Unfamiliar vocabulary

Pre-teach these words or phrases:

• flannel
• harsh
• swiftly
• furze bush
• oncoming
• feebly
• cuckoo
• slackened

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Modelled fluent reading

Tell the children you’re about to a read an extract from The Railway Children by an English children’s writer called Edith Nesbit.  It was written in 1905 so is a little old fashioned in its language.  The story is about a group of children who have adventures by a railway line.

Read the whole text fluently.

Ask the discussion questions on the board.

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Text marking/phrased reading

Show the children the section with the phrases already marked.  

Shared text mark the next section.

Tell the children to mark the next section on their own.  Go through this together.

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Echo reading

Echo read the section up to the end of this section:

‘It’s no good,’ Bobbie said again.

Discuss how speech marks and speech effect the reading.  Experiment with expressing the characters’ emotion through their voices.  Pause where you feel it’s appropriate to enable the children to echo back fluently.  Echo read the opening section three times, improving each time in response to feedback in class discussion.

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Paired reading

Get the children to read the whole extract to each other.  Use the scale to evaluate each other’s performance and give feedback.  Circulate and provide coaching to individual pairs where necessary.

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Reading for performance

Drama can bring this text to life.  Split the class into groups of four.  Within the group, split them in half. Two children will read all the speech, together, and two will read the narration together.  Focus on building a sense of suspense and drama.

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Comprehension

Have a whole class discussion of the three comprehension questions.  Shared write the answer to the first one and allow the children to complete the last two in pairs.

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