​ Analysis of the papers can take many angles and I don’t hope to cover them all in this series of blogs; instead, I intend to use an analysis of the reading SATs to allow for insights into our current teaching practices in the hope of developing and sharpening classroom pedagogy.

If I miss anything of particular interest, please do get in touch, and I will try to explore that avenue.

Inference – there’s more to it than meets the eye!

I have long since stopped the (to my mind) fruitless task of analysing past papers to see which tested domain presented the area of greatest weakness for my pupils. Following several years of laboured analysis, I realised that I was reaching the same, rather unhelpful conclusion: the children struggle most with questions relating to inference (tested domain 2d).

I now see that there are several reasons for this: firstly, it tends to be one of the most heavily tested domains; secondly, the question format tends to be the most challenging, in that the questions tend not to fall into the easier ‘tick a box’ type response. Clearly, if a domain is heavily represented in a test, then it is more likely that at some point children will make an error or two on one of the many questions within this sub-set, therefore making it likely to look like an area of weakness. To exemplify this point, let us turn to the figures…

In 2019, inference remained a testing domain heavy-weight, commanding 18 of the potential 50 marks from the test! Compare it to domain 2c (which tests the ability to summarise) - which was allocated a measly 1-mark question across all three texts -  and you begin to get a sense of the weighting.

If this weighting is taken too literally however, misinterpretations begin to form: if not careful, we may form a skewed perspective on how the testing domains relate to potential classroom teaching of reading. The weighting analysis could lead us to conclude that teaching ‘inference’ is more important than teaching ‘summarising’, after all, it appears that the children will need to flex their inference muscles a great deal more than their summarising ones.

Instead, it is helpful to step back and remind ourselves of the bigger picture, and specifically how the reading skills required to make inferences might marry together. To support with this, I refer you to a well-aged blog, published back in 2016 entitled Reading Re-envisaged, where we explored the potentially interrelated skills of reading comprehension. When considered in this way, we can see that the ability to summarise is an essential skill in allowing inference to flourish, not a mere by-stander in the comprehension process. Therefore, neglecting the teaching of ‘summarising’ in favour of teaching ‘inference’ is not going to win any marks in the long-run.

The message here then is that extrapolating insights from the reading tests, and using them to directly shape and guide classroom pedagogy, can be short-sighted and can lead to reductive teaching practices (the example here being that of the weighting towards inference questions: just because inference is tested more, it doesn’t mean that we should isolate this skill and try and teach it). Instead, we need to think wisely about the errors or gaps that we see displayed before us and respond in a measured and informed manner, bringing to the fore our understanding of what it takes to become a skilled reader.

Most often, the solution will be to provide holistic, rounded and well-informed reading guidance, allowing room for plenty of teacher modelling and pupil practice of a wide range of skills, using a wide range of quality texts, rather than honing in on domain specific questioning. Of course, this doesn’t provide a quick route to reading proficiency, but it certainly provides the most successful one.

It’s Vocab, Jim (but not as we know it!)

Another ‘hidden’ tested domain relates to vocabulary. Although according to the test mark scheme, only 6 marks were accredited to questions listed as testing domain 2a (‘give/explain the meaning of words in context’), as teachers, we know that word knowledge, and specifically vocabulary breadth, is fundamental to reading comprehension success. As the model of comprehension referenced earlier denotes, if you don’t know the meaning of the words on the page then you have great difficulty moving across to the outer circle of the comprehension model.

Every question within the test assessed proficiency within domain 2a. I am no doubt preaching to the converted when I state that vocabulary exploration and development must underpin everything that we do. Its power to support - and impede - the young reader cannot be understated.

Seeing as vocabulary knowledge and breadth is pivotal to reading comprehension, it is worth looking in depth at some of the questions in the 2019 paper relating to this domain, in order to gain an insight into the children’s strengths and weakness in this area. Indeed, a closer inspection of the question styles, and the data outcomes, does reveal something that may be helpful for guiding our classroom practices.

One of the most poorly answered questions, pertaining to texts 1 & 2, was question 8 (a lowly 65% correct national response rate). Question 8 is presented below.

If your children – like those nationally - stumbled over this question, then you may have reached the concluded that they struggle with word knowledge. As a responsible teacher, you may already be setting to work thinking about how you could address this area of supposed weakness. But, hold on! There may be more to this than meets the eye. There were two other questions pertaining to domain 2a within the question set for text 1 (question 4 & question 9) – both are represented below.

