Guided reading lesson: text level 14

This guided reading lesson will require students to read a narrative text. The text provides opportunities for:

• segmenting and blending sounds in words (see blending and segmenting sounds)
  
• rereading to check for meaning and accuracy
• making inferences about characters' feelings and motives

Text

The Great Pumpkin-Growing contest, Author Kerrie Shanahan, program Flying Start to Literacy
Published by Eleanor Curtain Publishing Pty Ltd.
©EC Licensing Pty Ltd. Reproduced by permission. 

Text overview

This text is a traditional tale of three brothers. They decide to try and grow the biggest pumpkin in the kingdom to receive a prize from the King. However, the two older brothers avoid helping the smallest brother with the task. When the smallest brother takes his pumpkin to the King he is awarded a bag of gold for growing the biggest pumpkin. The two older brothers want to help spend the gold but the smallest brother has other ideas.

Segmenting and blending sounds in words

Links to Victorian Curriculum - English

• Victorian Curriculum (English), Reading and Viewing, Language: Phonics and word knowledge
• One: Recognise short vowels, common long vowels and consonant digraphs, and consonant blends (VCELA181)
• Victorian Curriculum (English), Reading and Viewing, Literacy: Interpreting, analysing, evaluating
• One: Read texts with familiar features and structures using developing phrasing, fluency, phonic, semantic, contextual, and grammatical knowledge and emerging text processing strategies, including prediction, monitoring meaning and rereading (VCELY187)

Links to Victorian Curriculum - English as an Additional Language (EAL)

Learning intention

We are learning to break words into parts to help us decode them.

Success criteria

• I can use my eyes and finger to break up unknown words into parts.
• I can look closely at the letters in the parts and match to sounds.
  
• I can blend the sounds to help decode the word.

Lesson sequence

1. Hand out individual copies of the text The Great Pumpkin-Growing Contest by Kerrie Shanahan and illustrated by Ian Forss (Eleanor Curtain Publishing, 2015). Give students a nutshell statement about the text (see Text Overview above).
2. Introduce the learning intention. We are learning how to break up words into parts to help us decode new or unknown words. I am going to show how. Ask students to turn to page 3.
   
   Example-grow. On the fourth line find the last word. I can break this word into 2 parts because I can see a consonant blend and digraph I know. I can make the break gr/ow. I know the sounds for the gr consonant blend and for the ow digraph. When I blend together I can make gr-ow=grow
   
   Example-biggest. On the last line find the word that starts with 'b'. I am going to break that word into 2 parts-big/gest. I can see the word big and if I sound out the other letters I get g,e,s,t=gest. If I blend together I get big-gest=biggest.
   
   Example-whoever. On the fourth line find the word that starts with 'w'. I am going to use my finger to break this word into 2 parts. I can see 2 smaller words here because this is a compound word. I am going to make the break who/ever. The first word is who and the second word is ever. When I blend them together the word says whoever.
3. I want you to try to do the same thing when you come to a word you do not know. Break a word into parts, look at the letters in the part and make their sounds and then blend all the sounds together to help decode the word.
4. Students read text quietly to themselves. During this time the teacher hears each child in the group read individually. The teacher selects prompts to scaffold each student based on the learning intention (e.g. can you break that word up? Show me where the break will be. Can you match the letters to sounds, can you blend all the sounds together to decode the word? What could it be? Does the word look right?)
5. After reading check for students' understanding.
6. Ask students to demonstrate how they worked out unknown words. Prompt them to physically show the break, how they segmented and then blended to decode (refer to page number and word).
7. Return to the success criteria. Check students' understanding and their confidence with using the strategy of breaking words up to decode.
   

ABC Education Literacy Mini Lessons

The Department collaborated with ABC Education to create a series of videos. All 16 mini lessons based on content from the Literacy Teaching Toolkit are available on the ABC Education literacy mini lessons page.

Rereading to check for meaning and accuracy

Links to Victorian Curriculum - English

• Victorian Curriculum (English), Reading and Viewing, Language: Phonics and word knowledge
• Level 1: Recognise short vowels, common long vowels and consonant digraphs, and consonant blends (Content description VCELA181)
• Victorian Curriculum (English), Reading and Viewing, Literacy: Interpreting, analysing, evaluating
• Level 1: Use comprehension strategies to build literal and inferred meaning about key events, ideas and information in texts that they listen to, view and read by drawing on growing knowledge of context, text structures and language features (Content description VCELY186)
  
• Level 1: Read texts with familiar features and structures using developing phrasing, fluency, phonic, semantic, contextual, and grammatical knowledge and emerging text processing strategies, including prediction, monitoring meaning and rereading (Content description VCELY187)
  

Links to Victorian Curriculum - English as an Additional Language (EAL)

Learning intention

We are learning to reread if something does not make sense or look right.

Success criteria

• I can stop reading when I have read something that does not make sense.
• I can stop reading if I have said a word that does not match the text.
  
