How to plan reading lessons

I love planning reading lessons.  In my role, I'm lucky enough to sit down with colleagues across the school and plan with them.  Each time this happens, it makes me reflect on the process of planning an entire reading unit.  I touch on this during my reading training sessions (in person and online!) but have never put it down on the blog so...here goes!  This post is aiming towards a set of lessons in the four-part structure explained in Part 2 of these CPD videos. It might be worth watching before reading this post if you're not familiar.

Read the book...twice.

The first thing I do with a new reading unit is to read the book.  This seems really simple but it's surprising how often teachers start planning a unit before they've read the whole book.  It's important for this first time that I just read and enjoy the book, taking in any main themes or potential trigger areas.  Of course, I will start to get ideas as I read but generally I won't write these down yet.  Really, I'm reading the book to check its appropriateness: are the themes appropriate for the age (remember some book covers are deceptive)? Are the themes appropriate for my class/cohort? Am I enjoying reading the book? Would my class/cohort enjoy the book? How easy is it to follow the narrative and get lost in the book? Are there any issues in the book which may trigger certain reactions from children due to their lived experiences?  With that last question, if the answer is 'yes', that's not necessarily a reason to not use the book; it's a reason to consider communicating with that child and the family about the potential triggers before introducing the lessons. 

Once I'm happy the book is wholly appropriate and of a high-quality, I will read the book again.  This time, I'll read with a notebook next to me, scribbling down a variety of things: 

• Key vocabulary which comes up time and time again (e.g. in There's A Boy In The Girls' Bathroom there are a lot of American words) 
• Any general knowledge references which children may not know about or know enough about to fully comprehend the story (e.g. in Number The Stars, the Danish Resistance is quite key to many elements of the story)
• Key moments which would be good points to stop and summarise - perhaps before or after a complicated part of the plot - or to predict. 
• Extracts which lend themselves to a specific skill

These notebooks are fairly messy and rarely are all the ideas used, but it makes a very good starting point for planning.

Map out the book over the time

The next job is to ensure that we will finish reading the book in the time given.  You might have a half term, a term or a fortnight in which to complete your reading unit.  In this time, it's so important to finish the book with the children so that they get closure on the story and so that you can guide them through their comprehension right to the end.  I start this with the halfway point: if we're reading for a term, then by half term I need to be halfway through.  I create a rough guide to where I need to get to each week using page numbers or chapters.  This is something I started doing after making the mistake of not getting far enough and having too many pages to read in the last week of a term! 

Identify the chapters to 'just read' and link to skills

These chapters will be the ones you focus in on for teaching the reading skills to pupils.  They need to be at an appropriate point in the book each week to ensure you'll get through the text and also have enough quality text in them for the skill you want to achieve.  I often start with a retrieve or authorial intent (choice) activity linked to characters so the first 'just read' chapter could be one which introduces the main characters.  Once you're well into the book and before a big twist occurs, there may be a chapter which requires children to really understand what has happened - that could be a point at which you teach the summarising objectives.  I sit with the skills in front of me and match them to chapters/extracts, ensuring all the main comprehension skills are covered within a unit (unless it's a short unit).

By now you should have a skeleton overview with the key chapter/extract and the focus skill for each week. 

Vocabulary / General Knowledge

Each 'just read' lesson has a session before in which we front load (or pre-teach) some key vocabulary or general knowledge.  If my notes from the second read through are detailed enough, I should know whether each week's extract lends itself to a vocabulary focus or a knowledge focus.  These are added to the overview.  If it's a vocabulary week, it's important that the activity allows children to learn and understand the new words which they will encounter during the week.  Occasionally, this could be a dictionary task but I'd recommend the Vocabulary Ninja book and Closing the Vocabulary Gap for ideas for other vocabulary activities and some sound theory on vocabulary teaching.  A general knowledge week is a good chance to practise reading comprehension test skills with an unseen text.  Alternatively, children could complete a comprehension activity based on a text (or video, infographic, cartoon etc!) which helps them learn the appropriate information. 

Comprehension Activities

By now, the skills for each extract each week are mapped out.  It's time to decide how children are going to practise and improve the skill you are teaching.  More often than not, this means a focused comprehension activity rather than multiple comprehension questions as per CGP books or reading tests.  Will children need to respond to a question with prose? Do they need to match elements together? Are they making a judgment on something and how could they show their response? Do they need to justify their response with quotations?  I always have a go at completing the activity to consider what children will find difficult and what they will need during the input in order to be successful. This is sometimes the hardest part but by keeping these simple and focusing on the reading skill we can build children's understanding.  The more you talk to teachers, look in other teachers' reading books, have a look over Twitter (there are some brilliant ideas there!) and search, the greater your bank of potential comprehension activities will become. 

By this point, the weekly overview should be complete and you're ready to look at individual lessons.  I end up with something like the grid below.

