Showing posts with label guidance report. Show all posts
Showing posts with label guidance report. Show all posts

Thursday 8 November 2018

Reading Roles Linked To Reading Comprehension Strategies

Recently someone contacted me through my blog asking a very important question:
I have recently come across your Reading Roles. From 2016 you have the weather forecaster etc ones and then from 2018 there are also the student/quiz master roles - do you recommend using all of these to cover content domain or focus on the newer ones? It seems like a lot of roles to remember.
 And here's my answer:
I would focus on the ones that are reading strategies, rather than ones which are only areas of the content domain from the test frameworks: 
Professor: Activating Prior Knowledge
Quiz Master: Questioning
Director: Visualization
Student: Monitoring/Clarifying (this one covers the Translator and the Interpreter so those two can go, although there needs to be a heavy focus on the vocab)
Detective: Drawing Inferences
Editor: Summarising 
I need to blog about this properly, so thanks for the prompt!
So here's my blog post:

When I initially developed the Reading Roles I focused solely on the areas of the content domain taken from the KS2 test framework. This was in reaction to the infamous 2016 KS2 reading test.

As time has gone by I have learned more about reading strategies as opposed to the reading skills that are tested. Some of the research-backed strategies are linked to the reading skills that are tested (inferencing, summarising, predicting) but not all of them are. This led me to add to the Reading Roles that I initially developed in order to shift the focus to learning metacognitive strategies that children can apply in order to better comprehend what they read.

Now, as in my answer above, I would advocate a much heavier focus on developing the reading strategies instead of just getting children to practise skills (by answering test-style questions, for example). Thus, whilst the other Reading Roles might still be used, I suggest that anyone choosing to use the Reading Roles might choose to focus on the following:

Click here to download this as a PDF: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/reading-roles-linked-to-reading-comprehension-strategies-12016559
These reading strategies are recommended in the EEF's KS2 Literacy Guidance under recommendation 3:


Another useful document giving a summary of reading strategies is the IES Practice Guide 'Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade' where its first recommendation is to teach students how to use reading comprehension strategies (pages 10 - 16).

Both the EEF's guidance document and the IES practice guide point out that responsibility for the use of these strategies should gradually be transferred to the child. The intention of assigning familiar job titles to reading strategies is that children are given an easy-to-refer-to system for being more deliberate with their thinking during reading, with the ultimate goal of being able to comprehend texts. Therefore, Reading Roles should only be used until children are using the strategies automatically.

In addition to this, DT Willingham, in his article Can Reading Comprehension Be Taught?, says that research shows that "the strategies are helpful but they are quickly learned and don’t require a lot of practice... And there is actually plenty of data showing that extended practice of reading comprehension strategies instruction yields no benefit compared to briefer review... Ten sessions yield the same benefit as fifty sessions."

Again, to reiterate, these Reading Role strategies should only be described, modeled and practised collaboratively and individually until the strategies are seen to be internalised - this will most likely occur at different points for different children.

It is also worth mentioning that the Reading Roles are not designed to be assigned one to each child in a group. Children should be working towards being able to select strategies to use and therefore should be allowed to practise all of them. Having said this, in some sessions you may choose to only focus on one strategy at a time whilst the children become familiar with them.

If you would like Aidan to work with you on developing reading at your school, please visit his website at https://www.aidansevers.com/services and get in touch via the contact details that can be found there.

Further reading:

To find out more about the Quiz Master, Student, Professor and Director Reading Roles, please click here: http://www.thatboycanteach.co.uk/2018/04/reading-roles-metacognitive-reading-strategies.html

To find out about a generic reading activity that uses the Director, Student, Professor, Quiz Master and Editor roles, click here: http://www.thatboycanteach.co.uk/2018/09/reading-roles-plus-generic-reading.html

To see the generic Reading Roles reading activity exemplified, click here: http://www.thatboycanteach.co.uk/2018/09/reading-roles-plus-comprehension-strategy.html

This blog post goes into much more detail about HOW we might teach reading comprehension strategies: http://www.thatboycanteach.co.uk/2018/03/reading-strategies-isolation-combination.html

Saturday 24 February 2018

From The @thirdspacetweets Blog: EEF Report Summary: Putting Evidence To Work


My work with Bradford Research School has really turned me on to the work of the EEF. So when they release another a guidance report I'm always keen to read it first to find out what its implications are. The latests one applies to all subjects and all schools but here, in this blog post for Third Space, I outline how I should have used it had it been published in time, and how I will use it in the future to introduce any new changes.

Winds of change blew in the world of primary Maths when the 2014 National Curriculum was introduced. We now had to teach some things sooner, other things later, some things not at all and there were additions too (hello, Roman numerals!). The ‘new’ holy trinity of Maths teaching and learning were introduced: fluency, problem solving and reasoning.

Then the SATs gradually changed. The calculation paper had already been done away with; next to go was the mental Maths test, replaced by the arithmetic test. And the reasoning tests appeared to begin to assess how pupils were doing on the 2014 curriculum ahead of schedule. The two new reasoning papers were perceived by many to be more difficult than before.

And so, up and down the land, Maths leaders and teachers have been making changes to the way the subject is taught in their schools...

Click here to read on: https://thirdspacelearning.com/blog/eef-putting-evidence-work-report-slt-summary/