Reading for Pleasure in the new National Curriculum- June conference

Did you know how important it is going to be to have reading for pleasure as part of your curriculum?

“Pupils should be taught to read fluently, understand extended prose (both fiction and non-fiction) and be encouraged to read for pleasure. Schools should do everything to promote wider reading. They should provide library facilities and set ambitious expectations for reading at home. “

The New Curriculum, which comes into force in September this year for all but Years 2 and 6 (they will need to follow it from next year), starts the reading framework with the above paragraph.  From Year 1 the statutory requirements clearly state that children should be reading for pleasure. Most teachers already know this and make it an essential part of their teaching- there is rarely anything entirely new!

Reading for pleasure is of course, something we all wish for the children we teach and so is a welcome development that will hopefully have real and lasting impact on the children currently in primary school.  Studies have found that reading for pleasure is more important to a child's educational achievement than their family's wealth or social class, which is certainly something to stop and make you think. If it has that much power it ought to be the focus of everything we do.  Yet until this move for a new curriculum it has never been a focus of much attention in many schools as it does not appear in any SATs scores or league tables. But taking it to the logical conclusion, if you get the reading for pleasure bit right, you are improving those scores as children do better when they are children who read for pleasure.

So how do you encourage reading for pleasure? And how do you measure progress in reading for pleasure? (No wonder there is very little assessment guidance available!)  Of course we all want the children we teach to be reading for pleasure, but how can you actually make it happen? What resources might you need and what might you need to change in your current curriculum to promote a love of books and make it central to all that you do?

On 11th June there will be a whole day conference in Enfield, North London, which will begin to explore some of these issues. With guest speakers from a wide range of backgrounds, the day aims to motivate you to come to grips with the reading for pleasure aspect of the New Curriculum.

The author Joe Craig will be running one of the sessions. Joe has written many books around the character Jimmy Coates and is not only a great speaker, he is one of those authors boys love to read. Also attending will be Margaret Bright from Enfield Schools Library Service, to talk about, among other things, the summer Library Reading Challenge and the new Reading for Pleasure library boxes. Ruth Fairclough from Bookstart will be doing a session, as will Gina Menon from Raynham Primary, to talk about the wonderful  library they have at the school.  In addition there will be sessions on the background and research into the impact of reading for pleasure and how you can incorporate it into the life of the school.

This day promises to be an exciting one and not one to be missed. Book your place now as spaces are limited and will be given on a strictly first come first served basis.

Contact jacqueline.harris@hotmail.co.uk to book your place now.

 

Helpful hints for phonics decoding check

The week of 16th June 2014 is the third annual decoding check for Year 1 children and resits for Year 2 children who either failed the test or did not take it last year. Despite the proximity of the week, there are still things you can do to prepare children at this stage.

· In the couple of weeks leading up to the check, go over particular graphemes again. The analysis of the last couple of years show the most mistakes were on split digraph and the Phase 3 /oi/  grapheme. This was regardless of whether they were real or pseudo words. Further analysis has shown that unless the pseudo words were too similar to real words as in the first year (remember ‘strom’ and ‘frist’) or unless they had bizarre spellings (‘quorg’ and ‘quigh’) children were equally able to read real or pseudo words. So don’t worry about pseudo words, concentrate on the graphemes and use www.phonicsplay to encourage decoding skills.

· Do as much reading with children as you can. Expose them to opportunities where they have to decode and read for meaning. Whilst it is still true that some really good readers, who are almost past the stage of needing to decode, do find the check particularly challenging, with a real focus on decoding unfamiliar words, those children should not have problems with the check. They do however need reminding to carefully use their phonics rather than quickly glancing at a word.

· This year the pass mark will not be made available till after the results have been sent in. This is because in previous years statistical analysis has shown the very unlikely event; that there was a spike in the number of children who just managed the pass mark. The insinuation is that teachers were ‘helping’ children to pass and so the pass mark will be delayed, only being made available on Monday 30th June. Whether this has a big impact on the national and local data remains to be seen….

Whilst OFSTED do have a huge focus on the phonics and the decoding check data, it is important to remember that there will be some children who are just not at that point yet. So long as it is a handful of children and not half a class, that is perfectly acceptable. OFSTED always look at what you are doing to support those children who are underachieving rather than expecting every single child to be at the same level.

Finally– don’t panic– phonics is a tool for learning to read rather than the end result– we want readers and not just decoders in our schools.

 

The Foundation Stage- A Parent's View

I have been thinking a great deal about the Foundation Stage, which might be a little odd as my son is now in Year 1. Actually it is only with perspective that I am able to see the true nature of the Foundation Stage and how it really does what it says on the box– lay the foundations for future learning.

