Preliminary School Experience (PSE) and the Profile of a Reader

Task: to assemble a case study on an individual primary reader

We are asking you to make notes and collect possible data from your week in a
primary school. Below are possible questions/ areas to investigate. We do not want
you to write a full report until after you have had a chance to present your ideas and
discuss them with other students in your tutor group.

● Is there a time when the teacher reads to the class? What happens?
● Have you observed something called ‘guided reading’. How is this handled in
your school? What do teachers and pupils think about this?
● Do individual children choose books from a class or school library? Watch
what they do when they choose.
● Do they bring books from home which they are allowed/encouraged to read in
school? Non-fiction as well as fiction? Are there rules about what they can
bring in?
● Are there children in the class who speak languages other than English? How
do they cope with the school’s approach to reading? What support exists?
● Are parents involved – actually in school or in the ways they are invited to
support their children’s reading at home?
● Is there a ‘class novel’, a book everyone is reading at the same time? How is
this organised?
● Do you notice any gendered differences in the choices children make and/or
in the way they read?
● If you get the chance to talk to children – and we hope you do – ask them
about their favourite kinds of reading and viewing, inside school and out. It
might be possible to tape record your conversations. Such records can prove
fascinating and will be of interest to colleagues.
● If you get the chance to read with a child or a small group, think about the
strategies they adopt to make sense of the text. How do they deal with
difficulties? What do they enjoy?
● Beyond the printed text – what use is made of film and television in school?
● Are children becoming skilled users of information and communications
technology?

These are just a few ideas. You must follow your instincts when it comes to
assembling your case study and go for what interests you in the particular school
and classrooms you are working in. The pre-course reading by Barrs and Cork and
by Minns will help you to make (more) sense of what you observe – as well as giving
you more of an idea of what we mean by a case study.

Although you will not be writing a final report until after we meet in September, we
advise you to keep detailed notes (or a journal) of your observations in the primary
classroom. We want you to talk to your tutor group at the Institute about a reader.
S/he might be a ‘successful’ reader, or a struggling or ‘resistant’ reader. But please
do focus attention on individual learners. Whatever happens – get involved in
reading and be ready to share your experiences with your tutor group in September.
Profile of a Reader
Preparation for writing
• Look back at the notes that you made, and any other evidence that you
collected, during your week in the primary school.
• Refer to the prompt questions that you were given (see previous page).
• Think about the discussion of primary school experience at the Institute, when
you shared your observations with others in your group.

Writing your profile of a reader

• Focus on one child, and make your description as particular as you can. Refer
to specific moments of observation.
• Explain why you have chosen her/him as the subject of your profile: what
interested you about her/him?
• Describe the relevant contexts: teacher, class, school, home, community ….
• Relevant to this profile is all the information that you have gathered about the
literacy practices that impinge on your subject’s experience of reading.
• Feel free to write about other children as well, as a way of providing a context
and to provide a fuller picture of reading practices and the individual reader.
• Sometimes it is helpful to be explicit about what you don’t know – to write
about other things that you would like to have found out, other questions that
you wished you had asked ….

Reading
BARRS, Myra and CORK, Valerie (2001) The Reader in the Writer
MINNS, Hilary (1997) Read it to me now!
PAPEN, Uta (2016) Literacy and Education: Policy, Practice and Public
Opinion.
Refer to what you have read (see above), and explore how these readings
have contributed to your understanding of the reader about whom you are
writing.
o What picture of reading, and of readers, emerges from these accounts?
o How do these writers present case studies of individual readers?
o How do they present the contexts within which reading happens?
o And how did these accounts help you to make sense of what you
observed during your week in primary school?
• Feel free, too, to pursue your own interests: there are many different aspects
to this field of investigation, and you should write about what matters to you.

1500 words (indicative length)

This task can be included in the portfolio that you submit for the Language,
Culture and Learning module.