READ NG RECHARGED Activities to put the spark into guided and whole-class reading
Alex Barton
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BLOOMSBURY EDUCATION Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY EDUCATION and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain, 2021 Text copyright © Alex Barton, 2021 Material from Department for Education documents used in this publication are approved under an Open Government Licence: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/ Alex Barton has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes All rights reserved. This book may be photocopied, for use in the educational establishment for which it was purchased, but may not be reproduced in any other form or by any other means – graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage or retrieval systems – without prior permission in writing of the publishers A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: PB: 978-1-4729-8486-9; ePDF: 978-1-4729-8484-5
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Contents Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv Chapter 1: How to teach . . . . . . . . . 1 Chapter 4: Summarising. . . . . . . . 51 carousel guided reading An introduction to summarising. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 and whole-class reading Carousel guided reading and . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 whole-class reading Decoding versus comprehension. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The key elements of a carousel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 guided reading or whole-class reading lesson Choosing the right text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
How to run the summarising activities. . . . . . . . . 53
Activity worksheets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Chapter 5: Vocabulary . . . . . . . . . .69 An introduction to vocabulary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 How to run the vocabulary activities. . . . . . . . . . . 71 Activity worksheets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Questioning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Focused skill activities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Chapter 2: Retrieval. . . . . . . . . . . . 15 An introduction to retrieval. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Chapter 6: Prediction. . . . . . . . . . . 87 An introduction to prediction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 How to run the prediction activities . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Activity worksheets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
How to run the retrieval activities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Activity worksheets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Chapter 3: Inference . . . . . . . . . . . 33 An introduction to inference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Chapter 7: Commentating. . . . . . 105 An introduction to commentating. . . . . . . . . . . . 106 How to run the commentating activities. . . . . . 107 Activity worksheets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
How to run the inference activities . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Activity worksheets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Chapter 8: Authorial intent. . . . . 123 An introduction to authorial intent. . . . . . . . . . . 124 How to run the authorial intent activities . . . . . 125 Activity worksheets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . 140
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Introduction This book is a guide and resource bank for teachers who want to spice up their strategies for teaching guided and whole-class reading in primary schools. It provides tips and advice for the effective teaching of reading in your classroom, as well as a set of photocopiable activities that can be adapted to suit whichever text you are studying with your class. The activities support the teaching of the key reading skills of retrieval, inference, summarising, understanding vocabulary, prediction, commentating and authorial intent. They aim to teach children techniques to answer questions and understand these different skills within reading comprehension. Comprehension itself comes from children having broad knowledge and vocabulary. Whilst the reading lesson will help to develop these skills of comprehension, it is important to look at the bigger picture. Comprehension is more likely to improve if children are actively discussing books, developing their understanding of the world around them through an engaging curriculum, and expanding their vocabulary. Comprehension is gained from a wider reading experience and, as teachers, we are the role models for this. Whilst it is still important to practise exam-style questions, this should not be the exclusive focus of reading lessons. The activities in this book provide a different way of developing and applying the key reading skills through guided reading and whole-class reading. Guided reading and whole-class reading are important approaches in helping pupils to truly explore texts. The deep conversations they facilitate are pivotal to children’s development as readers. Guided and whole-class reading sessions are the perfect opportunity for teachers to help children develop the skills of retrieval, inference, summarising, understanding vocabulary, prediction, commentating and discussing authorial intent. In these focused sessions, children read a specific fiction or non-fiction text appropriate to their reading age and work on a particular skill by answering questions or completing tasks based on the text. Both guided and whole-class reading have the same purpose, aims and intended outcomes, but can often work in different ways. In this book, when I refer to ‘guided reading’, I am referring to the traditional ‘carousel’ approach to guided reading, whereby a class is separated into smaller groups with each group working on a specific text and differentiated task. The ‘carousel’ approach is the most common example of guided reading in practice across primary schools. Nevertheless, different methods can work for different teachers and there is certainly no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. Guided reading doesn’t have to look the same in every classroom. When I use the term ‘whole-class reading’, I refer to the approach whereby all children in the class are given the same core text and asked to practise a specific reading skill. I will explore the distinctions