Ideas to help you prepare for the key stage 2 reading SAT. Perfect for new teachers and those looking for some quick reminders.

I share my thoughts about the PEE acronym and its usefulness (or not) for answering extended comprehension questions in Key Stage 2.

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.

There are many advantages to delivering reading lessons to the whole class. For example, pupil engagement and productivity can be increased as all pupils receive the attention of the expert in the room (you) for the full lesson; you can build on children’s knowledge and understanding by linking the texts you use to the wider curriculum, you can make ambitious text choices so that the whole class are exposed to age-appropriate texts and by involving the whole class you have the potential for wider discussions than if teaching children in small groups. But just as there are advantages to teaching the whole class together, so there are also some common challenges.

Our director, Rachel, takes you on a walk through 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.

A hugely popular article signposting the suite of Primary English resources to support teaching and learning in reading. Planners, questions and prompts to support all aspects of the Content Domain for reading in KS1 and KS2.

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. 

Thoughts and ideas from the Primary English experts on how to move your guided reading practice from Good to Great.