 

At a national level, both these questions received significantly higher correct response rates than question 8 (Qu.4  = 95.1%; Qu.9 =  92% correct response) with the vast majority of children who had a go at the questions getting them right. The challenge then appears to be less about poor word knowledge per se and more about an issue with question style. If you had already set to work to resolve this issue by introducing more ‘copy and find’ style questions into your repertoire, you are unlikely to solve the issue. In fact, most children seemed ok with this style of thinking and questioning. Instead, what they struggled with was the ‘explaining’ element required by test question 8.

Most teachers would acknowledge that the ability to ‘explain’ is far trickier that the ability to ‘spot’. Knowing this should therefore guide our practice towards creating learning opportunities that develop the art of explaining language meaning, rather than simply spotting synonyms.  In reality, this means planning activities that allow children opportunities to explore language in context; allowing them time to tease out alternative meanings and to attribute the most likely one to the text in hand; to debate the nuances of language and then, most importantly (from a test situation perspective at least), to learn how to encapsulate this understanding into a pithy explanation or definition. This, you can see, is a very different approach to one which might have led to adapting some paper-based comprehension task to incorporate more generic domain 2-type questions.

The key to developing improved responses to question 8 – and others like it - will be achieved through regular well-planned language discussion, based on a wide range of quality texts, not through silo working on well-intentioned comprehension exercises.

The journey required to achieve this deep knowledge of words and language is undoubtedly longer, but ultimately, when dealing with vocabulary development, we have to recognise that we are in the business of securing long-term gains, rather than short-term wins.

I hope that this blog provides enough to get teachers thinking about some of the ways in which they might interpret the findings of this year’s reading SATs paper outcomes, and how their findings might be translated into effective classroom pedagogy.

 

The truth is that writing is hard. What’s more, teaching it is even harder! Every teacher knows that supporting a child to master what we might call basic sentence construction takes years. Too often, we encounter children in years 5 and 6 who, despite years of practice of this particular skill, still haven’t quite grasped it. Yet basic sentence construction is just the beginning. Beyond that, there appears to be so much more to learn in order to allow our pupils to articulate their thoughts in coherent and well-considered prose. The list of terminology held within the National Curriculum VGP appendix pays testament to this and often seems overwhelming: adverb, preposition, conjunction, pronoun, parenthesis, active, passive…the list goes on. It is not surprising therefore, given the lengthy list of terms that pupils are expected to learn, and the feats of syntactic artistry that children are expected to perform by the end of KS2, that teachers feel a sense of urgency to get on with the job of covering all this stuff, often at a rate of knots. Unfortunately, it is this ‘need for speed’ that so often forces teachers down a path of rapid-fire teaching and light coverage that results in false gains and subsequent gaps in key knowledge and skills. Although this need to push on is understandable, speedy coverage combined with lack of planned time for repeated practice, is most definitely your enemy when it comes to improving basic writing skills.

Although the curriculum remains packed at KS2, at KS1 the expectations regarding writing, and specifically sentence construction and demarcation, have been stripped back somewhat in recent years. It is important to remind ourselves that some of the aspects of writing that were expected to be taught pre-NC 2014, have been shunted into the KS2 Programme of Study (PoS). For example, according to the NC, ‘inverted commas to punctuate speech’ does not need to be introduced until Y3. Adverbs of time and place used to sit squarely in the Year 2 PoS, but again, this has been shifted to Year 3. Of course, the NC clearly stipulates that it remains the school’s decision whether or not they choose to introduce key stage content during an earlier key stage. My experience, however, is that teachers are often teaching this knowledge in KS1, not because they have engaged in deep consideration about whether or not it is relevant to their pupils’ needs, but because they still think that they have to. Even though the NC can no longer be called ‘new’, I find that some schools have yet to engage fully with the PoS laid out within it, and to have those crucial conversations about what should be taught within which year group, and most crucially WHY. I imagine that the conversations that are surfacing about curriculum design and sequencing may well provide a good platform from which these conversations can now take place – hence the timing of this particular blog.

In regards to the WHY question, my response is simple. Any stripping back of the content of the KS1 writing curriculum is a good thing due to the fact that what is left within the PoS is hard! Essentially, we are left with what some might unwittingly call ‘the basics’. That is, the skill of recognising and writing simple and multi-clause sentences, using the correct end punctuation and correct capitalisation. Year 2 takes this a little further by encouraging sentence embellishment: specifically, the addition of detail for the reading through the inclusion of adjectives and noun phrases. Fundamentally, when looked at coldly, there is now scope within the KS1 PoS to focus on the big stuff. Quite right too. As I stated in my opening line, writing is hard, and nothing is harder than supporting young writers to master the concept to transforming their thoughts into well-shaped sentences.

