Whole Class Reading
Whole Class Reading at Vicar’s Green
The Rationale for Whole Class Reading (as opposed to Guided Reading):
- All children are being taught reading skills by the teacher every day, whereas under the old Guided Reading system children were only given the teacher’s expert instruction once a week.
- Whole Class Reading exposes all children to good quality texts so that all children will benefit from being exposed to higher level vocabulary.
- Teachers follow structured weekly plans, and are able to develop various aspects of reading and comprehension skills with the whole class.
- Teaching Assistants are still present in lessons and will support small groups of children where needed.
During Whole Class Reading sessions, teachers instruct pupils on skills relating to eight key reading domains:
Decode |
Use phonological knowledge to read unfamiliar words and explain the meanings of words in context. |
Retrieve |
Retrieve and record information / identify key details from fiction and non-fiction. |
Summarise |
Summarise main ideas from more than one paragraph. |
Infer |
Make inferences from the text / explain and justify inferences with evidence from the text. |
Predict |
Predict what might happen from details stated and implied. |
Meaning |
Identify / explain how information / narrative content is related and contributes to meaning as a whole. |
Language |
Identify / explain how a meaning is enhanced through choice of words and phrases. |
Compare |
Make comparisons within the text. |
Resourcing Whole Class Reading
In order to teach Whole Class Reading, teachers use:
- Short extracts from longer texts
- Online texts and resources
- Sets of longer novels or non-fiction texts (15 of each book)
- Videos and audio where appropriate
Some of the books/texts we use to teach reading are:
- James and the Giant Peach (Roald Dahl)
- Animal Stories (Dick King Smith)
- Matilda (Roald Dahl)
- Beowulf (abridged version)
- Friend or Foe (Michael Morpurgo)
- The Railway Children (E. Nesbitt)
- Coming to England (Floella Benjamin)
- Carrie’s War (Nina Bawden)