between guided reading and whole-class reading in more detail in Chapter 1. Because of the different methods involved, some teachers consider guided and whole-class reading as two different sides of the same coin. However, it’s important to dispel this myth. In fact, we shouldn’t completely segregate the two approaches, as an effective reading lesson can have elements of both. A whole-class reading lesson can have elements of guided reading within it and vice versa. For example, the teacher could focus on one group after input, whilst everybody else continues with the same activity. The differentiation could be through adult support, whilst some children could even have a different task associated with the same text. Here we can see whole-class reading in action with elements of guided reading intertwined. In practice, your school will most likely favour either the carousel guided reading model or whole-class reading and if you are a classroom teacher, you will generally need to follow the approach that is preferred in your setting. The good news is that the activities in this book are suitable for both carousel guided reading and whole-class reading sessions, so you can use them no matter which approach your school favours. If you are the English lead in your school, you may wish to think again about which approach works best for your pupils and teachers. As you read this book and use the activities, it’s important to remember that while mastering the seven key reading skills is essential to children’s overall attainment, not just in English but also in subjects across the curriculum, there is so much more to teaching reading in primary schools. Primary teachers have a responsibility to nurture a love of reading, encourage reading for pleasure and help reluctant readers to discover the magic of books. Reading really needs to weave its way through a school’s curriculum and be part of your school’s ethos. Successful reading schools will take much pride in engaging readers in different ways and guided and whole-class reading lessons should only be one stop on this route. The activities in this book have been carefully selected to create a reading ‘buzz’ in your classroom and appeal to the more resistant reader. It is my hope that they will enable your carousel guided reading and whole-class reading sessions not just to focus on skill development but also to nurture an excitement for reading among the children in your class.
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t p e a r h 1 C How to teach carousel guided reading and whole-class reading
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Carousel guided reading and whole-class reading Carousel guided reading is a strategy for teaching reading that has been used in primary schools for decades. As a teacher, you will most likely be familiar with this time-honoured approach and may even remember being taught to read in this way when you were at school. Carousel guided reading aims to help children become confident, independent readers, and develop the seven core reading skills mentioned in the introduction to this book: retrieval, inference, summarising, understanding vocabulary, prediction, commentating and authorial intent. Traditionally, guided reading would take the form of small-group instruction and be highly differentiated based on reading level and individual needs. Carousel guided reading, when done properly, involves much role modelling and interrogation of a text. More recently, however, a new form of guided reading has been growing in popularity in UK classrooms, known as ‘whole-class reading’ or ‘whole-class guided reading’. Whole-class reading, as I’ll be referring to it, has very similar aims to guided reading, but has subtle yet significant differences. In this section, I’ll explain the two approaches in a little more detail and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each.
What is carousel guided reading? In carousel guided reading sessions, the teacher focuses on teaching reading skills to a different group of children each day. Sessions take place daily, often in addition to a literacy lesson on writing. Children are usually grouped into their reading levels and taught in these groups. While the instructor focuses on one particular group, the rest of the class is engaged in a carousel of reading activities that are often differentiated for their abilities. The activities are age- and ability-appropriate. For example, in a Key Stage 1 (KS1) guided reading lesson, each table may have different activities, such as phonics games, verbal phonics practice, a written phonics activity, comprehension tasks and follow-up tasks related to the text being studied. In a Key Stage 2 (KS2) classroom, you may have a range of different activities on the go that require children to develop their skills in areas such as retrieval and summarising. The teacher will spend time with a different group each day to further hone these skills. The planning that goes into carousel guided reading, as well as delivering it effectively, can be challenging. The quality of activities must not be diluted but often is. Poor carousel teaching may see children complete time-filling activities like wordsearches or practising handwriting and this can be detrimental. When the carousel model is done well, however, it can be very useful and is certainly worth its weight in gold in the classroom. As with whole-class reading, planning and time management are crucial. When using this model, the teacher must also find a way of removing the ‘ceiling’ for children’s attainment. Carousel guided reading can be effective if the tasks are progressive. The activities in this book can be used within a carousel lesson to help with this. Children will have the opportunity to develop a range of skills within a week and will also be given the opportunity to have one-to-one time with the class teacher. In this time, they may read aloud to the teacher and have any misconceptions addressed directly. As well as these activities, children should be regularly exposed to exam-style questioning. You can also support children by giving them reading sentence stems (or sentence starters), as a way of scaffolding book talk and encouraging meaningful conversation. For example, an inference sentence stem might read ‘I think the character is feeling _______ because in the text it suggests…’, or a summarising sentence stem might read ‘I would describe the character as ________ because in the text…’. These are useful ways of ensuring the children are referring to the text when giving an answer.
