Can class blogs improve writing?

Could blogging be the answer to engaging all children in developing their writing skills – even the most reluctant? Myra Barr and Sarah Horrocks describe the surprising benefits of a more spontaneous, laid-back approach to writing.

With the new primary accountability system now counting reading and writing as two separate subjects, the need for engaging all pupils in developing and improving their writing skills is greater than ever before. But what to do when students are unenthusiastic about writing?

Many teachers are launching class blogs as a way of giving their students the space to share their work with parents and peers, and an incentive to improve. On the flip side of the coin, we have the students who already enjoy writing and developing their skills. Blogs benefit them too, by giving them the chance to share their talent with the whole world! The students in between all benefit as well, as school ‘work blogs’ (blogs set up for educational purposes, as opposed to ‘play blogs’) allow teachers to establish learning dialogues with the pupils and give them another way to document and share their learning, other than creating classroom displays and writing it all down in their books.

The extent to which pupils are involved in organising a school blog and posting their contributions generally differs. In some schools, pupils write their blog posts only in school time, while in others, they blog and post from home – which does raise issues about access to computers and the internet. The extent of teachers’ contributions, as well as the control they choose to exercise over blog content, also varies.

Before now, no research projects have considered whether there are differences between pupils’ digital writing and their regular school writing on paper. There is some evidence to suggest that blogging sparks pupils’ interest and enthusiasm for writing, but little attention has been paid to its effects on the quality of writing in general. It was in light of this that CfBT Education Trust’s London Connected Learning Centre (London CLC) undertook a piece of research to investigate the differences in pupils’ writing on blogs compared to their other writing.

The project also aimed to explore the potential for using blogging to develop pupils’ writing skills, and to identify good practice in blogging. All but one of the four primary teachers in this project had been blogging for more than a year and had taken different routes into blogging. 

The story of Harvey, told in this post, provides one account of how a teacher became involved in blogging and what he saw as the potential benefits for his Year 6 class in this new approach to writing.

Starting up a blog
For Harvey, it was the London CLC’s conferences and professional development opportunities for ICT leaders, alongside the contacts he made with other schools involved in blogging work, that suggested to him that blogging could have real potential for improving children’s writing. He also followed other blogs, particularly that of Ferry Lane Primary School, whose Year 6 teacher had posted some very helpful videos and guidance about blogging. Harvey set up a WordPress blog for his own Year 6 class, with the help of London CLC staff, in January 2012, and chose Primary Blogger as the platform for the blog in September 2012. 

He says: ‘I felt the blog would be a good way of showing what we’d been doing in literacy. Writing was no longer in the SATs – teacher assessment was now the only way of assessing. This freed up the teaching of writing. Our literacy coordinator suggested that we should use class reading texts as the basis for all of our writing work and I chose some texts (The London Eye Mystery, Trash, Holes, The Man Who Walked Between The Towers) which seemed to have potential for generating interesting writing.’

Harvey did not use an ICT suite, but had six computers in his classroom. For blogging, he instituted a system where the class was divided into five groups, each of which had a blogging session once a week during guided reading sessions. At the beginning of most weeks, he put up a blog post for the class to respond to, often – but not always – linked to their class reading. He also sought out short films on particular themes for the class to view and respond to. In their blogging sessions, the groups had to post their responses to these ‘invitations’. 

In the course of the project, these short films included animations (The Lonely Robot, Galileo Galilei), and short films about social and environmental issues (a trailer for An Inconvenient Truth, a film about children who live on dumpsites in Manila related to the reading of Trash). Children were also invited to create their own radio adverts and record them for the blog. They frequently posted their own suggestions for blog posts. In addition, they kept up with the blogs of their QuadBlogging partner schools.

Improving writing
Even though their blogging time was relatively restricted, Harvey noticed some differences between the writing that children did in their literacy books and what they did on the blog. One student, Krzysztof, who had English as an additional language, was ‘very careful’ when writing in his book. His sentences were ‘truncated’ – he would keep it really simple, preferring to get it exactly right. But now he writes on the blog, ‘his writing is … much freer and it’s much better writing.’

Harvey was very clear that one key role of the blog was as a way to improve writing. ‘Writing is the main thing for me,’ he says. ‘It's my focus in the school to improve writing through blogging. Children in my class were way below expected levels when they started in September. Writing on the blog being part of everyday learning will have a real impact and will improve attainment.’

Interestingly, among the schools and classes that took part in this study, only Harvey’s class had permanent computers in the classroom. This enabled him to incorporate blogging into his guided reading sessions or other class-based activities. Harvey saw this as a real advantage, not least because it enabled him to moderate pupils’ blog posts through the week rather than in one go. Although the pupils in this classroom got no additional timetabled provision for blogging, they had a lot more informal access time within the school day. Evidence from other classes suggested that the timetabled use of ICT suites did seem to be holding back developments in blog-writing.

What do the pupils think?
Harvey’s Year 6 class was at home with blogging though many of the class said they liked writing in their books more than writing on the blog. 

One pupil summed up her complex feelings in this way: ‘The reason why I prefer [writing in] books is because it just does its own thing, it’s like the pen has a mind of its own. But in the cyber world, once something’s there it’s there for good. When you think you have edited it, the non-edited bit is still out there somewhere... I enjoy the blog a lot. Because you can show the whole world how articulate you are. It encourages me to take my writing to the whole next level.’ 

Another of the pupils in the class had a similarly mixed response to these different contexts for writing. Shafia was a high ability pupil. Harvey described her literacy writing as ‘ambitious in scope, always interesting and sometimes surprising’. She only blogged from school. The aspect she liked best about the blog was having a big audience, but she actually preferred writing in her book. She compared blog and book writing in this way: ‘Sometimes we write in our books first but usually we go straight to the blog and write. In writing in the book, you’ve already thought about your ideas and pluck ideas from that. On the blog, you go straight to it without thinking so much about it before.’

This quotation highlighted what Shafia found unsatisfying about writing on the blog – it calls for less reflection and less preparation. Shafia liked writing in her book because she liked to be able to ‘think of ideas, how I can change it. Sometimes I plan in my head, sometimes I make notes. I feel more comfortable in a book.’ 

Yet many children in the project schools, responding to the end-of-project students’ questionnaire, said that they enjoyed writing on the blog more than writing in their books. One commented: ‘On the blog you can write about anything you want, but in the book the teacher asks you to write down similes. Sometimes you write as a post, sometimes as a comment. Anything fun you've done. On the blog, I feel that you don't expect the teacher to say “use all your adjectives” – you can write freely without adding in similes. You can easily upload a photo, but you can’t in your book.’ 

This comment reveals one of the attractions of blogging – it was not subject to the same constraints and the same detailed assessment as writing in ‘literacy books’. There was not the same emphasis on the need to include ambitious vocabulary (‘wow words’), or ‘good sentences full of adjectives’. 

The blogging paradox
Among the many interesting findings raised by this project were three paradoxes relating to writing within, and outside, the class blogs:

1. Blogging improves writing despite a more laid-back approach to accuracy

In general, blogging seemed to teachers to have contributed to a general improvement in pupils’ writing over the course of the project, even when their writing on the blog was not seen by their teachers as being as careful or as accurate as their writing in their books. Blogging had been a ‘game-changer’ for pupils – it had made writing fun, even for reluctant writers, and had also given them valuable writing practice as well as a sense of a wider audience for their work. 

2. Teachers are less concerned with editing and revising students’ posts despite the potential global audience

Blogging was viewed by both pupils and by teachers as more informal than writing in literacy books, and was judged by different standards. Teachers were aware that there was a difference between the way they approached writing on the blog and their approach in literacy. One teacher explains: ‘In their books, I pick them up more on punctuation and spelling. It’s more open ended on the blog.’

Pupils were aware that their work on the blog was not being marked or judged in the same way as writing in their books. ‘There’s a massive difference,’ one pupil wrote. ‘In the book, she comments on handwriting, punctuation – “You forgot this, you forgot that”. On my blog writing, her comments are much more positive. ’

Both teachers and pupils emphasised that one of the key features of blogging was that the audience for the blog was potentially ‘the whole world’. And yet, somewhat illogically, there was little emphasis given to editing and revising blog entries in these classrooms. Teachers from Canada and Australia replying to the project’s international questionnaire stressed that publishing on the blog for a global audience routinely involved their students in editing and revising. For the London teachers and pupils in the project, however, blogging had become an area of relative freedom and experimentation.

3. Despite the possibility of reaching people all over the world, students are more concerned with what their peers think of their work

The literature about blogging  constantly emphasises  the importance of the wide audience that blogging can provide for children’s writing; however, it was clear from this project findings that, for the children in these classes, one of the key audiences blogging gave them access to was the audience of their own class. 

Blogging had made the pupils in all these classes much more conscious of each other’s writing. They rarely read the work in each other’s books, but on the blog they did. They would also comment on it, and were sometimes influenced by how each other wrote. 

The commenting function enabled them to communicate with other writers and respond to their writing directly – not everything had to be channelled through the teacher. Consequently, they became more aware of their own writing and more interested in how they might improve it. The blogs had established an area of sharing and a writing community. 

An overwhelmingly positive response
At the end of the project, teachers shared their overwhelmingly positive response to their experience of blogging and taking part in the project:

• ‘I think the blog is a great way to document learning and a great documentary of the year.’
• ‘If you can get children to write without any negative connotations, it’s a very magical thing to hold onto. They enjoy it in a way they don't other writing.’ 
• ‘I know that my blogging teaching has progressed through the ideas we have shared.’
• ‘Digital literacy gives writing a whole new dimension which primary children must be exposed to.  It is, after all, their future.’

Myra Barrs is a freelance author, consultant and teacher. Sarah Horrocks is the Director of London CLC, part of the CfBT Education Trust.

You can read their full report on the findings of this project here. 

Images © CfBT Education Trust

Teaching inferential reading

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Simple comprehension of a text isn’t enough. To be high-level readers, children need to be able to infer meaning that goes beyond what the text explicitly tells them. But how can we teach them to do this?

In this blog post, you'll find an outline for a session on inferential reading for use with Key Stages 2 and 3. There's also a free worksheet for you to download from our website and a number of suggested starter activities. 

But first, what is inferential reading, and why is it so important?

An essential reading skill
Inferences are the conclusions we draw based on what we already know and judgements we make based on given information. When reading inferentially, students use the information the text provides, combined with prior knowledge, to make assumptions about meanings which are not directly stated.

In a blog post on inferential reading for P@WS, Leanne Hegarty says: 'Inference can be as simple as associating the pronoun "he" with a previously mentioned male person. Or, it can be as complex as understanding a subtle implicit message, conveyed through the choice of particular vocabulary by the writer and drawing on the reader’s own background knowledge.'

The ability to make inferences is important for reading comprehension, but also more widely when analysing and critiquing texts. Inferential reading is vital to understanding the aims of a writer and the impact of their work on its audience, which, in turn, are crucial to the study of literature – at GSCE and beyond.

How to teach inferential reading
So we've established the importance of inferential reading – but how do we teach it?

It's best to start early, in Key Stages 2 and 3. A session on inferential reading with pupils of that age group might progress as follows:

1. Introduce the notion of making inferences from text. You can do this through an example text or poem (such this one here); a brief, sentence level activity (such as ‘Cucumber Cues’ or ‘Simple Sentences’ – see 'Activities to introduce inferential reading' below); or a discussion on the inferences students make in everyday life.

2. Hand out the text or section of the text you will be working on. Give each student the activity sheet ‘Reading and discussing texts together’ - download this for free here (download begins straight away).

Before reading the text:
3. Encourage students to discuss their prior knowledge about the topic. They will need to think about their experiences, background knowledge, what they have heard and seen, and other books they have read, then record their ideas in box 1 on the worksheet.

4. Students make predictions about what they might learn from the text or what might happen in the text, filling these in box 2.

5. Students record any questions they have about the text in box 3.

Reading the text:
6. Ask students to read the passage as a whole without interruption.

After reading the text:
7. Have students review their written predictions about the text.

8. Ask students whether they needed to modify their ideas in light of the text, and how the new information changed or reshaped their prior knowledge. They write this down in box 4.

9. Students complete the activity with a summary of the text in box 5, filling in the most important facts from the text in chronological order.

Activities to introduce inferential reading

There are many fun and simple games and activities to introduce the concept of inferential reading. You can find a whole list of them in this article by Dale Pennell. One example of his is the game ‘Cucumber cues’. This is how you play it:

1. Write a list of sentences on the board. Replace one word in every sentence with the word ‘cucumber’. Examples include:

• I like to eat peanut cucumber.
• A dog has four cucumbers.
• I clean my cucumber with a toothbrush.

2. Students work individually or in pairs to write out the sentences, changing cucumber to a word that makes better sense.

3. Students share their responses with the class and identify words that gave them clues to the word they substituted. Ask students to relate the clue word to their background experiences and explain how this background information helped them find an appropriate substitute word.

