The Blues Begin to Rock

In secondary junior school, this text is fairly typical of the material presented to students. It is a high-interest text but it also has a high level of lexical density. In this case nouns and noun groups. Students assessed as reading at Stanine 3 or even Stanine 4 will struggle with the context and the vocabulary. The structure of the text could also cause issues in terms of comprehension.

Read the document here

Here I'm trying to improve the pre-reading discussion. Before the students get the article they are required to make a prediction, to consider a likely topic for the coming reading.

 Students highlight, circle or underline the words as they read.

The text has been chunked into manageable sections.

The text offers the opportunity for a jigsaw reading exercise.

Another option is to use small groups. Each group creates a small summary for a single page. Each group then present their summary on a whiteboard. Ideally, the teacher then gives some feedback on the genre of summary writing.

Another option is to talk students through the process of keyword selection (see words highlighted in yellow). What to include, how to leave out excess detail. How to include a small amount of relevant detail. Put the chosen words on the whiteboard or screen. Ask students to cover the text, then ask students to write their own summary for the whole article.  A good strategy for the teacher would involve saying the summary out loud while pointing to each keyword. Show the students what you do in your head as you create a summary i.e. a think-aloud.  I'd feedback on this process but the teacher has gone abroad.