We LOVE Reading (for pleasure!)

It is an educational truth universally acknowledged that reading is of paramount importance to a child's success throughout their school years and beyond.  For that reason, we have worked hard over recent years to get children reading and to help them to enjoy it.  Here are some of the things we have done to raise the profile of reading and encourage children to do it and enjoy it.

Independent Reading Books - Recommending and buying

As in most schools, all our pupils have a book which they are reading independently.  In Y4, that is normally a short chapter book, perhaps with a few pictures.  We are always talking about which books children are reading, recommending them other books similar to those they've enjoyed and eyeing opportunities to buy new books for them to read.  Many boys last year enjoyed reading a Hank Zipzer book which someone picked up from the library van.  A few this year loved it too so we bought them the whole set.  Once children started reading them, the love for Hank Zipzer spread like wildfire and I'm not sure there are many boys in my class who haven't read at least one of them.  I find that once particularly vocal members of the class get hooked in a series, it is very easy to persuade their wide circle of friends to read those books as well.  Boys have particularly enjoyed the Time Hunters, Jack Stalwart, Football Academy, Foul Play and Percy Jackson series this year. Many conversations about these books have encouraged more children to read and enjoy them. 

Movie Books for Class Readers

Each half-term, we read a book which has a movie.  I read this to children at different points during the day.  It is protected time and the aim is to finish the book in six weeks.  We finished every single one this year.  The only way to do that is to value highly the time spent on it and prioritise it.  At the end of the half term, we sit down together as a year group and watch the movie.  This leads to interesting discussions about the comparisons between the books and the movies, particularly the choices made in the movie of Matilda.  

Reading Areas and Bookshelves - Beg, borrow, steal!

Every primary school (hopefully) has a dedicated reading area and most classrooms will have one bookshelf or reading corner each.  These are vital when it comes to encouraging children to love reading.  However, it is the texts on the bookshelves rather than the aesthetics of the area which make a real difference to children's enjoyment of reading.  This year, our reading coordinator organised two book fairs to generate the maximum possible profit for teachers to use to fill their bookshelves. These have allowed us to buy appropriate texts for our year group shelves using this list which was compiled from teachers' suggestions.  As a year four teacher, I am always going to other classrooms to find books that some of my pupils would love to read.  The look on a child's face is priceless when you tell them you "stole" the book from a year five or six bookshelf just because they might like it.  That alone is often motivation enough for them to start reading the book.   

Our Favourite Books

Each year, we read our favourite (children's) book to our classes.  That gives us the chance to share our passions for a book with them and discuss reasons why we think it's the best.  I read my class Scribbleboy by Philip Ridley; here's why I love it. 

Book Bingo

This is an idea I had during a frustrating moderation meeting.  We started handing out Book Bingo activities and giving children a star for completing 4-in-a-row.  At the end of the year, we held a big raffle with all the stars put into a bucket and children chosen to win prizes.  I thought this would be something relatively boring for children but they were completely inspired by it and, as you can see from the stars on our display boards, many rose to the challenge.  One child even created a Book Bingo photo montage of him completing one of the grids. 

Blue Book Bingo photo montage. Image used with parent's permission.

Author Visits / Giving Books Away

Nothing inspires reading and writing more than a visit from an author, especially one whose books you are reading together.  We combined budgets through year groups and the English curriculum and invited the wonderful Caroline Lawrence to come to visit us and share her expertise.  When her books were really cheap in sets, we gave each child one and she graciously signed every one.

Book Amnesties

This year, we have started something new to ensure our bookshelves are always full.  We discovered that some families had many books belonging to the school at home but were too embarrassed to return them as there were sometimes up to ten books.  To solve this, some of our school council set up a table on the playground for a week before and after school.  This became our Book Amnesty table, where parents and pupils could return books that belong to the school or certain teachers with no questions asked.  During our first amnesty, hundreds of books were returned to the school but many families donated old books to the school as well.  The school council then decided which year group each book should be returned to.  This has become a regular occurrence which helps us make sure we have a big selection of stories for our children to choose from.  

Take The Time To Talk - know your kids and know the books

If a child was struggling to know what to read, I would do one (or some) of the following. 

 - recommend a book based on their likes/dislikes
 - give them 2 appropriate books and suggest they read the first chapter of each and choose one (or we'll find a different one)
 - go the library or another classroom together and find some books similar to those they've enjoyed
 - suggest a child who is similar in their likes and ability to talk to the child about books they'd recommend
 - ask a child they admire or one of their friends to recommend some books to try
 - compose an email to staff members (with the child) to request a specific book and then buy it from our budget if no one had it.

Making time for such conversations isn't easy but the long-term benefits far outweigh any short-term minutes lost.  Generally, I encourage kids to "try before you buy" and I never force them to finish a book.  Discussing which books everyone is reading together is important too; we do this for the register sometimes.  Also, engaging parents in their child's choice of books is a powerful way of helping pupils enjoy reading. This is something I'm hoping to explore further this coming year.  Watch this space...

Further Reading (about reading!)

You may be interested to read this post about how teachers at The Wellington Academy have raised the profile of reading in their secondary setting.  

Also, Rhoda (a friend and former colleague) has written this post about what she'll be doing this year to enhance engagement with reading. 

Finally, this post was written with KS1 children in mind and has some more ideas for encouraging kids to read.

Preventing Extinction

There is a sound which is slowly become extinct from our spoken language and I'm on a mission to ensure it remains:

'th'

There are over four thousand words in the English language which contain the 'th' sound and some of them are among the most common words used.  However, in the last couple of years I have a noticed a deterioration in the pronunciation of it.  Often, children and adults are replacing it with a 'v', 'ff' or 'd' sound.  

Before training to teach, I spent four months in a children's centre on the outskirts of Mexico City. To bring in some money for the centre, I taught English classes to adult beginners in the evenings.  'Th' is a very unusual sound for South American Spanish speakers; they don't have any sounds which require them to push their tongue forward like that.  I always encouraged them to show their tongue to ensure they were making the right sound.  "Quiero ver tu lengua," (I want to see your tongue) became a regular phrase in the English lessons.  It was hard work for them but when they persevered they made much clearer English sounds.  Why, then, are we not encouraging native English speakers to make the real 'th' sound?

When I first started recognising this as a problem among my primary students, I found it hard to correct children because I felt like it might be an inappropriate thing to insist on.  After all, very few people speak the highest quality English and I was worried about highlighting the fact that children weren't speaking correctly.  It was when I realised this lazy form of speaking was having a negative impact on the spelling of some of my best writers that I started taking action.  

Below you can see some of the errors I've come across since September.  These are from a range of abilities and contexts. 

fin - thin

somefing - something 

ve/de - the

dere/fer - there

dat - that

phrone - throne

deaf - death

over - other

To try and tackle this and prevent the correct 'th' sound from being extinct from some children's speech, I've made it explicit in my class that every time we us a 'th' sound, it needs to be correct.  They can correct me, I can correct them and, most importantly, they can correct each other.  To help remind them, I've put this poster up on our Scribble HQ wall.  

It has quite shocked me the extent to which some children struggle to make the 'th' sound but, with the highest of expectations now, I am hoping to prevent extinction and improve the high-frequency spelling of my class.

UPDATE: I have recently added the poster below to my walls after discovering that well over half my class cannot correctly pronounce the number three.

Using Highlighters in Primary

In recent weeks, there have been a couple of blog posts (from Alex and Jon) about the use of highlighters in school.  Reading these made me think about my use of highlighters so I decided to go on a highlighter hunt in books for how both the children and I use them to have an impact on learning.  I was completely surprised by how much they are used in my classroom so here are some examples of what I've found they can help with.

CHILDREN'S USE

Sentence Structure

I have written previously about how I have tried to help children sort out there sentences.  Below, you can see how the child has serious errors in their sentences.  Using the highlighters to indicate a change of sentence makes it very clear.  The pupil can then re-write the work in the correct structure.  For more information about how I tackle ingrained misconceptions about sentences, please click here.

Maths Word Problems

I know often teachers ask children to highlight the information in work problems.  I get children to highlight the question as many times children have done the working out right but have chosen the wrong piece of information for the answer.  This helps them answer the actual question they are being asked.

