An Effective Reading Programme Online Workshop
-Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey
I attended this workshop during lockdown. While it took a lot of effort to stay engaged from 11am - 4:30 pm while doing an online course, it was so worth it as the knowledge that was shared was immense.
It was really great to listen to this and notice things that I am already doing in my reading programme. Using tools like modelling books, Sheena and Louise's multiple books, a range of the deliberate acts of teaching that were mentioned and also a range of approaches to teaching reading are things that I already do, so it was nice to hear that they see the importance of each of those examples too.
Here are my notes, activities and big ideas from the whole online course.
-Using modelling books with each reading group and giving the book to the students to use to record their ideas and also to glue in any graphic organisers that students have completed. Great way to gather data on student learning.
Short interactive mini lessons support both their reading and writing.
Important to still have time to read for pleasure and explore a range of texts across different topics.
Junior context
When using reading to support writing, make connections to what the children are doing in reading too. Look at spaces, sentence structure, first and last sounds, wow words, high frequency words.
Reading is a lot of talking and a bit of reading.
Think about how you can group kids to lessen the amount of groups. Think - Level 14 and 15 aren't so far apart so put the kids together in a group.
We had time to reflect on where most of our kids are working at and what the main things are that they should be learning to do in reading. All of my kids are working between magenta and turquoise reading levels and so their main learning points should be the main points from the top three boxes in the handout below.
When children are starting to read, the main focus is getting them underway with cracking the code. Thinking critically and comprehension are things that we are working on once they have a good foundation in cracking the code.
Retelling is the first step of summarising (pulling out the important ideas).
Louise discussed each of the comprehension strategies in the Reading Comprehension book.
Shared reading is a great time to incorporate critical thinking discussions.
Proverbs are a great way to support children's thinking. They support inferencing because you have to go beyond what the words actually say, It's great for critical thinking.
The teaching of phonics is important but not exclusive when teaching students how to crack the code.
Cracking the code is using all of the visual information that you have available.
Phonics is a useful strategy for students to use when they come across a phonetically regular word.
Phonics, chunking and analogy are all useful strategies when writing too as you don't have any meaning to help you.
Rhyming is also an important skill for writing too - going from look to shook.
Not all words are phonetically regular - eg. the
Learning high frequency words is important because it's quick and they can read and write them really quickly. This will help their fluency and analogy. Worthwhile teaching them a bank of words up to Level 13 /14.
Half of the words that children come across as they move through the levels have prefixes, suffixes and / or are compound words. So they need to know this.
TASK - Adding on suffixes to the base word 'loud'. Chn use whiteboards to add their words.
(Word building grid in book can be used as a tool to work on prefixes and suffixes). Learning about how if you add a suffix with the vowel at the beginning, you drop the 'e' on your base word.
TASK - Prefix activity where they write down words with the same prefix, draw a picture of one of those objects (eg. tripod) and then write a sentence using one of the words too.
TASK - Write base HFW (eg. it) and then write a list of rhyming words and then they walk around and share their words with buddies and add to their list too.
Youtube channel - The Literacy Place
I DO, WE DO, YOU DO process. However this isn't always linear as we often move back and forth between these.
Reading approaches: Do a little bit of each, often.
Read to - 10 mins.
- This can actually be done throughout our other reading approaches
- Many reasons why we read to
Modelled reading - Most teacher support given. Thinking aloud.
- Can be modelling fluency, expression, how to infer, how to predict.
Shared reading - 10 - 15 mins prior to guided reading.
- A lot of people think that it's about little kids and big books.
- Successful with kids who are getting ready for guided reading and ESOL students too
- The children need to be able to see the text so they can join in with the reading process. Lovely time to teach and model the reading strategies that your chn need to learn
- One of the most effective ways to teach reading strategies rather than trying to teach each group the same thing. The guided reading sessions can then be focussed around supporting the chn to give things a go themselves
Guided reading - 40 mins (2 + groups, 10 - 20 mins each group). Alongside our kids to prompt and guide them.
- If you have disengaged chn, using an I read, you read type situation can be useful. The chn can still be working on listening and therefore understanding and discussing what is happening in the text. You are just taking aware the responsibility of decoding but the chn are still learning.
- Ideally, chn actually shouldn't be introduced to anything new, it should be more about consolidating and practising their learning
- 10 mins is a good amount of time for the students that are new to reading. 15 mins is good for the students who are a bit further up the levels. 20 mins is appropriate for your more proficient readers.
- Don't forget that they have already had access to explicit teaching in reading with read to and shared reading. Guided reading is just the next level down.
- Introducing the book includes sharing new vocab
- Don't see guided reading as get through your groups and get through the book
- It's about the quality not the quantity - both in terms of groups and books
- Ensure there is time for talk! This is so important.
- Think about having one or two goals for a group and keep those goals for about a month. You cannot nail / effectively work on one reading goal in one lesson
- Chunking a longer text is really good too. Read one page, come back together for example.
- Students shouldn't read in unison or do round robin reading
Independent reading - 10 mins. Self select a book and read independently.
Independent activities
- Don't plan too many activities
- Mixed ability groups can work well
- Consider students moving between activities when they are ready rather than when teachers finish with a group
- Provide some choice and chances for students to self manage their learning (must do, can do)
- Plan activities where students can return to the text to deepen understanding, reread, talk and be creative (craft activities).
- Story maps can foster creativity, visualising, retelling and sequencing events
- Same but different activity venn diagram
Modelling books - Louise showed us a modelling book that had a group goal sheets (PM 34). This has the kids names, two goals and a notes section. This was a way to track how the students are going with their goals as well as which lessons they have taken part in. She also recorded tricky words from a book (and the page numbers) in the modelling book too.
-Give the kids the modelling book for a warm up acitivty or a follow up activity. They might be recording their ideas in the book too.
Use songs as a way to practice comprehension strategies.
Handa's Surprise book - could add speech bubbles on different pages and have chn say what they think the characters might be thinking. Could also have chn think of questions that the characters might want to ask too.
Owl Moon book
The Very Cranky Bear book
GENERIC FOLLOW UPS - Focus on giving chn generic activities to do after shared reading rather than thinking about and making new worksheets for each book. This can be brought into independent work time and involves the chn going back into the text.
Lessens the planning time and also the time spent explaining the task as chn will already know how to do this task.
TASK - Each child pretends to be a person on a boat emigrating. One child moves around the room with a thought bubble and / or speech bubble and asks students to share what they would be thinking or saying as those characters.
TASK - Using post it pointers to identify anything they have learnt about the narrator for example. Focus was on inferring.