Starter Fiction vs Non-fiction In groups, can students come up with a sentence that summarises the differences between fiction and non-fiction texts? How many examples of non-fiction texts can they think of? What are their favourite fiction texts? Main Activities KS3 English Language Reading Lesson 1: Identifying and Interpreting Teaching Ideas Learning Objective: To identify and interpret information in texts using different reading skills. Success Criteria: • To recap on the differences between fiction and nonfiction texts. The House of Terror Text Give out the The House of Terror Text, which is contemporary non-fiction, and ask students to read it in pairs. Scanning What do we mean by “scanning”? Check students’ understanding of the concept (allowing our eyes to move quickly over a text to find specific information), and then you could use the The House of Terror Questions (available in higher and lower ability versions higher ability students’ questions are not in chronological order, for extra challenge) to tests students’ scanning skills. How quickly can they identify information within the texts? You could turn this into a competition to add an extra element of challenge! Once students have finished, discuss what strategies they used to help locate information (for example, knowing that the answer would be a number can help to find it quickly). Moving House • To understand what is meant by “skimming” and “scanning”. Now, students could be presented with the Moving House Text, which is contemporary fiction. Before they read it, introduce the concept of skimming (moving from word to word to get an overview but not a deep understanding of a text). Can they skim the text and summarise what it is about in a short paragraph? • To apply skimming and scanning skills to identify and interpret information in texts. Skimming Context This is the first lesson in a KS3 unit of work focussing on KS4 English Language reading assessment objectives. This lesson, the focus is on AO1: • Identify and interpret explicit and implicit information and ideas. • Select and synthesise evidence from different texts. Students will test their skills of skimming and scanning. Now, you could use the Moving House Questions to test students’ skimming skills. These questions require students to interpret as well as identify information. Plenary Skim or Scan? Finally, you could return to the learning objective. How do skimming and scanning help us with identifying and then interpreting information? Students could fill in the Skimming and Scanning Summary Sheet.