Thinking Blocks

The children also use highlighters in their workings out.  As a school, we use thinking blocks to help children visualise mathematics.  Sometimes, it is necessary to colour some blocks so using highlighters is much quicker than colouring in or shading.  The child below is finding fractions of a number so she has used highlighter to indicate the amount which showing her understanding of the maths concept.

Here you can see highlighters used in fraction word problems and the calculation of the answers.

Long, Chunking, Bus-Stop, Column Division Method (Or whatever else you want to call it!)

Here, highlighters help the children locate where the answer is in their working-out notes.  

Subordinating Conjunctions

When using subordinating conjunctions at the beginning of sentences, children often forget the comma.  I can't remember whether this highlighting was done by a peer or the children themselves but it has helped to highlight the important parts of the sentence: conjunction at the beginning, comma after the clause and ending punctuation.  This serves two main purposes; it helps the children do corrections if they have missed elements and it highlights the key learning so it's easier for me to mark.  

ADULT'S USE

Stampers

I have a few stampers which give different options - highlighters make it clear which part refers to the work.  Our success criteria is organised into Good/Amazing/Awesome and I have a stamp to indicate that a child needs to remember Capital Letters or Full Stops.  You can see these highlighted below. 

Addressing Misconceptions

For children who can read and understand my comments, highlighters help me in explanations of their misconceptions.  Below, I have written out the calculation and the highlighter has helped me focus her attention on her target.

Pink/Green

Many primary schools use this: Pink = Tickled Pink = Evidence of great work  Green = Growth = Things to improve.  As you can see from the photos below, I use this across their work and on our success criteria which is titled Good / Amazing / Awesome (inspired by Ian).  Sometimes I provide corrections for the green areas but often it is the child's job to correct their work.  A simple pink or green mark near the end is accompanied by a comment to show an overall assessment of their work.

Scribble HQ - Writing Working Wall Display

Inspired by FootieFanMiss' Working Walls, this year I have kept a writing display as a fluid way of recording what we are learning and to help children improve their writing.  This is definitely a work-in-progress but the kids are really enjoying using it at the moment and it is having more impact than many of my displays have before!  This short, photo-heavy post will be a quick tour of what's on there and why!  To start with, this photo shows the wall as a whole.  I've called it "Scribble HQ" after the the location in my favourite children's book, Scribbleboy by Phillip Ridley.  I tend to read part or all of this book to every class so they understand the link! 

We are really focusing, in year 4, on word types so we have some mini word - clouds.  Some of them are pre-made but most are the children's ideas, sometimes with names or initials to give them ownership of the words.  

There is a space for our Alan Peat sentence of the week.

Next to this are some examples of the Alan Peat sentences in the books we have read as a class.  The children have got really good about pointing these out as we're reading so I try and bookmark them and write them up! 

When children bring in work which they've done at home linked to our writing, that goes on Scribble HQ too. 

I can use the display to address any little misconceptions which are consistent across the class.  Here you can see they are struggling to differentiate between these two words so this should remind them, complete with my lovely stick men! 

These post-it notes have been added this week because we are working on inverted commas for speech.  I stole some words instead of "said" from children's work, wrote it on a speech bubble and put their initial on it.  We'll add to these over the next few weeks so that children can have a variety to choose from. 

As I said, this is just a start and something I'm experimenting with this year.  I was a bit hesitant at first as I was unsure that it would be used by the kids and was worried it would take forever to do.  However I've found most of the content can be added in lessons and the kids use it all the time! 

UPDATE July 2015:

This is how the Scribble HQ display looks at the end of the year (minus my finger  and stapler - sorry!).  There are a few additions that are probably quite unclear:

th (top left) - lots of my class use f or v instead of sticking their tongue out for th. Cue a quick doodle to model it correctly. 

cos > because (at the bottom left) - I'm trying to counteract this lazy speech.

Tricky Spellings (top in the middle) - I just keep adding to this when particularly hard spellings crop up. 

TiP ToP paragraphs (top right) - just a quick reminder. 

Prefixes and suffixes (top left) - trying to make this part of their everyday language.