ABSTRACT
What do you do about 10-year-olds who are approaching the end of Year 5 and still have reading ages that stick stubbornly somewhere between 8 and 9 years? Their National Tests loom ahead, with demands that cannot be adequately met from such a reading base, and beyond that the secondary curriculum awaits them, with high demands for independent reading. Whatever the reasons for this delayed reading progress, it is important to identify efficient and effective methods of enabling these children to close the gap between their chronological ages and their reading ages, if at all possible. By this stage the children usually have a reasonable grasp of basic phonics, and even where this knowledge has areas of uncertainty, going over this ground for the umpteenth time does little to increase their reading ages, for it is not a better grasp of basic phonics that enables a reader to move further up the reading progress ladder.
