Teacher Guidance on the Faster Read

Find some schemes of work for Akala's The Dark Lady and Nathanael Lessore's Steady for This for students aged 11-14 years at the bottom of this page, written by experienced Faster Read teacher and researcher, Tara McMullan.

There are three key elements to this approach:

A ‘faster read’: read two novels, typically more quickly than usual, back-to-back, one each half-term and focus on developing students’ comprehension - not analysis - of text. Students need to practise comprehension of a longer, continuous and challenging text intensively over the 12 weeks. (It could be one longer novel and a shorter novella or series of short stories.) This approach supports the development of a more coherent, engaging read, particularly for weaker students.
Explicitly teach students reading strategies and allow them to practise these regularly in whole-class and small-group contexts so that they can use them independently.
Use weekly peer talk - guided reading and small group - for students to practise reading aloud and applying reading strategies to comprehend, explore and enjoy reading a whole text.

1) A faster read: strategies for reading a whole text quickly in 6 weeks
- Choose sufficiently challenging (not abridged) and engaging texts, including for weak readers, so that they allow students to practise their comprehension (e.g. inference)
- Read each novel rapidly over 3-4 weeks, in larger chunks, so students comprehend the whole text, then spend time deepening understanding afterwards (2-3 weeks)
- Maintain the pace and engagement, by the teacher reading aloud in class, supported by more fluent student readers, a CD, paired/group or silent reading to give variety & practise fluency & automaticity. Avoid ‘fragmented reading’, e.g. popcorn approach, with inexpressive, halting reading, where students can lose interest in the book. Instead, use the model of reading in class suggested here + guided reading groups (4-5 students), where all students can practise reading aloud (see below).
- The last 2-3 weeks can be used to deepen understanding, including more literary analysis if needed, having ensured that students have fully comprehended the text.
- Use quick recaps at the start of lesson and during reading to ensure that all students comprehend, including quickly defining essential new vocabulary, to consolidate the text-base model in readers’ heads.
- Make links across the book, using questioning, to ensure that students (including absentees) are connecting strands from earlier chapters, as this supports memory and understanding of the novel as a whole. Do this especially half-way through the text so that students understand the plot, how characters are developing and key ideas/themes to support their developing mental model of the whole text.
- Model how you read, using ‘think alouds’, applying a strategy when you get ‘stuck’ (see below on Monitoring your Comprehension)
- Model how to use graphic organisers to understand story-structure, drawing on students’ knowledge of how narratives are typically structured (from exposition to resolution, etc) – see below.
2) Teach students 'reading strategies' and enable them to practise these so that they can use them in groups & independent reading
Key strategies are:

a) Questioning, clarifying, summarising, predicting (see Guided reading, overleaf)

b) Inferring, by applying knowledge to the text (e.g. self-text, world-text, or text-text knowledge). Students must infer at the levels of word, sentence, paragraph, chapter and whole text.
- Word & sentence levels (e.g. inferring new vocabulary from the context, or inferring that ‘He’ in the 3rd sentence is the same as ‘Tommo’ in the first sentence)
- Paragraph level – inferring that the setting is a beach, even though the word ‘beach’ is not given in the text from, by connecting all the clues in a paragraph: pebbles, waves, Brighton, ice-cream. The same inference skills are required for the reading of short stories, where readers are invariably expected to infer setting, period, character details and relationships without any explicit reference (e.g. ‘Samphire’, O’Brien)
- Knowledge-based inferences: many inferences require students to apply knowledge to the text so you need to ensure that they have this knowledge and that they know how to apply it. e.g. historical knowledge of WW1; knowledge of autistic spectrum condition for The curious incident of the dog in the night-time, etc.
- Exploring examples of visual texts, where the viewer has to make inferences to ‘understand’ the picture/photograph is a helpful way of illustrating how to infer so students can transfer this approach to written texts. Teaching readers to keep asking questions, while applying their knowledge, is also particularly helpful. E.g. Based on the opening pages of The Curious Incident: ‘What kind of person would kill a dog with a pitch-fork?’ ‘And why? What has caused them to behave like this?’
c) Making connections across the text. The best way of enabling students to make connections is by you knowing the text very well and modelling this, by pausing at key moments in the reading to ask: ‘When did we last see Walter Cunningham in the book? What was he doing and how do you think this connects with the incident here?’ Ask them to practise making connections like this in guided reading groups.

d) Monitoring your comprehension – Stop! ‘I’m stuck! I don’t understand this bit at all…’ The purpose of guided reading is for all readers to monitor the group’s comprehension (see overleaf). But a good way of teaching this is to model how you read and get ‘unstuck’ when you come across a problem in reading, using a ‘thinking aloud’ approach: ‘I’m going to show you what I do when I read. I’m stopping here to clarify what these two words mean: scapegoat and xenophobia. Scapegoat means…but I’m going to try to infer what xenophobia means from the surrounding context, drawing on my understanding of what’s going on, and because I know what half the word – phobia – means (e.g. claustrophobia), so xenophobia might mean…’

e) Using vocabulary strategies to infer new words. Show students how to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words in texts, using clues of: sentence-structure and grammar as well as clues in the surrounding, semantic context of the word. Encourage students to be detectives and look for clues in the shape of the word (morphology), e.g. to break the word into the root or stem & the suffixes/prefixes – militate = milit + ate: ‘ate’ is a common suffix used to create a verb from a noun: orchestrate, chlorinate, administrate. What other words do students know with ‘milit’ in them? (e.g. military).You can also use other texts to support new vocabulary, exposing them to the same word in different contexts – e.g. using non-fiction and media texts to teach the context of a novel such as Now is the Time for Running, set in Zimbabwe and South Africa and being about refugees.

