Last week we jumped straight into our learning with a new shared reading book. Each morning, we come together in the workshop space and share a text a chosen text. Here is an explanation of shared reading taken from the teaching resource ‘First Steps’….
Shared Reading is a supportive, interactive reading procedure where all students can see the text being shared. Students observe a good model (usually the teacher) reading the text and are invited to read along. Shared Reading provides a common starting point and context for a variety of subsequent whole class literacy activities. Whole class shared reading sessions also provide a springboard for working with smaller groups to extend or consolidate reading behaviours or knowledge at different levels. Texts selected for Shared Reading sessions need to enable the teacher to demonstrate the chosen reading behaviours. Enlarged texts allow the students to see the text and contribute to the oral reading. Texts can be re-used several times; however it is important to sustain the students’ interest and attention when re-visiting the same text.
This week we chose the picture book ‘Today we have no plans’
The text provided an abundance of rich learning experiences. On Wednesday we read the book slowly, taking time to enjoy the illustrations, make predictions and share our own experiences. The students contributed their ideas and thoughts – in particular noting the rhyming words, high frequency words and that each section focussed on a different day of the week.
On Thursday we focussed on the days of the week aspect of the book, putting them into correct order. This also naturally led into months of the year. We then gave students the task during project and provocation time to match the Italian names for the days of the week.
The final day of the week, Friday, we drew the students attention to the following page…..
The students noted that the two words in the final two sentences rhymed – but had different spellings! We then investigated the /f/ sound and what spellings we could see in those words.
