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Teachers' Notes

Introduction

Why do we read? To satisfy curiosity? To explore new ideas? To develop deeper understandings? To learn more about ourselves as readers and writers? To gain specific information – or simply for enjoyment and entertainment?

Reading is always about constructing meaning from text. These teachers’ notes show teachers how to help students develop their use of strategies and processes for making meaning and thinking critically about texts. Many of the notes also include suggestions for exploring language, especially building vocabulary, and include explicit links to writing.

The notes provide models of effective teacher practice that teachers can adapt to meet the needs of their students, using either the selected texts or other reading materials.

The notes should be used alongside The Essential School Journal, Effective Literacy Practice in Years 1 to 4, Effective Literacy Practice in Years 5 to 8, Guided Reading: Years 1–4, Literacy Learning Progressions (Draft) and The English Language Learning Progressions.

The Literacy Learning Progressions (Draft) set clear expectations for student achievement in literacy. They clarify the skills and knowledge, in reading and writing, that students need to have mastered at specific points in their schooling in order to access all areas of the curriculum. Teachers should use the progressions as a reference point when gathering information about their students’ literacy strengths and needs, using a variety of reliable formal and informal assessment tools and procedures, in order to plan effective literacy learning programmes.

The English Language Learning Progressions explain what ESOL specialists and mainstream teachers need to know about supporting English language learners. They will help teachers to choose content, vocabulary, and tasks that are appropriate to each learner’s age, stage, and language-learning needs. This may include learners for whom English is a first language but who would benefit from additional language support.

Setting a purpose for the lesson

Using assessment data

The suggestions in these notes are intended to provide support for teachers when planning “next steps” for their students. Teachers should use assessment data from a variety of sources, for example, their observation of students, asTTle, STAR, the Assessment Resource Banks, or PATs, to identify their students’ learning needs.

Selecting a purpose

For most texts, a range of teaching purposes could be selected. These notes highlight one teaching purpose (shown in bold type) for each text, but they also list other possible purposes for which the text could be used. In concentrating on these specific purposes, it is important that they are seen in the wider context of building students’ independence in reading for meaning and enjoyment. A reading purpose is also included to ensure that students understand reading to have a purpose for them, such as enjoyment or gathering information.

Selecting a reading approach

The texts in these notes can be used for shared or guided reading. A level of difficulty is given for each text (excluding poems). These levels are calculated using the Elley Noun Frequency Method (Elley and Croft, revised 1989). This method measures the difficulty of vocabulary only and does not take into account other factors affecting readability. When selecting texts, you should also consider:

  • the students’ prior knowledge, interests, and experiences
  • the complexity of the concepts in the item
  • the complexity and length of the sentences and of the item
  • the style and structure
  • any specialised vocabulary
  • the density of the text and its layout
  • the support given by any illustrations and diagrams
  • the demands of the task that the students are being asked to undertake.

These notes indicate likely challenges or supports in the text, but the most useful indicator of the level of support required for the reading is your knowledge of your students, based on assessment data and on what you know about their interests and experiences.

Reading levels should be used as a guide only. For example, if your purpose for using a text is to teach your students to infer but the readability level suggests the text might be too difficult, you can then provide more support by using a shared reading approach. This allows the students to focus on their use of the inferring strategy rather than having to focus on decoding difficult text. Conversely, you can use a familiar or easy text with students and have them focus on strategy use and critical thinking.

Texts can be revisited more than once for particular instructional purposes. For example, you may wish to explore another aspect of the text or you may decide to run a mini-lesson about a text feature that your students found difficult. School Journal texts are also ideal for self-selected recreational reading by students.

Reading processes and strategies

The notes suggest ways to develop reading processes and strategies using a shared or guided reading approach. Both approaches provide an ideal context in which to teach and monitor students’ use of reading processes and comprehension strategies.

The processes include:

  • attending and searching
  • predicting
  • cross-checking, confirming, and self-correcting.

For more information about reading processes, see Effective Literacy Practice in Years 1 to 4, pages 127–131 or Effective Literacy Practice in Years 5 to 8, pages 139–140.

The comprehension strategies include:

  • making connections
  • forming and testing hypotheses about texts
  • asking questions
  • creating mental images or visualising
  • inferring
  • identifying the author’s purpose and point of view
  • identifying the main idea
  • summarising
  • analysing and synthesising
  • evaluating ideas and information.

For more information about comprehension strategies, see Effective Literacy Practice in Years 5 to 8, pages 142–152.

Shared and guided reading

In shared reading, the teacher works with a group or the whole class and reads the text aloud while the students follow the text with their eyes and actively participate in making meaning. The reading is accompanied by discussion.

Shared reading provides a setting in which teachers can systematically, purposefully, and explicitly teach specific strategies for reading, especially (in years 5 to 8) for making meaning and thinking critically.

Effective Literacy Practice in Years 5 to 8, page 100.

In guided reading, the teacher works with a small group of students to guide them purposefully through a text, supporting the students’ use of appropriate reading processes and strategies. The students usually read silently unless the sound of the text is a particular feature, as in poetry.

Both approaches involve:

  • selecting a teaching purpose based on the needs of the students
  • selecting a text that has features that link closely to the teaching purpose and content that is likely to interest and challenge the students
  • considering the difficulty level and particular supports and challenges and selecting an appropriate approach
  • introducing the text and sharing the learning goal and success criteria with the students
  • using instructional strategies (deliberate acts of teaching) to support the students in the use of particular reading strategies and processes (according to the purpose of the lesson) as they read and respond to the text
  • where appropriate, doing follow-up tasks.

