A curriculum-focused supplementary literacy intervention for secondary students with reading difficulties

Johny Daniel, Associate Professor, Durham University, UK

Introduction

Many students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are one to two years behind their peers in reading by the end of primary school (Daniel, 2025). As students transition into secondary school, the texts they encounter become increasingly complex, requiring them to decode multisyllabic words, draw on domain-specific vocabulary, and integrate background knowledge to support meaning-making. For students who arrive with weak literacy foundations, the gap between reading skills and the demands of the secondary curriculum can widen quickly.

Daniel and Barth (2023) found that difficulties in reading were characterised across multiple reading-related domains, such as word reading, vocabulary knowledge, reading comprehension and oral comprehension. This has important implications for intervention design: programmes that target only a single component of reading, such as phonics in isolation, may not adequately address the breadth of needs of secondary students with reading difficulties. 

Guidelines for reading intervention in secondary school (Vaughn et al., 2022) recommend that interventions should build decoding skills for complex multisyllabic words, provide fluency-building activities and use comprehension-building practices, including vocabulary instruction, questioning and summarisation. These components should not be treated as isolated modules but integrated within meaningful reading of connected text (Petscher et al., 2020).

Embedding literacy instruction within curriculum-relevant content allows students to simultaneously develop reading skills and build domain knowledge (Compton et al., 2014), which is particularly important for students with SEND, who often have restricted background knowledge (Spencer et al., 2019).

This article describes the Reading Resource Centre programme (Daniel, 2024), a curriculum-focused supplementary literacy intervention delivered to Year 7–8 students with reading difficulties. 

The intervention

Students in Years 7–8 were identified by the school’s special educational needs coordinator (SENCo) as having persistent reading difficulties. The intervention was delivered in small-group sessions by a trained research assistant, four days a week for approximately 30–35 minutes per session, over a 12-week period. 

The intervention was structured around four sets of lessons, each focused on a specific curriculum topic. The first two sets used geography content (settlements and coasts) and the latter two used history content (feudalism and revolutions), all drawn from the Key Stage 3 national curriculum guidelines. 

Each lesson followed a consistent structure aligned with the multicomponent approach (Daniel et al., 2024; Vaughn et al., 2022). Sessions began with sight word reading of keywords from the upcoming passage, followed by explicit vocabulary instruction for domain-specific terms. Students then engaged with a reading passage in one of two formats. For fluency-focused lessons, shorter passages at Key Stage 2 level were used to build reading confidence and accuracy. For comprehension-focused lessons, longer passages at Key Stage 3 level were used to build stamina and skill (Vaughn et al., 2022). The final three lessons were dedicated to planning and writing an essay on the set topic.

Measuring reading and writing

Oral reading fluency, measured as words read correctly per minute, was assessed weekly using curriculum-based measurement passages (University of Oregon, 2023). Three assessments were conducted before the intervention began to establish a baseline, followed by 11 weekly assessments during the intervention. Writing was assessed as the total number of words written on a given topic during baseline and the intervention. 

What we observed

Two cases illustrate contrasting patterns. Student 1 entered the intervention reading at approximately 63 words correct per minute (WCPM), placing them well below the 20th percentile and indicating a need for intensive support. Following the introduction of the intervention, this student’s fluency improved markedly, with scores regularly exceeding 90 WCPM and reaching over 100 WCPM in several sessions. By the end of the intervention, reading fluency had shifted into the below-40th-percentile range, representing progress from intensive to a less acute level of need. At baseline, student 1 wrote an average of 20 words per essay, rising to 175 words by the final assessment.

Student 2’s baseline reading fluency was higher, at approximately 95 WCPM, close to the 20th percentile. Fluency gains during the intervention were more variable, with peaks reaching 136 WCPM but also dipping back towards baseline levels. Fluency gains can emerge unevenly through repeated reading exposure, vocabulary development and extended practice with connected text (Wanzek and Vaughn, 2009). At baseline, student 2 wrote an average of 21 words per essay. During the intervention, this output rose to 172 words by the final assessment.

Both students’ progress was broadly representative of the wider group, who showed improvements in reading fluency and writing output, though the rate and pattern of change varied among individuals.

Implications for practice

The multicomponent structure of the intervention reflects current best evidence that students with reading difficulties need instruction addressing multiple areas of reading simultaneously (Daniel et al., 2024; Vaughn et al., 2022). Targeting word reading alone is unlikely to be sufficient for students whose profiles show difficulties across word reading, vocabulary and reading comprehension (Daniel and Barth, 2023). Using curriculum-aligned content builds the background and vocabulary knowledge that students need to participate more fully in their mainstream lessons. 

It is important to note the limitations of this data. This was a small group of students in one school, the data is reported descriptively and no causal claims are made. Nevertheless, the positive change for students, combined with alignment to current evidence-based recommendations, supports the potential value of this approach for practitioners working with secondary students with reading difficulties.

Read more from In Praxis: SEND and Inclusion