I am the sort of middle class parent who might be expected to want a quite formal learning environment. I am certainly the type of parent Mr Gove has in mind when he wants the traditional teaching brought back into schools. This is because my son is very able and exactly the sort who needs a great deal of challenge to keep him happy and learning.

We have been incredibly lucky with schooling so far. My son attended a wonderful outstanding Nursery school. He spent much of his first year there dressed up, either as Spiderman or Batman, or in a princess dress. The staff told me in no uncertain terms they were not going to teach him to read. In fact they did teach him to read, but not in any formal way at all. My son’s interests actually lay in writing so they taught him really excellent motor skills.  He’s a left hander so might be expected to be poor at handwriting like his mother! My mother was called into school when I was seven to be told I still could not use scissors and I was the last person in my class to be allowed to use a pen. My son will have no such difficulties due to the excellent motor skills he was given at Nursery. Also because he was so interested in writing the staff showed him how to form letters correctly and when he asked what letters were, they told him. They never sat him down and forced him to write, he chose to do it and consequently has remained a very keen writer; he entirely understands why writing is useful and enjoys it.  It also meant that by the time he started Reception he had a good idea of most of his letters and had done such good Phase 1 work he was easily orally blending  and segmenting.

Reception was another wonderful experience for him. The staff described him as being busy all the time. Of course that was because he was allowed to be busy all the time. He often planned what he was going to do that day on the way to school and the amount of work he undertook was amazing. We saw the Learning Journey book and it absolutely captured who he was. It was full of him organising things and playing complex games, sometimes by himself and sometimes with others. It had a detailed observation of him making a cinema. This involved over 80 minutes of sustained concentration (how many Year 4 children do you know who can do that?) while he arranged the chairs after negotiating the space with other children. Then he made tickets, using both his reading and writing skills and maths– he decided how many tickets he would need and how many he still had to make. He also made a clock to show when the film would start and accurately worked out how many minutes time it would be.  This was not an isolated event, he often undertook projects of this nature, using such a variety of skills I joked he could run the class.

Other learning opportunities included making a car park for all the bikes, using spacial awareness, numbers and large quantities of chalk. He also wrote little notes, all the time. We regularly got notes shoved under the door on the weekends, mainly asking when we were going to get up. He wrote (and still writes) every day, for choice. He wrote lists, always adding to my shopping list at home, as well as lists of things at school. He put labels everywhere, including on the front door when  ‘selling’ the soup we had made together. He also did maths all the time– though he would not have known that was what he was doing. When we were out he used to start mentally adding things at the shops, which meant he had no problems turning that into formal written sums. And crucially he actively enjoyed all this work; he was hooked on learning.

I should add at this point we have never been pushy parents, nor did we do any ‘work’ with our son at home. (In fact I’d be perfectly happy if he had no homework now!) All we did is talk to him from the moment he was born, take him regularly to the library, also from babyhood, and read to him everyday; his father as much as me. I know we gave him lots of experiences and vocabulary but I credit the Nursery and school with his academic performance.

The reason I started thinking about his Foundation Stage years was because he is doing so well in Year 1. I have watched him use all those skills he developed in previous years and apply them to what he is doing now. That, I believe, was the true strength in his excellent teachers. They understood that application is the essential element, so often missing from teaching I have observed. My son did phonics every day, but the key to the teaching was the staff enabling him to use his phonics and the same was true of his maths. The casual observer might have thought he was ‘only playing’ but it was really consolidating huge amounts of learning. And he was not the only one– I look at his class now and the majority are reading and writing with confidence.

Whilst I know my son is very bright and loves learning, I do not believe he could have achieved what he has done this year without the teaching he received in Nursery and Reception. For that I thank the staff, because they let him be the person he is, no-one put him off learning or trying out ideas, instead he had what I consider to be the very best start to his education, one that will carry him forward for the rest of his life; truly it is  the foundation stage and he got the best.

Seen in an Outstanding Nursery

I am 3.

I am not built to sit still, keep my hands to myself, take turns, be patient, stand in line, or keep quiet.

I need motion, I need novelty, I need adventure, and I need to engage the world with my whole body.

LET ME PLAY.

(Trust me, I’m learning)

 

How do you choose a favourite?

I was in the very lucky position of judging the Prima Baby Awards the week before last.

One of the categories we were judging was books and of course it got me thinking - how do you decide on which book is best? Surely it is a very personal and subjective choice, based on your preferences?

