improving reading

IMPROVING READING

Geoff Barton

Friday, April 21, 2023

www.geoffbarton.co.uk

1. Where are we with English?

2. What are the key issues relating to reading?

3. So what can we do to improve our pupils’ reading skills and pleasure in reading?


Welcome to the Literacy Club

Language Oddities …

DOGS MUST BE CARRIED

ON THE ESCALATOR

Please don't smoke and live a more healthy life

PSE Poster

Sign at Suffolk hospital:

Criminals operate in this area

ICI FIBRES

Would the congregation please note that the

bowl at the back of the church labelled ‘for the sick” is for monetary

donations only

Churchdown parish magazine

So where are we with

English?

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

• Literacy today is different from when we were younger

• Multi-media dominates

• Most ‘classic texts’ are known through film

• Reading extended writing is rare

• A visual culture dominates

• The notion of ‘accuracy’ is being challenged

• None of this is a bad thing

• Nearly 40% of pupils make a loss and no progress in the year following transfer, related to a decline in motivation

• Pupils characterise work in Years 7 and 8 as ‘repetitive, unchallenging and lacking in purpose’

• “Year 7 adds so little value that actually missing the year would not disadvantage some children” (Prof John West-Burnham)

The literacy context ...

The literacy context ...

• A 1997 survey showed that of 12 European countries, only Poland and Ireland had lower levels of adult literacy

• 1-in-16 adults cannot identify a concert venue on a poster that contains name of band, price, date, time and venue

• 7 million UK adults cannot locate the page reference for plumbers in the Yellow Pages

BBC NEWS ONLINE:

More than half of British motorists cannot interpret road signs properly, according to a survey by the Royal Automobile Club.

The survey of 500 motorists highlighted just how many people are still grappling with it.

According to the survey, three in five motorists thought a "be aware of cattle" warning sign indicated …

an area infected with foot-and-mouth disease.

Common mistakes

•No motor vehicles - Beware of fast motorbikes

•Wild fowl - Puddles in the road

•Riding school close by - "Marlborough country" advert

English Review 2000-05

October 2005: Key findings

• The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), published in 2003, found that, although the reading skills of 10 year old pupils in England compared well with those of pupils in other countries, they read less frequently for pleasure and were less interested in reading than those elsewhere. • An NFER reading survey (2003), conducted by Marian Sainsbury, concluded that children’s enjoyment of reading had declined significantly in recent years. • A Nestlé/MORI report highlighted the existence of a small core of children who do not read at all, described as an ‘underclass’ of non-readers, together with cycles of non-reading ‘where teenagers from families where parents are not readers will almost always be less likely to be enthusiastic readers themselves


There has been a marked improvement in the reading standards achieved but there remains a significant and continuing variability in performance across sometimes very similar schools. In addition, too few schools have given sufficient time and thought to how to promote pupils’ independent reading and there is evidence that many pupils are reading less widely for pleasure than previously. Many teachers struggle to keep up-to-date with good quality texts for their pupils to read.

October 2005: Key findings• The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), published in 2003, found that, although the reading skills of 10 year old pupils in England compared well with those of pupils in other countries, they read less frequently for pleasure and were less interested in reading than those elsewhere.

• An NFER reading survey (2003), conducted by Marian Sainsbury, concluded that children’s enjoyment of reading had declined significantly in recent years.

• A Nestlé/MORI report highlighted the existence of a small core of children who do not read at all, described as an ‘underclass’ of non-readers, together with cycles of non-reading ‘where teenagers from families where parents are not readers will almost always be less likely to be enthusiastic readers themselves.


• Strategies for promoting individual reading do not always sit easily alongside whole-class and group approaches to teaching reading. Most schools expect pupils to keep a record or journal of their reading, but the quality of these is mostly very poor.

• Pupils do not understand why they are expected to maintain them since most teachers do nothing with them.

• The Bullock report noted that the teacher who knows books well, who is aware of pupils’ interests and reading background and who discusses reading with them will have a significant impact on whether the pupils continue to read for pleasure and the effectiveness of their reading.


• Some teachers tell inspectors that teaching reading has lost its fun. • Is it appropriate or not any longer simply to read and share stories with their class; do they always need to analyse the text and set exercises? Is time for silent, independent reading regarded as good practice or not? Should teachers read whole novels with a class or is this a waste of valuable teaching time? • In fact, Ofsted’s evidence is that all these approaches, deployed appropriately, have potential, particularly as part of a systematic and balanced policy on reading.

So what should we do…



• across the school?

• and in our English lessons?