The key word in the last sentence is ‘master’. By this, I mean that they can write a sentence that has a capital letter at the start; that has the appropriate end punctuation; and that may, or may not, be extended by the use of a limited range of subordinating or coordinating conjunctions about any topic (within reason) in any context, be it an English lesson or history lesson or geography lesson and so on. Sounds simple, but the reality is that every teacher knows how hard this is to achieve.

No doubt, the key to success in this pursuit is practice, and lots of it. The danger is that, as I see it in the many classrooms that I visit, time for practice is regularly eroded away by teachers’ beliefs that they constantly need to be pushing on, harder and faster. As soon as the children appear to have grasped a concept (a very different ability to ‘mastering’, I’d like to point out), the teachers feel the urgency to move on: ‘Well done for starting some of your sentences with a capital letter. Now try to vary your sentence starters.’ Thus dashing on before the basic skills are embedding and running the risk of destabilising the yet-to-be-secured foundations. This is a common ‘next step’ that I hear teachers share with children in Year 1/ 2 – I also often seen it modelled in writing. I understand the drive: writing does have a much better rhythm when the sentences start in ways other than beginning with the noun, but there is a time for this next step, and while the children are still in the process of grasping basic sentence security, the time is not right to move on. Instead, what the children need is practice to be able to do this anytime, in any place and in any context.

Put simply, practice is the act of doing something that you can already do, thus allowing that skill to become automatic or second-nature. And, herein may lie the problem. As a profession, we have become nervous about asking children to do something that they can already appear to be able to do. ‘Where are the errors? Where is the challenge? Where is the ambition?’ we might be asked by a well-intentioned observer.

The fact is that we need to develop a bravery about stating what we know best about our subjects. And, one thing teachers know is that getting children to the point of mastering basic sentence construction and punctuation is a challenge. Hence the need for lots of opportunities for practice. This practice need not seem repetitive to the children. It may not occur to them that when they are writing about Lowry’s interpretation of life in Northern England, or the life cycle of a butterfly, that they are actually practising the skill of writing sentences. We do not in fact need to make this explicit to them, after all, it is the factual information of the task at hand that is key. It just so happens, however, that due to our recognition of the importance of time to practise the developing skill of sentence construction, we have engineered a task to share and embed this new knowledge that requires the recording of information in complete sentences. Therefore, when we design tasks across the curriculum that allow time for children to practise the skill of writing sentences in line with the English PoS, we are recognising that the time required to truly master this learning requires more than is available in the specified English lesson teaching time.

Time to practise this vital skill should not just be left to tasks undertaken within the wider curriculum – core practice time should also take place within the English lessons. Time to practise within the time allocated to English lessons falls within what was once called ‘phase 1 teaching’. Although this stage may now fall under different titles in different schools, it refers to the time within the English unit when you explicitly teach reading: both decoding and comprehension in KS1 moving to the dominance of comprehension tuition in KS2. When we teach reading, we often require children to express their understanding of what they have read in order to appreciate if they really have grasped what the text is telling them. We might, for example, following a read of a text featuring a dastardly villain, invite the children to discuss the appearance of the character and then write a WANTED poster recalling the distinguishable features of the accused. To give another example, following a read of a text featuring a character in distress, we might encourage the children to explore their thoughts and then record them in the form of a diary entry. The purpose of these writing tasks is to convey the children’s understanding of what they have read. In that sense, we are not teaching them how to write; instead we are allowing them time to practise the writing skills that we have already taught (perhaps in a previous unit) for the purpose of shedding a light on their reading development. As a teacher, when looking at these written outcomes, not only can we gain an insight into how their reading for meaning is developing, but we can assess their understanding of the key skill of sentence construction and demarcation. The beauty of this way of working is that we are able to see how well the children are able to construct sentences and demarcate them when sentence structure and demarcation is not the focus. If they can maintain those skills when they are focused on another matter e.g. conveying their understanding of character or reflecting on a character’s motives, then you can be assured that they are well on the way to mastery. If on the other hand, the burgeoning sentence demarcation skills that you celebrated in their last piece of focused writing (perhaps at the end of a previous unit when sentence demarcation was stated loud and proud as the success criteria for the piece) are now sadly absent, then the subsequent writing focus needs to be…yes, you’ve guessed it…basic sentence construction and demarcation.

The simple truth is that moving on too soon from this focus is futile. Until the children have really mastered sentence construction and demarcation at a basic level, it will just keep on coming back to bite. Look ahead by all means, but think carefully about moving on until the KS1 PoS is well and truly secure.

