Whole class guided reading

[Mistyhill]

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.

We have had a lot of problems with this, not just in reading but across the curriculum. The new approach, adaptive teaching, is supposed to let everyone access the learning without differentiation (which is now considered exclusionary and contrary to high expectations for learners). However, as you point out, there is only so much a scaffold will allow a learner to access. It's a fine line to walk. I sometimes differentiate in lessons where some learners have to catch up with others. For example in my current school we have no capacity for interventions so I do "in class" interventions where other children are learning something and others are practising something else for short periods of time to allow them to feel successful and practice skills they need to learn at their own pace. It's not idea because if I was observed by a standards officer they would probably pull me up on it.

I find it fine if children can 'read' (so most middle ability Y4s and above) but before that it's just no good. I don't really think there's any point in learning inference, vocab and prediction skills until you can...read. I teach a mixed year class and do two different groups so can at least swap my lowers and highers to the other year group but when I did straight Y3 it was just awful. That school had something like 5 different Y2 reading groups in one class then all of a sudden in Y3 they were all meant to be in together...

Thank you, yes it’s year 3 and it’s rubbish for them. Many of the lessons are too highly pitched for them anyway. I feel guilty as I know better but I just have to toe the line, I think. I used to do a better job and the children made better progress

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.

I could be wrong, but I think the OP's issue is more with independent work.

In our guided reading sessions we read the same text as a class and questions are adapted (the group of children who cannot access due to phonics is read to by the teacher and we scribe responses for many children). But these children are not capable of accessing the work independently - they need adult support.

Yes, it’s really to do with the pitch of the text and the reading ability of the children. Even though I read the text to them, some of them can’t understand it quickly enough.

Of course inference needs to be taught from the beginning and that is what guided reading sessions used to do. But with a suitably chosen text that stretches but not over stretches.

I have a degree in English literature and this is a very comfortable subject for me. What I am finding is far worse than a decade ago is the provision for the SEN and less able children. We used to plan for them and now they seem to be expected to just go along with the rest of the class. There are some gaps that can’t be scaffolded because they are really too large.

It is very interesting to see the changes in education.

I think it's one of the problems with these bought in schemes, especially if you're not allowed to adapt them - which is crazy!

It seems to be the way in these schemes that KS2 are expected to read and then do questions - like questions are only way to teach and assess comprehension. Can you not change some of the question bits of work to activities to be more accessible to the lowers? Or at least change the questions?

Also if their phonics is ok but they're still not reading well have you had any CPD on reading fluency. The Herts fluency project is really good.

I don't think it's sound like your problem is whole class reading. It sounds like your problem is having to blindly follow something which isn't suitable for your class without being able to make any adaptations? Which is obviously not what quality teaching is and shouldn't be the way your English lead is leading their subject. It's exactly the same as the issues with WRM.

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.

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.

thanks for all comments. I‘ll be working at another school soon and can compare notes. It may well be the school that is the issue - I suspect so. And yes I do have to blindly follow what I’m told as I’m a temporary teacher covering a short term leave.

really appreciate everyone’s thoughts. Thanks!

Yes but (and I know it's unpopular as phonics is meant to be the answer to everything) I don't find it helps massively because they know the sounds. They can shout them out to flashcards til the cows come home. What they can't do (and I appreciate this is part of phonics) is apply it to reading and read with anything like fluency. I'd just rather do a focused session at their level than try to keep them engaged looking at a text that is completely inaccessible to them.

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!

Well obviously I was being slightly facetious but I've never known a KS2 phonics intervention to have a significant impact. We do the Little Wandle KS2 one with aligned KS2 books and all the bells and whistles so we are doing it properly. I plan all my guided reading from scratch so I'm not rigidly following anyone else's scheme. I just find what we're doing now less effective than what we were doing 15 years ago; I'd prefer to go back to small groups reading at their own level.

We have had a lot of problems with this, not just in reading but across the curriculum. The new approach, adaptive teaching, is supposed to let everyone access the learning without differentiation (which is now considered exclusionary and contrary to high expectations for learners).

This a real issue in schools at the moment. Our ks1 class has very able children reading and confidently understanding the likes of Matilda outside school. In the same class..... a group who know phonics sounds well but still lack speed and fluency so are stuck on the equivalent of old green/orange level. The highest ability 4 or so are simply being held back, and half a dozen or so at the bottom can't access the work at all.

To clarify .... if you have the "same ambitious goal for all students", either
It has to be a goal that is accessible to the lowest attainers, which means it simply won't meet the needs of more able learners
Or
It will be challenging enough for more able, but lower attainers likely will not achieve the goal.