What is whole-class reading? Like carousel guided reading, whole-class reading is a teacher-led session to build understanding and comprehension. In whole-class reading sessions, children are given the same core text and asked to practise a specific reading skill, taken from the National Curriculum. The whole-class reading model steps away from the guided reading carousel and one benefit of this is that it allows for more teaching time for every child. In whole-class reading, all children receive continual instruction and support. In the carousel model, the teacher works with a different group of children each day. Take a class of 30 children. The teacher sits with six children each day to develop a skill. That’s only 20 per cent of the week that each child gets with their teacher in reading lessons. In whole-class reading, you could also argue that the teacher can ‘plan for progress’ much more as they have fewer activities to plan. Therefore, they can remove the ceiling that is often there with the carousel approach. Children who struggle with fluency and comprehension can often be given texts of diminished quality in carousel guided reading. The whole-class reading model is very much against this. All children are on a level playing field and can be 2
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exposed to high-quality literature. Of course, this can also be the case with carousel reading if planned well, but it can be harder to achieve. Follow-up tasks can be streamlined in whole-class reading but the core text is the same for everyone. This streamlining can be done quite subtly. For example, a retrieval question may be given three multiple-choice answers rather than none. Both carousel guided reading and whole-class reading should not be the only teaching of reading you do in your school. Topic and literacy lessons should be infused with reading opportunities too and class novel time, as I explain on pages 8–9, should be ever-present on your daily timetable.
Decoding versus comprehension I’ve entitled this part of the book ‘Decoding versus comprehension’, but in reality, these two skills must work in tandem in order for high-level comprehension to happen. Traditionally, both of these skills may have been developed and practised in carousel guided reading sessions, whereas whole-class reading tends to focus much more on comprehension itself. Despite the collaborative fluidity of these two skills, I believe the practice of decoding is best done outside of the guided or whole-class reading lesson. Instead, it should occur in ‘interventions’, with emphasis on phonetical understanding of language for the children who require it. This does not mean we shouldn’t listen to children reading in reading lessons, in fact quite the opposite, although it shouldn’t be the primary concern. I believe our primary concern should be comprehension.
What is decoding? Decoding is the ability to apply your understanding of letter-sound relationships, as well as letter patterns, to correctly pronounce written words. Children can then apply their understanding of letter sounds and patterns to read new, unexplored vocabulary. The National Curriculum states, ‘Skilled word reading involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words. Underpinning both is the understanding that the letters on the page represent the sounds in spoken words.’ Decoding is taught through phonics in the early teaching of reading, often when children start school. There will be a lot of focus on decoding particularly in KS1 and perhaps even lower KS2 to build confident word-readers.
What is comprehension? Comprehension is the ability to turn letters and sounds into meaning. It is the skill of processing text, understanding its meaning and then commenting on this through a contextual understanding of the world. The National Curriculum states, ‘Good comprehension draws from linguistic knowledge (in particular of vocabulary and grammar) and on knowledge of the world. Comprehension skills develop through pupils’ experience of high-quality discussion with the teacher, as well as from reading and discussing a range of stories, poems and non-fiction.’ As the curriculum states, accurate and high-quality comprehension requires an understanding of linguistic knowledge. Therefore, those who require additional support with decoding language need to be given a healthy diet of word-reading interventions systematically. Decoding is a vital part of teaching reading. In his book Reading Reconsidered, Doug Lemov (2016) writes, ‘Teachers who don’t teach decoding as part of their curriculum often don’t think about it. It can be a blind spot for some upper elementary, middle and high school teachers. However, because its mastery is a prerequisite to all reading comprehension, decoding is vital.’ This streamlined support will enable all children to develop their comprehension skills of retrieving, inferencing, predicting, summarising, commentating, understanding vocabulary and authorial choice within a guided or whole-class reading session.
