Reading in every lesson
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Stop going round the room
Reading aloud in turn feels like it keeps everyone involved. It does not. While one learner reads, the rest are passengers, and your least confident readers get the most exposing job in the room: unfamiliar text, out loud, in public, cold.
For exampleInstead: read the hard bit yourself, pair them up, or read a short passage together.
Your jobChoose what you would do at each moment. Every option is something tutors really do.
Level 2 Motor Vehicle · before they read · turn 1 of 5
The handout
Brake disc inspection (made up for this activity)
Mount a dial gauge to the [caliper] bracket and turn the disc one full revolution; if the [runout] reading is above the limit in the table, or the disc is deeply [scored], or measures thinner than the minimum thickness stamped on the hub, which will let it overheat under braking, replace the disc and do not refit it.
- In [brackets]: the three words most of the group will not know.
What is happeningYou are about to hand out the brake inspection page. It is dense, and the three marked words will be new to most of the group: caliper, runout and scored.
What do you do?
Pick one.
A dense page, a hard paragraph and eight moves. Pick one and use it every time.
Why this works in your room
Take the words out of the way and learners can get to your subject.
For your learners: Nobody is left stuck on the words or exposed reading them aloud, so more of the room reaches what the text is about.
For you: You stop losing minutes to stalling and turn-taking, and you find a misreading while it is still quick to fix.
Before they read
Five minutes
Teach the two or three words that block the page, with the real thing in your hand.
Setting them off
No prep
Give the reading one job: “Read this to find…”.
Read the hard paragraph aloud once while they follow.
While they read
No prep, or five minutes
Paired reading: one reads quietly, one follows and helps.
Or mark two stopping points, with one question at each.
The line to keep
A short passage, together
Read the one sentence they must remember together. Nobody reads alone.
Planned in
Their own level
A small, regular slot of independent reading. Library colour bands, Reading Coach.
Avoid round-robin reading
Going round the room
A sentence each. Your least confident readers get the most exposing job in the room.
Elsewhere in Bradford ThreadWorks
Big 4Immersive Reader in Teams, so a learner can have any text read aloud.Open Big 4 (opens in a new tab)
Lesson WeaverGo Read finds the reading in your plan and puts the move that fits beside it.Open Lesson Weaver (opens in a new tab)
The Inclusion HubSupport for learners for whom reading is the barrier, by need.Open The Inclusion Hub (opens in a new tab)
Prompts to paste into Copilot
Two prompts to paste into Copilot. They are our own wording, not Big 4 training. Change what is in brackets, and leave out learners' names.
The three words that block the page
Here is a text I am giving to [level] [subject] learners. [paste the text]. Pick the three subject words a learner must know to understand it. For each, give a meaning in under ten words that I could say aloud, and one sentence using it in this subject.
A job and two stopping points
Here is a text I am giving to [level] [subject] learners. [paste the text]. Write one single job for the reading, starting “Read this to find”. Then mark two places to stop, and give one quick question to ask at each that shows whether the section was understood.
Words first, then meaning
The Education Endowment Foundation's guidance on literacy makes teaching subject vocabulary a job for every subject, and recommends that learners are helped to read complex texts, not kept away from them.
EEF, Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools (opens in a new tab)A purpose, a model, a check
Giving reading a purpose, modelling how an expert reads, and checking understanding as you go are reading comprehension strategies. The EEF's Toolkit rates them among the highest-impact, lowest-cost approaches it lists.
EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit: reading comprehension strategies (opens in a new tab)How sure is this?
Fairly. Most of this research was done with school-age learners, so treat it as a strong steer for adults and not a precise promise. The eight moves are from the college's own Reading Project guide, Supporting reading in every lesson.
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