f) Understanding how stories are structured (story-structure & different genres), using graphic organisers and applying this understanding to the shared reader. Use narrative timelines, family trees, plot/event charts, tension graphs, story-mountains, emotion wheels, ‘oppositions’ charts of characters/events, etc. This helps students comprehend the plot & whole text, especially with dual or other complex narratives (e.g. Private Peaceful), Timelines and other diagrams can be displayed on walls & in books as a constant visual reminder. (see www.scholastic for some good examples).

g) Exploring ideas with other readers (see Guided reading below)
3) Use weekly peer talk - guided reading and small group
The aim of guided reading is for the group to help each other to read and comprehend a book, by reading aloud and practising your reading strategies. The more you practise these strategies, the better you’ll become at reading! You also need to monitor your comprehension to check that you’ve all understood. Pause every few pages to recap and discuss what’s just happened. Ask each other questions to help you understand this part

1. Include everyone, listen carefully & respond to what they say

2. Recap the section read last lesson (plot, key events, character-development, etc) & predict what’s going to happen next, giving reasons
- Pause in your group reading every so often to check you’ve all understood this section and try to summarise what’s just happened: ‘OK, so let’s recap: this chapter is set in…and the boys are trying to cross the river Limpopo because…’
3. Ask questions
- Ask clarifying questions: What does that word mean? Can we tell by breaking it down? What other words are similar? Have we ever heard someone using it? What could it mean in this sentence/paragraph? If you can’t infer the word meaning, write the new word on mini-whiteboard to take back to class. Other clarifying questions: 'What’s going on in this part? Who is ‘the man’ on p. 3?'
- Ask inference questions: Where & when is this book set? Why is Michael so angry? Could that link with his anger earlier when someone mentioned his father in Chapter 3? Was that an accident with Simon or did the boys mean to hurt him? What kind of person would kill a dog with a pitchfork#
4. Apply what you know to help you understand the book: self-to-text, world-to text and text-to-text (e.g. what you know about World War 1, bullying, etc.)

5. Give personal opinions about the book with reasons & examples (I think Deo feels helpless because on p. 30, it says… and earlier, there was a similar situation with Innocent where…).
- Try to imagine yourself in the character’s shoes – how would you feel in their situation? Has anything similar happened to you or a friend? Empathise with them.
- Try to visualise things in the book.
6. Build on what others say with more examples (‘I agree because…’ ‘I partly agree because…but don’t you think…?)

7. Or challenge, respectfully, with examples (‘I see what you mean, but I think… because in chapter 4, Michael feels…’ ‘I disagree, I don’t think Mina is jealous because earlier she said…

8. Make links across the book, connecting the different parts together to help you understand it as a whole (‘In this chapter, Michael is behaving as he did earlier in the book when… so I think he is feeling… because he says…).

9.Try to agree broadly on the overall meaning of the book or chapter you’re reading, but accept that you may have some differences in your interpretation: (‘I agree the mood is depressing here, but don’t you think this changes on p. 70, when it says: …?’ ‘I think this is a stereotyped view of women because… – what do you think?’)

Plan for small-group work, ideally using this kind of guided-reading format, every week. These guidelines are helpful for students to understand the purpose of guided reading and how to do it, but you might want to start by asking students to come up with their own guidelines for their reading groups so that they ‘own’ these & are more likely to adopt them.

It is important for you to model guided reading when you first introduce it, e.g. you could ask a small group to ‘have a go’ with you leading the group, in front of the class. Or simply rotate around the groups, one a week, introducing each group to the format and leading them into the routine of guided reading, by practising the strategies, before moving on to the next group the following week & allowing the inducted groups to continue more independently. You can always set clear tasks in early sessions of guided reading until groups develop a routine and become more independent. E.g. customise this kind of format, with specific questions based on your class reader:

a) Read pp. 10-15: one person is the narrator, the other readers can read the dialogue, like a play-script. Divide these 4 characters between you: …

b) Ask questions - clarify anything you don’t understand, e.g. new words.

c) Recap what has happened so far.

d) Predict what’s going to happen next, based on the whole story so far, explaining to each other why you think this. Remember: make links with the earlier part of the book.

e) Read from pp. 15 to the end of the chapter. What has happened to… Why do you think… Do you think X’s character has changed at all here from earlier in the book? How? Why?

You can experiment with roles, e.g. Lead reader; Lead questioner; Vocab-monitor (with mini whiteboard); recapper/summariser; predictor.

Give students sentence stems to support their developing talk about reading. E.g. Why do you think that? What does that paragraph mean? Can you explain that a bit more? I think this might mean… Encourage the use of tentative language, but ask students to keep rooting their ideas in the book read so far, not over-speculating: ‘I wonder if this might mean that Sam’s going to forgive him because earlier he said…’ ‘Do you think that…’ Maybe he’s… Perhaps… because in Chapter 10 he said…’

Encourage students to support each other, working on word meanings and whole-text comprehension, constantly questioning each other and the text: What does this sentence mean? Why is Tommo so upset? Students can be moved from lower-level comprehension to higher-level comprehension and analysis, once the former is secure, but you need to ensure that weak readers with poor memories have actually understood plot and character details before moving to analysis.