Reading

Nyree Wilson - Learning Specialist

It is important to be committed to developing a strong reading culture. Many teachers have dedicated themselves to creating resources and sharing strategies to encourage routine engagement with reading for pleasure and for purpose.

A powerful routine for establishing a culture of reading in your classrooms is by allocating 10 minutes at the start of designated lesson for reading. Reading routines where teachers also participate in, and model silent reading can also help a class settle into the learning space and get ready to focus on learning activities. This routine doesn't need to be in English classes - 10 minutes reading interesting news about science, technology, arts or any other subject related content is great!

Library lessons (if you have them) at the junior levels create a wonderful space to regularly undertake the explicit teaching of reading strategies and explore a variety of texts. These lessons also create an opportunity to luxuriate in reading, to share conversations about stories we've read and how they've affected us.

At the senior level, routine engagement with a reading practice such as allocating time for text book summaries, exploring a news article connected to their learning or some other reading related to a topic or concept can help students build their reading skills, but also shows them how what they are learning is present in the world!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Library Lessons

Differentiated Reading Strategies

Jigsaws and Text Rendering

Using Inferential Thinking

Developing Inferential Thinking

Developing Connection Making and Comparative Thinking Skills

Developing Knowledge of Common Symbols used in Writing

How Common Themes and Experiences Help us Interpret Texts

Using Themes to Focus our Thinking and 'Reading Lens'

Stereotypes and Characterisation

Analysing Characters

Texts in Context - Identifying Cultural and Social Connections

Library Lessons

These lessons are a great space to model reading for pleasure, and to create a culture of casual reading. Some people use these lessons to run a book club, run a reading circle, or an activity designed to get students thinking about what they are reading, and what they could read.

Library staff are amazing, and happy to help draw attention to the different areas of focus, events and issues going on in the library and the world. They are also great at supporting students to find the right books for them.

Some teachers use library lessons as a space for reading conferences, you may wish to run these formally, or simply create space to hear students read, or share something about a book they're reading, or have read.

Conferring With Readers - Penny Kittle

Differentiated Reading Strategies

This resource explains how we can differentiate students engagement with reading by creating groups of students who work with the same text in different ways to develop a shared understanding.

The resources below are designed to be used as mini-lessons within the phases of a lesson: introduction/hook - mini-lesson - student learning activity - wrap up. These resources can be used as is, or modified, or may inspire your own thinking about a strategy or resources you could develop.

Jigsaw activities & Text Rendering Powerful strategies for building our reading skills.

Jigsaws and Text Rendering

This resource helps introduce jigsaw activities as a reading strategy it helps students understand how and why we use this collaborative strategy.

Using short texts and anticipating it wont run smoothly the first couple of times you run a jigsaw is important. Get students involved in helping work out how to do it! Once you and the students understand the process it can be a powerful routine practice that only requires the sourcing of content to prepare.