Developing pupils’ skills
Find out how to use teaching approaches and learning opportunities to develop pupils’ active reading skills and strategies.
Pupils who are familiar with using a toolkit of active reading skills and strategies can start to develop and adapt these skills and strategies. This can help them to engage with a variety of texts as they move towards becoming more independent readers. The teaching approaches and learning opportunities outlined in the following sections can help to develop pupils’ skills as critical readers and improve their information literacy.
What is a critical reader?
A critical reader is a reader who can:
- engage with a variety of texts of all forms, genres and modes
- understand and respond to the main issues
- engage with and assess the validity and significance of information and ideas from different sources.
What is information literacy?
Information literacy is sometimes known as information skills. Pupils should be given frequent opportunities to develop their information literacy, deploying a range of reading, research and note-making skills. They should become confident in:
- using texts to source information for specific purposes
- learning to sort, sift and synthesise information in a way that supports their learning.