Transcript Document

IMPROVING READING
Geoff Barton
Friday, July 17, 2015
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?
www.geoffbarton.co.uk
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?
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•
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
The literacy context ...
• 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 ...
• 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 footand-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
October 2005: Key findings
 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.
October 2005: Key findings
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.
October 2005: Key findings
• 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…
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• across the school?
• and in our English lessons?
WHOLE-SCHOOL LITERACY IMPACT!
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Subject-specific
vocabulary
Varied approaches to
reading
READING
Active research
process, not FOFO
Using DARTs
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Subject-specific vocabulary:
•
Identifying
•
Playing with context
•
Actively exploring
•
Linking to spelling
•
Providing glossaries, etc.
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Approaches to reading:
• Scanning
• Skimming
• Continuous reading
• Close reading
• Research skills, not FOFO.
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
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…
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
• across the school?
• and in our English lessons?
As English teachers, let’s …
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!
… and maintain a rich, lively, enjoyable
commitment to celebrating reading
1: Teaching the
linguistic conventions
of non-fiction texts
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
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; nonfiction presents difficulties all the
way through
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
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
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
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
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
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 …
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
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.
What kind of text is this?
What is its purpose?
Who is it aimed at?
What do you notice about its language?
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
What kind of text is this?
What is its purpose?
Who is it aimed at?
What do you notice about its language?
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
What kind of text is this?
What is its purpose?
Who is it aimed at?
What do you notice about its language?
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 darkcloaked figures disappearing silently
through carved portals.
What kind of text is this?
What is its purpose?
Who is it aimed at?
What do you notice about its language?
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.
What kind of text is this?
What is its purpose?
Who is it aimed at?
What do you notice about its language?
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’.
What kind of text is this?
What is its purpose?
Who is it aimed at?
What do you notice about its language?
Proud mum in a million
Natalie Brown hugged her
beautiful baby daughter
Casey yesterday and said:
“She’s my double miracle.”
What kind of text is this?
What is its purpose?
Who is it aimed at?
What do you notice about its language?
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 Dickens
Chapter 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.
√
√
√
bad
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.
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-cawing above our heads.
Susan Hill
BUILDING TENSION
Brian Moore, Cold Heaven
1
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.
2
‘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.
3
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.
4
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.
5
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.
6
‘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?
7
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, spreadeagle. 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.
8
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.
BUILDING TENSION
Brian Moore, Cold Heaven
WHOLE-SCHOOL LITERACY IMPACT!
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Subject-specific
vocabulary
Varied approaches to
reading
READING
Active research
process, not FOFO
Using DARTs
As English teachers, let’s …
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!
… and maintain a rich, lively, enjoyable
commitment to celebrating reading
Final thoughts on 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.”
English Teacher
Petite, white-haired Miss Cartwright
Knew Shakespeare off by heart,
Or so we pupils thought.
Once in the stalls at the Old Vic
She 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 streets
One 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 married
Was killed at Passchendaele.
Brian Cox
From Collected Poems, Carcanet Press 1993.
IMPROVING READING
Geoff Barton
Friday, July 17, 2015
www.geoffbarton.co.uk