Reading at Carcroft

16th August 2023Admin Carcroft

We have aligned our teaching of reading with Jane Considine’s ‘Hooked on Books’ approach.

During the week, children take part in ‘Book Talk’ a whole class guided reading session.

In those ‘Book Talk’ sessions you will find our children reading by themselves, reading with a partner, reading as a whole class or listening to the class teacher model reading.

Children use the ‘Reading Rainbow’ to read and respond to texts through different lenses within 3 different zones of reading:

The Fantastics,
The Stylistics
The Analytics.
Book Talk is key to developing oracy skills. Children collaborate in groups using sentence stems and high utility words to develop a Book Talk response.

Children also complete comprehension tasks when working independently.

Activating our inference skills

12th November 2024Laura Hamill

Today, we continued to activate our inference skills by looking at a poem. We were introduced to the poem yesterday and worked hard to pull the text apart, identifying key vocabulary and labelling the text with key information and notes that we felt were helpful in our mission to understand poetry and what they poem was actually about. We then used these notes today to delve deeper into inferring the feelings of the characters. We began by working as a crew to identify the key points in the text for the first character, Chloe, and discussed how we thought she was feeling at each of these points. We used evidence from the text to support our ideas (E.g. she was happy at the beginning because she was looking out into space with open eyes). We then created a line graph to detail our findings. Following this, we worked in pairs to do the same for the second character, Max. Once we’d done this, we brought both graphs together to compare their feelings throughout the poem. We identified that Max was a much happier, more positive character, whilst Chloe was much less positive as she worried a lot and was scared by the idea of adventure.

Reading in Crew Hamill

8th November 2024Laura Hamill

After having a heavy focus on retrieval skills during Autumn 1, Crew Hamill have shifted their focus this half term and begun looking at inference skills – using clues from the text in order to provide an appropriate answer that is backed up with evidence from the text. To help us with this, we began by taking part in a hot seating activity in which we worked in mini crews to create questions that we would like to ask the main character of our story. One person then pretended to be this character and attempted to answer the questions, using what they knew from the text as support.

Following this, we then looked at some demonstration comprehension questions that we again focused on our inference skills. After working through how to answer this style of question with Miss Hamill on the board, we were given three questions of our own and three matching answers. We had to work in mini crews to match the question to it’s correct answer, using what we knew from the text to support us with this.

Demo comprehension in MI

18th September 2024Stacey McClare

Our entry ticket allowed us to get into role as Lenny and write a short letter back home to either mum or dad. We wrote about all the things that had happened so far and this really allowed us to recap events from the story. We enjoyed reading our letters in mini crews and then to the whole crew. We even tried to read them in role. When reading the next part of the story, we used a chorus read, partner read and independent read. We discussed language as we read and thought about Lenny and Mick’s characters in more detail. We used the text during our demonstration comprehension, skimming and scanning for words to support our answers. We worked in mini crews to find evidence from the text, text marking then sharing with our partner. Our exit ticket allowed us to reflect on what we had read thinking about what Lenny and Mick may be saying to each other as they left the garden. We also thought about Lenny’s thoughts and how these had changed.

Are you cut out for space?

17th September 2024Laura Hamill

On Monday, Crew Hamill began focusing on a new text which was an extra from An Astronaut’s Handbook. Our extract focused on what an astronaut was and where they travel to – space. We started our session by watching a video of Richard Branson and his team travelling into space, allowing us to see what it would be like to launch into space in a rocket. We then travelled to the blue room to immerse ourselves into a similar situation – a confined, dark space with the lights of the milky way and stars. We then listened as Miss Hamill read through the text for the first time, pulling out different vocabulary words and ensuring we understood what we were reading. Following this, we went back to class and skimmed and scanned the text for words, phrases and sentences that we felt comfortable reading. We then re-read the text as a whole crew with everyone joining in when they reached a highlighted word, phrase or sentence. Finally, we text marked our extract, underlining and defining key vocabulary, starring the key information and drawing an exclamation mark when we thought there was an important fact.

Book talk in MI

16th September 2024Stacey McClare

Today we used the next two pictures from the story for our entry ticket. We thought about what was happening in the pictures, what time of day we thought it was and how we thought the characters were feeling. We used our inference skills well here to discuss different ideas. We then read the next part of the story with our partners. We discussed our initial ideas and how these linked to what we had read. We thought about the noises being described and explained what these meant. We then tried to act our part of the story, putting ourselves in Lenny’s shoes. From here we used the page we had just read to answer an APE question. We made sure we answered the question, then proved it by using evidence from the text. We then used an independent read and chorus read for the next part of the story, thinking about why rhetorical questions were used and the impressions we now get of Joyce, one of the characters. Our reasons to read allowed us to explore ideas in more detail thinking lots about feelings of characters. Our exit ticket allowed us to think more of Lenny’s feelings, our main character. We again used evidence from the text to support our ideas. A great reading lesson MI 🙂

We are readers

15th September 2024Hannah McLoughlin

Our new text this half term is a non fiction book called Space Explorers, which included 25 extraordinary stories of space exploration.

In our book talk sessions we have learnt new vocabulary such as, ‘conflict’ ‘devoted’ ‘override’, ‘pacing’, ‘vast’, ‘mesmerised’ and ‘observation’. We ensure that we all know what the words mean and discuss how they had been used in the text by the author. Miss models reading the first couple of pages then we practise our fluency by taking it in turns to read paragraphs/whole pages each. We listen and observe carefully so that we can critique how well our partner had used the punctuation such as commas and full stops in the text. We then go through some reasons to read together which required us to use our skimming and scanning skills to allow us to retrieve information from the text. As a class we need to improve on explaining how we go about finding the answer to a question.

We take it in turns to read the different questions and unpick the vocabulary used to help us to understand what information was required such as, ‘How long…’ meaning that we needed to look for a time (minutes, years, months, years etc.). We use our skimming and scanning skills (with a little help from miss thinking aloud) to retrieve the answers from the text. Once we have located the information we check the amount of marks required and if 2/3 marks we explain our answers using the evidence that we had found to support our answer (A.P.E). Later on in the week in demonstration comprehension, we have unpicked questions and accuracy with answers. Miss can already see an improvement from our first Demonstration Comprehension lesson!