When We Were Warriors by Emma Carroll

Scaffolding

It's important that all children can access the learning and the activity.  Take time to consider how the children who struggle the most with comprehension or decoding will be successful with the skill you're teaching. Children who struggle with comprehension will often require different support to children who struggle with decoding.  Scaffolding for comprehension can include sentence starters or structures, more guided adult support, steps towards a final product or to focus on one element of the activity/story.  Scaffolding for decoding can include highlighted words or phrases to focus on for the reading, shorter extracts, a simplified version of the text or an audio book to support.  These children will require decoding intervention in addition to the reading lessons - we do this during the fifth independent reading session.  Make sure the scaffolding for pupils is clear on the plan, and that you've considered how all children can be successful.  Also remember, scaffolding should be withheld at first to give children the chance to smash your expectations of them, and any support should be temporary - but that's a whole other blog post!

Plan and resource

This final step is the one teachers are very familiar with and good at! Once the bare bones of the unit are in place and well-planned, it's easy to meat out the plans with clear explanations, modelling of the reading skill (including use of Teacher Fool), any questions which will be asked, key misconceptions to go over and the role of any adults within the lesson.  I tend to add detail to the plan as I resource each session: as I prepare any slides, resources or support materials, I ensure the plan is clear how and when they should all be used. 

I hope this has been useful, particularly if you're new to teaching or new to teaching reading in this way.  Please do get in touch on Twitter, via email or on the contact form on this blog if you have any questions.  There are tonnes more blog posts about reading here. Happy planning! 

Mixing It Up - Mixed Ability Grouping in my Primary Classroom

I have a confession to make. It's one I've made before on this blog and something I don't mind reminding people of time and again.  It's also important to remind myself repeatedly because I learned a lot from this big mistake I made as an NQT.

When I started teaching, I was obsessed with ability groups. 

How were groups organised?

In my NQT year, I had ability groups for maths, writing and reading so pupils moved between different tables for these lessons.  At first, these groups remained the same for half a term then they were changed based on assessments.  Children would be disheartened and parents would enquire if their child went from Rectangles to Circles. Equally, celebrations were had when they went 'up' from Rowling to Blyton.  

Very soon, I decided this wasn't working and that my groups should be more flexible.  For the next year, I changed maths groups each week, abandoned writing groups and kept reading groups the same; after all, it's impossible to do guided reading with 5 different books with flexible groups.  The move from Guided Reading to whole-class reading lessons allowed me to abandon reading groups. 

Why change the strategy?

Although it felt like I was doing some really important things, in reality having ability groups was damaging for many reasons.  Without realising it, I was cultivating an ethos of fixed mindsets.  The children knew where they stood in the class and equally that was where they stood in my mind - very little movement or opportunities for them to go beyond where I'd placed them.  Their tasks and activities were set at the right level for their table and they completed them.  However there was no real personalised challenge.  I was putting a ceiling on children's learning.  

Also, the children and their parents were acutely focused on the groups rather than the learning of the subject.  This had negative consequences on children's self esteem in return for no learning gains.  Having to change ability groups every week or six weeks meant I was creating unnecessary workload for myself. Within a week of being at my new school, I had completely abandoned all ability groups. 

How does it work now?

Children sit at mixed ability tables for all subjects.  Sometimes I specify who children sit next to in the groups and, occasionally, I've insisted they sit boy/girl/boy/girl; although this is for behavioural reasons.  As I've mentioned in previous posts, we plan our lessons in a top-down format.  We consider what will stretch our children who come to the lesson with the highest starting point and then plan to support the rest of the class to aim as high as they can within the same learning objective.  Instead of prescribing which level of support children have, they are able to choose when they need some forms of scaffolding.  This means that all children are challenged and there is a greater motivation for them because they have had an element of choice.  

The activity is the same for all children with different forms of support available.  I often use my three-tiered tray set to help organise this.  Sometimes the options for support for the activity are just displayed on the board or discussed as a class, other times I put resources to support children in the trays (e.g. word mats, sentence starters, questions, writing frames, 100 squares etc) occasionally corresponding the colours to the level of support but mostly the colours don't mean much. Children know where they can go for more support and, as much as possible, I try to ensure children can aim higher throughout the lesson if they are confident, removing supports to encourage independence.

When children are completing activities, I use my time in a variety of ways.  Firstly, I could be using my little Ikea stool to move around the class and support various children as and when they require some help.  Early on in the year, children learn to ask for help when they know they're stuck rather than expect me to come straight to them.  This is especially important for the children with the lower starting points.  In ability groups, they are often very used to having adult support immediately.  In mixed ability groups, they must become more in control of their learning and understanding, particularly recognising when they are stuck.  

Secondly, I could be targeting specific children who I have recognised that may require support in the lesson.  I would aim for them, using my trusty stool, and ensure I address any misconceptions or questions.  Alternatively, I may have decided to work with a specific group - it could be children who struggled in the last lesson, pupils who may require further input or announcing my help for children to come and go as they please.  In my classroom, I have a small carpet area which I use for these quick interventions.  Sometimes children bring their book and a pencil; other times they bring a whiteboard and a pen.  My aim in these times is to ensure children become confident enough to return to their working place as soon as possible but sometimes children choose work with me on the carpet for the whole lesson.  Providing they are challenging themselves and working hard, I am happy for them to complete the activity wherever.  

