Guided reading using INFOBYTES – Reading

Mr Madge taking a guided reading session using INFOBYTES

I recently paid my subscription for Infobytes from Hilton Ayrey, a reading consultant at SharpReading, to support student reading achievement in my class. After the success my class had experienced using Storybytes, I thought it was worth dipping my hand into my wallet again to purchase the subscription.

What are infobytes – They are short factual pieces (4 paragraphs) of age-graded text written and formatted especially for Guided and Shared Reading.

Each infobyte is graded at four levels

EASY: Reading Age 7-8 years
EASY PLUS: Reading Age 8.5-9 years
MEDIUM: Reading Age 10-12 years
HARD: Reading Age 13-15 years

This provides me with all sorts of options for developing my reading and writing programmes. The first Infobyte ‘Cats vs Dogs’ caught the student’s attention. When asked to predict what the piece might be about, they had a range of perfectly sensible suggestions.

• Which pets are the best
• They could be at a pet show
• It could be about them fighting.

They laughed when they read the first paragraph, it was about cat’s and dog’s toilet habits. Here it is for a reading age of 7-8 years:

The worst thing about having a dog for a pet is when they need
to go to the toilet. It doesn’t matter what the weather is like, you
will always have to take them for a walk. If you own a cat you
will never have to worry about that. They will use a litter-box or
they will sit by the door waiting for you to let them out. And they
always dig a hole and cover it over when they are finished!