Literacy,

Leora Heitlinger

Literacy Learning Specialist.

Good Afternoon to the CJC school community,

Today’s article will focus on the different types of lessons that tackle reading and viewing in the UPPER LEVELS.

Literature Circles…

Groups formed around students’ interests.
Student selected text (individual texts).
Focus on higher level thinking skills: author’s intent, characterisation, etc.
Teacher as Facilitator.

Book Talk…

Groups can be formed around students’ interest, or based in areas linked to the curriculum (Humanities/Social Emotional learning etc).
Each group has the same text.
Teacher scaffolds the conversation.

Students use sentence stems to frame their thinking and tier two words to express their ideas.

Guided Reading…

Teacher guides the lesson.

Reciprocal Reading…

Reciprocal teaching is a reading practice based on the foundational skills introduced through guided reading in addition to the use of scaffolded talk between a teacher and group members or group members with each other to develop and support comprehension.
Students who participate in this practice are encouraged to read, talk and think their way through the text.
Scaffolded talk about a text is guided by four comprehension strategies: predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarising (Palincsar and Brown, 1985; Palinscar, 2003).
Meaning of the text is jointly constructed through discussion between all group members. An appointed group leader prompts discussion for each of the strategies, so that all students are given the opportunity to apply and refine their skills when predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarising

BOOK Talk

Works on the principals of having three reasons to read.

Reason 1- The ideas of reading. i.e. The senses and inner thoughts/imaginings.
Reason 2 – The understandings of reading. The specifics, i.e. The setting, text structure, themes, impact, characters.
Reason 3. The competencies of reading. Analysis, i.e. the use of language, looking for evidence, examining deeper ideas in the text.