texts.

I’ve designed a framework to help teachers to scaffold well-executed book talk. The READS framework recommends the following steps:

• Review prior knowledge and make predictions: What do you already know about the Amazon rainforest? or What sort of challenges might the characters face?
• Explore text meanings and clarify understanding: What does the word “expedition” mean here? or Why might Fred be feeling nervous?
• Anchor points are identified to stop and discuss key points in the text: Let’s pause at this point - what has changed in this chapter? or How does this example link to the theory we learned earlier?
• Debate alternative meanings or competing arguments: Do you think the children made the right choice here? or Is globalisation always a positive force? Why or why not?
• Summarise the text to consolidate understanding: What are the three most important things that happened in this chapter? or How does this example affect your view of globalisation?

Crucially, teachers should not expect pupils to answer and discuss all of these questions all of the time. You can also just read together. But with a more ambitious text, these prompts can help you to make timely stops to check understanding and to secure comprehension.

Ultimately, schools need to consider whether the push for accessible levelled reading choices is exacerbating the problem that every primary teacher is ultimately trying to solve: helping their struggling readers to find reading easier.

Alex Quigley is the author of Literacy Essentials for Every Teacher

You can now get the UK’s most-trusted source of education news in a mobile app. Get Tes magazine on iOS and on Android