• I can go back and reread to fix up what does not look right or make sense.

Lesson sequence

1. Hand out individual copies of the text The Great Pumpkin-Growing Contest by Kerrie Shanahan and illustrated by Ian Forss (Eleanor Curtain Publishing, 2015). Give students a nutshell statement about the text (see Text overview above).
2. Introduce the learning intention. We are learning to go back to the beginning of the sentence and reread if something does not make sense or look right. I am going to show you how. Ask students to turn to page 6.
   
   Read the first 3 lines. On the third line read the words:
   "Not no," said the biggest brother.
   I am going to stop here because this does not make sense. I am going to go back and reread this sentence looking carefully at all the words this time. Reread sentence correctly and then talk through why the change was made (i.e. I noticed the word was not no). I scanned all the way to the end of the word and I saw a 'w'. I knew the word must be now. When I reread it, the word looks right and now the sentence makes sense!
3. Explain the success criteria to students. While reading today I want you to be thinking about what makes sense and what looks right. If you read something that does not make sense or does not look right, stop and go back and reread. As you are rereading look carefully at all the words to check that what you say matches the words on the page. If it does not, you need to do some problem solving to fix up your reading.
4. Students read text quietly to themselves. During this time the teacher hears each child in the group read individually. The teacher selects prompts to scaffold each student based on the learning intention (e.g. Does that make sense? Does that look right? Can you go back and reread and check the words carefully? Which word does not look right? What could go there that makes sense? What could go there that looks right?)
5. After reading check for students' understanding.
6. Ask students to demonstrate a part of the text they reread. Talk through the strategies they used to self-correct (refer to page and sentence).
7. Return to the success criteria. Check which students used the strategy of rereading and how successful they were at it. Did rereading help them to make sense of the sentence? Did rereading help them to check that the word they read matched the words in the text?
   

Making inferences about characters' feelings and motives

Links to the Victorian Curriculum - English

• Victorian Curriculum (English), Reading and Viewing, Literacy: Interpreting, analysing, evaluating
• One: Use comprehension strategies to build literal and inferred meaning about key events, ideas and information in texts that they listen to, view and read by drawing on growing knowledge of context, text structures and language features (Content description VCELY186)
  

Links to Victorian Curriculum - English as an Additional Language (EAL)

Learning intention

We are learning to make inferences about the main characters' feelings and motives to help us understand the story.

Success criteria

I can use my background knowledge and look for text clues (words or illustrations) to help me make an inference about the three brothers in the story.

Lesson sequence

1. Hand out individual copies of the text The Great Pumpkin-Growing Contest by Kerrie Shanahan and illustrated by Ian Forss (Eleanor Curtain Publishing, 2015). Give students a nutshell statement about the text (see Text overview above).
2. Introduce the learning intention. We are learning to make inferences about the main characters' feelings and motives to help us understand this narrative. The 3 main characters are the biggest brother, the middle brother and the smallest brother. We want to infer why they said and did the things they did.
3. Explain the success criteria to students. To help us make an inference we first need to use our background knowledge, in this case our background knowledge of brothers and families. Who has a bigger brother or sister? What do you know about them? How do they act around you? As you are reading today, I want you to think about your brothers or sisters. Are they like the characters in the story? Why or why not?
4. Then as we read, we need to look carefully at the text clues; the words and the illustrations. Both of these will give us clues about how each brother felt and why they acted like they did. When we put both our background knowledge and text clues together we can make an inference.
5. Students read text quietly to themselves. During this time the teacher hears each child in the group read individually. The teacher selects prompts to scaffold each student based on the learning intention.
   
   Text Clue: Let's stop and look at the illustrations on page 10 and 11. What are the bigger brothers doing? What is the smallest brother doing? What clues does it give you?
   
   Text Clue: What words on page 6 tell us what the brothers are doing? Can you find another page where the words are telling us what the brothers are doing? (page 8 and 11) What do you notice?
   
   Background Knowledge: What do you know about bigger brothers or sisters that is the same as these bigger brothers in the story? Why are they sitting on a log? Why are they reading a newspaper?
   
   
6. Base the after reading discussion on making inferences about the 3 brothers and their feelings and motives.
   
   Ask students what they thought of the 3 brothers and why? Ensure students refer to their background knowledge and use text clues to explain their thinking.
   
   Ask students to turn to the last page of the narrative where the smallest brother takes the gold and walks away. Why does the smallest brother say "Not now…I have too much to do"? Again, ensure students use background knowledge and text clues to make an inference.
   
   
7. Return to the success criteria and check whether students had used their background knowledge and text clues to assist their inference making.
   

ABC Education Literacy Mini Lessons

The Department collaborated with ABC Education to create a series of videos. All 16 mini lessons based on content from the Literacy Teaching Toolkit are available on the ABC Education literacy mini lessons page.