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Do It Yourself Reading + Multi-track Reading
Do It Yourself Reading
DIY Reading allows one adult to monitor the reading of individual pupils who are reading at their
own pace and level in a group.
Pupils read large amounts of material at high fluency levels - even at the earliest stages of reading.
They take responsibility for asking for help when they don't understand something. The way the
group is set up is such that pupils quickly realise that it is in their interest to ask.
Help is never refused, answers are given immediately. The aim is to maintain a relatively
uninterrupted flow of reading and DIY Reading provides the context in which fast and furious reading is
valued more than being seen to read difficult material.
The increasing ability to decode, developed through the Read Words Track, feeds into this track, sometimes
at the level of systematic decoding, sometimes without conscious attention.
Multi-track Reading
Multi-track Reading deals with the organisation of books and the way pupils move through them to
the goal of being able to read any book.
Materials are organised so that when a pupil finishes a book they can immediately identify
another that is imperceptibly harder, allowing the pupil to continue
reading at a high fluency level. Because pupils read at a high fluency level, they have the processing capacity to deal with
any new material within the text easily, and remember it. They move effortlessly through a continuum
of increasingly harder reading material.
Throughout the DIY Reading session the teacher asks the question - could this particular pupil
be reading a more difficult book? If the answer is yes, the pupil will change the book
at that precise point - pupils usually want to finish the current book outside the session.
If at any point, the pupil feels that the book they are currently reading is difficult, they
have easier alternatives that they move to without any teacher involvement.
Pupils are totally aware of minute by minute progress, not least because they are engaged
in informed decision-making and self-monitoring of progress through the record booklets.
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The context: A group of 8, year 5&6 boys doing DIY Reading
'Here Miss, if we was just to stay here and read we'd be able to read anything wouldn't we?'
'Absolutely.'
'So why don't we? Reading is the most important thing we do, so I want to read instead
of going into lunch.'
Then followed this fantasy (or was it?) conversation.
'I've got sandwiches anyway.'
'If reading is the most important thing we do, why don't we do it this afternoon?'
'We could do it after school - you'd get us a take away Miss wouldn't you?'
'... and we could sleep on gym mats.'
'Miss ... on Sunday there's a big match, could we stop for a couple of hours to watch it?'
This conversation took place on a Thursday at 11.50 am.
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