Live Reading Sessions: A Guide for Schools

Most reading programs start well. Pupils get stories, a level and a target. Then the reading is left to free time, and free time fills with other things. By the second month, a few pupils are reading and the rest are not. The stories were not the problem. The reading had no place in the week.

This guide follows one argument. A session gives reading a fixed time, a teacher and a group. Online and in-school sessions do the same job, and a school can mix them. Letting pupils choose among several times for the same unit raises the chance that they come. Fewer, fuller sessions save teacher time. Attendance is the first number to watch. Each section reports the research with care, says whose learners it covered, and links to the articles that go deeper.

What is a live reading session?

A live reading session is a timetabled class in which a group of pupils reads a set part of a story with a teacher present, in a classroom or online. It differs from reading alone in three ways. The time is fixed. A teacher sets up the story and checks understanding. And each pupil reads alongside others who are reading the same text.

Reading alone still matters. Pupils need far more reading than sessions can hold, and home reading supplies it. The session is the anchor. It is where a pupil who has fallen behind is noticed, and where the next piece of reading is set.

What research says about reading with and without a teacher

The National Reading Panel (2000) reviewed studies of programs that gave pupils time to read silently on their own. In most of them, pupils chose their own material, with no monitoring and no discussion. The Panel did not find evidence that these programs improved reading achievement. It added that the idea was unproven, not disproven, and that the studies were few and often weak.

Reutzel, Fawson and Smith (2008) tested a version with more support, called scaffolded silent reading, with third-grade pupils. They compared it with guided repeated oral reading, a practice the Panel had found effective. They found no significant differences in fluency and comprehension growth, apart from one result on a single passage. Silent reading with guidance did as well as the recommended practice.

Both sources studied children in school reading lessons, not EFL pupils. For language learners, Day and Bamford (2002) set out ten principles for teaching extensive reading. One is that reading is individual and silent. Another is that teachers orient and guide their students. A live session is one way to do both at once. That is our reading of the principles, not a finding they report.

No study cited in this guide compares a reading program with live sessions against the same program without them. The case for sessions rests on the evidence above and on practice.

Online sessions: the same job at a distance

An online session does the same job as one in a classroom. The teacher opens the story, pupils read, understanding is checked and the next step is set. What changes is what the teacher can see. In a room, you can see who is reading. Online, you have to ask.

What research says about online and blended learning

Means, Toyama, Murphy and Baki (2013) combined 45 studies that compared online or blended learning with face-to-face teaching. On average, students in online conditions performed modestly better. The advantage was significant for blended learning, which mixes online and classroom teaching. It was not significant for purely online learning.

Two cautions come from the authors themselves. The blended courses also tended to involve more learning time, more resources and more interaction among learners. Any of these could explain the result. And the learners were older than yours. The average age in a study ranged from 13 to 44, and about half the studies involved learners in graduate programs or professional training. None of the studies was about reading in a foreign language.

Research on live online teaching is thinner. Martin, Ahlgrim-Delzell and Budhrani (2017) reviewed 157 articles on synchronous online learning from 34 countries. Martin, Sun, Turk and Ritzhaupt (2021) note that most of those studies were set in higher education. Their own meta-analysis covered 19 publications, with undergraduate, graduate and professional learners.

Martin, Sun, Turk and Ritzhaupt (2021) found a small, statistically significant effect in favour of live online learning over online learning without live classes, for cognitive outcomes. The comparisons between live online and face-to-face teaching were not statistically significant. So the fair summary for a school is modest. Nothing here shows that live online sessions work worse than classroom sessions. Nothing here shows how either works for pupils aged 8 to 16.

Running the session online

How to Run Live Online English Reading Classes gives a structure for a forty-minute session in short segments, with a response from pupils every few minutes. It also covers what to do when the technology fails. The advice there is from practice. Try it and adjust it to your class.

Three habits help a teacher who cannot see the room:

• Ask for a response often. A one-word answer in the chat tells you who is still with you.
• Name pupils. 'Sara, what did the fox do next?' works better than a question to everyone.
• End with the check. The quiz or the retelling shows who read, which a camera does not.

Tutoring centres face the same task with less room in the day. Their pupils arrive after a full day at school. Online Reading Sessions for Tutoring & After-School Centres covers small groups, session times around the school day, and what paying parents expect to see.

