
The aim of the Project READ website is to support collaboration between schools in our joint endeavour to improve reading outcomes for Derbyshire pupils. A huge 'Thank you!' to all who have contributed case studies. Use the case studies as a starting point to reflect on practice in your school with colleagues. Explore the 'Useful Links' tab for research, resources and continuous professional development (CPD) opportunities. The password to view the video clips is projectread
An investigation into non-fiction texts at Hallam Fields Junior School: What barriers to comprehension do some Year 3 pupils experience? What strategies can help?
About our school
'Hallam Fields Junior School has 240 children on role. We are a 'Thrive' school. Our school motto is 'Growing, Learning, Achieving Together'.
The school has spent the last four years building up an Active Reading ethos. Following training, we developed the Inference Intervention strategies in whole class reading lessons as well in interventions and guided sessions. Barriers to literacy for some of our pupils include limited reading miles and a narrow vocabulary. When using narrative, we noticed that the children appeared to be more aware of the range of Active Reading strategies but both staff and pupils were less confident when using them for non-fiction. We noticed that many non-fiction texts were being used across school for retrieval and literal questioning only. By choosing non-fiction texts that were accessible yet challenging, we wanted to see what the challenges were and how we could overcome them.'
Aims
'In Summer 2018, our aims were:
- to identify the specific challenges pupils encounter when reading non-fiction texts
- to plan how to equip staff with teaching strategies to overcome those challenges in Autumn 2018
- to broaden and balance the range of texts we use across school.
In the lesson we filmed, I aimed to include: explicit description of the strategy; modelling; collaborative use of the strategy in action; guided practice; opportunity for more independent application.'
Timescale
'The explicit teaching of comprehension strategies takes place each week in a 1 hour whole class lesson. These strategies are then used across the curriculum throughout the rest of the week. The film clips are from a lesson in July 2018, at the end of Year 3. It was the second in a series of 2 lessons.'
Outline
Impact
'It was difficult to assess the impact of this input at the end of Year 3. However, following discussion with the Year 4 staff in Autumn 2018, I feel that we still need to support the children to monitor cohesion between sentences, to make global links across paragraphs and to use cohesive ties such as connectives. This has now been given a higher profile in teaching reading skills in Year 4 and we have picked it up with the new cohort in Year 3.'
Next steps
'As well as the areas mentioned above, one area we are now working on as a school is to use a broader range of texts to incorporate more non-fiction. This has meant further training for staff in order to use graphic organisers more effectively.'
Contributor
Sheena Cowley, English Co-ordinator, Hallam Fields Junior School. enquiries@hallamfields.derbyshire.sch.uk
Additional information
Would you like to take part in a comprehension project in your school? Project Comprehension EYFS - Year 6 is a collaborative CPD opportunity available to primary school clusters in Derbyshire. It builds on the robust foundations of Project READ. It will enable schools not involved in the original project to participate in similar, collaborative school improvement projects. Participating schools work in partnership with Derbyshire's Teaching, Learning and Assessment Consultants and with Specialist Leaders of Education from Derbyshire's Teaching Schools. Contact EIS@derbyshire.gov.uk for more information.
Year group - Year 3
In this Year 3 whole class comprehension lesson, Sheena uses a non-fiction text to focus on cohesion ie: the reading strategy of making connections between words, sentences and paragraphs in order to comprehend the text.
...(click to read more)Year group - EYFS - Year 6
How can we support young readers to read with understanding? This case study captures the experiences of two teachers who attended Reading Comprehension: a whole school approach CPD during the Project READ year.
...(click to read more)Year group - Year 3
In this Year 3 group session, Natasha, a Teaching Assistant, uses an extract from 'The Butterfly Lion' by Michael Morpurgo to support four pupils to develop inference skills. Natasha and Lorna, the Year 3 teacher, recently attended Inference Training: The Intervention CPD as part of Project READ.
...(click to read more)Year group - Year 6
In this Year 6 small group session, Erica uses a picture to reinforce active reading skills. The pupils visualise, predict, use inference skills and summarise.
...(click to read more)Year group - EYFS-Year 6
In this case study, Bryony shares how the whole school is talking about vocabulary and making sure that what they read really does make sense.
...(click to read more)Year group - Year 1 and Year 5
in this case study, Year 1 and Year 5 learners read challenging texts to practise their skills of comprehension monitoring.
...(click to read more)