Teaching Primary Reading Course (4 terms)

Just Imagine, and Agate Momentum Trust are delighted to be working in partnership to offer a comprehensive reading course which is designed to have maximum impact in your school. The course comprises workshop-based sessions combined with classroom visits to observe and reflect on practice.

Audience

• English leads
• Class teachers (years 1 – 6)
• We ask that a senior leader attends the first and final session for maximum school impact

Course Description

Teaching reading is, without a doubt, one of the most important objectives of primary education. It has been a hotly contested topic. Research indicates that children who choose to read experience many other benefits, such as better health and well-being,
increased chances of academic success and, as a result, better chances of social mobility.

Teacher knowledge and understanding are crucial for developing effective practice. This comprehensive course examines the latest reading research and practical application in the classroom. This course demonstrates the connections between
reading, writing and oral language, with high-quality dialogic teaching being a key factor. We focus on blending reading for pleasure with reading skills rather than treating them as discrete aspects of reading. We look at developing a reading culture in which children choose to read in school and at home. This is the bedrock on which the other elements of this course are built.

The course starts by exploring fundamental questions: What is reading? What is reading for? How do children learn to read? What makes a reader? The importance of high-quality children’s literature, book provision and text selection is a theme that runs through the course. We will look at the many different ways in which books are made available to children both for reading for pleasure and consider how we choose books for teaching by close examination of their potential for teaching.

We examine in depth how children make meaning from what they read and how comprehension can be supported and developed through the judicious teaching of reading skills. Skills in themselves are not the objective of teaching. Routines and rituals
carry a high degree of redundancy, so teacher identification of which skills need to be taught, when to teach them and how, are considered in depth. Alongside the teaching of skills, we present reader response approaches that examine
the importance of developing cognitive and affective responses and the teaching strategies and tools that support this.

We also detail the specific challenges of disciplinary literacy – reading in science, history and geography and new approaches to teaching reading across the curriculum. Delegates will be introduced to a flexible framework which synthesizes the different
elements of reading instruction. This framework was initially devised as part of a London Schools Excellence funded project (4XR) and further developed and refined by Just Imagine as Take One Book. The framework is designed to progress from orientation to reading through first encounters (establishing a literal understanding) to a deeper understanding and reflection. The framework is useful irrespective of whether a school adopts Take One Book. Delegates will be taken through a planning process so they can apply the principles to texts of their choice.

Please note: that while this course acknowledges the importance of good phonics teaching and may indicate opportunities for practising phonic knowledge, an approach or scheme for teaching phonics is not incorporated into the sessions.

What Is included in the training?

• 8 face-to-face training workshops with class observations and review
• An introductory and final session to include a senior leader
• Practical gap tasks to inform reflective practice
• 12 months Just Imagine school subscription, which includes access to Take One Book resources and Just Imagine Primary School Book Club (If you are already a subscribing school, you will have 12 months free subscription from the date that your renewal falls due). This is worth £300 plus VAT
• 6 books used in ‘Take One Book’ (per school) worth £60.

Training Dates

• 6th July
• 5th October
• 19th October
• 16th November
• 18th January
• 7th March
• 25th April

Plus one date in the summer term 2024 tbc

Cost

£1100 plus VAT

Additional teachers £800 plus VAT

Invoices must be paid prior to the start of the training.

Venue

Scott Wilkie Primary School, Hoskin’s Close, London E16 3HD  (Close to DLR stations)