Using Cambridge Primary Insight to support children with English as an additional language

Reading fluency

Talha’s teachers recognise that he is a motivated and conscientious student. When reading in English he is able to identify common words and sound out some unfamiliar words, although he does not always appear to understand the meaning of what he has read.

The Cambridge Primary Insight Reading module assesses three key skills children need to understand the meaning of texts:

• Word recognition
• Word decoding
• Comprehension

Cambridge Primary Insight provides age-equivalent scores for Reading and Spelling. These scores are useful for making comparisons against expected attainment, and between modules, to establish areas of strength and areas for improvement.

^{The age equivalent scores chart present the scores as ages in years and months at which a pupil is performing.}

^{Delving deeper into the subsections of the Reading and Spelling modules enables a teacher to make direct comparisons between scores.}

Reading comprehension

The Comprehension section of Cambridge Primary Insight requires the pupil to read a passage and, when given a choice of three words, to select the word that fits into the sentence most appropriately.

Comprehension skills rely on a number of factors, such as an understanding of sentence structure and a wide vocabulary. However, one of the main factors is reading fluency. If a pupil spends a lot of time sounding out the letters of words in a sentence (word decoding), they can easily lose track of the sentence itself and find it difficult to comprehend the overall meaning of the text.

This is a common challenge for EAL students, where comprehension skills are dependent on a range of factors, including: first and second language proficiency, the structure and writing system of the first language, reading skills and strategies previously used and background knowledge.

Talha’s scores indicate that he has the key building blocks (word recognition and word decoding) to develop his reading comprehension, but he may benefit from concentrated support, for example guided reading and discussions about the texts, to allow him to flourish in this area.

Next steps for Talha and his teachers

We know that problems with reading comprehension can impact on all areas of schoolwork. Talha’s teachers can help him achieve his full potential by introducing specific learning interventions and reading fluency strategies, including:

• Using ‘before reading’, ‘during reading’, and ‘after reading’ strategies
• Activating pupils’ background knowledge
• Conducting regular ‘read alouds’ to build crucial background knowledge, and foster reading comprehension and fluency
• Implementing peer-to-peer reading sessions

Cambridge Primary Insight is a diagnostic, adaptive assessment, used by schools around the world to monitor progress in six key developmental areas:

• Reading
• General Mathematics
• Developed Ability
• Spelling
• Mental Arithmetic
• Attitudes

Each module of the assessment takes around 25 minutes to complete and while most schools find it useful to do the assessment at the beginning or end of the school year, it can be done at any time of the year, which is especially useful for late arrivals.

You can use Cambridge Primary Insight to assess pupils at any time from the end of Year 1 through to the end of Year 6. You can assess a class, or whole cohort, at the same time or test in smaller groups if you wish. Each module of the test may be administered separately, and there is no teacher marking required.