An alternative to this activity is ‘Simple sentences’. Give students a list of sentences to practise making inferences. Each sentence should contain two facts, which, when combined with prior knowledge and context, can give the students further information about the characters or situation in the sentence. Examples include:

• Sue blew out the candles and opened her presents.
• John went running out into the street without looking.
• We bought tickets and some popcorn.

Roy van den Brink-Budgen explores ways teachers can develop the critical skill of inferential reading and the research behind it in our upcoming issue of Creative Teaching and Learning. Watch this space for more information!

Resources for reluctant readers

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Image: readingbyphonics.com

There are many reasons why children don’t read. One oft-cited reason is lack of interest. Some kids have never read a book they've enjoyed so shun all others. Others would much rather be doing something else, like watching TV.

Some children, generally those with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN), struggle far too much with the process of reading to ever enjoy it.

The secret is finding the right book for each child – and it doesn't have to be a traditional book either. Graphic novels are a great way to appeal to visual learners, especially reluctant boys.

Audio stories are also a useful resource, as although they don't require any actual reading, they can help cultivate a love of stories and the desire to read. Kids can get access to renowned novels like Pride and Prejudice or The Great Gatsby as audio stories. Surely worth encouraging for older students who might struggle with these books in written form?

Whatever medium they come in, books and stories are vital for developing imagination, empathy and communication skills. The list featured below features some of the best books, graphic novels, websites and apps for use with struggling or reluctant readers. There's also a list of useful articles for teachers on encouraging kids to read more, which includes access to a free article by Anne Fine!

Just because a child struggles with words doesn't mean they have to miss out on the worlds of adventure, fantasy and wonder stories provide.

Books

• Moon Chase, Bridge Reader Edition by Cathy Farr – Fast-paced fantasy adventure in large print. Great for weaker readers. Accompanying workbook makes it ideal for classroom use.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid (series) by Jeff Kinney – Now also a series of films. Suitable for pre-teens/early teens.
• I Survived… (series) by Lauren Tarshis – Each book tells a story from history through the eyes of a boy who lived to tell the tale. Series includes surviving the Nazi invasion, the Japanese tsunami, the sinking of the Titanic, shark attacks and more. 
• Astrosaurs (series) by Steve Cole – Dinosaurs weren’t in fact wiped out by that wayward comet millions of years ago, they took off into space! Brilliant sci-fi series for both boys and girls. Easy to read too.
• Jiggy McCue (series) by Michael Lawrence – Hilarious series, including The Killer Underpants and The Toilet of Doom. Great for early teens.
• Dork Diaries (series) by Rachel Renee Russell – Fun series for girls. Title says it all.
• What My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones – A novel in verse, great for teenage girls, as are Sones’ other books, including What My Girlfriend Doesn’t Know and One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies.

Graphic novels 

• Bad Island by Doug TenNapel – A gripping graphic novel with a unique plot and cast of characters. Also see TenNapel’s other graphic novels, including Ghostopolis, Tommysaurus Rex and Cardboard.
• Knights of the Lunch Table (series) by Frank Cammuso – New kid Arte King opens a locker no one else can - sound familiar? Three-part series packed with humour and clever references to Arthurian legend.
• Graphic Guide Adventures (series) by Liam O'Donnell – These are especially interesting as they combine an action adventure story with real world facts about wilderness survival skills, democracy, corporate conspiracy, and more.
• Stormbreaker: The Graphic Novel (Alex Rider Adventures) by Anthony Horowitz – Great for reluctant boys.
• The City of Ember: The Graphic Novel (Books of Ember), by Jeanne DuPrau – Boys and girls, young and older, will enjoy this (also available as a traditional book, and now a film too).
• Discovery Channel’s Top 10 Deadliest Sharks and Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Predators – A one-of-its-kind non-fiction graphic novel.
• Olympians (series) by George O’Connor – Vibrant retellings of Greek myths, focuses on various Olympian gods, including Zeus, Hera, Hades and more. Includes lots of monsters, romance and explosions!

Online resources

• Funbrain has a great reading section, packed with word games and online versions of popular kids’ books (including Diary of a Wimpy Kid).
• Storynory features a range of free audio stories, including fairytales, myths and legends, and more.
• Scholastic provides a selection of non-fiction books and articles from Scholastic’s magazines. Offers audio narration and complex topics in kid-friendly terms.
• The Lexile Framework for Reading helps children choose books according to their reading ability and interests.  You don’t need to know your Lexile levels – this tool calculates an approximate range for you.

