The Literate Classroom

Prue Goodwin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351982603
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Now in its fourth edition, The Literate Classroom combines a range of refreshing and challenging viewpoints from experienced classroom practitioners in order to offer practical and effective approaches to teaching reading and writing to primary students. Over the last few years, how teachers talk with children about their learning has been missing from much of the documentation going into school, but with essential information and advice, this book highlights the importance of speaking and listening in literacy learning and recognises the powerful links between reading, writing and dialogic talk.

This fully updated edition includes:

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• shared and guided reading and writing

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• comprehension through response to children's literature

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• guidance on literacy teaching with ELL pupils

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• new chapters on digital literacy, drama for literacy, talk for spelling and poetry.

The Literate Classroom describes how the theory behind key areas of literacy teaching can be transformed into realistic learning experiences within the classroom. An accessible and informative collection, this book is a must-have for any teachers of literacy in the primary sector.

Part

I

Starting points for literacy

Chapter

1

Making space for reading

Teaching reading in the early years

Margaret Perkins

Introduction

At the start of each new academic year, teachers consider their classrooms and look at their teaching plans in the light of what they want their pupils to experience and achieve. The teaching of reading is an area where they are not short of advice; the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum and the National Curriculum are just the beginning of a plethora of documentation offering advice and ‘guidance’. It can be confusing, and one is tempted to ask, ‘Where do I begin?’ in deciding how to teach reading.

Perhaps a useful starting point is to reflect on what we actually want the children to be able to do – how do we define reading? The National Curriculum makes big claims for reading: ‘Through reading in particular, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Literature, especially, plays a key role in such development. Reading also enables pupils both to acquire knowledge and to build on what they already know’ (DfE, 2013, p. 13). So reading is everything – but yet it is even more. When I read I enter into the worlds and minds of others – I know what it feels like to be in a certain place, in a certain situation, facing a certain dilemma. When I read my feelings are engaged; I sympathise and empathise with the characters I am reading about and often my emotions are as raw as theirs. When I read I learn things; I gain new information; my bank of knowledge is enlarged. When I read I hear others’ opinions and I evaluate them against my own viewpoint and against what I know of the writer. When I read I argue with the ideas on the page; I interpret them in the light of my own experiences; I absorb them or I reject them; I create worlds and ideas which grow from what I have read. When I read I know what to do; I follow the instructions to make the Ikea bookcase, to cook that new recipe, to find an address. When I read I enjoy the delights of language, of laughing as the joke plays with the meanings of words, of struggling with hidden meanings as I complete the crossword, of revelling in the craft of the skilled wordsmith. When I read I curl up on the sofa enjoying the escape from the bustle of life, but then I want to talk, ‘Have you read this? What do you think? Did you know that…? What happens next?’ Friends and family recommend books to me, colleagues show me where to find out certain information, the Internet takes me on unending journeys of discovery. Reading is a part of me and my life – without reading, my life would be poorer.

How do I begin to teach that? How can I hope to show children what reading offers them and what they can achieve through reading? It was Halliday (1978) who reminded us that effective and successful readers are those who understand the functions of reading; they know what reading can do and they want to exploit it to its fullest.

Starting points

As I contemplate my teaching programme, I need to remind myself that I am not starting from nothing. As teachers, it is important to acknowledge and build on what children already know, understand and can do in relation to literacy. What experiences have 3- to 7-year-olds had with regard to literacy? They are sure to be avid watchers of television – CBeebies, CBBC and CITV are probably key features of their lives. They follow the deadly adventures of Steve Backshall, look for World War I spies with Harriet and search for the ultimate Zook in BAMZOOKi. They might even watch The Worst Witch and be inspired to read the book. Of course, they cannot express the idea, but their laughter at many of the antics suggests that they are reading the text of the programme inferentially. They also will have been to the cinema and seen Moana, Trolls and the latest film versions of The BFG and The Jungle Book. They probably went with their families and afterwards discussed which bit they liked best and what they thought of the behaviour of the characters. They may travel in the back of the car and watch adults looking for road signs, trying to find where they are on the map and attempting to make sense of the directions. They watch adults using YouTube to move around visual texts, assembling a new bookcase and complaining that the instructions don’t make any sense. They play games on the PlayStation 4 and read much more effectively than I can what is happening on the screen. They take advice from their older siblings who have probably downloaded cheats from the Internet and can show them how to move on quickly to the next level. They may visit museums, stately homes or art galleries and follow a trail using a guide that asks them to find things out and record them. They may have visited the library and taken out lots of books so they can collect the stickers. They may even have looked at the books! They have done all these things and they have watched even more. They have experienced the power and invasiveness of the printed word in their lives and the lives of those around them.

