Teach Primary Issue 18.2

www.teachwire.net | 37 Jo Cummins is an advisory teacher for a specialist provision, an experienced English lead, and a children’s book blogger. She has been part of the judging panel for several children’s book awards and has delivered workshops at conferences across the country. children to use the context of the sentence and other similar words to develop their understanding. On subsequent days, pupils can read the text aloud at the start of each session. There are several ways you might like to organise this: • Choral reading – the children read the passage aloud with the teacher. This limits public exposure for less confident readers. • Echo reading – the pupils repeat back a line that the teacher has just read, mimicking the teacher’s pacing and intonation. • Paired reading – pairs of children alternate reading lines or paragraphs aloud to each other (or an adult). Initial responses After the children have heard the text for the first time, it can be interesting to record their initial thoughts and responses; going back later and looking at how these thoughts may have developed following further investigation and reflection. I like to use the Tell Me grid from Aiden Chambers to support children with organising their ideas to begin with. Re-read the extract and encourage pupils to mark it as you go. Model how to underline unfamiliar vocabulary, any phrases the children particularly like, and any questions they have about the text as they read. Use question stems to interrogate the text. Further tasks During the main part of the sessions, pupils will typically work on the same tasks individually, in pairs, or in small groups, before coming back and sharing with the class. Additional support can be offered using carefully planned talk partners or through the deployment of adults. Children who need more specific interventions should of course receive these in addition to whole-class reading. When selecting your tasks, think about specific skills that your pupils need to develop and ensure a spread across the various strands of the reading curriculum. You can encourage children to engage with the text by asking them to: sequence key events; sort statements into true or false; look for synonyms or antonyms; draw inferences based on clues in the text; use information from a test to add labels to a scientific diagram; create a glossary. Creative responses To encourage pupils to engage with a text on a more imaginative level, you can ask them to use information from the text to write newspaper reports, diary entries or letters. They could also use descriptive language from a text to draw a labelled picture of a character or setting, or create story maps to help sequence events. Ask the class to make wanted posters or write police reports about the deeds of the ‘villains’ in a story. Or they can identify key events in a story and use them to create a comic strip or graphic novel version. You can also use drama techniques such as freeze- framing, hot-seating, or ‘conscience alley’ to explore key moments from a text. I hope this piece has given you the inspiration needed to trial whole-class reading, or, if this is already something you do, provided some new activities to try with your pupils. Either way, I think that the benefits of whole-class reading, using rich texts, really do speak for themselves. TP T E ACH RE AD I NG & WR I T I NG @BookSuperhero2 Guided reading Whole-class reading Attainment-grouped tasks Whole-class tasks Differentiated texts Same high-quality text for all Limited direct teaching by the ‘expert’ Daily direct teaching by the ‘expert’ Tasks focused on written assessment High-quality speaking and listening skills developed Table 1.