Eight lessons that move a class from choral recitation to genuine comprehension, using texts short enough to fit on a blackboard.
Choral reading aloud is the default in many classrooms, and it is not worthless: it builds fluency, confidence and pronunciation. The problem is when it becomes the whole of reading, so that a class can recite a passage beautifully and answer almost nothing about it.
These eight lessons keep the reading aloud and add a second stage to every text. Pupils read aloud, then work on the text: finding, inferring, predicting, and finally asking their own questions of it. The move from answering questions to asking them is the point at which reading becomes independent.
All eight texts are short enough to copy onto a blackboard in a few minutes, and they get progressively longer and less supported. Two are informational, four are narrative, and two are the kind of practical text pupils will actually meet: a notice and a set of instructions.
The unit deliberately leaves some words unglossed so pupils practise working out meaning from around them. The word-attack routine in lesson two is for exactly this.
Open books turn comprehension into a copying exercise. Closed books, then open to check, gives you an honest picture of what was understood.
The questions pupils write in the last lesson are the best diagnostic in the unit. Weak questions almost always show where the reading broke down.
A full term of Grade 4 English, sequenced week by week, with every lesson planned and every resource included. Written for teachers who are covering English alongside other subjects.
The fifty English phrases a teacher needs to run a lesson in English, with pronunciation notes and a four-week plan for introducing them without losing the class.