Reading Spines
No Outsiders
Our PSHE Reading Spine explores and helps teach about equality, diversity and protected characteristics and is developed from the ‘No Outsiders’ lesson plans which cover a broad range of themes around protected characteristics, equality and diversity. Each year group has six specific age-appropriate texts linked to these themes, meaning that the children’s knowledge, understanding will build each year.
The 5 Plagues of the Developing Reader
In his book ‘Reading Reconsidered’, Doug Lemov points out that there are five types of texts that children should have access to in order to successfully navigate reading with confidence. At Hempshill Hall, we have used the 5 Plagues to ensure the children are exposed to books that build on the knowledge of text types throughout their reading journey. Books for the reading spine and the Starbooks have been selected with these plagues in mind.
Archaic Language: The vocabulary, usage, syntax and context for cultural reference of texts over 50 or 100 years old are vastly different and typically more complex than texts written today. Students need to be exposed to and develop proficiency with antiquated forms of expression to be able to hope to read James Madison, Frederick Douglas and Edmund Spenser when they get to college.
Non-Linear Time Sequences: In passages written exclusively for students—or more specifically for student assessments— time tends to unfold with consistency. A story is narrated in a given style with a given cadence and that cadence endures and remains consistent, but in the best books, books where every aspect of the narration is nuanced to create an exact image, time moves in fits and start. It doubles back. The only way to master such books is to have read them time and again and to be carefully introduced to them by a thoughtful teacher or parent.
Narratively Complex: Books are sometimes narrated by an unreliable narrator- Scout, for example, who doesn’t understand and misperceives some of what happened to her. Or the narrator in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” who is a madman out of touch with reality. Other books have multiple narrators such as Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. Others have non-human narrators such as the horse that tells the story in Black Beauty. Some books have multiple intertwined and apparently (for a time) unrelated plot lines. These are far harder to read than books with a single plot line and students need to experience these as well.
Figurative/Symbolic Text: Texts which happen on an allegorical or symbolic level. Not reflected in Lexiles; critical forms of text complexity that students must experience.
Resistant Texts: Texts written to deliberately resist easy meaning-making by readers. Perhaps half of the poems ever written fall into this category. You have to assemble meaning around nuances, hints, uncertainties and clues.