Please note: this resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.

The objectives of this lesson were for the children to:

• Understand that spoken language and word usage may change over a period of time;
• Understand that to be able to use an historical document as a source of evidence it is necessary to have a knowledge of specific vocabulary;
• Become familiar with using a textbreaker to access difficult and challenging texts;
• Be able to work in teams to pool knowledge and to produce a report for whole-class presentation.

Literacy context
I felt able to apply lessons I had learned from the video clips of John Fines' teaching and the use of Reading documents strategies to enable children to access difficult and demanding texts.

I had been exploring the idea of offering 'real' situations within the literacy hour to raise both verbal and written skills. Work on identifying types of questions to interrogate a text and raise understanding beyond the literal had also been a focus of reading strategy teaching.

Teaching methods Reading documents Questions and questioning Speaking, listening, discussion and debate - Oracy