5 minute read
Focused skill activities
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.
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.
In this part of the book, I have collected all the different styles of questions from KS1 reading SATs papers from 2018 and 2019. You may want to use this style of questioning within your reading lessons and adapt it to the text your children are studying. The questions are broken down into the key skills required at KS1.
KS1 questioning: vocabulary
Question style
Write two words that tell you… [Insert quote] What does this tell you about…? Circle two words that show…
Example(s) from 2018/2019 SATs
Write two words that tell you what the dough feels like. ‘One day, huge, rumbling, grumbling machines crawled towards the pond.’ What does this sentence tell you about machines? Circle two words that show Dora was in a rush to get back to the hall the next morning.
[Insert statement] Find and copy one word that tells you this.
‘It was difficult to get the piece of paper through Dora’s letterbox.’ Find and copy one word that tells you this. What makes [insert character name] feel…? What makes Liam feel proud and gives him a real sense of achievement? Find and copy two words that tell you… Find and copy two words that tell you how JJ and Jasmine tried to clean off the paint.
[Insert quote] This means that… (tick one) [Insert multiple-choice answers] ‘As the flowers fade…’ This means that the flowers… (tick one)
Find and copy one word that… Find and copy one word that makes the apples sound tasty.
KS1 questioning: retrieval
Question style
Draw three lines to show… (matching-up exercise) What…? Why…? When…? Which…? Where…? (written information retrieval questions) Write one item that… [Insert statement] Put 3 more ticks in the table to show… Choose one of 4 answers to complete the sentence. (multiple-choice question) Tick two things that…
True or false? Fill in the gaps.
Example(s) from 2018/2019 SATs
Draw three lines to show what Jasmine and JJ did on each day.
What did Jasmine and JJ see at the circus? Why did JJ agree to paint the shed wall? When mum came home, where did she first see the paint? Which two pieces of clothing did cowboys use to protect their faces from the weather? What covered most of the land in North America two hundred years ago? Which area of the park does Liam keep particularly nice? Write one item that cowboys used for working with animals. Real cowboys are different from cowboys in films. Put 3 more ticks in the table to show what cowboys are like. Liam works… (choose one of 4 answers)
Liam’s daily tasks can change. What two things can make his tasks change? Tick two. Put ticks in the table to show which sentences are true and which are false. Fill in the gaps. The boy and the old man wanted to buy something at the jumble sale. The boy wanted to buy a _________________. The old man wanted to buy a _______________________.