They had some wonderful books but to decide which one was better than the others was for me, completely impossible. I love Hugless Douglas by David Melling but that was up against Debi Gliori Dragon Loves Penguin- how can you possibly decide? (They both got top marks from me!) The only book I did not give top marks to was an alphabet book- which was a lovely book but not phonically correct and I can't help myself; I think phonics have dripped into my blood- sad, I know.

That got me thinking about my favourite books- I could never have just one!

I'm a sucker for gorgeous illustrations as well as wonderful storytelling. Many of my favourite picture books combine both these aspects. I adore Quentin Blake and Lauren Child, not only for their great stories but also the illustrations. I'd love to have prints of their work on my walls.
I can't help myself, I do enjoy Guess How Much I love You by Sam McBratney - it seems to encapsulate my feelings for my children so exactly and the illustrations by Anita Jeram are just lovely. Then there are those picture books that take your breath away with the quality of the art work, like The Whale's Song by Dyan Sheldon and Gary Blythe. In fact my list would be almost endless!

For an older reader, I love the Anne of Green Gables books- the whole set. They are a part of my childhood and I have read them again and again. I have a lovely old set, they were my mother's and aunt's, and they are clearly loved and read-a-lot type of books.

Adult books are harder- one of my favourite authors is Guy Gavriel Kay. These books mix history (one of my great loves) with fantasy and they are always hauntingly beautiful.  'Under Heaven' set in ancient China has remained in my mind for a very long time and I'm looking forward to reading the next one.
I also loved The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay.  I certainly never thought I'd count a book about boxing as one of my favourites! (Don't read the sequel- it's nowhere like as good).

I feel I've barely scratched the surface with this thought- the more I pondered on my favourites the more books sprang to mind that I just had to consider. That lead me to thinking about developing a love of reading in children- one of the elements mentioned in the new National Curriculum. I can't remember anyone actually teaching me to love books, but I can remember many, many visits to the library. I can't remember learning to read but I can remember being read to. What I would want for my own children and for the children I teach, is that they have the same hard time trying to pick favourite books, because they have so many they absolutely love and they have that lasting pleasure in picking up a book and savouring it.

It's never too young....

It is never too young to start reading. Books should be one of the great joys of life and even really young babies can find that joy. My daughter had her library card at three weeks old. My son, then five, picked her books for her. He was fascinated by the black and white books suitable for really young babies and hunted for them among the shelves. We were lucky- our local library next to his school- has a wonderful selection of board books, picked by a very clued-up librarian. It is only a small library (Osidge Library in Barnet- they deserve a mention) but they have really well stocked shelves.
So my little girl started her reading journey. At first she managed a few seconds, with my son discovering, to his joy, that he could read her books to her. Now, at the grand age of five months she is very interested indeed. Her father reads to her every night and just like her brother she likes 'That's not my train' by F. Watts and R. Wells, as well as the books selected from the library. Unlike her brother she also gets to hear far more advanced material, such as James and the Giant Peach, if she is feeding while I'm reading my son his latest favourite. She also gets to hear him read, not only her library books but his books from school.
I was chatting to my hairdresser about going to the library. She is a lovely woman and a devoted mother, but it had simply never entered her head to take her baby to the library. She had no idea that there was such a wonderful selection suitable for babies, nor that she would get a Bookstart pack. So I wondered if other new parents had any idea about how to go about getting such great free resources. May be this is an opportunity for libraries and Bookstart to think about connecting with parents from birth. They put all sorts of things in the Bounty pack; why not library joining cards? At a time when yet more research shows children who visit the library do better at school, we need to be thinking of ways of getting children into the library and supporting parents to take them there. It seems like a missed opportunity to not grab parents from the word go. I would want every child to have the wonderful reading experiences my children have, because reading really is one of life's greatest pleasures.

Phonics teaching- whole class or ability groups?

There is currently a great deal of debate about how to teach the discrete phonics session. Should you teach whole class or ability groups? The short answer is that either is ok, but my experience is that whole class works better for all children. This conclusion is based on two things– the research and also the experiences of schools who have successfully navigated the phonics maze, both in terms of the Y1 decoding check and OFSTED.
First of all what does OFSTED say about the matter? Actually they shouldn’t mind which way you teach, so long as the lesson is challenging for all children and the quality of teaching and learning is good. They have to abide by their own rules which are stated in their handbook. ‘Inspectors will not look for a preferred methodology but must identify ways in which teaching and learning can be improved.’ Also when judging quality of teaching, ‘Inspectors must not expect teaching staff to teach in any specific way or follow a prescribed methodology.’ So in theory they would not mind if you taught the lesson standing on your head, so long as the children were learning!