It’s helpful if teachers and students use a whiteboard, chart, or group-reading book before, during, and after the reading for such things as:

  • supporting students with making meaning by clarifying links to previous knowledge, for example, by creating word webs before reading
  • drawing attention to aspects of the text such as specific words or phrases
  • recording students’ questions, predictions, and ideas
  • recording, sorting, or summarising ideas or information from the text, for example, by creating graphic organisers
  • using a group-reading book (a large book with blank pages), which is particularly helpful because it creates a permanent written record that teachers and students can refer to after the reading.

Supporting ESOL students

When considering the needs of ESOL students, you should especially think about:

  • any culture-specific assumptions about the types of prior knowledge and experience that readers will bring to the text
  • any colloquial language in the text which may be familiar to English-speaking students but not to ESOL students
  • any large amounts of dialogue in the text that make it difficult to determine the context and/or speakers
  • the use of ellipsis (for example, “the man [who was] lying under the tree”)
  • the length and complexity of the sentences as well as the complexity of and variation in verb phrases and noun phrases
  • the extent to which the types of prior knowledge and experience that the text assumes readers have are culture-specific
  • colloquial language that may be familiar to New Zealand students but not ESOL students
  • the length and complexity of the sentences in general as well as the complexity and variety of verb phrases and noun phrases.

For ESOL students, the vocabulary lists compiled by Paul Nation and Victoria University provide a useful guide. You can analyse texts according to these lists at: www.lextutor.ca/vp/

Deliberate acts of teaching

The notes include suggestions for the teacher’s use of deliberate acts of teaching (instructional strategies) to guide and support students’ learning. (Refer to Effective Literacy Practice in Years 5–8 for information about deliberate acts of teaching).

The instructional strategies are:

  • modelling
  • prompting
  • giving feedback
  • telling
  • explaining
  • directing.

Content of the notes

The notes for each text include:

  • suggested teaching purposes, a learning goal, and success criteria
  • features of the text that make it appropriate for the particular teaching purpose
  • features of the text that may provide particular supports or challenges
  • suggestions for ways to support students’ learning as they read through the text
  • possible follow-up tasks or links to other learning. These may involve writing or links to spelling, word study, or building vocabulary.

The notes follow the format of before, during, and after the reading, but the headings may vary for some sets of notes. There will always be an introduction to a text but, for example, if the reading of the text involves a great deal of discussion, there may not be a separate “After reading” section. Each set of notes has links to other texts that support the same teaching purpose.

Before the reading

The introduction should be relatively brief. It should:

  • make explicit links with the students’ prior knowledge (of context, of text form, and/or of reading strategies) and motivate them to read
  • clarify the learning goal and discuss the success criteria with the students.

The introduction may:

  • highlight selected features of the text
  • introduce in conversation unfamiliar names or potentially difficult concepts. You may choose not to mention every challenging aspect of the text before the reading, for example, if to do so would give the students information you’d prefer them to infer as they read or if you want to specifically monitor the students’ use of particular strategies.

Sharing the learning goal and success criteria

The suggested learning goal is given in students’ words and it links to the teaching purposes. Care is taken in these notes not to make the learning goal too specific to the text in case it gives too much away before the reading. For example, the goal might say “I will look for clues in the text about why the characters act as they do” rather than “I will look for clues in the text about why Jess changes her mind.” Sometimes you may share an additional learning goal after the reading or when revisiting the text.

The success criteria are designed to scaffold the students towards meeting the learning goal. At the end of the lesson, have the students reflect on how well they have met the learning goal and success criteria.

During the reading

Some texts can be read straight through; others will need to be broken up with breaks for discussion. While the students are reading the text silently, you can observe their reading behaviour and help any students who are struggling. You could encourage your students to identify (for example, with paper clips or self-adhesive notes) any words that cause difficulty.

After the reading

Discussion after the reading should be brief (a maximum of ten or fifteen minutes) and should not be a simple question and answer session. Encourage focused conversations to extend students’ comprehension and critical thinking. Use questions and prompts to probe their understandings. Ask the students to justify and clarify their ideas, drawing on evidence from the text.

Be aware that some question forms, especially those that use modal verbs such as “might”, “could”, or “would”, may pose additional challenges for ESOL students.

You can also explore (and enjoy) vocabulary and text features in greater detail or look at words that have caused difficulty for the group. These notes list some words that have challenged students when the material has been trialled. You should not assume, however, that these same words will challenge your own students. Talk about strategies the students could (or did) use, such as chunking longer words and noting similarities to known words (to help them decode) or rerunning text and looking for clues in the surrounding text (to clarify meaning).

This is also a good time to look closely at language features if these are a focus for the lesson. For example, you could:

  • discuss poetic features, such as alliteration, similes, or metaphors
  • take the opportunity to expand students’ vocabulary by discussing word meanings
  • make links to the students’ writing by analysing aspects of the writer’s style
  • where appropriate, you may decide to select follow-up tasks.

Links to further learning

This section gives information about linked texts and suggests follow-up tasks that will help students to consolidate or extend their new learning. These will often include links to writing or to exploring language.