The Reflective Reader can make a considered response to a range of texts and use information from a range of sources.
Reflective readers not only identify relevant points in a text but are able to find significance in, summarise and synthesise (form own ideas from parts of textual understanding) information from different texts or from different places in the same text. They are able to incorporate well-suited quotation or textual reference neatly into their argument to support their ideas, linking examples and explanations or comments coherently in their responses to text.
Readers at this stage are beginning to move from straightforward inference and ‘reading between the lines’ to more sophisticated interpretations. They are beginning to be comfortable with the notion that different layers of meaning are possible within a text. In other words, they are increasingly reflective and perceptive readers who appreciate the way a text can work at different levels and are able to explore their ideas in some detail.
Furthermore, they are becoming aware of the wider implications of information, ideas or events in a text as well as the deeper significance of the writer's use of language and organisational features and the way these contribute to the text as a whole.
Secure reflective readers are able to grasp the 'wholeness' of a text; they are able to explore the way a writer uses language or makes structural choices but they are able to go further, reflecting on the way these features support the writer's overall theme or purpose or contribute to the overall effect on the reader. This might involve tracing the development of a theme or character across the text as a whole, tracing an image throughout a text or exploring the way the writer builds up to an unexpected ending.
Secure reflective readers understand how the writer's overall purpose or viewpoint may be located in the choices of words or sentence structures. In other words, they understand the 'bigger picture' as well as the 'nuts and bolts' of the text, but more importantly, they are beginning to understand their dependence of one upon the other – the relationship between.
Pupils at this stage are beginning to think more independently and more critically about writers, texts and readers. Beyond this point, readers become increasingly independent and versatile, need less support but more freedom and benefit less from the structure of a guided reading approach.
Reflective Reader Prompts
Can you make a connection between an element in this section and an event / character / feature in another text you have read?
Can you identify and explain one or more of the themes (ideas that keep popping up) that are explored in the section / text?
Can you identify a theme (see above) that is being explored in the text and explain how the writer has developed the idea?
Can you identify the most important theme (see above) in the text, explain how the writer explores the idea and justify your choice?
Can you identify specific features from that section of the text using literary terminology (e.g. similes, metaphors, alliteration...) and explain how they work / have an impact on the reader?
With reference to the section you have just read, can you explain the relationship and interplay between the writer, narrator and the reader?
Can you identify and explain how a writer uses irony (the technique of indicating an intention or attitude opposite to that which is actually stated) in the section / text?
Can you use an online encyclopedia or internet search engine to give you a little more information about the time and place in which the text was written (which is not necessarily its setting) and explain how the section / text has been influenced by this?