Bridging the gap between decoding and comprehension Firstly, children who struggle to decode require specialist support to develop this skill. If a child comes up to KS2 unable to decode, teachers must ask the question why. Is there a special educational need that should be considered here or is there a resistance to or disillusion with the phonics scheme that has been taught to them? The teacher must always ask: is there another way? There are many primary English specialists who can support you with guidance and ideas but planning one-to-one, high-quality interventions will be of huge significance. These interventions must have an exclusive focus on word reading rather than comprehension.
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Here are some of the ways I’ve found useful to ‘bridge the gap’ between decoding and comprehension in the classroom:
Spice up your reading strategies
Mix them up
Children try different ways of reading the text so it isn’t always read ‘in their head’. Choral reading, echo reading, paired reading and teacher-led reading help to model expression and intonation. Children can then work to emulate expressive reading styles.
Arrange the class so that children are sitting in mixed-attainment pairs, therefore allowing the weaker reader to be exposed to a more confident reader. High-level comprehension can then be passed on simultaneously while reading as a class or in a group.
Control the game
Streamline follow-up activities
Pick one student to read at a time. Get them to read a short segment to maximise the concentration of the class. Make sure they do not know whose turn it is next, so that they all have to pay attention to the reading. Move quickly between readers to encourage a lively pace. ‘Pupils who struggle mightily with reading aloud will lose engagement unless this is done in a sharp, swift and seamless manner’ (Lemov, 2016).
Focused reading skill activities can be differentiated to reflect differing needs. The core text is not differentiated. All children are exposed to the same level of high-quality literature. As Lemov (2016) writes, ‘Low readers in particular are often balkanized to reading only lower-level books, fed on a diet of only what’s “accessible” to them – but which is also often insufficient to prepare them for college.’
Give them the tools they need to read
Create a stimulating reading environment
The obvious tricks are often forgotten. Does one child need a reading ruler because they have dyslexia? Does another child need a slope because they struggle with their body positioning whilst reading? Provide children with the tools they need to read. Support the process as best as you can. How do they feel most comfortable reading and can you support this?
Make reading part of your everyday practice. Children should be able to access fresh, vibrant and engaging texts in the classroom. Ensure you have a designated 15-minute slot for reading every day. It is the last thing that should fall off the timetable. Create this idea of reading being an endless opportunity to learn and escape to new, undiscovered worlds.
The seven comprehension skills We have ascertained that it is best to teach decoding outside of guided reading and whole-class reading, so these sessions can focus purely on comprehension. When teaching comprehension, there are seven key reading skills you must focus on developing. These reading skills reflect the National Curriculum requirements for children in a primary school setting. They are: ⊲ Retrieval: retrieving and recording information from non-fiction. ⊲ Inference: drawing inferences such as inferring characters’ feelings, thoughts and motives from their actions, and justifying inferences with evidence. ⊲ Summarising: identifying main ideas drawn from more than one paragraph and summarising these. ⊲ Prediction: predicting what might happen from details stated and implied. ⊲ Vocabulary: checking that the text makes sense to them, discussing their understanding, and explaining the meaning of words in context. ⊲ Commentating: asking questions to improve their understanding of a text. ⊲ Authorial choice: identifying how language, structure and presentation contribute to meaning. (Based on the National Curriculum in England: English Programmes of Study, 2014)
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The activities in this book are broken down into these seven key comprehension skills to help you focus your guided reading and whole-class reading sessions and meet the curriculum requirements. Four of the skills are relevant to the National Curriculum for both KS1 and KS2, while commentating, prediction and authorial intent are predominantly relevant to the National Curriculum for KS2 only. I’ve mapped the skills to the curriculum requirements for each key stage.
KS1 National Curriculum KS1 National Curriculum requirement
Comprehension skill
Draw on knowledge of vocabulary to understand texts.
Vocabulary
Identify and explain key aspects of fiction and non-fiction texts, such as characters, events, titles and information.
Retrieval
Identify and explain the sequence of events in texts.
Summarising
Make inferences from the text.
Inference
KS2 National Curriculum KS2 National Curriculum requirement
Comprehension skill
Give and explain the meaning of words in context.
Vocabulary
Retrieve and record information and identify key details.
Retrieval and summarising
Summarise main ideas from more than one paragraph and make comparisons within the text.
Summarising and commentating
Make inferences and explain and justify them with evidence.
Inference
Predict what might happen from details stated and implied and identify how meaning is enhanced through choice of words or phrases.
