Our Approach

Understanding the Science of Reading

The Science of Reading refers to a large body of research into how children learn to read and the teaching practices that support reading development. Learning to read involves several connected skills. Children need to recognise and work with sounds, understand the relationship between letters and sounds, read words accurately, develop fluency, build vocabulary and understand what they read.

At The Reading Tree, we use this knowledge to guide our teaching and the resources we create.

Learning through doing.

Our resources are designed to make abstract reading skills concrete and accessible.

Children may work with letter cards, word banks, sentence activities, reading passages and picture-matching tasks. Each activity has a purpose and gives children an opportunity to apply a particular skill.

For example:

Read and Search: Children read a word and identify the matching picture, practising word recognition and meaning.

Scramble Sentences: Children rearrange words to form a meaningful sentence, strengthening their understanding of word order and sentence structure.

Cloze Sentences: Children use a word bank to complete sentences, drawing on reading skills and understanding of meaning.

Reading Comprehension: Children read passages, find relevant information and demonstrate their understanding of the text.

These activities help us teach reading in a way that is practical, structured and engaging.

Reading and writing are connected, but they are not the same.

Reading and writing draw on overlapping skills, but writing also requires children to manage additional demands, including spelling, handwriting, letter formation and expressing ideas in written language.

A child may be able to read a word or sentence before they are able to write it independently.

That is why we pay attention to the individual skills involved rather than assuming that a child's reading and writing abilities will develop at the same pace.

Our goal is independence.

We don't want children to rely on someone else to tell them every word.

We want them to develop the knowledge and strategies to approach unfamiliar words, make sense of sentences and understand what they read.

Reading done right — rooted in science and based on evidence.

Learning through doing.

Our resources are designed to make abstract reading skills concrete and accessible.

Children may work with letter cards, word banks, sentence activities, reading passages, and picture-matching tasks. Each activity has a purpose and gives children an opportunity to apply a particular skill.

For example:

Read and Search: Children read a word and identify the matching picture, practising word recognition and meaning.

Scramble Sentences: Children rearrange words to form a meaningful sentence, strengthening their understanding of word order and sentence structure.

Cloze Sentences: Children use a word bank to complete sentences, drawing on reading skills and understanding of meaning.

Reading Comprehension: Children read passages, find relevant information and demonstrate their understanding of the text.

These activities help us teach reading in a way that is practical, structured and engaging.

Reading and writing are connected, but they are not the same.

Reading and writing draw on overlapping skills, but writing also requires children to manage additional demands, including spelling, handwriting, letter formation and expressing ideas in written language.

A child may be able to read a word or sentence before they are able to write it independently.

That is why we pay attention to the individual skills involved rather than assuming that a child's reading and writing abilities will develop at the same pace.

Our goal is independence.

We don't want children to rely on someone else to tell them every word.

We want them to develop the knowledge and strategies to approach unfamiliar words, make sense of sentences and understand what they read.

Reading done right — rooted in science and based on evidence.