14-11-11
See slides print-out and resources on Westgate.
Poem a Day project: ‘Your Dresses’, Carol Ann Duffy
With musical instruments.
Benefits of exploring poetry this way: giving them ownership of it, making it fun and engaging, cross-curricular links (in this case: dance, geography, DT and making things to represent images, writing the next verse), exploring the rhythm, rhyme and composition of it by focusing on individual words and how they all work together, bringing mood and emotion of poem to the surface, inclusive activity (collaborative exercise, pupils are given option to choose their role- speaking or non-speaking- etc).
Oscar Got the Blame, Tony Ross
(Illustrated by the same).
Older child interprets words on the page using relevant colloquialisms that are age-appropriate (where a teacher might not be so skilled at this).
Focus on the pictures and repetition without correcting the younger child.
Looking at Rose Review quote
‘Language-rich curriculum’:
Magpie Wall: stealing words from other Word Walls, sharing words around the school. A couple of kids forage for words each Literacy lesson (wearing a magpie mask).
Encourage discussion and use of ambitious vocab, refer to new words often and celebrate them. Speaking and Listening to bridge gap between comprehension and application.
Role-play and Drama.
Reading Areas, class or school libraries.
Simple View of Reading
Most up to date model of reading we have. Language Comprehension (LC, Overall understanding, meaning-making) and Word Recognition (WR, Phonics and Decoding).
Terms of the model (‘good’ and ‘poor’) are imprecise and subjective: you would not call a 5 year old high-achieving reader a ‘poor’ reader, but a ‘developing’ or ‘inexperienced’ reader.
Elements of WR and LC appear on the EYFS Communication, Language and Literacy Area of Learning (see slide).
Book Start- check this out online.
NC and PNS
NC: statutory.
PNS: non-statutory, split into 12 Strands.
First 4 are Speaking and Listening strands. Strands 5-8 are Reading strands.
Important to link these strands to the Simple View of Reading: strands 5 and 6 are about WR, while strands 7 and 8 are to do with LC.
Strand 5 is blank in Year 2 onwards (implication is chn should have adequately developed their WR skills).
Using screens
E-mails, reading LOs, using Film (in order to ‘understand and engage with text’ i.e. a script read aloud, an oral story passed down, the story of a film) to fill in gaps etc- check up British Film Institute for ideas in the classroom.
However, this shouldn’t replace reading from books.
Phonics
Systematic means it is sequenced/ordered and meets Core Criteria (see web link on slide).
Most popular programmes: Big Cat Phonics, Jolly Phonics, Letters and Sounds and Read, Write, Ink.
3 Key Principle: phoneme may be represented by more than 1 letter, same phoneme may be spelled in more than one way and the same spelling may represent more than 1 phoneme. See examples on slide.
Analytic Phonics: analysing a word for common chunks. Uses onset and rime. (thinking of ‘cat as /c/at/, whereas in synthetic phonics you would segment /c/a/t/. Children will naturally move on to analytic phonics, but the govt prefers synthetic)
Onset- sound you hear before the first vowel. If the word begins with a vowel, then there is no onset.
Rime- everything from the first vowel onward (in chips, it’s /ips/; in sing it’s /ing/).
The idea is that children pick up on similar rimes and notice that words rhyme and can use their knowledge to decode new words.
Clackmannanshire Research
Divided chn into 3 groups and taught them by different methods: analytic, phonological awareness (like Phase 1 of Letters and Sounds) and synthetic phonics.
The third group completely out-performed the others. However, wasn’t a fair test at all.
Video- Leading Partners in Literacy
Model teaching of Phonics: very fast pace, slick use of actions and accurate pronunciation, encouraging them to get up and act out the actions, good resources (bringing in actual objects- popcorn for /p/ etc, boxes in the classroom for each phoneme), patience with kids to allow them to try out the sounds themselves but keeping them on task when she wanted their attention etc.
Reading by Six report: Ofsted examining 12 outstanding schools and finding out what it is in the schools that made Phonics so successful- see slides.
Reading and Comprehension
How do we do it? Inferral, looking at generic tags (using prior knowledge), using contextual clues.
Understanding, engaging with, critically evaluating the text, making connections with existing knowledge + reflecting upon responses (yours and others’- hence the importance of discussion).
