Reading at 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.

Book Talk and Demo Comp – The very dangerous dinosaur.

Crew Hamill have really enjoyed this week’s book – The very dangerous dinosaur. We have lots of dinosaur fans in our reading group and they loved discovering the mischief that the dangerous dinosaur got up to. We spent the beginning of the week predicting what we thought might happen in the story based on a few pictures from the text and a brief introduction to the story. This allowed us to make notices and wonders about the story, using evidence from what we had read and seen to support our learning. We then unpicked some of the more difficult vocabulary in the story, allowing us to improve our fluency when echo reading, reading in pairs and reading independently. Following this, during our book talk question lesson, we were able to use Fastest Finger and Have a Think skills to accurately find the answers to questions about the story. Finally, we worked in mini crews to focus on inference questions within a demo comprehension lesson. We developed our skills from last week in which we found the key information in the question to find the key information in the text. This information gave us clues that enabled us to come up with a sensible answer to the questions, using the clue to support our ideas. We will then be able to apply these skills to our independent learning during our independent comprehension.

New Reading Challenge! Who will earn a golden ticket?

“I’ve got a golden ticket!” – Who will be able to say these 5 magical words by the end of Summer Term?! Crew Hamill have been challenged again to read at home and this time, there will be FIVE winners! The first 5 to reach the golden tickets at the top of our challenge, by reading 30 times, will receive a special reward (that may or may not involve a chocolate baking treat). It’s been so lovely to see the engagement from the children already in this challenge! Lots of children’s names are moving up the oompa loompas and heading towards golden victory!

Book Talk and Demo Comp

Crew Hamill have enjoyed starting a new book in reading lessons this week – A celebration on Planet Zox. This book reintroduced us to some of our favourite characters from previous books we have read and then introduced us to some of their family. We loved being able to make links to our previous learning! We began by making predictions on what we thought the book might be about, thinking perhaps there was a birthday party due to the word “celebration” in the title. We then explored more of the complex vocabulary within the book, identify their definitions. Following this, we completed a book talk lesson in which we answered questions about the book, using Fastest Finger and Have a Think skills. For demo comp, we have moved away from retrieval as this was a huge focus for last half term and is something we are much stronger at now. We have begun to look at inference questions and learned all about identifying clues within the text in order to provide answers. We worked together to pull the questions apart and search through our books for the clues. Once we had identified these, we had a great discussion on what this information was able to tell us and how we could use it to provide a detailed answer. We can’t wait to use these skills tomorrow in our independent comprehension.

Book talk in MI

Our entry ticket allowed us to think about the word inventor and what it means. We tried to think of any words that belong to this word family. We thought about the root word first and what it meant. Children thought about the word invent, inventing and invention. We shared our understanding of the word with the whole crew.

We then looked at some of the vocabulary that would appear in the text. Before we were introduced to the word class of each word, we discussed this with our partner. We also tried to put each word into context to help us gain a better understanding of what the words meant. As we read, we then text marked these words. We also tried to circle any other unfamiliar vocabulary and tried to think of one fact that we thought was really interesting. We placed an exclamation mark by this fact. We shared this with our partner then with the whole crew. Our reasons to read challenged our thinking 🙂 We even voiced our own opinions on the invention of the telephone.

Tomorrow we will continue with our book talk session where we will read about Josephine Garis Cochrane, the lady who invented the dishwasher!

Book talk continues in MI

Our entry ticket allowed us to reflect on yesterdays lesson and what we learnt about Mauritius. We created our own flag using our knowledge. It was great to see how much we had remembered.

We then unpicked our new language and discussed which text marking symbols we would focus on as we read. We read independently and with our partners today and we also listened to Mrs McClare read the text focussing on expression and fluency. Our reasons to read allowed us to get practical, sorting statements into two categories. We worked in mini crews to read each statement and decide if it was a fact for Madagascar or a fact for Gabon. We then shared our facts as a whole crew 🙂 We then looked at another impressions question, using the text to support our ideas. We are becoming more confident when answering this type of questions.

Our exit ticket assessed our whole understanding of the texts we had read. We sorted our cards again but this time thinking about the order they appear in the text. We used the text too to help us do this.

Book talk in MI

Our entry ticket allowed us to build on previous reading lessons, thinking back to the African countries we have studied and read about. We thought back to the facts we had learnt about these countries and worked with our partners to voice facts. I was blown away by what we remembered! We have really loved learning about each country and learning about what it has to offer.

We then read our next bit of text all about Mauritius! This was a complete contrast to some of the countries we had previously looked at. We took part in a partner read, independent read and then a chorus read. We read the text over and over to ensure we were taking in the information. Mrs McClare questioned us on our reading as we read. We unpicked some of the language and made inferences based on the information.

We then moved onto our reasons to read, using the text to support our answers. We looked at different types of questions, some of these were ones we had struggled with in our latest assessment. We thought about our impressions of Mauritius and used the text to support our ideas.

Finally our exit ticket allowed us to think about Ammeenah Gurib, we voiced all the facts we had learnt about her whilst reading. A fantastic reading lesson today 🙂