In short, they have learnt that the written word moves – it changes, it can be played with, it is there to do what I want it to do. They have learnt that it informs, it tells you things. They have learnt that reading can be fun and can be done with lots of other people. Of course, not all children will have had all those experiences. Many children will have done things with print but not talked about them with a more experienced reader – for them, their learning may be deeply embedded so that they do not realise what they know. For some, their experiences of print will be very different from what I have described. We can be confident, though, that all children will have had experiences of print. We know from research going back over many years (Heath, 1983; Minns, 1997; Pahl, 1999; Gregory, 2000; Dyson, 2001) that children come to school with understandings of how literacy works and what it can do. The danger is that we assume their understandings are the same as ours, and even more dangerous is the assumption that we are right and they are wrong. As teachers, our starting point must be a recognition of the knowledge, skill and understanding with which children come to school and to use those as the starting point for our teaching and planning.

Making space

How do we do that? I would argue that we begin by making space for reading within our classroom and within our teaching programme. It is as we create time, experiences, opportunities, conversations and resources for reading, and observe children within those spaces, that we can identify their understanding. I watched Andy reading The Guardian in the role-play area; I watched Jessica looking up a number in the phone book before she made a call; I watched Edward rejecting all the books in the book corner because ‘I don’t know how to read yet’; I watched Taylor, who struggles with many books, devour a challenging book about fishing because, ‘I go fishing every week with my Dad’; I watched Lucy and Sophie talking and laughing together as they read a picture book; I watched Ryan’s mum asking him if he had a new book to read and telling him to ask me for one; I watched Thomas laughing with joy as I read to the class. As I watched these children and their encounters with reading, I came to know what reading meant to them (and perhaps to their families) and what they were expecting reading in school to be. This enables me to plan so that I can extend their understanding of print and what it can do and enable them to become effective readers. I do this by making space within my classroom in many ways.

Space for texts

We live in a print-rich environment and I want to reflect that within my classroom. I want the print in my classroom to serve all the different purposes that the children have seen and experienced it serving in their homes and communities. That means, among other things, that they will have access to a wide range of texts.

There will be conventional picture books, pop-up books and non-fiction books. There will be collections of books by the same author, collections of books on the same theme (joke books, school stories, stories that challenge convention, poetry) and books that allow the more inexperienced reader to enjoy them independently because of the relationship between the words and the illustrations and/or the use of natural language that follows the rhythm of spoken English. In short, there will be lots and lots of books of all different sorts. I will create a space for these books within my classroom that allows them to show themselves off and which supports children in their reading. I will put similar books together. I will draw attention to related books. I will suggest what they might look for in the books, and I will recommend ones I have enjoyed and suggest they do the same. I will draw their attention to other types of texts to read and share: web pages on the computer found through search engines, notices on the wall and on the screen in the school reception, labels and captions, talking photographs, films and cartoons, and all sorts of graphic texts. This space for texts will be like a treasure island, inviting exploration and discovery.

However, a treasure island takes time to explore, and so within my classroom I will provide time for the children to be there. They will be encouraged to browse and allowed to pick up a book, flick through it and take it away to read or reject it. I will encourage the children to make decisions about what they read and give them time to encounter a variety of texts. I will provide time for general browsing.

There will also be time for focused browsing. I want children to be able to use books for their own purposes, and so there will be times when I will ask them to browse with a given aim in mind:

‘Look at all these books about Preston Pig – how many different ways has he escaped from the wolf?’