Mixing live sessions and self-study

Few schools can teach every story live. A blended program uses live time for the parts that need a teacher, such as a new story or a discussion of its moral. Self-study carries the repetition: games, quizzes and re-reading. Blended & Hybrid Reading Programs: Live Sessions + Self-Study sets out how to divide the two. It also explains why the teacher should look at self-study results before planning the next live session.

A school can also mix online and in-school sessions for the same unit. A pupil who cannot stay after school may be able to join from home at six. The unit, the check and the record stay the same.

In-school sessions: a plan for the room

An in-school session needs a plan more than it needs equipment. Thirty to forty minutes divide into four parts.

How to Run an In-School Reading Session explains each part. It also covers mixed levels in one room, pupils who finish early, pupils who pretend to read, and the room itself.

The quiet reading is the longest part, and it is where the teacher works hardest. In the study by Reutzel, Fawson and Smith (2008), the silent reading was scaffolded. It was designed as an alternative to silent reading that is left alone. In practice, the teacher uses the reading time to sit beside four or five pupils in turn. Each pupil reads a few lines and says what has happened so far. Two minutes is enough to learn whether the text is too hard.

Audio helps in a room with mixed levels. Chang and Millett (2015) studied 64 EFL students in year 10 of secondary school over 26 weeks. One group read graded readers silently and the other read them with audio. Both groups improved in reading rate and comprehension, and the audio group improved substantially more. This is one study with one age group. It is also the closest evidence in this guide to your own pupils. Reading while listening reviews the wider research.

Student choice and scheduling: several times for one unit

A single session time for a unit will clash with something for someone: a club, a bus, a shared device at home. The fix is to offer the same unit at several times and let each pupil join one. The content is the same in every session, so the teacher plans once.

Let Students Choose Their Session: Timetabling for Attendance explains the rule that keeps this tidy: each pupil joins exactly one session per unit. Does Flexible Scheduling Improve Student Attendance? argues that the first extra time slot helps most. It suggests a simple test. Compare attendance for one unit with a single time against the next unit with two.

What research says about giving learners choice

Patall, Cooper and Robinson (2008) combined 41 studies of choice, with child and adult samples. Providing choice enhanced intrinsic motivation, effort, task performance and perceived competence. The effect on motivation was stronger for children than for adults. It was also stronger when people were given two to four choices in a row.

Be careful about how far this reaches. The choices in those studies were between activities, versions of a task, rewards and options within a lesson. The meta-analysis measured motivation and performance, not attendance. So the research supports a general point. People put more into what they have had a say in. It does not show that choosing a session raises attendance.

The case for several session times is mainly practical. A pupil cannot attend a session that clashes with the bus home. Choice removes the clash. No study cited in this guide has tested it for reading sessions, so measure it in your own school.

How many sessions to run

Start from the largest group you are willing to teach. Divide the number of pupils by that size. The result is the fewest sessions you can run. Then look at when pupils are free. If their free times are spread out, you will need more sessions than the minimum.

How Many Reading Sessions Should You Run Per Unit? works through the same sum. It also explains why the number can change from one unit to the next.

Fewer, fuller sessions save teacher time

Every session costs a teacher's hour, whether 5 pupils come or 15. A half-empty session is the most expensive kind. How Smarter Session Scheduling Can Cut Teacher Workload shows how to merge sessions that run well under their limit, without going over the school's cap on size.

There is a balance to keep. More session times give pupils more choice. Fewer sessions give teachers more time. Review the numbers after each unit:

• Open a session where pupils were turned away or could not find a time.
• Close a session that has stayed small for two units, and move its pupils.
• Keep the cap. Merging two small sessions must not push one over the size the school has set.
• Count teacher hours per unit. Write the number down, so the saving is visible next term.

Attendance: the first number to watch

Attendance comes before every other measure. A pupil who is not in the session does not read the unit, does not take the check and does not hear what comes next. Quiz scores and levels describe only the pupils who came.

What research says about absence and achievement

Gottfried (2010) studied elementary and middle school pupils in the Philadelphia School District. He used a quasi-experimental design to estimate the causal effect of days present on achievement. The results consistently showed positive and statistically significant relationships with grades and with reading and maths test scores.

That study counted whole days of school in one US city. It did not measure attendance at a weekly reading session, and its pupils were not learning English as a foreign language. It supports the expectation that time in class matters. It cannot tell you how much one missed session costs.