Apps

• Speak It! – A text-to-speech app. Great for students to get some help with reading when they need it.
• Dragon Dictation – A speech-to-text app. Useful for help with spellings and for students who struggle with writing to jot down ideas.
• Soundnote – Record drawings, notes and audio all at once.
• Find the letters HD – Asks learners to find letters and numbers in a colouring grid.
• Read & Write – Enables students to practice both skills – for example, tracing letters and learning letter sounds.
• WordSort – Helps children identify parts of speech and improves grammar skills.
• Read 2 Me – Includes a library of texts which can be read aloud.
• Audiobooks – A collection of free audio books, offering access for struggling readers to complicated texts such as Romeo and Juliet.
• Reading Trainer – Helps boost reading speed and ability.
• Stories2Learn – Allows you to create your own text and audio stories.

Best practice articles from our archives

• FREE ARTICLE! '50 books a year!' by author Anne Fine – A range of exciting ways to encourage children to read more and enjoy it.
• 'Developing confident readers' by author Piers Torday – Strategies to help reluctant and challenged readers gain confidence in their own abilities.
• 'Creating a whole-school reading ethos' by CILIP President Barbara Band – Ways of working with your school librarian to raise the profile of reading and provide opportunities for the whole school community to get involved.
• 'Boys, books and Xbox' by Collette Higgins – Improving boys' reading and writing by tapping into what and how they read outside school.
• 'The storytelling curriculum' by Sue Lyle – No phonics, no spoon-feeding of literacy sub-skills, yet astounding results… How would you explain it? A brilliant teacher? A freak year? Dr Sue Lyle reports on action research at one primary school that turned the entire approach to teaching literacy on its head.

Image: cpb.org

5 speaking and listening activities to explore characters and motive

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An important part of reading is exploring characters and the role they play in a story. Empathy is a key word here – children have to be able to put themselves in a character’s shoes and think about their motives and emotions. 

This can be difficult, especially for younger children, but empathising with book characters and considering why they chose this course of action, or what the consequences would be if they chose another, is a great way to develop a wide range of thinking and communication skills. 

Below you’ll find 5 classroom activities which will help your students explore and empathise with the characters they're reading about. They work best with primary age pupils but there’s no reason why older students won’t enjoy them too.

The activities are all adapted from Ros Wilson’s fantastic Ideas for Big Talk (Andrell Education). Download the full booklet here.


Activity 1: Thought tracking

Freeze! What are these characters thinking?
(Image: clicksphotography.net)

This technique supports children in examining the private thoughts of characters at certain points in a story (particularly tense moments work well here). 

Have a group of students recreate a scene from a book as a freeze frame. The rest of the class make a circle around the frozen character(s) and each student says what he/she thinks one of the characters in the freeze frame is thinking at this moment in the story.

To keep a permanent record: Photograph the freeze frame, print out the photo and stick it in the centre of a large piece of paper. The children can draw thought bubbles from their chosen character and write down their imagined thoughts.


Activity 2: Interior monologue
The purpose of this activity is to encourage children to think on their feet about continuity of thought, in role as a specific character. 

First, ensure students know what a monologue is – a prolonged talk by one person, usually written as if they are talking to themselves. Next, students either talk through the illustrations of a book as a character, or talk over a film clip where a character is not saying anything.

This activity can be quite intimidating. Have students work in pairs at first and then let the more confident kids perform their monologues.


Activity 3: Book gossip
We all like a good gossip! In this activity, children are given a situation from a story and work in pairs to role play as two minor characters talking about what they think of the main characters and what they are up to. 

This is a great way to explore less prominent characters and also develop a rounder picture of the main characters.

"You'll never guess what Harry and Ron did yesterday.
Hermione was fuming!"
(Image: nnhs65.com)

Activity 4: Who said what?
Give children examples of dialogue from a story. Can the children decide who said what? 

For example, who would say, ‘I want the kingdom for myself rather than for my brother and sisters!’? Is it Bob the Builder, Harry Potter or Edmund? 

Children have to explain why they think that character is the one who said it. Pick more ambiguous quotes and characters from the same book or film to increase the difficulty of this activity.


Activity 5: Mirror, mirror
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? 