WHOLE-SCHOOL LITERACY IMPACT!QuickTime™ and a

TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

READING

Subject-specific vocabulary

Varied approaches to reading

Active research process, not FOFO Using DARTs



Subject-specific vocabulary:

• Identifying

• Playing with context

• Actively exploring

• Linking to spelling

• Providing glossaries, etc.



Approaches to reading:

• Scanning

• Skimming

• Continuous reading

• Close reading

• Research skills, not FOFO.



Using DARTs:

• Cloze

• Sequencing

• Diagram completion

• Disordered text

• Prediction

• Avoiding “Glombots”

The Glombots, who looked durly and lurkish, were fond of wooning, which

they usually did in the grebble.

1 What did the Glombots look like?2 What were they fond of doing? 3 Where did they like to do it?

So what should we do…



• across the school?

• and in our English lessons?

1. Approach text from the point of view of being a writer

2. Use class readers as symbolic texts and to make connections with other texts

3. Use more non-fiction but broaden the genres

4. Read texts aloud but not around the class

5. Teach students about non-fiction conventions - eg interrupting, long subjects, connectives, agent-avoidance!

As English teachers, let’s …

… and maintain a rich, lively, enjoyable commitment to celebrating reading

1: Teaching the linguistic conventions

of non-fiction texts

Fiction is more personal. Non-fiction has fewer agents:

•Holidays were taken at resorts

•During the 17th century roads became straighter

LITERACY FOR LEARNING

Children’s fiction tends to be chronological.

Fiction becomes easier to read; non-fiction presents difficulties all the

way through


Non-fiction texts rely on linguistic signposts - moreover, therefore, on the other hand. Children who are unfamiliar with these will not read with the same predictive power as they can with fiction


Non-fiction tends to have more interrupting constructions:

The agouti, a nervous 20-inch rodent from South America, can leap twenty feet from a sitting position

Asteroids are lumps of rock and metal whose paths round the sun lie mainly between Jupiter and Mars


Fiction uses more active verbs.

Non-fiction relies more on the copula (“Oxygen is a gas”) and use of the passive:

Some plastics are made by … rather than

We make plastics by …


Non-fiction texts have more complex noun phrases:

The remains and shapes of animals and plants are lost in the myriad caves of the region


2: Use starters to immerse pupils in lots

of texts

GUESS THE TEXT TYPE

What kind of text is this?What is its purpose?Who is it aimed at?What do you notice about its language?

It was on a bright day of midwinter, in New York. The little girl who eventually became me, but as yet was neither me nor anybody else in particular, but merely a soft anonymous morsel of humanity – this little girl, who bore my name, was going for a walk with her father. The episode is literally the first thing I can remember about her, and therefore I date the birth of her humanity from that day.


Urquhart castle is probably one of the most picturesquely situated castles in the Scottish Highlands. Located 16 miles south-west of Inverness, the castle, one of the largest in Scotland, overlooks much of Loch Ness. Visitors come to stroll through the ruins of the 13th-century castle because Urquhart has earned the reputation of being one of the best spots for sighting Loch Ness’s most famous inhabitant


Jake began to dial the number slowly as he had done every evening at six o’clock ever since his father had passed away. For the next fifteen minutes he settled back to listen to what his mother had done that day


Seville is voluptuous and evocative. It has to be seen, tasted and touched. The old quarter is Seville as it was and is. Walk in its narrow cobbled streets, with cascades of geraniums tumbling from balconies and the past shouts so loudly that one can almost glimpse dark-cloaked figures disappearing silently through carved portals.


Thirty years ago, Neil Armstrong was preparing for the most momentous step made by a human being in the twentieth century. But first he had to get there, wiggling his way out of the lunar module that had brought him and Aldrin this far.


There was a double eclipse in the early autumn of 1605 – a lunar eclipse on 19 September followed by an eclipse of the sun in early October. Such celestial phenomena were traditional held to ‘portend no good’.


Proud mum in a million Natalie Brown hugged her beautiful baby daughter Casey yesterday and said: “She’s my double miracle.”


2wentys Flights are ready to blast off again for summer 99. It’s a new concept in flying where we give you what you want (not what some old gipper wants). Let’s face it, if you’re flying to Ibiza it’s Sasha and Digweed not Mozart and Bach you’re after.

3: Explore texts actively, as if you were

a writer

How would YOU start a biography of a famous writer?

The Life of Charles DickensChapter 1

CHARLES DICKENS, the most popular novelist of the century, and one of the greatest humorists that England has produced, was born at Lanport, in Portsea, on Friday, the seventh of February, 1812.

