Reading Reconsidered: A Practical Guide to Rigorous Literacy Instruction

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In addition, we decided that reading lessons would be separate to literacy lessons, with word reading and comprehension taught in the former, and writing skills taught in the latter. At the time I was teaching in Y4 and identified that while we were using texts in literacy, we weren’t giving children opportunities to read a book without having to keep stopping and analysing it.

Reading Reconsidered provokes us into thinking in new ways about that most foundational of academic skills: making sense of the written word. The authors offer a fresh perspective on reading that is both intellectually stimulating and relentlessly practical." Teachers read to children but it wasn’t consistent across year groups and books were seldom finished. After spending time in classrooms and holding discussions with teachers, it was clear that we didn’t have a consistent whole-school approach to reading.If teachers want to ensure maximum achievement in reading and maximum readiness for college, text selection deserves greater attention and intentionality. This does not mean that every book needs to be selected using a ‘maximum value for learning’ calculation. Some should be; we hope many will. Choosing others sheerly for the pleasure of it or on a lark is fine as long as the overall portfolio of books is intentional and balanced.” We decided that reading needed a dedicated, non-negotiable space in the daily timetable. Distinct reading and literacy lessons Comprehension skills develop through pupils’ experience of high-quality discussion with teachers, as well as from reading and discussing a range of stories, poems and non-fiction. Reading fiction and non-fiction For Shanahan, preferable alternatives include reading in pairs, where students alternate after each paragraph, choral reading, where students and teachers read the same section of the text simultaneously, and repeated reading, where students read the same passage multiple times. In all cases, Shanahan argues that students read more and have greater opportunities to improve fluency, citing studies reviewed by the US National Reading Panel (NIHCD, 2000 We carried out a staff survey, asking questions about how often teachers read to their class and which text types they chose. We also surveyed pupils and asked then if they enjoyed reading, which types of texts they liked and if they read at home.

But what texts would pupils read? We wanted to challenge our children so classic texts were an obvious choice, but when we set about designing a whole-school reading spine that teachers would use to select their class novel, we realised that most of the texts we’d considered were written by white British authors. The world we are preparing our students to succeed in is one bound together by words and phrases. Our students learn their literature, history, math, science, or art via a firm foundation of strong reading skills. When we teach students to read with precision, rigor, and insight, we are truly handing over the key to the kingdom. Of all the subjects we teach reading is first among equals.To fit our school’s context and our pupils needs, we adapted his suggestions, enabling us to include a more diverse range of text types. urn:lcp:readingreconside0000lemo:epub:f2e6a5f1-e2d0-466c-bb1a-1a86008ee213 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier readingreconside0000lemo Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s25r3txmmnw Invoice 1652 Isbn 9781119104346 Our vision was to prepare pupils for university and college, where they’ll mostly be reading non-fiction articles. Our end-of-KS2 results have been above the national average for many years and children were reading, so change didn’t seem urgent. Some year groups did reading carousel activities – planning so many differentiated activities took a toll on teachers’ workloads. They would often give groups of children ‘holding’ activities to keep them busy while offering very little challenge.

The Education Endowment Foundation’s ‘Putting evidence to work’ guidance report was a really useful starting point for implementing change. The authors also focus on the "fundamentals" of reading instruction--techniques and subject specific tools that reconsider approaches to such essential topics as vocabulary, interactive reading, and student autonomy. Filled with practical tools and over 40 video clips from real classrooms, this book provides the framework we need to ensure our students forge futures as lifelong readers. It’s all very well saying that reading was on our school development plan, but what was it that we wanted to change? We knew why we had to have it as a focus, but needed a clear whole-school picture. In addition, different year group teachers were asking different types of reading comprehension questions: some used the ‘ VIPERS’ approach (vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval, summarise), while others used different approaches they’d found online.Overhauling the way we taught reading had been on our school development plan for a long time, but other things became a priority and it kept on getting pushed further down the list. In the 2010 article "Building a Better Teacher"--the article that "launched" Teach Like a Champion, journalist Elizabeth Green compared two schools of thought--one that teaching skills were the most important driver of classroom learning, the other that content knowledge was the true driver. Some readers saw a conflict between these two perspectives. The authors of Reading Reconsidered have always thought that the answer was more complex: that technique was irreplaceable and helped teachers maximize the application of their subject knowledge but there was also no substitute for content knowledge. Moreover, they believed, there were in fact techniques specific to each of the content areas that drive results and could be delineated and learned like the general techniques in Teach Like a Champion. Reading Reconsidered is the authors' first effort to take on the challenge of defining subject specific methods. It is an anxious time for many teachers but also a time of great opportunity. This book will provide a road map from confusion to success"-- Lccn 2015049348 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9452 Ocr_module_version 0.0.15 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-WL-1300157 Openlibrary_edition In the national curriculum, the programmes of study for reading at KS1 and 2 consist of two dimensions: word reading and comprehension (both listening and reading).