Christopher Such

I've made a blog-post where all the resources I've shared - from science curriculum documents to tier two vocabulary lists - can be downloaded. Help yourself! primarycolour.home.blog/2019/11/02/one…

@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.)

Southern states boost early reading, but gains stall in middle school. Why the ‘Mississippi miracle’ disappears by eighth grade. hechingerreport.org/proof-points-8…

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…

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 😍.

@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).

The Writing Revolution. That's it. That's the tweet.

@LearnLead_ @MrZachG That's lovely to hear. Thanks for listening.

@MrZachG Very informative episode. I could listen to @Suchmo83 talk about literacy all day. Thank you, Zach!

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…

Fascinating to see @grok, without any equivocation, tell those who ask that this is somewhere in the Vatican or Versailles. It's neither. It's the crypt at Salerno Cathedral.

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 👇

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…

@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.

@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.

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.

📚 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!

@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:

@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:

@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.

@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.

@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.

@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. >>

@HaleDonal @SimonWildSchool @profbeckyallen @_MrLevick No worries.

@Suchmo83 @SimonWildSchool @profbeckyallen @_MrLevick Thanks, Chris.

@HaleDonal @SimonWildSchool @profbeckyallen @_MrLevick x.com/i/status/20303…

@SimonWildSchool @profbeckyallen @_MrLevick

@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.

@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.