whole books or extracts in English lessons?

[conistonoldwoman]

Interesting thread on secondary ed.
What novels are teachers using in KS2?
How long do you focus your teaching on them?
Novel per half term?

One unit devoted to a novel takes me 4 weeks.

Do you have enough copies for each pupil or do they share?
What stories have they enjoyed?

For class novels, sometimes we read an important chapter together (photocopied), and sometimes I read to them. In guided reading we have sets of 6 books, read as stand alone texts.

'There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom' by Louis Sachar is one they absolutely love, any Paul Jennings short stories, 'Granny' by Anthony Horowitz, any stories which have Robin Hood in them, Skulduggery Pleasant, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Darren Shan books.

at the moment Upper KS2 studying A Cue for Treason and lower KS2 The Eagle of the Ninth - every child has a copy

As aside I was staggered with my niece's response whern I asked her what lit. she was studying for French A level (which I did).
'Oh we don't read whole books. Just extracts.'

Eh?

If my kids haven't read a whole book in class, I make damned sure it is read entirely at home.

Sorry we use a novel for a half term

A novel pre half term.

When the LIteracy Hour came in our head insisted we use extracts, I ignored this and still read the novels. Luckily now we have reverted to complete novels

We ignored this too - I argued the case for story time right up to Y6. Head eventually capitulated, but made us write lesson plans for it!

What a prick your head must be Feenie! Glad you have story time up to year 6.
mrz sounds great that you have generous supplies of books.
Anyone using the Abacus evolve new literacy resources. I went to a Michael Rosen seminar organised by Abacus which was pushing the use of whole books.

DD1 is in year 6 and at the moment they are studying Macbeth in literacy as part of their wider topic of the Tudors; They have done some really good stuff thus far - Obviously reading the (whole but abridged version) in class, they have had a theatre company in to perform the play, watched excerpts of "Traditionally acted" scenes on DVD, role play and explored the characters according to their ability groups, and that is only the stuff she has told me about.

This was a long time ago, so he is no longer head .

Also had a stand up argument because he wanted Enid Blyton removed from our library shelves.

I won

I used Macbeth with Y2 two years ago and The Tempest last year

Blimey mrz. Well impressed.
I remember many, many years ago a year 4 class using The Hobbit as their focus for English work.
Iam notminterested: your DD's lessons sound excellent.
Any feed back on Abacus literacy welcome!!

We read (well I read they listened) the Hobbit last year as a class book at story time but not for study

Really encouraging to know there are people out there who can teach without the crutch of the primary literacy framework dominating everything they do.

...also dressed in period costumes and used a vast amount of papier mache! Not to mention the teachers dressing up and the children building Shakespeare's Globe Theatre as a year group. She is loving it.

mrz - re: The Tempest; How did your pupils respond to it? I studied it for A-level and remember it as my least favourite Shakespeare play.

mrz

Have no idea where the rogue "mrz" came from at the borrom of my post; perhaps it's my old Lit teacher coming back to haunt me for dissing The Tempest...

My Y2s loved the Tempest ... fairies, a wizard, a monster, a shipwreck great stuff when you are seven

DD is in Y5. This term they are reading The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe as there class reader and have been doing literacy around that. According to the year planner sheet next term is Shakespeare but I don't know which text yet.

Trying to remember some of the others they have done in Y3 and Y4. All I can remember at the moment is The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark, and one of the Michael Morpurgo books.

Oh, and last year in Y4 they did A Midsummer Night's Dream - think most of KS2 did as it was their school play at the end of the year so they all covered it to varying degrees.

"If my kids haven't read a whole book in class, I make damned sure it is read entirely at home."

I agree entirely with your sentiment, moondog; my DD has a textbook with extracts in it, and her homework three nights a week is to read an extract and answer comprehension questions on it. I generally use the extracts she has liked the most as inspiration for books to buy her to be read whole.

Yes indeed.
What pleasure or meaning can ever come for an extract?
I read a chapter a night to my children and/or get them to read it to me and their father (when here) and sibling.
It's surprising how many books you can get through like this, even with the most reluctant reader. Currently on the 3rd on the Laura Ingalls Wilder series which I loved so much as a child.

I think I love it even more now. A lot of it makes me cry thoguh.

I use complete novels but extract different sorts of Genre from each one.

Last year one of the books we looked at was The Secret Garden (classic fiction) and aside from the obvious fictional writing/ comprehension/ vocab/ text word and sentences level stuff, we also covered playscripts (by using dialogue from the book and watching bits of the film), leaflets (visit Misselthwaite Manor), journalistic writing (Grand opening of Misselthwaite Manor), letters (from Colin to his father begging him to come home or from Mrs Medlock complaining about Mary's behaviour) and lots of PHSE emotional literacy. I have found this a far more engaging way of covering all the genre expected from the KS2 curriculum.

I use a visualiser and project the text onto my Smart Board.

Has anyone used the literacy Evolve?

We are using the abacus evolve for maths at the moment in year 6 and I love, it's our 2nd year of using it.

We are discussing getting it for literacy, any opinions?

I've looked at it but wasn't too impressed with the range of books available