What happened when parents were told the real number

Rogers and Feller (2018) ran a randomised experiment with the parents of 28,080 students at high risk of absence, from kindergarten to grade 12. Parents received personalised information about attendance several times in the school year. The most effective versions reduced chronic absenteeism by 10% or more. The authors report that this worked partly by correcting parents' mistaken beliefs about how many days their child had missed.

The lesson for a reading program is modest and practical. A parent may not know that a child has missed three sessions out of eight. Say so, with the number. The experiment was in a US school district and counted days of school. Treat this as a sensible practice, not a tested one.

Keeping the record

• Record every session, for every pupil, the same way. Write down what counts as present.
• Add one sign of taking part. The quiz answered or the unit finished.
• Review weekly. Act when a pupil misses two sessions in a row.
• Check the timetable first. If the absent pupils share a time slot, change the slot.
• Keep the record to the staff who need it. Nobody else sees a named list.

How to Track Attendance in Reading Sessions covers each step, with a table of what to record and an example note to a parent. For attendance next to the other measures, see the guide to measuring reading progress.

Putting it together in a school week

Here is one way the parts fit in a week. The table is an example for one grade reading one unit. Change the days to suit your school.

A checklist for the first month

1. Fix the unit for each week. One story divided into units, one unit per session. See how to split a story into units.
2. Write one session plan and use it everywhere, online and in school.
3. Offer at least two times per unit. Add a third only if pupils are still clashing.
4. Agree the rule for 'present' and write it down.
5. Name the person who reviews attendance each week.
6. After four weeks, count. Sessions run, average pupils per session, and pupils who missed two or more.

Where the evidence is thin

This guide has tried to be plain about its limits. The research on online and blended learning comes mostly from older students and other subjects. The research on choice is about motivation, not timetables. The research on attendance counts school days in the United States. The research on guided silent reading is from children in school reading lessons, not EFL classes. The one EFL study cited is with year-10 students. Your own records will tell you more about your pupils than any of these. For how a session program fits the year, see how to plan a reading program across a school year.

How iRead supports this

In iRead, a session is a live class, online or in school, that students enrol in themselves. Admins or teachers publish several sessions for the same unit, and each student joins exactly one. An optimizer proposes the schedule that seats every student in the fewest sessions, and the school's team approves it. Attendance is recorded automatically, and a quiz runs after every session.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Means, B., Toyama, Y., Murphy, R., & Baki, M. (2013). The effectiveness of online and blended learning: A meta-analysis of the empirical literature. Teachers College Record, 115(3), 1-47. doi.org/10.1177/016146811311500307
2. Martin, F., Ahlgrim-Delzell, L., & Budhrani, K. (2017). Systematic review of two decades (1995 to 2014) of research on synchronous online learning. American Journal of Distance Education, 31(1), 3-19. doi.org/10.1080/08923647.2017.1264807
3. Martin, F., Sun, T., Turk, M., & Ritzhaupt, A. D. (2021). A meta-analysis on the effects of synchronous online learning on cognitive and affective educational outcomes. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 22(3), 205-242. doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v22i3.5263
4. Patall, E. A., Cooper, H., & Robinson, J. C. (2008). The effects of choice on intrinsic motivation and related outcomes: A meta-analysis of research findings. Psychological Bulletin, 134(2), 270-300. doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.134.2.270
5. Gottfried, M. A. (2010). Evaluating the relationship between student attendance and achievement in urban elementary and middle schools: An instrumental variables approach. American Educational Research Journal, 47(2), 434-465. doi.org/10.3102/0002831209350494
6. Rogers, T., & Feller, A. (2018). Reducing student absences at scale by targeting parents' misbeliefs. Nature Human Behaviour, 2(5), 335-342. doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0328-1
7. National Reading Panel (2000). Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction. Reports of the Subgroups. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Washington, DC. Chapter 3: Fluency. www.nichd.nih.gov/sites/default/files/publications/pubs/nrp/Documents/report.pdf
8. Reutzel, D. R., Fawson, P. C., & Smith, J. A. (2008). Reconsidering silent sustained reading: An exploratory study of scaffolded silent reading. The Journal of Educational Research, 102(1), 37-50. doi.org/10.3200/JOER.102.1.37-50
9. Day, R., & Bamford, J. (2002). Top ten principles for teaching extensive reading. Reading in a Foreign Language, 14(2), 136-141. doi.org/10.64152/10125/66761
10. Chang, A. C.-S., & Millett, S. (2015). Improving reading rates and comprehension through audio-assisted extensive reading for beginner learners. System, 52, 91-102. doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2015.05.003