Our first reading skills book this year has been Holes.

Holes is a book about a boy called Stanley Yelnats. Stanley Yelnats' family has a history of bad luck, so he is not entirely surprised when a miscarriage of justice sends him to the Camp Green Lake Juvenile Detention Centre in the middle of the Texan desert. There is in fact no lake there at all and not much green either. Stanley soon discovers that his work at the camp will be to dig a deep hole each day, and to report back about anything he finds there. Stanley gets to work - but he soon discovers there's more to the task he's been given than merely an exercise in character-building.

We have been learning about the different types of reading comprehension questions there are, focusing on the acronym - VIPERS.

V - vocabulary questions - asking what words mean and giving definitions. Explore the meaning of words in context, confidently using a dictionary and discussing how the author’s choice of language impacts the reader.

I - inference questions - what can we infer from the clues given in the text? Drawing inferences such as inferring characters’ feelings, thoughts and motives from their actions, and justifying inferences with evidence.

P - prediction questions - what do we think is going to happen next? Why?

E - explanation questions - can you explain what is happening and why? Being able to justify and give reasons. 

R - retrieval questions - using skim and scanning techniques to find the answer to questions 

S - Summarising - being able to summarise the main ideas of the text in a sentence. 

We enjoyed the book and have all quizzed on the book which contained 47,000 words! 

Our next book is going to be Clockwork or All Wound Up by Phillip Pullman.