Reading Reconsidered provides the framework necessary for teachers to ensure that students forge futures as lifelong readers. It breaks the process down into four stages: explore, prepare, deliver, sustain. Reading for pleasure and reading & writing All pupils must be encouraged to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and love of reading, and to gain knowledge across the curriculum. Shanahan’s point is that reading aloud is valuable insofar as it improves students’ reading fluency, which is strongly associated with comprehension (e.g. see the EEF’s most recent guidance on literacy at key stage 2). But, Shanahan argues, students need large volumes of practice to improve reading fluency – taking turns one-at-a-time is ahighly inefficient way of providing this. I started off by reading the Education Endowment Foundation’s guidance reports on literacy in EYFS, KS1 and KS2. I also found the following three books incredibly useful:

Overhauling the way we taught reading had been on our school development plan for a long time, but other things became a priority and it kept on getting pushed further down the list. It’s all very well saying that reading was on our school development plan, but what was it that we wanted to change? We knew why we had to have it as a focus, but needed a clear whole-school picture. Skilled word reading involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words.In addition, time in literacy lessons was often spent analysing a text with few writing skills being taught. This became increasingly evident when I looked at work in pupils’ books and talked to children about links in the curriculum. Teachers read to children but it wasn’t consistent across year groups and books were seldom finished.

This involves texts that are over 50 years old and feature vocabulary and syntax that is vastly different and typically more complex than texts written today.

Erica Woolway

We found the Open University’s whole-school development resources really useful during this stage. Whole-school reading At the time I was teaching in Y4 and identified that while we were using texts in literacy, we weren’t giving children opportunities to read a book without having to keep stopping and analysing it.

urn:lcp:readingreconside0000lemo:epub:f2e6a5f1-e2d0-466c-bb1a-1a86008ee213 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier readingreconside0000lemo Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s25r3txmmnw Invoice 1652 Isbn 9781119104346 In the 2010 article "Building a Better Teacher"--the article that "launched" Teach Like a Champion, journalist Elizabeth Green compared two schools of thought--one that teaching skills were the most important driver of classroom learning, the other that content knowledge was the true driver. Some readers saw a conflict between these two perspectives. The authors of Reading Reconsidered have always thought that the answer was more complex: that technique was irreplaceable and helped teachers maximize the application of their subject knowledge but there was also no substitute for content knowledge. Moreover, they believed, there were in fact techniques specific to each of the content areas that drive results and could be delineated and learned like the general techniques in Teach Like a Champion. Reading Reconsidered is the authors' first effort to take on the challenge of defining subject specific methods. It is an anxious time for many teachers but also a time of great opportunity. This book will provide a road map from confusion to success"-- Good reading comprehension draws on linguistic knowledge (vocabulary and grammar, in particular) and knowledge of the world.

Our end-of-KS2 results have been above the national average for many years and children were reading, so change didn’t seem urgent. Discussions about whole-class reading can be muddied by terminology. Names for whole-class reading include ​ ‘Round Robin Reading’, ​ ‘Popcorn Reading’ and ​ ‘Control the Game’. The latter is advocated in Doug Lemov’s popular ​ ‘ Teach Like aChampion’ series and, most recently, his book ​ ‘ Reading Reconsidered’. We knew that the children in our school start significantly below where they should be in terms of speaking, listening and language development. Reading widely and often increases pupils’ vocabulary because they encounter words they would rarely hear or use in everyday speech. Reading also feeds pupils’ imagination and opens up a treasure-house of wonder and joy for curious young minds. Redesigning our reading curriculum The authors also focus on the "fundamentals" of reading instruction--techniques and subject specific tools that reconsider approaches to such essential topics as vocabulary, interactive reading, and student autonomy. Filled with practical tools and over 40 video clips from real classrooms, this book provides the framework we need to ensure our students forge futures as lifelong readers.

In addition, different year group teachers were asking different types of reading comprehension questions: some used the ‘ VIPERS’ approach (vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval, summarise), while others used different approaches they’d found online. The world we are preparing our students to succeed in is one bound together by words and phrases. Our students learn their literature, history, math, science, or art via a firm foundation of strong reading skills. When we teach students to read with precision, rigor, and insight, we are truly handing over the key to the kingdom. Of all the subjects we teach reading is first among equals. The second half of Reading Reconsidered reinforces these principles, coupling them with the 'fundamentals' of reading instruction—a host of techniques and subject specific tools to reconsider how teachers approach such essential topics as vocabulary, interactive reading, and student autonomy. Reading Reconsidered breaks an overly broad issue into clear, easy-to-implement approaches. Filled with practical tools, including:After spending time in classrooms and holding discussions with teachers, it was clear that we didn’t have a consistent whole-school approach to reading. Lccn 2015049348 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9452 Ocr_module_version 0.0.15 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-WL-1300157 Openlibrary_edition video clips of exemplar teachers demonstrating the techniques and principles in their classrooms (note: for online access of this content, please visit my.teachlikeachampion.com) Some year groups did reading carousel activities – planning so many differentiated activities took a toll on teachers’ workloads. They would often give groups of children ‘holding’ activities to keep them busy while offering very little challenge. We carried out a staff survey, asking questions about how often teachers read to their class and which text types they chose. We also surveyed pupils and asked then if they enjoyed reading, which types of texts they liked and if they read at home.