Prediction and authorial intent
The key elements of a carousel guided reading or whole-class reading lesson Reading is taught in different schools at different times and in sessions of different lengths. Some schools teach it discretely every day for 20 minutes, focusing on a specific reading skill in each lesson, whilst other schools may have two or three longer sessions per week, each covering more than one reading skill. There is no right or wrong way to do this and the best approach will depend on context. That said, there are some key elements that I believe are crucial in every whole-class or carousel guided reading lesson and I would like to share them with you below, along with some tips for running each element, which I have developed in my own practice. This formula works well for me when running a reading lesson, so I hope it will help you too or at least give you some advice and guidance that you can slot into your own reading lessons. I have also given a guide as to the amount of time I’d advise you to spend on each element within your session.
1. Tricky word scan
2. Text reading
Time < 5 minutes
Time < 15 minutes
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3. Mixed skill questioning
4. Focused skill activity or mixed comprehension
Time ≈ 20 minutes
Time ≈ 25–30 minutes
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1. Tricky word scan Time < 5 minutes Pre-select any challenging vocabulary that the children will come across in the text and discuss the meaning of these words before reading. Alternatively, you could ask the children to circle any vocabulary they do not understand whilst reading and then have a discussion about potential meanings by studying the context of the sentence or by using dictionary definitions. This helps to ‘level the playing field’ before comprehension.
2. Text reading Time < 15 minutes Children are exposed to the text almost immediately. The text should be on their table prior to their arrival in the classroom to maximise learning time. The length of the text will differ depending on the year group, but the reading of the text should take no longer than 15 minutes. If the majority of the class have not finished reading in this time, it will be worth revisiting the difficulty and suitability of the text for next time. Mix up your reading strategies so the energy and engagement of the lesson remains high and there is an element of unpredictability. Sometimes, ask the children to read independently in their heads. On other occasions, use teacher-led reading, class reading, choral reading, paired reading, repeated reading and echo reading. Here is a breakdown of these reading approaches:
Independent reading
Paired reading
Pupils read individually and independently in silence. You should also aim to be silent in this time to maximise the opportunity for comprehension.
Exactly what it says on the tin. Pupils are sorted into pairs and read to one another. This can be done paragraph by paragraph or page by page.
Class reading
Choral reading
Also called ‘Control the game’, this is where the teacher selects children to read passages of text. Doug Lemov (2016) suggests improvising this process rather than pre-selecting children, so every child stays alert and is ready to read if called upon.
With an appropriate passage of text, the children and the teacher read in unison. This can be altered slightly by giving each table a paragraph from the text to read to the rest of the class. It is a good way to find out who can keep pace and who needs further support.
Teacher-led reading
Repeated reading
Pupils follow the text with their finger whilst the teacher reads. The teacher should aim for a high level of intonation and expression so children can see ‘how it’s done’. A fun way to do this is switch off the lights and give each child a finger torch. They read the text in the dark whilst I provide the audio. Or, give children headphones and an online version of the text. You could pre-record your reading of the text.
This is more commonly used in KS1 with younger children reading shorter texts, but can often be used with older children too. This may be done after children have been given a focused skill question. They then go back into the text and read it again to try and find evidence to support their answer for that question.
Echo reading This is when the teacher models expression and intonation, whilst the children provide an echo and attempt to repeat those high standards. This is a great method for reading poetry, picture books or short stories.
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3. Mixed skill questioning Time ≈ 20 minutes Practise skills of retrieval, inference, summarising, understanding vocabulary, prediction, commentating and authorial intent through exam-style questioning. Children can look at these questions on the interactive whiteboard and answer either verbally or in their books or journals. Some questions require the children to work as a pair, some require them to talk as a table, whilst others may ask them to stand up and discuss their answers with someone they might not usually work with. Again, mixing up these strategies keeps the children on their toes and encourages ‘book talk’. It’s important to note here that the style of questioning does not necessarily need to change significantly depending on the year group you are teaching. Instead, the complexity of the answer is what will differ from Year 1 to Year 6 and how you aim to facilitate this will be crucial. Modelling good reading responses to a skilled question is also useful. This is so children can see what effective answers look like and can model theirs on yours. For example, you may model a prediction answer like this: I believe in the next chapter, Character A will… because in the text so far it says… Or for an inference question, a model answer may look like this: I believe the character is feeling… because the author used the word… This part of the lesson should last for around 20 minutes. As this is such an important part of the reading lesson, I have included some additional guidance and example questions for each comprehension skill on pages 10–14. You may wish to refer to this when planning the questions you intend to ask in your lesson.
