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Literacy TeachMeet – Jolyon Gardner, HAMD Literacy Coordinator
Literacy Lesson Focus: reading non-fiction
Reading Non-FictionJolyon GardnerLiteracy CoordinatorHarris Academy Morden
Literacy TeachMeet – Jolyon Gardner, HAMD Literacy Coordinator
Literacy Lesson Focus: reading non-fiction
Why do students find it harder to understand non-fiction than fiction?
Literacy TeachMeet – Jolyon Gardner, HAMD Literacy Coordinator
Literacy Lesson Focus: reading non-fiction
Why do students find it harder to understand non-fiction than fiction?
• The biggest influence on our language is our parents
• 1-in-16 adults cannot identify a concert venue on a poster that contains name of band, price, date, time and venue
• 7 million UK adults cannot locate the page reference for plumbers in the Yellow Pages
• Aged 7: children in the top quartile have 7100 words; children in the lowest have around 3000. Declining reading comprehension from 8 onwards is largely a result of low vocabulary
Literacy TeachMeet – Jolyon Gardner, HAMD Literacy Coordinator
Literacy Lesson Focus: reading non-fiction
Why do students find it harder to understand non-fiction than fiction?
Fiction is more personal. Non-fiction has fewer agents:
• Holidays were taken at resorts
• During the 17th century roads became straighter
Literacy TeachMeet – Jolyon Gardner, HAMD Literacy Coordinator
Literacy Lesson Focus: reading non-fiction
Why do students find it harder to understand non-fiction than fiction?
Children’s fiction tends to be chronological:
• Fiction becomes easier to read; non-fiction presents difficulties all the way through
Literacy TeachMeet – Jolyon Gardner, HAMD Literacy Coordinator
Literacy Lesson Focus: reading non-fiction
Why do students find it harder to understand non-fiction than fiction?
Non-fiction texts rely on linguistic signposts - moreover, therefore, on the other hand. Children who are unfamiliar with these will not read with the same predictive power as they can with fiction.
Literacy TeachMeet – Jolyon Gardner, HAMD Literacy Coordinator
Literacy Lesson Focus: reading non-fiction
Why do students find it harder to understand non-fiction than fiction?
Non-fiction tends to have more interrupting constructions:
The agouti, a nervous 20-inch rodent from South America, can leap twenty feet from a sitting position.
Asteroids are lumps of rock and metal whose paths round the sun lie mainly between Jupiter and Mars.
Literacy TeachMeet – Jolyon Gardner, HAMD Literacy Coordinator
Literacy Lesson Focus: reading non-fiction
Why do students find it harder to understand non-fiction than fiction?
Fiction uses more active verbs.
Non-fiction relies more on the copula (“Oxygen is a gas”) and use of the passive:
Some plastics are made by … rather than
We make plastics by …
Literacy TeachMeet – Jolyon Gardner, HAMD Literacy Coordinator
Literacy Lesson Focus: reading non-fiction
Why do students find it harder to understand non-fiction than fiction?
Non-fiction texts have more complex noun phrases:
The remains and shapes of animals and plants are lost in the myriad caves of the region.
Literacy TeachMeet – Jolyon Gardner, HAMD Literacy Coordinator
Literacy Lesson Focus: reading non-fiction
Why do students find it harder to understand non-fiction than fiction?
What can we do to help?
1. Make non-fiction conventions explicit .. actively
2. Get English teachers to use more non-fiction
3. Read non-fiction texts aloud
4. Teach students about interrupting and long subjects, connectives, agent-avoidance!
5. Subject Key Word [email protected]
Literacy TeachMeet – Jolyon Gardner, HAMD Literacy Coordinator
Literacy Lesson Focus: reading non-fiction
• Speaks at conferences on teaching English, grammar, school leadership and behaviour management
• Head Teacher at King Edward VI School, Bury St Edmunds
www.geoffbarton.co.uk
Thanks to: Geoff Barton