Read and Respond

Throughout school from Foundation Stage to Year 6, children take part in a specific reading comprehension lesson every week. This lesson is based upon a text which has been chosen primarily because of the level of challenge it presents, either challenge through language, theme or issues. A unit of work is planned around a text and each child reads a chapter/section of the story every week at home in preparation for this lesson. This is a crucial part of homework because it allows the time in lesson to be spent exploring a wider range of comprehension skills in depth rather than simply reading the chapter and retrieving basic information as a recap.

Skills are focused around our reading gems, such as summarising and predicting using evidence from the text, evaluating and analysing an author’s craft, making judgements about characters’ motivations and debating and examining key issues are just a selection of the vital comprehension experiences our children participate in weekly.

The work produced in these lessons is recorded in a Read and Respond Journal which showcases the variety of developing reading thinking skills on offer.

Here are some examples of the texts we use in our Read and Respond sessions: