The Photo on the Wall

Reading together

This original Level 5 reader is written for students aged 11–20 who benefit from accessible text and age-appropriate characters. It uses short connected sentences, familiar high-frequency words, dialogue and picture support. Joining words and pronouns link the small problems and the actions that solve them. Students practise tracking print, following the sequence and rereading for meaning. Each book has eight to ten story pages chosen for its content, not a fixed page limit. 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 5 is the intended difficulty, not a formal PM assessment. Reading age 5–6½ 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 photo, wall, putty, corner, straight 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.

An adult can model the first sentence, then invite the reader to join in. 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

How is Joel helping Megan? What do they use to stick the photo to the wall? Why is the photo beginning to lean? What do they decide to add to the photo? Where does Joel put the extra putty? How can they tell the extra putty helped? What does Megan notice when she steps back? How does Joel straighten the top? What are the other students stopping to look at?

Retell what Megan and Joel wanted to do, what went wrong and how they solved it. Use the pictures to show first, next and last.

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

An adult can read the eleven separate question cards aloud and offer picture support. The questions include recall, simple “why” discussion and word meaning; the activity instructions are support text, not an independent Level 5 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.