Reading To Learn 2008

READING TO LEARN

In your school

Background Information

Reading to Learn is a proven International program that moves kids quicker in Literacy than any other program in the world.

It is not individualised work at ability levels, but explicitly teaches the skills of reading and writing.

Reading Preparation Reading to Learn imports the very supportive

adult/child relationship of Pre-reading at home. Research has found that children were

advantaged when parents ‘talked around the text’ of a book before starting school.

It is not just about reading a book to a child. It is the discussion and talking around the text which is the single biggest difference in determining how likely they are to be successful readers.

Successful readers are exposed to at least 1000 hours of reading before they start school.

What Reading and Writing involves.

How complex Reading and Writing is.

Different approaches

The Reading to Learn Approach.

Key Concepts

Existing practice that differentiates/individuates the curriculum creates an end result where we don’t move all the kids.

Reading to Learn has the same high expectations of all students.

It works on the foundation skills to move kids up.

Reading to Learn lesson cycle.

Assessing Independent

Tasks

A Lesson/Cycle Outlay

Preparing before Reading – 5 to 10 mins Detailed Reading – 20 to 30 mins Preparing to Writing – 5 to 10 mins Joint Rewriting – 20 to 30 mins Individual Rewriting – 20 to 30 mins Sentence Making – 10 to 15 mins Spelling – 5 to 15 mins Sentence Writing – 5 to 10 mins

Preparing for Reading

Students are first prepared to understand the text in general terms, by: providing the background knowledge they need to

understand it explaining what it is about summarising the sequence in which it unfolds, in terms

that all students can all understand. This allows all students to follow the text with general

understanding as it is read aloud, without having to struggle to work out what is going on at each step, nor to struggle decoding the letter patterns of unfamiliar words.

Detailed Reading Students are prepared to read each sentence in a short

passage, by means of three preparation cues: a summary of the meaning of the whole sentence in

commonsense terms, which the teacher then reads aloud a position cue that tells learners where to look for the

wording the meaning of the wording in general or commonsense

terms. Students then have to reason from the meaning cue to the

actual wording on the page. Students are always affirmed for identifying the wording, which they then mark by highlighting or underlining.

Once they have successfully identified a wording, its meaning may be elaborated, by: defining technical or literary wordings explaining new concepts or metaphors discussing students’ relevant experience.

Preparing for Writing Once all students can read a passage with fluency and

comprehension, they prepare to write a new text that is patterned closely on it. There are two approaches to Preparing before Writing, depending on the genre:

Factual texts: students write up the wordings they have highlighted in Detailed Reading, as dot point notes on the board.

Stories, arguments and text responses: the class brainstorms new content for a text that will use the same literary or persuasive language patterns of the text they have read. The teacher writes all ideas on the board or butchers paper.

Joint Rewriting The notes that have been written on the board then

provide a framework for students to jointly write a new text on the board, guided by the teacher.

With factual texts the content of the reading text, in the notes, is rewritten in wordings that are closer to what students would write themselves, with the teacher providing whatever language resources they need, and guiding the construction.

With stories, arguments or text responses, the reading text is followed very closely, as the grammatical patterns of each sentence are used with new lexical items. This provides an extremely powerful scaffold for all students to acquire the sophisticated language resources of accomplished authors.

Individual Rewriting Before students are expected to write independently, they

individually practise rewriting the same text as they have rewritten jointly. For factual texts this may involve erasing the joint text

from the board, but leaving the notes, which students use for their own text.

For stories, arguments or text responses, students practise using the same language patterns with their own content, which may be partly derived from the earlier brainstorming activity.

In both cases more experienced students are able to practise independently, allowing the teacher to provide more scaffolding support for weaker students.

Independent Writing All these stages of preparation enable all students to

successfully write new texts, using what they have learnt in the preceding stages.

This is the task on which students are assessed, whether it is a research task in society and environment, a report in science or an essay in English.

The independent task may be about a new topic or about a new literary text, but it will be the same genre, using many of the same language patterns that have been practised in the preceding stages.

The teacher can be confident that all students have been adequately prepared to complete the task successfully.

Assessments will then provide a clear measure of how successful the teaching activities have been.

Intensive strategies

Sentence Making In groups, students take turns to cut up

sentences into word groups, and then words, put them back together, mix them up, and rearrange them.

They can also construct new sentences with the cards, using their imagination. This can be a fun game.

Punctuation can also be cut up and arranged, especially complex punctuation such as dialogue.

Spelling Words are cut up into their letter patterns

There are four levels of spelling patterns you can show students to rapidly improve their spelling, using words they know from the texts you are reading:

compound words

word endings and beginnings (suffixes and prefixes)

multiple syllables (multisyllabic words)

onset and rime.

Students then practice writing the words on individual whiteboards

Sentence Writing Once all learners can automatically spell most of the

words in the paragraph, they can practise writing the whole paragraph from memory on their boards.

To support them to do so, most of the words in the paragraph are turned over on a sentence maker.

The purpose of Sentence Writing is to support students to practise fluently writing long stretches of meaningful text, without the load of inventing a story for themselves, planning how to write it, thinking of the words to use, and knowing how to spell them.

Our personal findings. All children have benefited from our involvement in Reading to Learn. We were concerned about the engagement of our high achievers, however

we have found that all students were enthusiastic, highly engaged and successful.

It really boosted the confidence of the students with lower ability, and they were very keen to participate.

Writing samples have shown a great improvement, especially where children have borrowed language features and patterns from successful authors.

We particularly like the affirmation that Reading to Learn advocates as it motivates them to keep playing the learning game. Questions we are asking are not testing the child’s understanding. We are continually preparing them to give a successful response, therefore the child can’t fail.

In a normal mainstream classroom such as a Wembley classroom, it is sufficient to use this program 20% of the literacy time to see the benefits. Alternatively, it could be used as an Intervention program.

We’ve felt it has provided us with greater professional knowledge in reading and writing, especially the writing genres and their features.

We also believe it has greatly impacted on comprehension for students and reaffirmed that we cannot assume students comprehend words/sentences or make connections outside of the text, just because they are able readers. A deeper approach is often necessary.