Abstract
Alex Quigley’s most recent book is an excellent springboard into the ‘reading gap’, a subject which continues to be of great interest and is highly topical. From the outset, Quigley reminds us that a common barrier for many educators is that they are likely to be confident and fluent readers. Their individual experience of learning to read is a distant memory; the daily activity of reading has become, for them, automatic and fairly effortless. In such circumstances, it can be hard to empathize with the daily barriers and successive setbacks faced by students who struggle with reading, not only in regard to how this affects their learning, but also in regard to the emotional and motivational impact. Quigley mediates between these two groups, reminding us that something we usually take for granted is an extremely complex set of processes, which many students are still learning.
Despite the reading gap emerging in the home, this book is aimed at teachers and it deals with how to support struggling readers in the classroom and introduces the concepts needed to support pupils. However, carers or parents will also be able to use many of the strategies given when talking to their child about reading, and some may find it useful to be more familiar with the reading expectations of children at school. Quigley gives us the relevant theory with a brief history of reading and an introduction to some of the scientific approaches and then guides us through putting it into practice by explaining what makes books challenging, how to support reading for specific subjects and giving us a comprehensive list of strategies.
There are a plethora of different reading strategies dotted throughout the chapters and there is advice aimed at all levels of teaching, from classroom teachers to senior leadership. However, despite this, the book doesn’t address the fact that for schools to be really effective in closing the reading gap, they need to have consistent collaboration across the school as one informed and skilled classroom teacher, can only achieve so much.
Quigley’s overview of the theory is clear and accessible, but the practice element in this book is not as strong. Quigley advocates for teachers being specifically trained in teaching reading, but there is no information included on how or where this training might be acquired.
The final chapter is devoted to exploring how the ideas in the book can be put into practice, Many strategies are described but there is little information on how to integrate these into a lesson plan or in which situations they might prove most useful. The final chapter also contains two case studies cited from the Education Endowment Fund and those who have begun to look into improving reading in their school are likely to have come across very similar examples.
In this final chapter it is interesting to question how these strategies apply to children with special educational needs. Children with special educational needs are likely to have difficulty with speech, language and communication, especially in regard to literacy and literature, and many of the strategies given could be adapted to support pupils with special educational needs (SEN). However, this book is written with neurotypical students in mind and the question of how it applies to SEN students is left, for the most part, unanswered. The only exception to this is the subject of dyslexia. Quigley seeks to explain some of the current theories of the origin of dyslexia, but when it comes to supporting students themselves the advice is that a complex learning need has no simple solution: In regard to any other speech, language and communication need, the advice Quigley gives is to seek additional advice from your schools SEN coordinator.
Overall, this is a really useful introductory text. For those who are new to teaching or literacy support this book contains most of the knowledge it might take several years of practice to obtain. It is a rich resource both in terms of its exhaustive list of strategies and its broad introduction to the key ideas you will need to familiarize yourself with. These are written in a clear and engaging fashion, and it is apparent throughout that Quigley cares deeply for his students and their school experience. However, for those professionals who work specifically with SEN, this may not be the most useful text. Similarly, for those who are already familiar with the ‘reading gap’ and teaching reading, this text is likely to affirm what you already know.