4. Focused skill activity or mixed comprehension Time ≈ 25–30 minutes Focused skill activities or mixed comprehension are an important element in any carousel guided or whole-class reading session and should be used regularly to consolidate the seven comprehension skills required by the National Curriculum. It is in this part of the reading lesson that this book will be very useful, as there are lots of engaging activities to support children with their focused skill activities for retrieval, inference, summarising, understanding vocabulary, prediction, commentating and authorial intent. These activities will require children to dive back into the text, which by now they will have already read in its entirety using one of the reading strategies mentioned on the previous page. In this part of the lesson, the children are usually encouraged to work independently but sometimes they can work in pairs or small groups or may have teacher-led support. It is fine to provide scaffolded activities to match their abilities. It is important that you cover a range of skills and genres of writing across the year with your class. Not only is this essential for children to develop the comprehension skills they require to become confident readers of many different text types, but it is also important for attainment in SATs. Although SATs coverage in 2018 had inference at 44 per cent and retrieval at 26 per cent, the other reading skills still featured. For example, vocabulary had a 20 per cent coverage in Year 6 reading SATs in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
Choosing the right text Schools are required to ensure a coverage of genres in reading lessons, as the National Curriculum states, ‘All pupils must be encouraged to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world they live in, to establish an appreciation and love of reading, and to gain knowledge across the curriculum.’ It will usually be the class teacher or the literacy lead who chooses the texts that are studied. In some schools, the class teacher will have a planning meeting with the literacy lead to discuss what might work well and what might not. Class teachers will sometimes be given the autonomy to choose the texts the children study. If this is the case, your literacy lead will still be likely to want to see evidence that a range of genres have been covered, such as fiction, poetry and nonfiction. If you do not have that autonomy but have a burning desire to study a specific text, approach your literacy lead and enquire about a reading coverage meeting where you can discuss your ideas. A teacher’s passion for a text is likely to rub off on pupils and promote a reading ‘buzz’ in the classroom.
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It’s unlikely you will read every text with the children from start to finish. You may choose chapter samples or specific pages to study in detail, but there should be many opportunities to read through a whole text outside of your guided and whole-class reading sessions. You can do this through story-time. It is effective practice to create a class novel spine across the whole school of high-quality texts that can be read by the class teacher at ‘story time’. A class novel spine is a list of books that the teacher will read with their class in their entirety. You should therefore go down two avenues when picking the texts for the children in your school. The first avenue is producing a class novel spine, promoting reading for pleasure and enjoyment. Which texts do you want to expose your children to from start to finish? Which stories should they leave primary school with accurate knowledge about? It is these texts which will ‘live with them’. These texts are read exclusively by the class teacher during story time. Expression and intonation are modelled to a high standard and children enjoy these texts being read to them every day. I’m definitely an advocate for ‘doing the voices’! Collecting staff and pupil voice is useful when creating the spine to guide your decisions on which books should make it and which shouldn’t. This part of the day should not fall off the timetable. The second avenue to go down is selecting the texts you want your children to study in guided and whole-class reading to develop their comprehension skills. Sometimes you may study part of a book that is on your class novel spine in a carousel guided or whole-class reading lesson. You won’t cover many of these texts in their entirety, but the children will still have exposure to them. Reading widely in this way also enables children to create their own reading identity by discovering the authors they like to read. A useful tip here to promote reading for purpose is to select texts that have an association with your topics. For example, if you’re teaching about chocolate in Year 3, why not find a book that explores the Mayans or the Aztecs, who used cocoa beans for trade? Perhaps you could study a text that explores the impact of too much sugar on the body to link in with your science topic of ‘healthy humans’. This really gives the children a 360-degree learning experience where their learning has a clear sense of direction and we can give them the tools to build their knowledge. The main learning goal is still to develop their comprehension skills, but the children can also lock in some valuable knowledge too. For both ‘avenues’, ask yourself these general questions as a starting point when selecting texts: ⊲ Do you have a range of genres for each year group? (Think about poetry, chapter books, newspaper reports, song lyrics and picture books.) ⊲ Do you have texts that reflect the school’s context? ⊲ Are some texts chosen to match the school’s curriculum? (For example, if Year 4 study the Stone Age, do they study the text Stone Age Boy by Satoshi Kitamura?) ⊲ Have you fed diversity and inclusion into the reading curriculum? How do you ensure children see a range of characters from diverse backgrounds? ⊲ Can children see themselves in the texts that you choose to study? ⊲ Have class teachers been part of the selection process to ensure their enthusiasm about texts? ⊲ Do class teachers know which texts are studied in each year group? Can they support the children in making links between texts, as the National Curriculum requires them to do? Now let’s look at both avenues in a little more detail.
