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.
Reading Recharged © Alex Barton 2021
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