His father, John Dickens, a clerk in the navy pay-office, was at this time stationed in the Portsmouth Dockyard. He had made acquaintance with the lady, Elizabeth Barrow, who became afterwards his wife, through her elder brother, Thomas Barrow, also engaged on the establishment at Somerset House, and she bore him in all a family of eight children, of whom two died in infancy. The eldest, Fanny (born 1810), was followed by Charles (entered in the baptismal register of Portsea as Charles John Huffham, though on the very rare occasions when he subscribed that name he wrote Huffam); by another son, named Alfred, who died in childhood; by Letitia (born 1816); by another daughter, Harriet, who died also in childhood; by Frederick (born 1820); by Alfred Lamert (born 1822); and by Augustus (born 1827).

DICKENS

CHARLES DICKENS was dead. He lay on a narrow green sofa – but there was room enough for him, so spare had he become – in the dining room of Gad’s Hill Place. He had died in the house which he had first seen as a small boy and which his father had pointed out to him as a suitable object of his ambitions; so great was his father’s hold upon his life that, forty years later, he had bought it. Now he had gone. It was customary to close the blinds and curtains, thus enshrouding the corpse in darkness before its last journey to the tomb; but in the dining room of Gad’s Hill the curtains were pulled apart and on this June day the bright sunshine streamed in, glittering on the large mirrors around the room. The family beside him knew how he enjoyed the light, how he needed the light; and they understood, too, that none of the conventional sombreness of the late Victorian period – the year was 1870 – had ever touched him.

All the lines and wrinkles which marked the passage of his life were new erased in the stillness of death. He was not old – he died in his fifty-eighth year – but there had been signs of premature ageing on a visage so marked and worn; he had acquired, it was said, a “sarcastic look”. But now all that was gone and his daughter, Katey, who watched him as he lay dead, noticed how there once more emerged upon his face “beauty and pathos”.

EXPLORING SUSPENSE

Write the opening of a mystery story. Set it at a funeral in a wintery churchyard.

√ √ √

Using models

Before ….

It was a bitterly cold day. Everyone was in black. The cars were black too. There were people standing around in a group waiting for the coffin. Crows were flying in the sky. It was really eerie.

bad

After ….

The undertaker's men were like crows, stiff and black, and the cars were black, lined up beside the path that led to the church; and we, we too were black, as we stood in our pathetic, awkward group waiting for them to lift out the coffin and shoulder it, and for the clergyman to arrange himself; and he was another black crow in his long cloak.

And then the real crows rose suddenly from the trees and from the fields, whirled up like scraps of blackened paper from a bonfire, and circled, caw-caw-ing above our heads. Susan Hill

BUILDING TENSION

Brian Moore, Cold Heaven

The wooden seats of the little pedal boat were angled so that Marie looked up at the sky. There were no clouds. In the vastness above

her a gull calligraphed its flight. Marie and Alex pedalled in unison, the revolving paddles making a slapping sound against the waves as the pedal boat treadmilled away from the beach, passing

through ranks of bathers to move into the deeper, more solitary waters of the Baie des Anges. Marie slackened her efforts but Alex

continued determinedly, steering the pedalo straight out into the Mediterranean.

1

‘Let’s not go too far,’ she said.

‘I want to get away from the crowd. I’m going to swim.’

It was like him to have some plan of his own, to translate idleness into activity even in these few days of vacation. She now noted his every fault. It was as though, having decided to leave him, she had withdrawn his credit. She looked back at the sweep of hotels along the Promenade des Anglais. Today was the day she had hoped to tell him. She had planned to announce it at breakfast and leave,

first for New York, then on to Los Angeles to join Daniel. But at breakfast she lacked all courage. Now, with half the day gone, she

decided to postpone it until tomorrow.

2

Far out from shore, the paddles stopped. The pedalo rocked on its twin pontoons as Alex eased himself up from his seat. He handed her his sunglasses. ‘This should do,’ he said and, rocking the boat even more, dived into the ultramarine waters. She watched him surface. He called out: ‘Just follow along, okay?’ He was not a

good swimmer, but thrashed about in an energetic, erratic freestyle. Marie began to pedal again, her hand on the tiller, steering the little boat so that she followed close. Watching him, she knew he could not keep up this pace for long. She saw his flailing arms and for a

moment thought of those arms hitting her. He had never hit her. He was not the sort of man who would hit you. He would be hurt, and

cold, and possibly vindictive. But he was not violent.

3

She heard a motorboat, the sound becoming louder. She looked back but did not see a boat behind her.

Then she looked to the right where Alex was swimming and saw a big

boat with an outboard motor coming right at them, coming very fast.

4

Of course they see us, she thought, alarmed, and then as though she were watching a film, as though this were happening to someone

else, she saw there was a man in the motorboat, a young man wearing a green shirt; he was not at the tiller, he was standing in the middle of the boat with his back to her and as she watched he

bent down and picked up a child who had fallen on the floorboards. ‘Hey?’ she called. ‘Hey?’ for he must turn around, the motorboat was coming right at Alex, right at her. But the man in the boat did not hear. He carried the child across to the far side of the boat; the

boat was only yards away now.

