Think2Read is a UK not-for-profit organisation that is committed to helping teachers fulfil the reading comprehension, transferable thinking and co-operative learning potential of children of all abilities.
The Think2Read Programme offers a complete teaching resource that systematically helps you teach reading comprehension skills the reciprocal way from the early years upwards. Children learn progressive skills that show them how to question, find meaning for themselves and become enthusiastic readers with a passion for group enquiry.
Joanna Haynes & Karen Murris’s Philosophy for Children approach (‘Storywise’, Dialogue Works, 2000)
Donna’s first comprehension book (Quick Fix for Year 6 Comprehension, 2007 – ERA Finalist 2007) based on the Think2read approach, was written with Year 6 colleague Ruth Nixey for Key Stage 2 children and has became a best-selling resource.
The more recent ‘whole-school’ downloadable Story Talk, Reciprocal Team and Comprehension Skills programmes (2012) deliver the meta-cognitive and dialogic elements of the Think2Read approach more explicitly over 33 sessions (see ‘Story Talk’ ‘TEAM-building’ and ‘SPECtacular Reading Mission’ on this site for more details about the whole school digital programme modules and whiteboard lesson resources). The new ‘Story Talk’ 3 – 6 year olds school package (Early Years ERA Finalist, 2015) includes downloadable whiteboard teaching materials, print-out activities and interactive Bookmarks Kit with picture book for home and school use.
“If we want our children’s literacy skills and learning to improve and reading to become a life-long pleasure, we need to teach them strategies for ‘making meaning’ as they read – right from the beginning”.
Donna’s explicit comprehension resources were devised to provide teachers with the essential meta-learning steps that help young children to independently apply inference, comprehension skills and questioning techniques to self-monitor their reading and understanding. These explicit teaching and learning steps were missing from National Literacy Strategy guidelines (see report on Think2Read methods by Maureen Lewis, NLS, 2005) and unavailable as teaching materials to schools until Donna’s resources were published in 2006.
Donna set up Think2Read in 2006 to provide CPD training, further resources and research action projects to help schools to facilitate more independent and collaborative reading for meaning, learning and enquiry across the curriculum.
Tried and tested reading skills programme provides context for learning grammar and language structure. Shows all abilities how to: