How to structure an English lesson- fitting it all in.

I decided to write this post as I’ve been asked a few times on Instagram how to structure an English lesson. Particularly how I am “fitting it all in” when teaching English. As far as the curriculum goes, these are the aspects that need covering.

But how much time do you spend on each? What day do you teach what? How often do you teach Oral Language?

There is an awful lot to cover with regards to English and “fitting it all in” is not easy while juggling a pretty hectic timetable. In this post, I’m going to run through how to structure/intertwine my English lessons in hope that it’ll help you if you’re unsure how to structure your lessons.

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Reading is taught for 30 minutes daily from 9.30-10.00. I won’t go in to too much detail in what I cover but follow this link to see a more in-depth look into what I cover in these lessons.

Everyday, a similar structure (see below) is followed:

10 minutes: Read the text, using a mixture of teacher read, pair read (to each other) and choral read (all together)

5 minutes: Model the Reading skill of the day by explaining the activity.

12 minutes: Children complete the activity in mixed ability pairs or individually.

3 minutes: Feedback from activity/extend learning with an extension.

There is a focus solely on teaching a different Reading skills each day, while developing their pace, fluency, expression and general book talk. It’s a crucial lesson to teach every day I think, so no matter where I teach, I think I’ll always worm in a Reading lesson every day!

This photo is a snapshot of what my weekly Reading lessons cover and remember, it only takes 30 minutes a day.

Need any Reading resources? Follow this link!

I teach Writing for 35 minutes daily from 10.00-10.35. I’ll do a more in-depth post on my Writing lessons soon, but to give you a breakdown, I teach a new genre of writing over 3 weeks, following closely ideas from Pie Corbett- Talk 4 Writing.

Why I follow this strategy?

Talk 4 Writing is an amazing strategy to teach children how to write. These style of lessons use loads of DRAMA, COLLABORATIVE LEARNING, ACTIONS and TALK to orally cement the sentence structure in children, before they put pen(cil) to paper!

The difference it makes to children’s writing is phenomenal as they fully understand what is expected of them for that particular piece of writing. An important point to note, I have had NO training in this strategy. I just read some of his books and shadowed a teacher teaching it in my previous school. So don’t feel you cannot try some aspects of this technique in your classroom.

This is a ROUGH guide to what my Writing lessons might look like:

Week 1 Immitate the text:

Children make up actions, draw text maps and engage in drama to memorize the entire text. Let these activities take as long as they need too. Keep them fun, light-hearted and include competitions such as text tennis- Partner A reads line one, partner B reads line two. Repeat until the entire text has been recited. Below is an example of a text map drawn by my partner teacher (amazing right?).

Want the ‘How to Trap a Wild Wolf’ Reading lesson? Click here!

Week 2 Innovation:

Now that the students have an idea of the text type, I spend this week helping them to edit the text/plan their own version of this text type.

With younger pupils- this can be through editing their text map. For instance, take the text map above, children could edit the picture of the wolf, insert a post-it note over each wolf and draw a new animal. There text then changes to ‘How to trap a…’. Whatever they have drawn.

With older pupils- I would be inclined to edit the text map too, but then progress into planning their change in written form too. See here for more information on this.

Week 3 Independent Writing:

In the third week, the children are building up to write their final, edited version of the initial text from week 1. I tend to mix up some modelled/shared write before allowing the children to write their own piece. By the time they are writing their independent work, they are so ready and often excited to finally write it themselves. The RESULTS from this technique really are excellent.

By using this technique it allows you to incorporate Oral Language in your Writing lessons- two birds, one stone- am I right?

But more on that later..

Oral Language is incredibly important and has great benefits for children’s vocabulary, listening and general communication skills. The benefits of TALK in learning should never be under-estimated. BUT, the day-to-day timetable can be incredibly jam-packed. So I tend to incorporate my Oral Language lessons into my Reading and Writing lessons. Below I’ll discuss how I incorporate Oral Language into a Reading lesson.

Every Friday in Reading, we engage in an inference-based activity that requires little to no writing. It usually is a picture that looks like this.

This image is displayed on the IWB for all to see. Children get 3 minutes to discuss the picture and give their first impressions. I’ll then start by asking one of the questions on screen for example:

“Where do you think the creature has come from? Why?”

On their tables, children discuss this question and must use the sentence starter (in white) to share their ideas. This allows them to:

1. Speak and listen to other children.
2. Develop their own ideas by “magpying” other ideas.
3. Work on their inference skills (win/win).

I’ll then ask 2/3 children to share their answer by using the sentence stem (in white). Then I give children 45 seconds to find a new partner. They have to move around the classroom and sit beside someone new for the next question. I’ll follow the same process as the first question, but this time they’re collaborating with new children. Repeat until all questions are answered, then return to their original places.

I encourage children to agree/disagree with each other respectfully. I allow them to do so once they can explain why they agree/disagree.

Find these Inference resources here!

In the last two years I’ve really changed how I teach grammar. I used to teach it as a stand alone lesson on a Monday each week, but I found children weren’t retaining the grammar concept and forgetting them completely two weeks later.

With that in mind, I’ve started to teach grammar as a daily starter to my writing lessons and it appears to be much more purposeful. First of all, make sure the grammar concept you are teaching is being used in the writing genre you are also teaching that week. The more contextual the grammar concept is for children to see it in use regularly, the more they will understand it.

For example: we covered instruction texts last term and the grammar concept one week was how to use a comma in a list. Below is the model text we used in Writing lessons.

For 5 minutes at the start of each Writing lesson that week, we did a quick snappy activity based on using a comma in a list. We did things like:

• I called out items I bought in the shop- they wrote a list on their whiteboard using a comma in between each item.
• I gave them a “busy picture” (see below)- they wrote down everything they could see using commas in between.
• They corrected their partners list and checked if the comma and ‘and’ was in the right place.

By the end of the week, children were confident in using a comma in a list because they had seen it used many times that week and in context too. It may not work in your class and you may feel that you need to teach a stand alone grammar lesson, however for me, this is how teaching grammar works best in my class.

I’ve put Phonics and Spelling in the same category as I feel they’re similar, depending on the age you teach. I don’t teach phonics with my age group this year, but it needs to be taught explicitly for sure. The more contextualized the better. As I am not teaching Phonics (as such) this year, I’ll discuss how I incorporate the teaching of Spelling in my week.

For hands-on Phonics lessons ideas, click here! Use code REBECCA for 10% off!

On a Monday morning, I’ll go through the Spelling rule of that week, reinforcing the phonics of the spellings to the whole class for those who need it. I’ll draw pictures with the children to help us to associate that spelling rule with an image and display it on the our display dots for the remainder of the week. Children complete their spellings at home, which means that the explicit teaching of spellings is done primarily at the start of each week.

If there’s a spare 5 minutes in any day, I’ll do a quick check of the spelling rule for that week by doing a quick fire quiz. This could be by throwing the ball around the room and asking a spelling of that week. Or getting children to write them on their whiteboards while I circulate and check for misunderstandings.

The Spelling Shed is an excellent resource for spellings in the classroom, including games and resources to help children at home and in school with their spellings.

Further Reading and Resources

5 Steps for Converting to Whole Class Guided Reading

Whole Class Guided Reading: A Week Of

Writing Resources

Reading Resources

English Resources for your Classroom

To sum up

My English lessons incorporate different aspects of the curriculum daily. I incorporate Spelling, Grammar and Oral Language into Reading and Writing lessons to ensure I cover as much as possible. I hope I’ve given you some ideas into how you could structure your English lessons.

If you have any other suggestions as to what works well in your classroom, please do share below in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.