5

‘Alex,’ she called. ‘Alex, look out.’ But Alex flailed on and then the prow of the motorboat, slicing up water like a knife, hit Alex

with a sickening thump, went over him and smashed into the pontoons of the little pedal boat, upending it, and she found herself

in the water, going under, coming up. She looked and saw the motorboat churning off, the pedal boat hanging from its prow like a tangle of branches. She heard the motorboat engine cut to silence, then start up again as the boat veered around in a semicircle and

came back to her. Alex?

6

She looked: saw his body near her just under the water. She swam toward him, breastroke, it was all she knew. He was floating face down, spread-

eagle. She caught hold of his wrist and pulled him towards her. The motorboat came alongside, the man in the green shirt reaching down for her, but, ‘No, no,’ she called and tried to push Alex toward him. The man caught

Alex by the hair of his head and pulled him up, she pushing, Alex falling back twice into the water, before the man, with a great effort, lifted him like

a sack across the side of the boat, tugging and heaving until Alex disappeared into the boat. The man shouted, ‘Un instant, madame, un instant’ and reappeared, putting a little steel ladder over the side. She climbed up onto the motorboat as the man went out onto the prow to

disentangle the wreckage of the pedalo.

7

A small child was sitting at the back of the boat, staring at Alex’s body, which lay face-down on the floorboards. She went to Alex and saw blood

from a wound, a gash in the side of his head, blood matting his hair. He was breathing but unconscious. She lifted him and cradled him in her arms, his blood trickling onto her breasts. She saw the boat owner’s bare legs go past her as he went to the rear of the boat to restart the engine. The child began to bawl but the man leaned over, silenced it with an angry slap, the man turned to her, his face sick with fear. ‘Nous y serons dans un instant,’ he

shouted, opening the motor to full throttle. She hugged Alex to her, a rivulet of blood dripping off her forearm onto the floorboards as the boat raced to

the beach.

8

BUILDING TENSION

Brian Moore, Cold Heaven

WHOLE-SCHOOL LITERACY IMPACT!QuickTime™ and a

TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

READING

Subject-specific vocabulary

Varied approaches to reading

Active research process, not FOFO Using DARTs

1. Approach text from the point of view of being a writer

2. Use class readers as symbolic texts and to make connections with other texts

3. Use more non-fiction but broaden the genres

4. Read texts aloud but not around the class

5. Teach students about non-fiction conventions - eg interrupting, long subjects, connectives, agent-avoidance!

As English teachers, let’s …

… and maintain a rich, lively, enjoyable commitment to celebrating reading

Richard Steele:

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body”

Woody Allen

“I took a speed reading course and read 'War and Peace' in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.”

Final thoughts on reading …

English Teacher

Petite, white-haired Miss CartwrightKnew Shakespeare off by heart,Or so we pupils thought.Once in the stalls at the Old VicShe prompted Lear when he forgot his part.

Ignorant of Scrutiny and Leavis,She taught Romantic poetry,Dreamt of gossip with dead poets.To an amazed sixth form once said:‘How good to spend a night with Shelley.’

In long war years she fed us plays,Sophocles to Shaw’s St Joan.Her reading nights we named our Courting Club,Yet always through the blacked-out streetsOne boy left the girls and saw her home.

When she closed her eyes and chanted‘Ode to a Nightingale’We laughed yet honoured her devotion.We knew the man she should have marriedWas killed at Passchendaele.

Brian CoxFrom Collected Poems, Carcanet Press 1993.

English Teacher

Petite, white-haired Miss CartwrightKnew Shakespeare off by heart,Or so we pupils thought.Once in the stalls at the Old VicShe prompted Lear when he forgot his part.

Ignorant of Scrutiny and Leavis,She taught Romantic poetry,Dreamt of gossip with dead poets.To an amazed sixth form once said:‘How good to spend a night with Shelley.’

In long war years she fed us plays,Sophocles to Shaw’s St Joan.Her reading nights we named our Courting Club,Yet always through the blacked-out streetsOne boy left the girls and saw her home.

When she closed her eyes and chanted‘Ode to a Nightingale’We laughed yet honoured her devotion.We knew the man she should have marriedWas killed at Passchendaele.

Brian CoxFrom Collected Poems, Carcanet Press 1993.

IMPROVING READING

Geoff Barton

Friday, April 21, 2023


improving reading

Documents

reading skills

reading standards

enjoyment of reading

pupils independent reading

cycles of nonreading

year old pupils

key findings

lower levels of adult