After initial testing of students and discussion with relevant classroom teachers, the Reading Room endeavours to establish and consolidate basic reading skills where they are lacking. Year 7's are the priority, that is, 4 to 5 periods per week, but selected students in Years 8 and 9 also receive 2 or 3 periods per week where necessary. The Reading Room caters for students 26 periods (out of 30) per week, and also maintains a Lending Library for all Year 7 and Year 8 students.
Students are guided to approach reading using phonics as the initial key. Then once they have mastered the sounds of all consonants and vowels, they can decipher simple text accurately. This leads to a gain in confidence - they are getting meaning from what is being read - and they are ready to learn rules which sequentially unlock the next steps to the reading of more sophisticated text. By using text of a correct level of difficulty students increase their confidence in their ability to make sense of print - the ultimate goal.
The methods employed are:
Short sessions of Group Reading
Short sessions of Individual Reading - reading aloud the book that is being read as Home Reading
Constructing sentences from cut-out words based on the Group Reading Book currently being read
Tutor Systems, an individual game which uses booklets concentrating on specific skills in the process of reading
Taped Books - short bursts of following text as it is being listened to
OHP Cloze Passages (Fill-the-Gap) in groups. Discussion re suitability or spelling of suggested words
Cloze Passages based on factual topics, eg Ned Kelly, Leonardo da Vinci, Lightning, etc
Card Games which concentrate on special sounds, eg "ai" words, "-tion/-sion" words etc
Activities are always of relatively short duration to maintain interst and to avoid concentration loss.
Homework is very important as it is always based on the "sound" or "rule" being studied in class. Revision of previous work is also covered every week on the Homework Sheet.
The Reading Room is co-ordinated by Leonie Forsyth.
