Integrated Approach to Reading – 2nd to 6th Class

Introduction

 The Integrated Reading Approach to Reading has been implemented in

Killeeneen N.S. since 2008, following the completion of the Postgraduate
Diploma in Special Educational Needs, by Mr. Patrick Dolan.
 This is a unique approach that uses the class reader to combine all the different
elements of literacy into one lesson – questioning, predicting, oral language
development, vocabulary development, reading, phonics, spelling, writing and
comprehension.
 Prior to implementing this approach, we had a separate phonics plan, spelling
programme and writing was also somewhat separate from the class reader.
 This approach offers a way of integrating these elements with the class reader
to teach a more cohesive Literacy programme.
 The beauty of the programme is that it can be adapted to the needs of our
school, individual classes, pupils and it lends itself perfectly to in-class support.

Questioning and Oral Language Development

 Questioning and Oral Language Development forms a significant component

of the Integrated Approach and permeates each lesson.
 When a story is introduced initially, the teacher begins by using literal
questions focusing on the title of the story and the visual cues progressing to
inferential and predictive questions
 Once the questioning is finished, the children rule their copies. They have a
page for their character profile, a page for their cool words and a page for their
phonic pattern.

Highlighting Direct Speech

 During each lesson the direct speech in the story is highlighted.

 This allows the children to see a visual difference between direct speech and
narrative text.
 It breaks up the text and increases the child’s awareness of punctuation.
 The children soon begin to realise the inextricable link between narrative and
direct speech. Additionally, students come to the realisation that paragraphs in
stories with a high narrative text content may need to read 2 or 3 times – this
process is modelled by the teacher.
 Furthermore, they become aware that the narrative text offers direction on how
to verbalise the direct speech.
 Reading

 Reading is an area that can pose a lot of difficulty for the class teacher because
some children can feel under pressure when asked to read aloud. Choral
reading is the predominant method employed by the Integrated Approach,
where children read in groups. Individual children are assigned the role of a
particular character and will read the direct speech for that particular character.

Vocabulary
 The integrated approach gives the teacher flexibility with the vocabulary they
choose to teach.
 The vocabulary chosen is the language the teacher would like the children to
use in their oral & written expression.
 For example, at the beginning of the year the children are given a free writing
exercise to ascertain the type of language that the children need to focus on for
the year e.g. verbs, adjectives etc.
 The teacher teaches the new word to the children, who will be active
participants in this process & later the children will have to put the new word
into a sentence.

Phonics and Spelling

 Children are given an assessment at the beginning of the year to determine
which phonic patterns & spellings are problematic. The teacher then creates a
list of phonic patterns and difficult spellings to choose from when planning
stories during the year.
 This phonic pattern could incorporate some of the vocabulary the children are
learning from the story.
 If the story does not contain enough words with the chosen pattern the children
can brainstorm additional words. This phonic pattern then becomes the
children's spellings for the next one or two weeks.

Character Profile
 The teacher chooses a particular character in the story & analyses that character
in detail. The teacher picks four or five characteristics to focus on and elicits
these from the children (the children may even come up with additional
material). The children have to back up their characteristic with evidence from
 the text. Thus, improving the child's comprehension skills & preparing them to
be succinct and concise with their answers.
 The children record the character sketch in their copies and later write a full
character profile using the information in their copies.

Homework
 After each lesson the children usually have the following items for homework -
spellings (from the phonics covered in class), reread what was covered in class,
& writing a cool word sentence/story summary/character profile.
 The following elements do not occur in every lesson but rather are a menu that
teachers can select from as they go through stories. For example story circle,
teacher in role, pupil in role, conscience ally, & writing activities.

Story circle
 This is an excellent strategy to improve comprehension and the child's ability
to select the most important information in the story. Once the class has
covered a couple of pages in the story they can use this strategy.
 Divide the children into groups of 4/5/6. The children have to summarise the
story in 4/5/6 sentences. Each child has one sentence. Initially, this task can be
very difficult as the children can put in a lot of redundant information.
However, as children become familiar and comfortable with this task they
produce excellent summaries of a story in 4/5/6 sentences. The children
become adept at providing concise information & sequencing a story. Children
then write their story summary.

Teacher & pupil in role

 Children really love this element. However, it is something that needs to be
conducted carefully by the teacher as children need careful direction. The
teacher needs to model this process for the first number of stories so that the
children are familiar with the process. Once the children are familiar the
teacher can choose a child who is confident enough to carry out this role and it
enables other children to feel more comfortable having viewed a peer in role.
 Also the language children use will be predominantly the language that they
have been learning while studying the story. They can also draw on their
character sketch to help them in their role.

Conscience ally
 This is another strategy that allows the teacher to carry out an in-depth analysis
of a particular character & giving children a greater insight & understanding of
 how a particular character is thinking. The children form two lines & the
teacher walks down between the lines. When the teacher touches the shoulder
of a particular pupil they say what they feel the character is thinking.

Writing
 The writing process is carried out in a number of ways. Through the cool word
sentence, story circle, character profile & other elements that can be brought in
e.g. children can write letters, debates, essays based on a particular theme that
may emerge in a story.
 For example, writing a character profile. The children will have the basic
outline for this activity from their character sketch. The children work in
groups and write about the character using the characteristics that were selected
from the story & support it with evidence from the text. When the children
finish their profile they self-edit & then peer-edit their work. Upon completion
of this exercise the children have a character profile of an angry/worried/happy
character, which they can incorporate into their creative story writing.

Comprehension
 The integrated approach both implicitly & explicitly teaches comprehension
strategies to the children.
 It caters for all learning styles - visual, aural, kinaesthetic. Sections of the text
are acted out by the children, which brings the story to life & makes it easier
for children to understand.
 The language is analysed in a fun and exciting way & children are asked literal,
inferential, predictive & evaluative questions while studying each story.
 By providing concise story summaries children collaboratively work together
to ascertain the most pertinent information to include in a story summary.
 Additionally, their ability to sequence information is enhanced.
 By separating the direct speech from the narrative text children have a clearer
understanding of the structure of the story.
 Furthermore, because children are assigned characters they are more alert in
their participation in class.
 Conscience ally also improves comprehension because children are delving
much deeper into a particular character and it provides them with a greater
understanding of that character and of the story.
 In a similar way, the character profile augments the pupil’s comprehension of
the story.
  The Integrated Approach compliments and uses the comprehension strategies
outlined in the ‘Building Bridges of Understanding’ programme. These
strategies are outlined below.
 Prediction – setting up expectations – titles, text features, pictures, captions etc.
(Building Bridges pg. 17 - 19).
 Visualisation – generating mental images as you read – may be by focusing on
the senses to create a mental picture. (Building Bridges pg. 26-27).
 Making Connections – activating your prior knowledge to evoke personal
connections (Building Bridges pg. 34).
 Questioning – generating questions to explore the text further (Building
Bridges pg. 41 - 43).
 Clarifying – key ideas and vocabulary (Building Bridges pg. 50 - 51).
 Determining Importance – selecting the essential information (Building
Bridges pg. 63 - 69).
 Inferring – recognise the author’s meaning where it hasn’t been explicitly
stated, apply evidence in the text to deduce the author’s intention (Building
Bridges pg. 75 - 77).
 Synthesising – integrate new information with your prior knowledge (schema)
(Building Bridges pg. 85 - 87).

Implementation Date
This policy is currently implemented.

Timetable for Review

We will review this policy in 2016.

Ratification & Communication

This policy was ratified by the Board of Management on April 3rd, 2013.

Signed: __________________________ Date: _______________________

Chairperson, Board of Management, Killeeneen National School.