Wonder by RJ Palacio: Whole-class reading unit (or guided reading plan)

*This took me hours to make and I always share my resources for free. However, if you have found this useful and would consider chucking a book my way (I’m trying to collect class sets for my class), I’d really appreciate it! My Amazon wishlist is here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/36JJE26YLGHYC?ref_=wl_share *

I’m a big advocate of whole-class reading over the carousel method of guided reading! However this planning could also be used with a small guided reading group.

This is a plan for roughly 6 weeks’ worth of reading lessons (24 sessions - provided you do at least 4 a week. Each session lasts about 30-40 mins). It’s definitely aimed towards Year 6, but could be adapted for a Year 5 class. I have used question starters taken from the 2016 sample SATs paper and real SATs paper to prepare children for the new reading curriculum.

I’ve included a “3-mark question” in most of the sessions as a ‘challenge’, and based my example answers round the ‘PEE’ style structure. The accompanying notebook can be used during the lessons so the questions can be displayed on the board for children to see - everything should be there for you! :)

***It has now become apparent that ‘PEE’ is far from a useful method to answer 3-mark SATs style questions. However, I’m going to keep them in the resource as I still think it’s a good way to develop children’s written responses in general. Rhoda Wilson has written an excellent blog here that explains how to write 3-mark responses for SATs: https://misswilsonsays.wordpress.com/2017/01/15/pee-off/ ***