ABSTRACT
Children with communication difficulties will need lots of consolidation at the same level before moving on too quickly through reading schemes. Sometimes children with speech and language delay may read words without real understanding of the grammatical context and begin to struggle with comprehension at higher levels. They should read a variety of schemes at the same level to provide repetition of grammatical structures, phonic patterns and vocabulary. There are many different ways of stretching out the reading material and embedding the language, phonic and comprehension skills at all levels. Pre-teaching, practising high frequency words, vocabulary teaching and a phonics focus will all help to consolidate learning. Children should embed the skills they have learnt before progressing too rapidly to harder books. Reading schemes with patterned language and repetitive sentences will be easier than those with a purely phonic approach for children with delayed language.
