KS2 Literacy – Create An Online Reading Group
Margaret Meredith recounts how three small schools joined together to create an online reading circle and caused an explosion in book talk…
One of the difficulties faced by small rural schools is that pupils often lack peers of a similar age and academic ability, which can be particularly limiting for gifted and talented children at upper KS2.
This is precisely the case in our cluster of primaries in the Esk Valley, North Yorkshire, where there are between 10-20 pupils in the whole of KS2 in each setting.
Recently, the three schools, along with student teachers from a local university, explored using an online discussion forum to create a virtual reading circle.
22 Y5 and Y6 children from the three schools linked up with four student teachers, whose role was to lead and promote discussion.
The pupils were divided into two groups according to reading ability, and two student teachers were assigned to each group.
Based on the teachers’ knowledge of the children and the books some of them were currently enjoying, we chose Pig Heart Boy by Malorie Blackman for one group and Cool by Michael Morpurgo for the other.
The two online reading circles took place over a fortnight. The children got a real buzz from receiving messages and their motivation to participate was high.
Across the spectrum
Here is one example of the many thoughtful interactions and reflections we saw from the children:
Child S: It was sad when his nan died.
Child I: I agree because she would’ve wanted to live in time to see Alex (about second operation)
Child P: It made me think about the blood that the woman threw over him and what would I do in his situation. What would you do?
Child T: I’d scream and yell and make her feel sorry.
Child R: I really don’t know but if I was a vegetarian I would be angry!!!! So I’m not so sure what to think.
The impact of the project was noticeable across the spectrum of readers. Those children who might otherwise struggle to reach the end of a book really pushed on to get it finished, so that they could join the forum. It also worked well for the avid readers and gifted and talented pupils, who participated regularly and discussed a number of aspects of the book with their peers in the other schools – something they have little opportunity for in a small school.
In fact, we can categorically say that we would never have elicited this type of discussion face-to-face in the classroom.
As well as linking children together over distance, the discussion forum provides an ‘asynchronous’ way of communicating. Children have time to consider their contributions before posting them and there is research to suggest that this can lead to greater participation and greater reflection in the contributions.
Involving student teachers
The student teachers added an extra layer of interest for the children. Their brief was to coax and promote discussion by opening the floor. We wanted to avoid an ‘adult asks, pupil responds’ dynamic and were keen for the children to set the agenda. After all, it’s difficult to have a meaningful discussion about a book you’ve read if all you can do is answer someone else’s questions.
The student teachers had recently studied Tell Me by Aiden Chambers, which looks at how to encourage book talk with children. Putting these strategies into practice, they asked very open ended questions and made comments that children could respond to in their own way – ‘I’m puzzled about…‘, ‘What do you think?‘, ‘Was there anything that puzzled you?‘…
Learning from mistakes
Now we have seen this project through, we have a much clearer idea about its possibilities and what could be improved. It’s important to ‘start with a bang’ and to capitalise on children’s initial interest and excitement. In our case, previous commitments meant that schools’ arrival on the forum was staggered over several days. Next time we’ll plan further ahead and set aside time to get children online on the first day.
In fact, we have now decided to set out a timetable for the year, with ‘who, what and when’, identifying the year group(s) involved, the topic and the start and finish dates. This should help us to set aside time in school for the children to contribute, which is important as not every child has internet access at home and internet access can be poor in rural areas.
We will also work on the quality of the discussion. During this project, the online debates sometimes ended with a number of children simply saying ‘I agree’ and the structure of the conversation was lost. Next time we will give the pupils a little more guidance on how to contribute. It could be that we reinforce skills of persuasive writing or balanced argument. The children could be asked to finish their contribution with another question, or each contribution could be required to consist of at least two sentences. We need to explore ways of promoting more extended contributions without this becoming formulaic and artificial.
We have lots of exciting ideas about how to take this project further, such as setting a maths challenge for children to work on and getting them to explain how they approached it to their peers in the other schools. We also think online discussion would be good for writing poetry. Now that we have seen what is possible, we will plan out the year and have online collaborations lasting from a day to a week or two. Watch this space!
Building a forum
We used a learning platform provided by North Yorkshire called Fronter. As with most Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) it includes the ability to set up discussion forums. The ICT coordinator in one of the schools created the two specific reading groups – one for Cool and another for Pig Heart Boy.
She was sent the names of all participating pupils and student teachers and populated the appropriate forum with these. Discussion forums are also freely available on the internet, but can be vulnerable to spam attacks.
Browse ideas for International Literary Day which takes place in September.
