Dragon

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Dragon! by Hilary McKay
Epict Module I Literacy and ICT Susan Goodwin
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• Lesson Plan
• Curriculum Area Literacy
• Topic Guided Reading - Reluctant Readers
• Learner Cohort 18 year 6 mixed ability children

Literacy and ICT
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Reluctant Readers

• Some children dont like to read and some
  children would enjoy reading but find it
  difficult. These, when grouped together are
  called reluctant readers. These children need
  to be given books that they feel comfortable with
  and make them want to continue with their read.
• Texts should both suit reading level and have a
  content that suits the childs age. Teachers
  often discover that books like these are
  difficult to find but publishers are beginning to
  fill this gap and Barrington Stoke is one of
  them. They are now producing what are called
  HiLo books. These are books that are very
  interesting and are able to hold the attention of
  the reader, but have a vocabulary age suitable to
  the reader. 
• Content and structure
• The content and the structure of a book are very
  important to the reluctant reader.
• The appearance/cover of a book is vital and can
  spoil the effect of first impressions. It needs
  to attract the readers attention and give a good
  impression, suggesting that the book might be
  interesting or humorous and worth opening the
  front cover for. Nothing puts off reluctant
  readers faster than a book that is infantlike or
  boring.
• How did the children feel when they got the book?
• Comments about first impressions were
• it looks interesting
• exciting
• colourful and interesting.
• When asked what they thought of the blurb
  comments were
• it made me want to read the book

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• Frequent readers engage in a book without
  thinking about how it looks inside, but the
  reluctant reader is easily put off by a range
  of intimidating challenges.
• Print size - is an important factor as children
  will quite happily put down a book where the
  print is small and lines are close together. It
  makes the text look daunting and too much like
  hard work to read. Larger type with wider line
  spacing (this is technically called 'leading') is
  easier on the eye. However, if the text is too
  large the child may think it is more infantlike. 
  
• Short paragraphs (particularly in fiction) and/or
  section headings along with short paragraphs (in
  non-fiction) help text look less daunting.
• This along along with Pictures can also break up
  text into bite size chunks, therefore this
  illustrative content will provide weaker readers
  with the visual clues still needed.
• Comments about the book layout and content.
• too easy, pictures were great for setting the
  scene
• good humour, fantastic illustrations
• enjoyed characters, words too easy
• some of the sentences were boring (from a
  higher ability child)
• Many of the children commented that they had read
  the book in just over an hour. This came from
  the middle to higher ability children in the
  class. However, the children that the book was
  aimed had either just completed it the evening
  before we carried out the trial or had not quite
  finished it. (Had the book for three days.)
• Both the content and the structure of Dragon
  appears to satisfy the needs of the group it is
  aimed at.

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Childrens views about the book
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Evaluating the SmartBoard Screens
After the children had completed their book
reviews we began looking at the SmartBoard
screens that I had created. Throughout the
morning I had three groups of children six upper
ability, five middle ability and five lower
ability readers. The lower ability were the
reluctant readers. The time I had to work with
the children was limited, so I was only able to
trial two or three screens with each group. The
first group were the upper ability children. The
Chapters I engaged the children in first were
Chapter 1 with a word focus on pronouns and
Chapter 5 with a text focus on stories with
morals. The children preferred the work on
morals because of the hyperlinks within the
frames, but they didnt enjoy the pronouns I
felt this was because it was work they had
completed fully in class and were probably quite
adept at. Working with the middle group I felt
that the activities were becoming closer to their
capabilities. We worked on Chapter 2
(punctuation), firstly looking at any speech in
the chapter, we discussed punctuation marks, how
they should be used and the proceeded to complete
the Smartboard Slides. (see Appendix 3 )
Finally, I worked with the lower ability group.
After a little instruction with the children we
completed the slides about compound words. (see
Appendix 1 and 2 ). The children advised that
they enjoyed the activities.
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Childrens views about the Whiteboard
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Future use of resource

• I would like to be able to use the book to carry
  out a full guided reading session with children
  who had not read the book in advance, this would
  invite improved responses during discussion. It
  would give time to link the on-screen activities
  to the book in a manner that would enhance the
  childrens learning.
• Some of the children had commented that the book
  wasnt long enough and that it finished rather
  abruptly, however, they did feel the idea of
  being able to write a further adventure of Max
  and the Dragon was a good idea. I showed all of
  the groups the slides that would help write a
  story sequel and they began to imagine all sorts
  of situations and problems that could arise e.g.
  going on holiday, joining the circus, are just
  two. This could lead on to a Big Write session
  with all the class, regardless of ability.
• I would have also liked the class teacher to have
  had the screens in advance to get her views.

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Compound Words 1
Slides 9 and 10 show lower ability children
working on Chapter ___ with the focus on Word
Level Compound Words. In this video clip the
child was underlining words in a piece of text
taken from Dragon.
Click here!
Appendix 1
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Compound Words 2
Child from the reluctant reader group dragging
compound words and putting them into Aunt Emmas
cauldron.
Click me!
Appendix 2
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Punctuation
Click here!
This child is writing the words that Max has
spoken into the speech bubble.
Appendix 3