IHETC School

Reading and writing — Primary

Everything else depends on it. A child still decoding laboriously at the end of primary school will not understand a maths problem in secondary: the difficulty moves, and gets blamed on the wrong subject.

What is at stake in this subject

Decoding and fluency
Understanding a short text
Vocabulary and word meaning
Writing correct sentences
Locating information in a text

What this page covers

concepts covered: 5
subjects covered in primary: 3
stages to validate one concept: 4

From decoding to understanding

The most common and most misread case: the child produces the sounds correctly, so the adult concludes they can read. In fact all their effort goes into decoding and none is left for meaning. Working on comprehension before reading is fluent is pointless — decoding must be automatic first.

What the tutor does with your child

Very short daily sessions rather than long weekly ones: fluency comes from closely spaced repetition. The tutor has the child read aloud, then asks them to retell — and immediately spots the gap between the two.

It changes angle the moment an explanation misses
It leaves the answer to the pupil and stays alongside until they find it
It has the result checked by a second route
It goes back to the missing prerequisite, even one from an earlier year
It keeps the concept open until the pupil restates it in their own words

Parents' questions

My child reads in French but we speak another language at home.

That is the situation of a large share of pupils, and not a handicap in itself: early bilingualism is a long-term asset. It does require more exposure to written French, and particular attention to vocabulary — that is where the gap opens, more than on decoding.

Create the family account