Choosing a class reader As Doug Lemov (2016) points out, ‘In many schools, reading has come to be tacitly defined as “the act of asking and answering questions about a text.” ‘ Allowing time in the school day for ‘story time’ is an opportunity for children to participate in a low-stakes, enjoyable reading experience that does not revolve around answering skill-based questions. Instead, children can simply sit and enjoy listening to a story, whether it be a classic or contemporary. In terms of selecting texts to be read to the children at story time, as I’ve mentioned, it’s best to create a class novel spine that runs across the whole school. These are the texts that can be read for pleasure, in their entirety, to the children in an allocated story time slot each day. These texts should be very challenging. Most children in the class should struggle to read these texts independently. This enables you to raise your reading expectations of the children without losing them.
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Chapter 1 • How to teach carousel guided reading and whole-class reading
It is important that you pick a range of classic and contemporary children’s literature for the spine. We are living in a golden age of children’s literature and so we should strive to provide our children with the opportunity to explore new authors, whilst not forgetting the iconic authors who have come before them and who have earnt their place in the curriculum. Sitting down with your members of staff and discussing which authors should be on the spine always makes for a fascinating staff meeting and it’s something I would certainly recommend. Doug Lemov (2016) also writes on this topic, ‘Teachers should consider not just whether each book their students read is “good”, but also what the totality of the texts they choose for students accomplishes as part of their broader education.’ The texts chosen as class readers, for some children, are their foundation blocks for understanding the world. Therefore, there needs to be a diverse range of meanings that children can take away from these texts. You may choose texts that explore emotions such as fear or bravery or pick texts that encourage empathy and friendship. Do not forget the power of picture books here, even in upper KS2. The messages they convey can be monumental. We should not underestimate the impact these books can have and we are in a privileged position to share them.
Choosing texts for carousel guided and whole-class reading lessons It’s important to choose a range of texts from different genres for guided and whole-class reading. As previously stated, I would encourage linking texts to the topics you are teaching in other subjects to support a knowledge-based curriculum. Children can make links between texts they have read and things they have learnt. For example, you might explore links between your PSHE curriculum and your reading lessons and see that Year 2 are learning about ‘bravery’. Therefore, you could identify some excellent picture books such as Tom Percival’s Ruby’s Worry and Rachel Bright’s The Lion Inside, which would tie in nicely with this theme. Also look at the school calendar for specific ‘national weeks’. You could identify texts for Anti-Bullying Week in November or create a list of texts including biographies and newspaper reports that each year group could study during Black History Month in October. This really creates a sense of reading for purpose. If children can recognise the significance of what they are reading, one could argue they are much more likely to commit themselves to the text. Not all texts need to link to the school’s foundation topic units of study however. Whilst it’s useful to do this, sometimes a text should be added simply because it’s a fantastic text. For example, you may choose to study the first chapter of The Explorer by Katherine Rundell, as it has an evoking, powerful opening that really hooks the reader. You could use some of the vocabulary activities within this book to delve deeper into the exciting language used. As long as you can provide justification for your choices, it may be worth liaising with your literacy lead to discuss text coverage. * In summary, when choosing texts, it’s important to remember that, with a class novel, you are promoting reading for pleasure and enjoyment, and through your canon of texts chosen for carousel guided and whole-class reading, you are supporting the progression of comprehension skills as well as an understanding of the world.
Questioning I mentioned above that questioning will form a significant part of your guided and whole-class reading sessions. This is vital formative assessment to help pupils develop the skill you are focusing on in your lesson and for you to ascertain the level pupils are working at before setting the main activity the children will be completing independently or in small groups. In this section of the book, I therefore want to give you some examples of the types of questions you might like to ask for each skill. I have split them into KS1 and KS2 and they are based on example questions collated from the 2018 and 2019 SATs papers.
