Whole Class Reading | Vicar's Green Primary School

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:

Some of the books/texts we use to teach reading are: