Christopher Such

27.4K posts

Christopher Such banner
Christopher Such

Christopher Such

@Suchmo83

Experienced primary teacher, school leader and author. Feel free to DM if you are looking for professional development relating to reading.

@suchmo83.bsky.social Katılım Ekim 2010
1.1K Takip Edilen25.1K Takipçiler
Christopher Such
Christopher Such@Suchmo83·
@C_Hendrick I'd gamble that if we looked at these schools' post-phonics reading lessons, we would find not much scaffolded reading practice, the thing required to allow pupils to benefit from the initial decoding taught via systematic phonics. (This is broadly what happened in England.)
English
4
11
38
5.5K
Christopher Such retweetledi
Chris Jordan
Chris Jordan@chrisjordanhk·
As high school teachers, how do we know if students are struggling to read the texts in our curriculum? What's our next step if we discover this? 📖 @Suchmo83 illuminates how younger children learn, why they struggle and what to do about it in this week's podcast. 🫛 Listen below or wherever you stream episodes. open.spotify.com/episode/0WV2tc…
English
0
5
7
1K
Christopher Such retweetledi
Ella Martin
Ella Martin@ellamartin_ks2·
This year, we bought each year group ‘Primary Reading Simplified’ by @Suchmo83 & used the ideas in the book to change our approach to reading lessons. Year 6 have just sat mock SATS & I’m getting texts like this from the team 😍.
Ella Martin tweet media
English
2
4
38
6.1K
Christopher Such
Christopher Such@Suchmo83·
@SciInTheMaking I like The Writing Revolution, but I think it is primarily useful as a method of getting pupils to use writing to support their grasp of academic subjects rather than as a writing curriculum in itself (i.e. it supplements, rather than constitutes, effective writing instruction).
English
3
0
22
2.4K
LSG
LSG@LearnLead_·
@MrZachG Very informative episode. I could listen to @Suchmo83 talk about literacy all day. Thank you, Zach!
English
1
0
1
62
Christopher Such retweetledi
Zach Groshell
Zach Groshell@MrZachG·
Chris Such argues that we have got some things right and some things wrong in current discourse around early literacy and phonics instruction. Listen to the legend’s epic return in this fascinating podcast! educationrickshaw.com/2026/03/09/s5e…
English
1
7
25
2.8K
Christopher Such retweetledi
Steplab
Steplab@Steplab_co·
Following the launch of our Reading Steps, Zach Groshell (@MrZachG) spoke with Chris Such (@Suchmo83) on Progressively Incorrect about phonics, assessment, and what effective reading instruction looks like in practice. Read more and listen below 👇
Zach Groshell@MrZachG

Wonderful to go a second round with Chris Such in this episode about powerful action steps for teaching reading @Steplab_co educationrickshaw.com/2026/03/09/s5e…

English
0
1
6
1.4K
Christopher Such retweetledi
Zach Groshell
Zach Groshell@MrZachG·
Christopher @Suchmo83 really nails it with this great explainer on what often gets skipped over in discussions about “escape velocity,” “too much phonics,” and “linguistic phonics.” And did you know he's been working on action steps for @steplab! educationrickshaw.com/2026/03/09/s5e…
English
0
8
25
4.4K
Christopher Such
Christopher Such@Suchmo83·
@SimonWildSchool I wholeheartedly agree with you about the value of termly fluency assessments. I would have DMed you rather than just reply, but that option wasn't available.
English
1
0
0
44
Simon Sharp
Simon Sharp@SimonWildSchool·
@Suchmo83 2/2 The argument still stands: too many children leave primary school without adequate fluency and schools should be screening termly. But the data needs to be right and it wasn’t. Thank you for checking it properly and flagging it publicly.
English
1
0
1
39
Simon Sharp
Simon Sharp@SimonWildSchool·
UK fluency benchmarks (FFT Education Datalab): Year 1: 46-60 WCPM Year 2: 61-75 WCPM Year 3: 76-90 WCPM Year 4: 91-110 WCPM Year 5: 111-130 WCPM Year 6: 131+ WCPM How many schools are actually tracking this? Save this. Share it with your English lead.
English
4
16
109
14.7K
Christopher Such retweetledi
Steplab
Steplab@Steplab_co·
📚 Happy World Book Day To celebrate the launch of Reading Steps, we’re giving one school the chance to win: 📖 Primary Reading Simplified by Christopher Such (@Suchmo83) 🎟️ £500 in Amazon vouchers for your school library To enter: ✔ Follow Steplab ✔ Like ✔ Share Closes 10:00 am, Mon 9 March. Winner announced the same day. Good luck!
Steplab tweet media
English
59
203
217
9.6K
Christopher Such
Christopher Such@Suchmo83·
@SimonWildSchool I think I have worked out the source of the error in your blog. The data you have attributed to FFT here aligns with Hasbrouck & Tindal's (2017) data from US schools, though wrong by a year because grade 1 in the US is actually Y2 in English schools:
Christopher Such tweet mediaChristopher Such tweet media
English
2
0
1
143
Christopher Such
Christopher Such@Suchmo83·
@SimonWildSchool The reason I am relatively confident about this is because - having collaborated with FFT previously - I was sent this data to add into Primary Reading Simplified just before their report came out. Specifically, here is the table they shared with me towards the end of 2024:
Christopher Such tweet media
English
1
2
14
1.5K
Christopher Such
Christopher Such@Suchmo83·
@hgaldinoshea @SimonWildSchool I've been doing a little digging around, and I don't think FFT have published further data since the report you are referencing here. Regardless, I would be stunned if ORF assessment scores had risen so much in such a short space of time.
English
1
0
1
75
Hélène Galdin-O'Shea
Hélène Galdin-O'Shea@hgaldinoshea·
@Suchmo83 @SimonWildSchool I was wondering about that but I thought perhaps new figures had been published. I refer to the Nov 24 report very frequently so had those figures in mind.
Hélène Galdin-O'Shea tweet mediaHélène Galdin-O'Shea tweet media
English
1
0
1
84
Christopher Such
Christopher Such@Suchmo83·
@gingercatsareok @SimonWildSchool And even if it did, this leaves ~40 minutes to actually answer the questions. Generally, though, I agree that we should be aiming for all pupils to be able to read aloud accurately and with fairly natural prosody.
English
0
0
0
52
Christopher Such
Christopher Such@Suchmo83·
@gingercatsareok @SimonWildSchool It's worth bearing in mind, though, that for relatively fluent readers, silent reading tends to significantly outpace reading aloud, so we shouldn't assume that, say, 100 WCPM aloud means that a pupil will need ~20 minutes to read the ~2000 words in a Y6 reading paper. >>
English
1
0
0
58
Christopher Such
Christopher Such@Suchmo83·
@TopCatTeacher @SimonWildSchool @Grammarsaurus1 Indeed. This is why WCPM scores relate specifically to oral reading fluency assessments, which are a measure of underlying word recognition automaticity with connected text, just one (admittedly important) component of reading development.
English
0
0
1
31
TopCatTeacher
TopCatTeacher@TopCatTeacher·
@SimonWildSchool @Grammarsaurus1 But reading isn’t just quickly reading text. Lots of times you have to slow down especially when reading unfamiliar content. I can read in German. I can read fairly quickly. Do I understand it? Less than 30%. Speed is not equal to understanding.
English
2
0
4
543