The research is particularly compelling and, I find, rather shocking. It comes from the seven year Clackmannan-shire study into the teaching of synthetic phonics, which kick-started the phonics revolution in schools. ‘Slowing down the programme for some slower learning children may be setting them up for reading failure; they may never catch up with their classmates, no matter how much extra practice in reading they get.’ (Teaching Syn-thetic Phonics by R. Johnston & J. Watson 2007) The idea that, with the best intentions, we are creating auto-matic failure for some children, is a rather scary one.


The experiences that schools have had would back this research. For example schools that taught the lower abilities separately and at a slower pace, found that there was no way those children could succeed when it came to the Y1 decoding check. It did not matter how much progress they had made, they simply had not cov-ered all the phonemes required to do the test and so could not hope to pass it. Schools that had taught all chil-dren in a whole class situation, all the phonemes, found that all children could at least attempt the test and some schools got as high at 87-90% passing the check due to this.

I also know schools who ‘undid’ the grouping by ability. It was very difficult to start off with, particularly ensuring that all the children in the lower groups had some sort of catch up to make up for the missed phonemes. What the schools found however, was that the lower ability then made accelerated progress– perhaps it was just a rise in expectations for them or perhaps it was the challenge of being with the more able children. The other thing these schools noticed was the amount of time they had suddenly freed up– in one case it was as much as 3/4 hour each week. In a large school, moving children around for different groups takes up a great deal of time.

The teachers also felt far more confident in their own knowledge of where children were as they were teaching them all the time. This is another big issue around ability grouping. Frequently the Support Staff are used as the teachers for a group and they quite often have not had the same level of training in order to teach the phonics. Grouping has a difficulty around staffing which can really only be solved if Support Staff are involved and teach-ing groups. There are obviously some really outstanding Support Staff, but equally without experience and train-ing it can be a disaster for that group.

Obviously whole class lessons need to be effectively differentiated, which is very easy to do. For example if you are teaching /ee/ in Phase 3 and you have some more able pupils you add in some Phase 4 words such as sleep, creep etc and very able pupils words like cheese. When teaching Phase 5 you always refer to the Phase 3 words covered and your least able group can revise Phase 3 and even Phase 2 as necessary, so long as they are also learning the grapheme for that day. Practice is easy to differentiate by the words given– though always make sure everyone is covering the grapheme for that day and apply you just need to have easier or more complex sentences to read or write, again making sure that all children are applying the grapheme for the day, even if all the rest of the words are only at Phase 2.

Finally, something to think about... On the whole schools do not put children into ability groups and teach them separately rather than whole class, for any other subject, particularly in EY and KS1. So why is it different when it comes to phonics? I don’t think it is different and I would hope schools have high expectations of all their  pupils, giving them equal access to one of the key skills for learning to read.

Nonsense words

I've been asked a great deal about nonsense words in the last few weeks. Teachers anxious about the decoding check next June want to know what they should do about nonsense words. They know that the children in their classes will be expected to read 20 nonsense words and being diligent and caring teachers they want to prepare the children as best they can.

My take on the matter is rather different. I want the children to read real words. I want them to be exposed to all the rich and wonderful vocabulary that they could then use in their writing and spoken language. I want them to learn new words and ways of expressing their ideas. to be honest, I don't care if they can decode 'zerb' or 'ock'. I care if they can read and understand 'beware' and 'chaos'.

A head teacher I met had suggested to staff they put up nonsense words around the classroom. I was completely appalled and baffled. What good would this do the children, particularly those who might not know whether they were real or made up words? If you read Letters and Sounds there are so many good words you might want children to use and have understanding, there is no need to make words up. After only a week of phonics teaching Reception children will be able to make the word 'sap'. I doubt many 4 year olds will know that word so there is a great opportunity to extend their understanding. Go outside, find a tree with sap or talk about the term sapping your strength. Who needs nonsense words when there are wonderful words waiting to be understood and used. Words that will enrich children's writing and are perfectly decodable and could be used in a test, if there is insistence that there is one.

I can think of two instances when nonsense words could be used. One of those is when reading. A book like Linley Dodd's, The Dudgeon is Coming! is full of wonderful made up names like the bombazine bear and the stickleback twitch. Matched with imaginative illustrations of these characters it is a delight to read and would test the phonic ability of many children. The other occasion in a game like phonicsplay.co.uk.  The games involve children decoding words and seeing if they are real or nonsense words. As this of necessity involves language comprehension it is a much better use of nonsense words than purely decoding them for the sake of it.

So I say to all those teachers out there, don't teach children nonsense words. Your purpose has to be teaching children to read not just decode. Give them all the wonderful words English has to offer and it will be doing them a far greater service than learning to decode 'blerk'!