Their tables are named after Superheros and the groups are called their Super Groups.  Every 3 or 4 weeks (half of a half term) they change Super Groups and they can earn Super Group points for behaviour, effort, reading at home, getting diaries signed, games etc.   The winning team at the end of the time gets a prize - a box of heroes (get it?!) - to share.  

Every lesson is different and there is certainly no formula I use to manage mixed-ability groupings.  I organise lessons based on the learning taking place and what I know about the children.  There are some patterns within different subject areas and, having used mixed-ability groups for a while now, it is second nature to ensure all children will be appropriately challenged.  At times, this requires changing the course of a child's learning mid lesson - and those are certainly the most exciting lessons! 

More information:

This post has information about challenging all children.

This post links mixed ability groupings to mindsets

This post goes into further detail about pupil choice in lessons.

How to Plan for a Supply Teacher

After such a successful first post about his experiences supply teaching, my husband has written another post to give some ideas about how best to leave plans for a cover teacher to follow.  

It is a huge misconception that class teachers need to leave thorough and detailed plans for supply teachers. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t provide plans at all, but what it does mean is that class teachers shouldn’t waste their time writing out, printing and generally fretting too much over what their supply teacher is going to do with their class. The reason I write this is because class teachers already have a busy schedule without needing to worry too much about days when they have got supply. They’ve got other things to get on with! 

When cover teachers arrive at a school in the morning, they don’t want to have to look through pages and pages of planning. This is not because we are lazy - we are against a time limit. We need to be able to read through up to five different lesson plans before the children arrive for the day. The plans need to be short, simple and understandable. I tend to arrive at a school before 8am meaning I have approximately 40 minutes to get my head around what is going on. It makes us supply teachers panic if we are not really sure about what to do in each lesson. It is best not to leave hand-written plans as, sometimes, that can be even harder to read and understand. Typed notes, if possible, are much clearer. 

If you know your school’s lesson plans are difficult to comprehend because the format is full of boxes, jargon and anything else that is simply included to impress Ofsted, don’t leave that for supply teachers to read through. Plans for supply teachers need to be brief notes with the important bits only. Either that or simply highlight the important parts of the plan that you want the cover teacher to read so they don’t have to go through it all. It is not ideal to write all over plans as, again, this can make the plans difficult to understand. 

I have often turned up at schools and the plans have been left with a teaching assistant.  This is less than ideal because they tend to come in later than me and could be absent on the day.  Instead, ensure any plans and resources are left out somewhere obvious so that, if the supply teacher comes in earlier than the teacher welcoming them, they can read through everything and get their heads around it straight away rather than having to wait. If the class teacher is in school on the day that they have got cover, it is helpful to visit the supply teacher to check if everything makes sense or to discuss the plans.  It is useful for teaching assistants to know what the class is doing so that, if there are any problems, they can help.  If there are any IT resources to be set-up for the day, it is a good idea to check that they work first and ensure that someone in school is arranged to load them. 

The most thorough supply teachers mark books from all lessons at the end of the day. However, it is really important for teachers to not leave too much marking for their supply. I have been in the position where, come 3:15pm, I’m faced with the prospect of marking 4 sets of books. If I am to mark well, there’s no way I can mark that many books before 6:00pm. If you want work to be marked well by the supply teacher, remember to include it in your notes. Furthermore, try to leave a reasonable volume of marking otherwise the supply will probably only tick and stamp them. If it is possible, try to think of some practical lessons, for example whiteboard or online work, to plan into a supply day to help reduce the marking. Alternatively, plan time for the children to mark their own work. 

Planning aside, the most important thing I need to know is how to keep your class safe.  Are there any allergies, serious family circumstances or other well-being issues?  Which children require extra support and are there any adults who are not DBS checked that cannot be left alone with children? These notes need to be very clear and near the top of any documents.  It is also useful to have timetable information for the school and some idea of how children are grouped in lessons.  

Finally, please make sure you point cover teachers in the direction of the toilet, staff room and coffee machine. After all, we're only human! 

The Five Minute Lesson and Topic Plan (Adapted from @TeacherToolkit )

The Five Minute Lesson Plan has been floating around the Twitter-sphere and Blog-sphere for a few months now.  I've often looked at it and thought it sounds like a great idea but couldn't see it working practically for me.  However, I am now at that moment where I am looking for a different planning format because the one I currently use takes a long time to fill in.

Taking the original plan by @TeacherToolKit, I have adapted it for the primary classroom, adding in a section for Support along the bottom so I can plan in my TA and other adults and where they will be.

You can find my Five Minute Lesson Plan here:

MrsPTeach Five Minute Lesson Plan

I also wanted something similar to plan whole cross-curricular topics or subjects.  So I made a Five Minute Topic Plan which you can find here:

MrsPTeach Five Minute Topic Plan

Have you used the #5minplan ? What do you think of these adaptations? Let me know in the comments.  Hopefully you can download and edit these yourself in Word!

MrsPTeach