ISSUES TO DO WITH LITERACY AND READING
- Teaching reading effectively has to be premised on explicit and shared intentions:
(what does this engagement mean?/how are you (pupils) expected to learn and progress/what overall sense can we make? how are we making meanings?)
- Objectives in themselves will not lead to improvement - they have to be shaped and supportively frame intended learning
- 'The reading professionals' (advisers, consultants, teachers, etc.) have to keep up with their own reading of material suitable and necessary in classrooms
- 'Reading professionals' should be exploring more networking and sharing opportunities
- Reading can often be more helpfully taught through the use of complementary/comparative texts alongside lead texts (single texts can become learning aids in themselves - rather than vehicles for reading learning)
- Good reading teaching requires making available for pupil choice a range of texts for sustained, independent reading (in the way that primary teachers have been successfully developing)
- The shift of attention to teaching and learning of non-fiction, so successfully growing in the primary school has to be continued into the secondary phase (this involves modelling of reading text aloud/reading for meaning/extending reading strategies)
- A vital element of learning to read involves the growing independent ability and confidence to raise more questions - at text, sentence and word level - about texts
- Pupils need to be assisted in the development of a clear, realistic image of themselves as readers
- Teaching of reading in the literacy lessons can only be fully worthwhile where teachers seek opportunities to apply that learning in real reading situations.
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Literacy Issues
NAAE's view:
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