 

​In my previous blog, KS1 mathematical recording is not just for Ofsted I considered the question that I am often asked by teachers when reflecting on their maths teaching, “What should it look like in their books?” This led to reflection as to the purpose of recording in maths. I concluded that recording is essential, although how this is achieved depends on the purpose of the mathematical recording - whether it aims to make connections between models, practise a new skill, record the journey through a problem, develop precision in reasoning, focus on reflection and evaluating strategies...

In this blog, I have tried to capture some ideas which might support teachers (KS1 especially) to develop manageable and meaningful mathematical recording. What follows are some practical suggestions and examples of what is achievable in KS1. All examples show work produced by Year 1 children and have been provided by some of the amazing practitioners that we have the pleasure of working with. They show how recording can be manageable and meaningful and support pupils to deepen their understanding of maths; they show just how important recording in maths can be.

Encourage pupils to record alongside concrete models

Through supporting pupils to move from concrete to abstract, through pictorial representations, mathematical understanding is deepened. In this example from Ashtree Primary School in Stevenage, I was delighted to watch as pupils chose their level of challenge and then busily built their part whole models, recording them independently.

 

​

Encourage pupils to record pictorially and abstractly together

In addition to supporting transfer between models to build depth of understanding, recoding pictorial representations alongside abstract ones, ensures that those pupils who find recording difficult can still prove their mathematical understanding and provides an opportunity to practise the elements of recording the pupil is finding hard.

For example, the pictorial representation of 31 below, produced by a Year 1 child from St. Paul’s Catholic Primary School in Cheshunt, leaves no room for doubt over the intention of the pupil and allows the teacher to identify that further practise in writing the numeral 3 is required and provided.

 

In the example below, from St. Alban & St. Stephen Catholic Infants, pupils have used abstract representations to show understanding of the connection between the part whole model and addition and subtraction.

 

 

Develop depth of understanding through encouraging multiple representations

In the example below, from Boxmoor Primary School in Hemel Hempstead, the pupil is recording their understanding in many different ways including using their own representation and each different representation is exposing something different about their understanding. 

 

 

Similarly, from the same school, the representations below all show the same thing, but each tells us something different about what the child understands.  For example the tens frame model showing understanding of the two parts of the whole, the part whole model emphasizing the understanding that the parts go together to create the whole and the bar model highlighting understanding of the relative sizes of numbers.

 

 

Provide pupils with opportunities to complete representations to show understanding

Often activities can be “tweaked” so that the amount of recording needed is limited or to enable pupils to record in different ways, for example by completing representations.  This example from Millbrook School in Cheshunt, provides an excellent example of just that and ensures that the focus can be placed on showing mathematical understanding.

 

 

Similarly this example, from St. Gregory’s Catholic Primary School in Northampton, has provided the opportunity for the Year 1 pupil to complete the representation to show understanding.

 

Provide opportunities to annotate representations to focus on reasoning

When the focus of the recording is reasoning, providing representations in questions can enable children to be able to annotate what is already there to show their understanding and so the focus can be placed on explaining how the pupil knows. 

 

 

Encourage pupils to prove how they know

Proving does not need to involve words.  Consider how, in the example below, the pupil has proved that one more than 12 is 13.

 

 

However, Year 1 pupils can reason in writing.  In the example below from St Paul’s, the pupil has proved their understanding pictorially and in writing.In addition, it has given the teacher an opportunity to provide the pupil with precision.

Support pupils to develop independence in recording

At St Teresa’s in Borehamwood, pupils have access to blank tens frames and part-whole models which they can use at any time to support their recording; developing both independence and mathematical recording.

Use questions with limited recording to uncover understanding that is not yet secure

In the question below, pupils are being asked to think deeply about the structure of the problem, but the recording required is limited.

 

 

Use recording to challenge

Using the example above, challenge could be added by asking pupils to prove their selection or by considering how else the problem could have been presented. What could the worded problem be? Challenge can often be offered by simply using the command: show me another way.

Support pupils to know how the recording could look through modelling

Through models on working walls and providing recording scaffolds, pupils can be shown how the recording might look. Where these are used most effectively, pupils will use them repeatedly from many different starting points and will start to develop their own links too. Having used the same recording frame many times, starting at different points, pupils have the opportunity to reinforce understanding, make new links and develop independence.

 

 

Give pupils the mathematical vocabulary

vocabulary precisely is essential in the development of a mathematician. By providing the mathematical vocabulary and using this recorded task, the teacher has made the focus the use of accurate mathematical language.

