Working with factual text using the Reading to Learn methodology

This post is being written as Deb Avery conducts a Grade 4 Science lesson on the topic of  Energy at Victoria Primary in Grahamstown. The Grade 4 girls are all sitting at their desks in the classroom. A group of Intermediate Phase teachers are sitting at the back of the classroom next to me, observing the lesson. They are as engaged as the girls!  The aim of the lesson is to understand the text on Energy and make one's own notes from the text.

Preparing for Reading stage
First comes the Preparing for Reading stage. Deb gets to know the class and links the topic, cleverly, to the class’s prior knowledge. She explains where the text will be found, and gives a summary of the text.

Preparing for Reading stage

Detailed Reading stage
In the Detailed Reading session, the girls read through the section with Deb. They work with vocabulary, synonyms and comprehension questions, guided by Deb. They are then given a copy of the page from the textbook as they are not allowed to write in their textbooks. They number the sentences and underlined keywords. Deb asks 'wh' questions as they identify the keywords together.

Today's text

Intensive Strategies stage
In the Intensive Strategies session the girls each get a paragraph to illustrate how to work with keywords. They cut up the text as guided by Deb's questions. They then jumble the cutouts and have a competition to see who can put them in order first.

The paragraph that is cut up

Cutting out the words

Putting the sentences together again

Joint rewriting session
Deb writes the keywords from the first three sentences on the board. (The class calls out the keywords).  Different girls call out their recreated sentence and Deb chooses one girl to go to the board and write it. The girl goes to the board and writes a simplified sentence next to the original sentence. Different girls give their versions of the other two sentences using the keywords and the same procedure is followed.

The first sentence is written

The second sentence is written

The third sentence is written

Joint reconstruction of the third sentence is complete

Independent reconstruction
We had to leave after this stage because Deb needed to give a demonstration lesson in Grade 1. The Grade 4 teacher then took over for the Independent Reconstruction stage where the girls would completely reconstruct the text and make their own notes.

It was a brilliant lesson. The teacher sitting next to me was excited about it and said she would definitely be doing a factual text like this next term. (School closes tomorrow).