The Old Sketch

Reading together

This original Level 19 reader is written for students aged 11–20 who benefit from accessible text and age-appropriate characters. It uses connected sentences, familiar vocabulary and picture support, with longer connected events, varied sentence openings, short dialogue, cause and effect, comparison, supported inference and explaining choices from details in the text. Varied sentence beginnings, pronouns, short dialogue, time words and simple cause-and-effect links help readers follow a small problem, an attempt and its solution. Students practise reading phrased sentences, tracking pronoun references, using punctuation and checking that what they read makes sense. Each book has nine story sections, chosen for its action sequence. A reader may point to each word, join in with a repeated phrase, and use the illustration to discuss meaning. Introduce picture-supported words before reading; offer help with any unfamiliar word. Level 19 is the intended difficulty, not a formal PM assessment. Reading age 7½–8 is an approximate guide to text difficulty; it does not describe the student’s age or maturity.

Before reading

Read the title and look at the cover. Introduce the characters shown there. Explore archive, caption, viewpoint, altered, identify using familiar examples. Invite a prediction about what might happen.

During reading

Introduce unfamiliar character names and useful topic words before reading. Help the student blend unfamiliar words using letter–sound patterns they have learned. Explain a word with an untaught pattern, then reread the sentence. Use illustrations to discuss meaning and check understanding; do not ask students to guess printed words from pictures. These School Readers are not a phonics-sequenced decodable programme.

Model a sentence when useful, then invite the reader to continue. Point to the words from left to right, pause at the full stop, and reread the short sentence for meaning. Use Talk Together for a prompt on each page. Encourage students to look back at both the words and the pictures to support an answer.

After reading

What makes Christine think she recognises the building? What detail challenges Toby's first idea? Why is the sketch's date not enough? Why do they visit the promenade? How do they treat the café owner's memory? What do the dated photographs show? Why do they write that the artist is unknown? What do visitors do at the history evening? Why does Toby keep his first caption beneath the final one? What does this suggest about how his thinking changed?

Retell the beginning, problem, attempts and ending. Explain why a character changes a plan. Use details from the story to support your ideas. What else might have worked?

Reading-age guide

Levels 1–20 describe this library’s editorial progression. Reading-age ranges are approximate orientation guides, not tested scores or automatic equivalents to PM, Oxford Levels or Reading Recovery. Choose a book by listening to the student read and checking fluency and understanding. Match the characters and subject matter to the student’s age and interests separately from text difficulty.

Activities

The eleven separate question cards can be read aloud when needed. The questions include recall, simple “why” discussion and word meaning; the activity instructions are support text, not an independent Level 19 reading task. Explore five vocabulary words, build them from movable letters, order three story pictures and retell the story. Students can drag with a mouse or finger, use tap controls, or use the keyboard. Personal discussion answers may vary.