CAL:ON Cymru

Our Evidence Base: The Science of Reading

CAL:ON is grounded in the Science of Reading; a large body of research from cognitive science, linguistics, and education that explains how children learn to read and write, and how to teach them most effectively.

This means our work helps schools to:

• Teach reading and writing explicitly and systematically.
• Build knowledge of the skills and content that underpin literacy success.
• Foster motivation, confidence, and a love of reading by helping all learners experience success and meaning in what they read.
• Use ongoing assessment to inform teaching and monitor progress.

Our programmes, professional learning, and assessments are designed to support the explicit teaching of:

• Oral language and oracy: Developing spoken language and vocabulary as the foundation for literacy.
• Systematic phonics (including synthetic phonics): Teaching letter–sound relationships in a clearly sequenced, cumulative way.
• Fluency: Building accuracy, automaticity, and expression in reading.
• Spelling and writing: Teaching encoding, morphology, grammar, and composition.
• Reading comprehension: Supporting pupils to make meaning from text by developing knowledge, vocabulary, and reasoning skills.

Together, these components ensure that all children and young people – including those who struggle – receive explicit, cumulative, and evidence-informed instruction that builds reading and writing success. We want to ensure that children and young people across Wales become ambitious, capable learners who enjoy reading and writing for purpose and pleasure.

We are a multidisciplinary team of teachers, school leaders, authors, publishers, linguists, and psychologists who have spent over a decade developing and delivering language and literacy programmes, professional learning, and assessment tools.

Our collective work includes:

• The Reading and Language Intervention for Literacy (RILL)
• The Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI)
• The Developing and Evaluating Mainstream Spelling Instruction (DEMSI) project

We bring together expertise in Welsh and English to ensure that CAL:ON’s materials are linguistically and culturally appropriate for Wales, while remaining firmly aligned with the international evidence base.

We are building a national network of schools committed to improving literacy outcomes for all learners. Over the next two and a half years, participating schools will have access to:

• Bilingual, evidence-informed programmes and interventions, developed and tested through national research.
• Professional Learning (PL) for teachers, literacy coordinators, and school leaders, focused on reading science, language development, inclusive literacy practices, and effective teaching methods.
• Digital assessment tools including LanguageScreen, ReadingScreen, and ComprehensionScreen to identify pupils at risk and track progress across the full range of ability.
• Ongoing support and collaboration through the national CAL:ON Literacy Hub on Hwb, with access to resources, exemplars, and networks.