‘Can you find out where milk comes from?’

‘What are the differences between these different versions of The Three Little Pigs?’

‘Which of these stories about Alfie do you like best?’

It is clear that both during and/or after general and focused browsing must come talk. The children need to talk about their discoveries and to be encouraged to tell where and how they found this out, what their reasons are for thinking this and what the text tells them about that. An informed adult will build on their responses, and by asking the right questions will encourage them to look and think further:

‘Why do you think Alfie felt shy about going to the party?’

‘Why do you think the wolf wanted the pigs to go and pick apples?’

‘How does the milk get from the farmer to the shop?’

‘Do you think Preston Pig knows the wolf is always chasing him?’

Reading is a social activity, and talk is an essential element of the reading process. By talking with children about their reading, we can encourage them to respond to what they have read. Chamber’s (1993) model of the three sharings is useful in this context:

• ‘Tell me the things you enjoyed and didn’t enjoy about this book. What made you excited and what annoyed you? Tell me the good bits and the not so good bits. Did you like the same parts as I did? I wonder why not?’
• ‘Tell me what puzzles you about this book. What don’t you understand? What doesn’t make sense to you?’
• ‘Tell me the patterns you see in this book. What do you think it is about? What things go together? What is linked to what?’

This model helps children to engage in depth with a text. The Magic Bed by John Burningham (2003) is a book that prompted long discussion with a group of children:

‘I was really cross with Granny when she sold the bed.’

‘I loved it when he chased the pirates away.’

‘Who is Frank?’

‘What is the magic word?’

‘When he travelled on his magic bed he looked after lots of people.’

‘He had lots of secrets from the grown-ups.’

By listening to children’s comments and inviting them continually to refer back to the book to support what they are saying, the adult is teaching the children to read intelligently. This sort of talk can happen during shared or guided reading, when working at text level. A group could also browse during independent time or discuss a book with another adult at that time. The adult needs only to have read the book and to know the framework of three sharings. As children and adult respond together, the children are equal contributors to the discussion.

When planning my teaching programme I will also include space for me to read aloud to the children. I will do this as often as I can and whenever I can. Reading to children is an important time for establishing group cohesion but it is also a vital reading lesson. I will choose to read texts that the children cannot read for themselves; I will introduce them to new texts and new authors; I will use this opportunity to extend their repertoire and teach them more about being a reader. What do I want them to learn from these lessons?

• I want them to hear what fluent, phrased, expressive reading sounds like. They will have a model of ‘good’ reading on which they can base their own reading. This means that I must be sure that I read the book well, that I know it and have prepared this reading lesson as much as any other. I will also put in my classroom a listening corner with tapes of lots of people reading different books. They will hear different voices reading in a variety of accents and even languages.
• I want them to be introduced to a large range of different authors and books. I want the children to be enthused and want to read these books for themselves.

Children’s literature will be the bedrock of my reading curriculum. There is a huge, disparate range of published books, and I want children to be the sort of readers who can discriminate and choose quality texts. However, literature is not the only sort of text we read, and in my classroom I want to make space for many different types of texts.

There will be audio texts – both commercial and homemade – that will enable children to hear different readings and different voices. There will be comics, magazines, newspapers, posters, mail – examples of the texts that surround us all in day-to-day life. My role-play area, in whatever form it takes at this particular moment, will contain props that allow the children’s play to reflect the literate behaviours that naturally occur within that context. So a home corner will have phone books and message pads, cookery books, noticeboards with memos and calendars, newspapers, letters, junk mail and so on. Talk about these props and how they are used will inform and guide the children’s play.

There will be electronic texts of all types – talking books, web pages from the Internet, emails and text messages, adventure games, etc. Talk around these will focus on how we read different texts in different ways and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributor list
• The literate classroom: an introduction
• Part I Starting points for literacy
• Part II ‘The sea of talk’
• Part III Becoming readers and writers
• Part IV Engaging the imagination
• Index