Pause, prompt and praise – peer tutored reading for pupils with learning difficulties

Abstract

Eila Burns undertook the enquiry that is the subject of this article while studying for her MEd degree at the University of Birmingham. She is now a lecturer in teacher education at Jyvaskyla University of Applied Sciences in Finland. The project she describes here aimed to assess the effectiveness of peer tutoring and the advantages of the structured ‘pause, prompt and praise’ reading method in improving reading skills among pupils working in Key Stage 4. Action research was undertaken in a secondary level special school catering for pupils with moderate learning difficulties (MLD) in order to explore the benefits of establishing such interventions within special school environment.The pause, prompt and praise reading sessions were conducted at the beginning of lessons, employing same‐age peer tutors and using subject‐based texts. The findings reveal that, after a slow start, the tutees' rates of self‐correction began to rise, indicating improvements in reading skills. Eila Burns also reports growing skills and confidence in the tutors, suggesting benefits for all involved in the peer tutoring process. She describes, in detail, interesting differences between outcomes for the different tutor‐tutee pairings in her work and proposes a number of ways in which her small‐scale enquiry could be taken forward. The implications of this study are, however, very encouraging for practitioners considering the use of peer tutoring in their own environments.