I’ve been teaching a class this term and the school’s approach is to teach one quite highly pitched text - everyone gets an extract - we read together, discuss and they answer questions.
Quite clearly the less able readers are completely floundering.
It seems to me this is just like removing differentiation. Fine for the middle/ higher but the less able or the lower attainers are just being failed.
I have had quite a big break from teaching and when I was last teaching the amount of work I had to do to create differentiated work and design multiple guided reading sessions was insane! I wouldn’t want that back as I now have an okay work life balance. However, I do feel I am failing the lowest attainers with this crazy high pitch in all things…. It’s like education has thrown the baby out with the bath water.
Does anyone agree? Or maybe I’m just working at a school where the lessons are badly planned.
Whether you're a permanent teacher, supply teacher or student teacher, you'll find others in the same situation on our Staffroom forum.
The staffroom
Whole class guided reading
Mistyhill · 14/03/2024 06:29
careerchange456 · 16/03/2024 19:48
If you don't start to learn inference and vocabulary from the beginning you can't understand what you're reading.
I do whole class reading in KS1 - it depends what you do and how you do it. We've found it hugely beneficial to their fluency as a balance to the sounding out and roboticness that their reading can be with phonics. Our phonics results also have remained very high - in fact better since we moved to our current model.
Also the lowers love the fact that they're accessing a high quality picture book otherwise they'd be forever reading Sit, Sat, Sip and the like and would be even more disengaged by reading. However, we don't make them read the actual text of the book - it's rewritten as an extract/model text and can be adapted for the ability of the class.
Some of the extracts and texts chosen by some of the popular schemes are ludicrous for LKS2.
Horaced · 17/03/2024 17:14
I just think it exacerbates the problem that children who aren't reading by Y3 are pretty much left to flounder - it's a missed opportunity for learning more decoding skills. Absolutely no point in being able to infer or comment on vocab if you can't read a very simple text in the first place. I'm also not sure I really agree with having to teach inference - I do, but actually I think most of it simply comes from being able to read very fluently. I really think we spend far too much time on comprehension skills when the barrier to comprehension is not being able to fully decode the text or do it quickly enough to not lose its meaning.
careerchange456 · 17/03/2024 19:44
Aren't those children in phonics interventions though? We wouldn't use whole class reading to tackle those needs but the child would have daily phonics intervention and 1:1 reading of their decodable texts at another point. We'd use the reading lesson to allow them to access age appropriate content and try to develop some love of reading rather than it being a chore - I appreciate this highly depends on your school approach and 'scheme' though.
Horaced · 17/03/2024 17:14
I just think it exacerbates the problem that children who aren't reading by Y3 are pretty much left to flounder - it's a missed opportunity for learning more decoding skills. Absolutely no point in being able to infer or comment on vocab if you can't read a very simple text in the first place. I'm also not sure I really agree with having to teach inference - I do, but actually I think most of it simply comes from being able to read very fluently. I really think we spend far too much time on comprehension skills when the barrier to comprehension is not being able to fully decode the text or do it quickly enough to not lose its meaning.
careerchange456 · 19/03/2024 16:56
If your phonics intervention is predominantly shouting out sounds to flash cards then I can't imagine they will make much progress in their reading. We use a proper KS2 intervention that is fully aligned to our KS1 SSP and has all the PowerPoints, worksheets, workbooks, reading books etc to support the teaching of the intervention and the children in using phonics to decode and to spell.
Then they move onto a fluency intervention.
They also access their whole class guided lesson - but we don't use one of the awful rigid schemes for that so it is accessible and the tasks enjoyable. Well as enjoyable as school can be!
To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.