Reading; between sessions

Like all learning, what happens in between quality time with the teacher?

You can read between sessions, without ruining your appetite.

As an adult reader, I often come across words which are new to me. I have developed a broad range of predictive and deductive skills which allow some access, but, if all else fails there’s the dictionary. The journey to reading was, for me, painless and beyond a few childhood memories of the books which I read, like Janet and John and Biggles, I don’t remember really learning to read.

As a teacher, hearing children read was individualised, with some children being heard up to five times each week.

If you go into any Primary classroom and see the timetable, there’s every chance that you’ll see guided reading planned in, a twenty minute slot where a group of children will sit with and adult and share a book. During that time, between six and eight, mixed ability children will read together, sometimes as a group, sometimes individually, which, if the latter, amounts to 3 or 3.5 minutes of teacher observed reading time per week. Those three minutes can be very valuable, as a means of checking current reading skills, especially if the teacher or other adult is very skilled at picking up and addressing any issues that might arise, through some kind of miscue analysis.

However, if there are five guided reading sessions a week, to ensure all children have this contact, totalling 100 minutes per week;

• What is happening for the other 97% of reading time?
• What are children reading between the sessions to ensure that they are making continuous progress?
• How do teachers make sure that beyond the guidance, the skills that have been the focus of that session are being regularly practiced?
• Is the guided book actively part of the time between sessions?

Reading is a fundamental building block of becoming literate. The better a child can read, the easier they can accommodate and assimilate new information, through their own efforts. Their enjoyment of the written word provides a driving force for continued improvement.

For many children, there is a great need to read more regularly than the once a week guided group, which for them might need to be supplemented with further sessions. The presence of additional classroom adults can support this.

All groups in a reading session where one group is likely to be working solely with a teacher need to know what is expected of them during the time, so discrete challenges need to be articulated. It should never be one quiet group and a free for all.

The book selected should be just slightly ahead of the current fluency levels of the group, to provide challenge, but that will vary with the individuals.

Fluency level books need to be the regular diet of the children, with regular opportunities to change these, even daily. There should be sufficient quantity of books to enable regular changing. These should be available to them at home and in school.

Reading non-fiction, as well as fiction, is a constituent part of reading learning. Topic based book research can be incorporated into reading activity, if a very clear question focus has been given. One simple idea which I used with many themes was to research an alphabet for the topic, where every child could subscribe to a developing glossary to support the global knowledge bank (which might just be a great title for a thematic display)

Comics and magazines are often seen in guided reading sessions. Taking a five picture comic story as a storyboard and turning that into a five sentence story narrative can provide an incentive to some.

Interpreting stories into their story threads, identifying key points in the narrative, as a sketch map can support retelling at a later stage.

Digital microphones can be used to make an on-going record of developing reading, but also allows for listening back and self-correction.

Interactive stories for younger readers, via a laptop and headphones might provide a substitute adult reader model.

Flip the reading. Send the book home, with a challenge to read to a specific page within a timescale then use the group time to discuss and move story interpretation forward.

Guided reading in itself does not fulfil all the needs of a developing reader.

In one sense it offers the teacher an opportunity to hear reading. Unless specific guidance follows, that might be all that is accomplished. It is essential to look at the whole reading diet and the embedded dynamics, to develop confident, fluent readers.