Have students work in pairs. One plays the magic mirror, the other plays a character from a film or book. The character asks the mirror what it thinks the consequences of an action the character is considering taking may be. For example, Edmund from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe may ask: ‘What will happen if I take my brother and sisters to the White Witch?’ 

Do you dare ask the enchanted mirror for the truth?
(Image: disney.wikia.com)

Remind the students that the enchanted mirror in the story of Snow White NEVER lies. It tells the truth, whether that’s what the characters want to hear or not. It also doesn't give yes or no answers. Students playing the mirror should give an explanation of what they think may occur should the character choose that certain path and why.

This activity is a great way to encourage kids to ask open-ended questions and to consider the alternative directions a story could have taken. If the children haven’t read the end of the story yet, it can also be a good prediction exercise.

You might need to initially model the role of the mirror yourself, before splitting your class into pairs and/or larger groups to ask and answer their own questions.

Read Ros Wilson's article 'A creative approach to the new curriculum' for more ways to keep creative even under the new curriculum's restrictive impositions.

Reading in roles - Collaborative reading task (with free resources!)

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Reading can often become a very isolated activity in the schools. Regular classroom reading sessions are great for getting kids in the habit of reading, but children are social creatures and too often, such sessions involve sitting in silence with a book the child may or may not find interesting. Not many skills being developed there!

Reading at GCSE level and beyond requires a range of skills. Students have to read for meaning (hidden or otherwise) and form opinions. They will have to question a text, summarise it, clarify it to themselves and the examiner, and even make predictions about what the text implies will happen next.

You don't have to wait until the students are studying GCSE English to teach these skills... you can start as early as primary school!

Ever heard of the reciprocal reading roles? 
If you're a subscriber to our magazine, you'll be familiar with this reading task as it's often featured in the free cross curricular project plan published with each issue.

The purpose of this activity is to encourage active thinking and reading through close examination of a text. This can be fiction, non-fiction, a short story, an extract from a novel, a historical account - anything you like!

This activity can be used by primary teachers in Years 3-6, and also in secondary schools, in years 7-9.

Here's how it works:

1. Split your class into groups of four (five, if absolutely necessary, but four is preferable).

2. Assign each student with the group a reading role. The roles are:

• SUMMARISER – Think beyond what actually happens in the text. Identify the three most important events/details. Why are they important? Are they connected in any way?
• QUESTIONER – Pose at least three questions which look at the text in depth. Try to ask open, challenging questions. Address confusions that will encourage thought and provoke discussion. 
• CLARIFIER – Make a note of any words or phrases that will need to be checked. Are there any ideas or issues that need to be clarified to make the reading clear and easy to understand? To help to clarify, can you think of any ways that this section links with other sections and what you already know? 
• PREDICTOR – Identify at least three text-related predictions, based on how your response to the text is developing. This will help your group to articulate what will happen next.

If there is a fifth group member, he or she becomes the group director, ensuring all the roles are undertaken conscientiously in the group.

3. Hand out the reading roles cards (these can be downloaded from our website here). These explain what each role entails in more detail. They will need to be cut out, beforehand if more convenient, and folded so they stand like place names. The tabs on the outer edges can be folded inwards to increase stability.

4. Each group member reads through the text from their assigned perspective. They work independently, taking responsibility for their own role, but in a collaborative way, discussing their findings with the group and making links between each role.

5. Students record their findings by contributing to the group record sheet (download this here). This grid can be photocopied at the end and distributed to each member for a permanent record.

You can download an alternative collection sheet here. This splits the main aspects of the text down into sections (i.e. key people, actions, locations, links). Students can then categorise their summary/clarifications/questions/prediction according to each area.

You many need to spend some time beforehand explaining the reciprocal reading roles to your students, but it won't be long before they've gotten the hang of it! This activity can be used over and over again, as students take on different roles and develop a wide range of reading skills, ready for use later on in their schooling.

This activity was designed by Jane Jones. Jane creates the cross curricular projects included for free with each issue of Creative Teaching and Learning magazine. You can subscribe to the magazine here.

Interested in our cross curricular projects?

Subscribers to Creative Teaching and Learning can access all our cross curricular projects for free. If you're not a subscriber, don't panic! You can purchase the projects for £36 each, no subscription required.

Projects available for purchase include:

• The Princes in the Tower - A historical investigation

• Investigating local history

• Mysteries of the Middle Ages

• World War II

• The Titanic
• The Olympics
• Tutankhamun and the Ancient Egyptians