What's included in the Adaptive Reading Practice The Secret Cave pack and why is it useful?

Year 3 Adaptive Reading Practice The Secret Cave (Working Towards Pack 1) pack is designed to help you deliver a full sequence of reading sessions built around a single short text, in small steps before pupils move on to independent comprehension work. The pack helps you cover pre-teaching, fluency, sequencing and comprehension in one place, prompting moments to assess understanding, address misconceptions and move children onto independent tasks.

Each pack has been carefully designed, along with core materials and supporting materials, to help you guide children on their own journey and ensure progress for every child, not just the average child. A different year group specific theme is used as a setting, and these can be found in our adaptive reading resources here.

An on-screen PowerPoint version of the pack is also available as part of the download. This can be used alongside the worksheets for in-class group, whole-class discussion or to reduce printing.

The Secret Cave links to the theme of the Stone Age. Each morning on his way to the stream, Jack passes a huge, jagged cliff with a faint flickering light glowing from a gap at its base. He sees the glow every day and night but never discovers its source, and grows increasingly curious about who or what might be hiding inside.

One morning he slips away from the stream and climbs up to the cliff. He waits for the light to appear, then squeezes through the gap and edges along a dark passage, past strange shapes painted on the ancient walls. The passage opens into a vast cave lit by a small fire, with something small and shiny lying on the ground beside the flames. As Jack reaches for it, a stone crumbles loudly behind him and the fire goes out. He spins round in the darkness, heart pounding, not knowing what is standing there.

The story ends on a cliffhanger, leaving the identity of the cave's occupant unrevealed.

Each pack follows this structure:

Core Materials

• The Text - The Secret Cave, used with the dictogloss and as a reference point throughout the pack. Includes key Year 3 and Year 4 words (though, breath, notice, strange, surprise) and spelling rules (-ous words) for further GPS opportunities. The text is linked to the history topic of the Stone Age.

• Image - Children discuss a scene from the text and answer two questions to encourage retrieval and inference.

• Dictogloss - The teacher models reading the text (or a section) two or three times before children first read it themselves, reducing cognitive load. Children make notes, then work together to reconstruct the text.

• Fluency Booster - A copy of the text alongside four activities: Beat Your Time, Skim and Scan, Vocab Checker and Partner Read, which can be repeated as needed.

• Comprehension - Retrieval, inference, vocabulary, prediction, effect of language and summary questions, with scaffolds included in the PowerPoint to support adaptive teaching.

Supporting Materials (used adaptively, individually or as a whole class)

• Vocab Pre-teach - Key vocabulary with images to encourage children to ask questions and make predictions about the story, using six words: crouched, cliff, ancient, passage, echoing and enormous.

• Sequencing - A set of three activities (a story mountain, ordering the text and creating the order) for children who require more sequencing practice.

• Task Boards - Tasks based on recall, explaining and justifying, used as an assessment tool. Four tasks per sheet for printing; one task cut out per child. Children are not expected to (but can) complete all three questions.

• Extended Thinking - A challenge to develop evaluation skills, asking children to compare the two discoveries and use evidence from the text to explain which they think is the most important.

How do our Adaptive Reading Practice resources work?

Our Adaptive Reading Practice resources provide targeted, responsive support so that every child can access the same reading material at the right level of challenge. They work best used together across a number of sessions throughout the week, rather than in a single lesson.

• Start with discussing the image then complete the dictogloss activity using the teacher model read of the text.

• If required, introduce key vocabulary using the pre-teach before the children encounter the text.

• Use the fluency booster and if adaptive teaching is needed, provide the sequencing / task boards to provide extra support before moving on.

• Children will then move on to the comprehension activity to access the retrieval, inference, vocabulary, prediction, effect of language and summary questions.

• Challenge children using the Extended Thinking task to provide further stretch and depth.

Packs provide as many reading opportunities as possible, and teachers should use discretion over which resources are necessary for their class before printing.

The stories use topics that are common across schools as a setting or story element. This keeps reading skills as the main focus while helping children make links to previous or current learning.

Each year will have 5x Working Towards, 10x Expected and 3x Greater Depth packs, progressing across the year alongside vocabulary, statutory spellings and spelling rules. Start with the five Working Towards texts in autumn – pack 1, pack 2 etc. – and then move to expected when your class is ready.

Adaptive Reading Practice resources are not a separate lower-attainment route. They provide temporary and responsive support to help pupils access the same intended learning.