English: Shared Reading in Year 2

In our Shared Reading sessions, we have been reading the book, Cinderella: An Art Deco Fairy Tale.

We use this text to help us to understand more about how we can read and understand a text. So far, we have made predictions about some of our characters, using illustrations to help us to understand their personalities. We have also been able to explain the meanings of words, using what we have learned from the text. We have learned about how Cinderella may have earned her nickname, from sleeping by the fireplace each night, and having ‘cinders’ fall on her.

We have been learning about what it means to ‘infer’ and that we must retrieve information to be able to ‘work out’ what a character is thinking or feeling. We know that often, what a character does can tell us a lot about them. We saw that the cat was running away from the step sisters, Elvira and Ermintrude, so this could be a clue that they are evil. When we compare this to Greta, she is very good with animals so this could tell us that she is a kind character, as we know animals often trust kind people.

More recently, we have practicing our retrieval skills (similar to using a lasso, we have to find a word or phrase and bring the information back to us). We started our lesson by recapping what we had read so far by summarising or retelling our story. We spoke about what we know of Cinderella from other versions, and thought about the different objects that the fairy godmother used to get Cinderella to the ball. We then, with our learning partners, went through the text to collect any nouns that we thought were an important part of our story. This helped us to consolidate our understanding of nouns as a person, place or thing. We then answered the following questions:

1. Can you name two of the objects that the kindly woman asked Cinderella to collect?
2. What was Cinderella’s mode of transport to the ball in this version of the story?
3. What was the warning that the kindly lady gave to Cinderella before she left for the ball?
4. What was Cinderella wearing to the ball?

We know that we must check the text for our answers, as this is where they will be… or clues, at least. We are able to take the words or phrases directly from the text to be able to answer our questions. This is something that we are continuing to work on, as retrieval is a skill that means finding and bringing back to us.

Well done for all of your hard work, Year 2! What has been different about this version of Cinderella compared to the traditional ones that you might have read before?