What is the teacher’s role in pupils’ reading comprehension?
Modeling correct skills to engage with different types of texts, demonstrating, questioning, giving them particular strategies to help understand what they are reading.
‘Active strategies’ in reading comprehension- have them respond by keying them into a text, speaking and listening activities (hot-seating, conscience alley, debating etc), writing alternate endings etc.
‘Literature Circles’- chn are each given a role. (Character Profiler, Illustrator, Summariser, Discussion Director, Passage Selector, Word-Finder)
Think about how to adapt this for different age groups: changing the names of the roles to be more easily understood, changing the nature of their tasks, prep the chn with these roles; take one role as a whole class activity; pair up the chn with 1 role).
My role- reading aloud. Instantly thought about how to organise and order the text so that I could direct the group to which point I wanted to read out; started thinking more clearly why I liked certain passages (therefore a higher level of questioning skills about comprehension), and a good range of responses from word, sentence to whole text levels.
Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver (?)
PNS, Understanding Reading Comprehension, Guidance, Curriculum and Standards.
Think about putting Guided Reading at the start of the day 0900-0930 (need to be organized and have questions for chn prepared and groups settled so that chn know where to go straight away).
Another Active Strategy
The Mirror from Short! Kevin Crossley-Holland
- Brainstorming the word Mirror for associated words and stories that use mirrors. See slides for more.
- Read para 1
- Draw, imagine setting, ask central question
- Read para 2
- Make predictions
- Read to end
- Suggest alternate titles
Shared Reading and Guided Reading
Shared Reading: a whole-class, teacher-led activity using an enlarged text (big book or Overhead Transparency - OHT- , IWB or poster).
Advantages of IWB- you can highlight key words, move text, jot notes, edit, underline etc.
Advantages of big book- navigating the text (turning pages to reach glossary or index) etc.
Balance necessary.
Teacher’s role is to mode aspects of the reading process: inferral etc.
Chn are actively involved in the process (discussing, engaging with the text, thinking about which words are most important...) Problems emerge with differentiation (to prepare against this, prepare the text and group chn to read out specific parts). If pupils are struggling so much they can’t access he text, put the emphasis on them listening to you reading instead.
Main objective is not to have the chn reading aloud with you.
Aims of shared reading
Developing their understanding of stories- interrelation of beginning, middle and end, intricacies of plot, themes and issues that emerge and any contingent discussion points.
Pointing out features of the text (blurb, title, contents and index).
To make it a cross-curricular routine- shared reading in other subjects e.g. textbooks.
Think about LC and WR and how you can incorporate this into Shared Reading.
Guided Reading: teacher-led, differentiated group activity with chn working independently (i.e. they’re doing the reading but you’re moderating and overseeing) on the reading task (reading passed over to chn).
Enable you to focus support in a small group (of usually 6 or so kids).
Chn experience reading as a social activity (they feel secure as they work with chn of similar ability).
‘Book Talk’- exploring responses to the text by looking at illustrations, author, characters etc.
Chn should each have a copy of the text to give them a little ownership.
90-94% accuracy of reading is a good level of reading material for the group.
Planning Sequence of Guided Reading
Introduction:
Warming up the text (text, sentence or even word level) by activating chn’s prior knowledge (‘Have you read any other stories by this author, What do you know about -title- What happened last time, What words cold we pick out that were of interest, What does the front cover tell us, What difficult words can we isolate from the cover or blurb...)
Give the chn a focus for their reading drawn from the LO.
Designed to grab attention and gain enthusiasm.
Strategy Check
Review strategies for WR and LC (What could you do if you get stuck on a word - look at tricky word wall, look at sounds +blend etc)
Independent Reading
Teacher’s role is to circulate, monitor and intervene where necessary, identify strategies chn are using and note for assessment purposes.
Return to text: Discussion and Recap
Ascertainment of comprehension, word recognition, chance to share strategies that worked. Chn self-evaluate. Set targets.
Ideas for Guided Reading: Comprehension Cards- laminated cards with passages and questions on them. Play games with words. Use Literacy Circles.
Difficulty of quiet in the classroom: carrot of Golden Time (display the words and turn over letters day-by-day with accumulation of minutes.
Looking at Guided Reading Planner and a video, The Tortoise and the Hare
The Firework-Maker’s Daughter, Philip Pullman.
