Reading in Year 1
Supporting Reading and Assessment
How we assess reading
• Benchmarking
• Guided reading
• Individual reading
Benchmarking
• Assessment of a child’s mechanical reading
skills - word accuracy, sounding out.
• Also assesses comprehension/understanding
• Results give us a score which relate to the
reading book colours/bands.
Guided Reading
• Groups of 2-5 children
• Share reading a text
• Questions check childrens’ comprehension
and relate to assessment objectives.
• Guidance and teaching is given to improve
reading skills including fluency, expression as
well as comprehension and interpretation.
Assessment Objectives
AF1 – applying phonics strategies to decode words.
AF2 – answering questions and use evidence from the text to support comments.
AF3 – predicting, interpreting things from the text e.g. why a character did something.
AF4 – thinking about titles, paragraphs, pictures and the layout of the text.
AF6 – relating what they read to their own life experiences.
AF7 – relating what they read to other stories/films/traditions they know.
Individual Reading
• Children read 1 – 1 with an adult.
• Instruction and support is mostly focused on
fluency, expression and, importantly,
‘sounding out’ (using phonic strategies)
• Additional support is given for punctuation,
font styles and other features of the text.
How you can help
• Read each book three times.
• ‘Sounding out.’
• Asking questions – checking understanding,
prompting inference/interpretation.
• Asking your child to retell the story.
• Ask their opinion – compare to other stories they
have read.
• Make note of problem words in reading records