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KS1 exam-style questioning In this part of the book, I have collected all the different styles of questions from KS1 reading SATs papers from 2018 and 2019. You may want to use this style of questioning within your reading lessons and adapt it to the text your children are studying. The questions are broken down into the key skills required at KS1.
KS1 questioning: vocabulary Question style
Example(s) from 2018/2019 SATs
Write two words that tell you…
Write two words that tell you what the dough feels like.
[Insert quote] What does this tell you about…?
‘One day, huge, rumbling, grumbling machines crawled towards the pond.’ What does this sentence tell you about machines?
Circle two words that show…
Circle two words that show Dora was in a rush to get back to the hall the next morning.
[Insert statement] Find and copy one word that tells you this.
‘It was difficult to get the piece of paper through Dora’s letterbox.’ Find and copy one word that tells you this.
What makes [insert character name] feel…?
What makes Liam feel proud and gives him a real sense of achievement?
Find and copy two words that tell you…
Find and copy two words that tell you how JJ and Jasmine tried to clean off the paint.
[Insert quote] This means that… (tick one) [Insert multiple-choice answers]
‘As the flowers fade…’ This means that the flowers… (tick one)
Find and copy one word that…
Find and copy one word that makes the apples sound tasty.
KS1 questioning: retrieval Question style
Example(s) from 2018/2019 SATs
Draw three lines to show… (matching-up exercise)
Draw three lines to show what Jasmine and JJ did on each day.
What…? Why…? When…? Which…? Where…? (written information retrieval questions)
What did Jasmine and JJ see at the circus? Why did JJ agree to paint the shed wall? When mum came home, where did she first see the paint? Which two pieces of clothing did cowboys use to protect their faces from the weather? What covered most of the land in North America two hundred years ago? Which area of the park does Liam keep particularly nice?
Write one item that…
Write one item that cowboys used for working with animals.
[Insert statement] Put 3 more ticks in the table to show…
Real cowboys are different from cowboys in films. Put 3 more ticks in the table to show what cowboys are like.
Choose one of 4 answers to complete the sentence. (multiple-choice question)
Liam works… (choose one of 4 answers)
Tick two things that…
Liam’s daily tasks can change. What two things can make his tasks change? Tick two.
True or false?
Put ticks in the table to show which sentences are true and which are false.
Fill in the gaps.
Fill in the gaps. The boy and the old man wanted to buy something at the jumble sale. The boy wanted to buy a _________________. The old man wanted to buy a _______________________.
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Chapter 1 • How to teach carousel guided reading and whole-class reading
KS1 questioning: summarising Question style
Example(s) from 2018/2019 SATs
Number the sentences below from 1–4 to show the order they happen.
Look at the sentence about apple juice. Number the sentences below from 1–4 to show the order they happen. The machines cut down the apples. ____ The apples are washed and cleaned. ____ The fruit grows from apple buds. ____ The juice is poured into cartons. ____
Number the sentences below from 1–5 to show the order the things happen in the story. The first one has been done for you.
Number the sentences below from 1–5 to show the order the things happen in the story. The first one has been done for you. Machines destroyed the pond. ____ The ducks lived happily in the pond. 1 The ducks were set free on the lake. ____ The ducks were rescued by a helper. ____ The ducks hid in some thick reeds. ____
KS1 questioning: inference Question style
Example(s) from 2018/2019 SATs
Why…?
Why did Bryn get out his toys? Why was Bryn surprised when he met his cousin? Why did Bryn put his toys away? Why is Statues a good name for this game? Why did the ducks leave their home? Being a park keeper is a good job for Liam. Why? Why did Dora want to give things to the jumble sale? Dora cried as she pushed her pram away for the last time. Why was she sad? Why did Dora decide not to buy her things back?
What…?
What did the children learn about this Monday morning when they went outside?
Draw four lines to match… (matching-up exercise)
Draw four lines to match these games to what the text says you need to win each one.
Choose the correct answer to complete the sentence. (multiple-choice question)
The poem explains how cold weather… (1 mark to tick correct box)
Circle two words that show…
Circle two words that show Dora was in a rush to get back to the hall the next morning.
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