| Teaching reading at Key Stage 2
Principles and practices: institution-based sessions
The content of these pages is underpinned by the principles exemplified in Literacy in General which provide an excellent starting point for teaching student teachers. Principles, drawn up by the English team at Brighton University and specific to each context for teaching reading, are included, together with relevant texts and teaching and learning strategies. Making curriculum links with homes and communities is also a valuable resource.
Student teachers do need a sound theoretical understanding of the principles that should underpin their practice, but they also need to know how to teach children to read.
Your teaching strategies
Good teachers, like good writers, show; they don’t simply tell! You have probably become a teacher educator because you are an excellent classroom practitioner. You will therefore have a range of teaching strategies which will be crucial to your success with student teachers. In institution-based sessions, not only will you model and discuss these strategies in the context of teaching student teachers how to teach reading at KS2 but, as you do so, you will be teaching the student teachers themselves much of what they need to know about reading and texts.
Thus the practice is grounded in theory and the theory understood through the practice. You will be working within the student teachers’ zones of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978: 80; Geekie, Cambourne and Fitzsimmons, 1999; English for Pupils with Diverse Backgrounds - Key Principles and Emphases)
The following comment, made by a Year 3 student teacher after a module (taught recently by a former colleague), based around approaches outlined in Shared Reading and Teaching out of the Box is typical in its appreciative evaluation.
Throughout this module I have felt more supported and inspired than ever to really make sense of English literature. I only wish I had had this experience earlier in my life. Lectures have been creative, concise, and most importantly active. The subject has been brought alive in every aspect of English teaching. Using similar, if not the same teaching strategies we try to use with primary school children has been the best way for me to learn and grow in confidence.
Student teachers may be making regular visits to a school and care needs to be taken so that there is a continuous and productive interaction between institution-based sessions and school experiences. Watching and analysing video material helps student teachers learn how, and what, to observe in the classroom.
 
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