Rachel Clarke Rachel Clarke

Close reading

Want to know more about close reading? This short article tells you more…

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Focus on comprehension: retrieval

Retrieval is a key reading skill whether you’re teaching comprehension through Guided, Close or Whole Class Reading. In this short article we share some quick and easy techniques to help your class retrieve key information from texts. All of the suggestions here are lo-fi and designed to save you time whilst have a clear focus on retrieving and recording key information from texts.

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Spooky Stories for Halloween (and all year round)

Here at Primary English HQ we’ve been busy assembling some of the spookiest children’s books we know to help you and your class enjoy some ghoulishly good learning this Halloween. We have ghostly Guided Reading Packs, spooky sets of Starting Points and a wicked Whole Class Reading Sequence.

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Guided Reading

Love it or loathe it, guided reading is probably the most well-used strategy for teaching reading in the UK. This popular post collects together a range of ideas to help you plan for meaningful guided reading sessions.

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What’s the big idea? Identifying themes in texts

In this article, I take a brief look at supporting children to identify themes in texts.

The National Curriculum asks that children in Year 5 and Year 6 identify and discuss themes and conventions in writing. But what are themes?Themes are not the plot and they are not the genre. Instead, themes are the underlying messages that exist beneath the words written on the page. They are the big ideas that the author is trying to convey to the reader. 

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Once upon an ordinary school day

Once upon an ordinary a day an ordinary teacher was looking for an ordinary book to read with her ordinary children during their ordinary guided reading lesson, when..she stumbled across a quite extraordinary book indeed: Once Upon an Ordinary School Day by Colin McNaughton and Satoshi Kitamura.

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