Summary of Unit of Work:
Research continually tells us that nightly reading directly benefits a student’s improvement in reading. As teachers we know the importance of students choosing the right levelled books to ensure reading progression, however we also want to engage the students in reading. This series of lessons looks at engaging students in reading by using library time (book borrowing) to share, discuss, choose books of interest and hopefully grow reader engagement.
This reading unit would run alongside a student’s levelled reading program.
Australian Curriculum Links:
English – Literature (Responding to Literature, P-6 Progression):
- Foundation – Respond to texts, identifying favourite stories, authors and illustrators (ACELT1577)
- Level 1 – Express preferences for specific texts and authors and listen to the opinions of others (ACELT1583)
- Level 2 – Identify aspects of different types of literary texts that entertain, and give reasons for personal preferences (ACELT1590)
- Level 3 – Develop criteria for establishing personal preferences for literature (ACELT1598)
- Level 4 – Discuss literary experiences with others, sharing responses and expressing a point of view (ACELT1603)
- Level 5 – Present a point of view about particular literary texts using appropriate metalanguage, and reflecting on the viewpoints of others (ACELT1609)
- Level 6 – Identify and explain how choices in language, for example modality, emphasis, repetition and metaphor, influence personal response to different texts (ACELT1615)
Unit Learning Intention and Success Criteria:
Learning Intention:
Students to understand how their interests/preferences affect the books they read.
Success Criteria:
- Library borrowing will be increased.
- Nightly reading will be increased.
- Reading levels will be increased.
- Students are able to verbalise their preferences when reading books.
Unit Overview:
This unit is broken into the following lessons and would be ideally taught to boost student reading engagement and revisited over the year regularly:
- Lesson One – Student Interest What are your students’ interested in? What do they watch, play, do, write, draw and/or think?
- Lesson Two – Matching interest to fiction books Lesson Two focuses on matching student’s interest to fiction books.
- Lesson Three – Becoming the expert on their interest Lesson Three students become the expert on good books which feature their interest.
- Lesson Four – Exploring other interests Lesson Four focuses on expanding students’ preferences.
- Lesson Five – Comparing their interest to most popular books Once students have been exposed to books at their interest level and the interest of peers begin to expand their engagement by showing them popular books.
Assessment Ideas:
- Running Records / Benchmark Assessment
- Reading Journal – record of nights read
- Anecdotal notes on engagement in lessons
- Book review assessment either speaking and listening or writing criteria depending on the Australian Curriculum outcome.
Resources:
Download all of the unit-related resources below:
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