 

Give pupils the language to communicate mathematically

Pupils need to be supported to talk mathematically before they will be able to record in this way and we know that the quality of this talk is crucial.  This is one of the reasons that speaking frames are so integral to the new ESSENTIALmaths resources.  The talk has value in itself and so will not always be recorded, but the same speaking frames used to support the talk, can be used as writing frames where appropriate.  In addition, talk can be captured where this is purposeful.  Some schools achieve this by using post-it-notes or stickers written on and stuck into books or by recording directly into the book.

I am not advocating that this be used all of the time for every child, but it could be a great use of an adult in the room as it helps you assess understanding that you may not have seen yourself and it builds self-esteem for the child.  It can also help everyone to focus on the importance of reasoning rather than just the answer.  When considering capturing talk you might consider:

• When is this most achievable and beneficial?  Carpet time/small-group discussions/during practical activities…
• Who would it be useful to focus on? 
• How will talk be captured? 

In the examples below, key mathematical noticing and explanations have been captured effectively by other adults in the room.

 

 

 

Other schools use i-pads or other recording devices to capture the rich reasoning in their classes and to offer the children a different audience and medium to share their recording through.

Remember recording DOESN’T have to be all about books…

Pupils tend to like recording in unusual places.  Sometime the allure of a post-it or coloured sugar paper can work wonders and can allow for collaboration and recording on the run … 

In the example below, pupils worked together to consider the number nine and all the ways that they could record this.  Whilst the post-it note came from a quick challenge question from a teacher who said “4 is 4 less than 8.  How else could we say that?”

 

 

 

 

Value recording for the maths

KS1 pupils sometimes identify the best mathematicians as those who record most neatly and this can be a telling sign of what we show that we value in our classrooms.  It can be important to make sure that we are show how we value recording which really shows the mathematical understanding.

In summary, I would suggest that we enjoy developing mathematical recording with our pupils, thinking carefully about the purpose that the recording has in each case and ensuring recording provides opportunities for all pupils to access tasks independently, develop their understanding and to demonstrate this.  If we focus on the needs of our pupils and developing their mathematical understanding, we won’t be caught in the trap of thinking that we need to record to provide evidence for Ofsted!

Top tips for developing manageable and meaningful maths recording in Year 1

• Encourage pupils to record alongside concrete models
• Encourage pupils to record pictorially and abstractly together
• Develop depth of understanding through encouraging multiple representations
• Provide pupils with opportunities to complete representations to show understanding
• Encourage pupils to prove how they know
• Support pupils to develop independence in recording
• Use questions with limited recording to uncover understanding that is not yet secure
• Use recording to challenge
• Support pupils to know how the recording could look through modelling
• Give pupils the mathematical vocabular
• Give pupils the language to communicate mathematically
• Remember recording DOESN’T have to be all about books…
• Value recording for the maths

​

Catherine Root is Literacy and Reading Recovery Lead at Stationers' Crown Woods academy, a large academy based in Greenwich, southeast London. Catherine participated in the KS3 Reading Fluency Project in summer 2021 and implemented the strategies with students in years 7 and 8 who were struggling with reading accuracy and comprehension. 

I was looking for the Holy Grail - the quest that every school Leadership team has: to find something that would close the literacy gap. Having been an English teacher for 23 years and a senior leader for 13 of these, I had seen ‘literacy’ float around school agendas in a pretence of its significance but in truth anything being actioned having very little real impact. ‘Word of the Week’ may have been displayed in every classroom, students might have access to a well-stocked library, key word lists might well be distributed and displayed but the stark reality was that these things, while ticking boxes, had very little influence on improving students’ literacy levels, even less so for those who had already fallen behind. Worse still perhaps was ‘literacy intervention’ which although undoubtedly offering reading time and pastoral support, also fell short of a high energy, high impact measurable strategy to really close the gap.

Returning from maternity leave, I started a new part-time role as Literacy Lead at a 1700 strong academy in Greenwich.  The main part of this work was to review literacy provision across the school and to launch some reading recovery programmes. As I met the pupils, my heart ached for the students in front of me, whose level of reading was so poor that not accessing their Geography lesson was the least of my worries for them. How do they navigate the world on a daily basis? Read a bus timetable? Send an email? Read instructions? How will they apply for job? Be able to revise for their driving theory test? Do something that an employer requests of them?  In most cases, these children have learnt to cleverly mask their weakness in reading - even more dangerous in the classroom where busy teachers think they understand but do not realise how little they have really grasped.

I wanted to fix it; to put it right once and for all; to find that intervention that would really work! 

I looked at various programmes, all of which had merit but all were also tagged as ‘moderate’ in impact. Some were phonics focused but my issue was students who could, on the whole, decode successfully but had somehow stopped developing and reading so that their comprehension and vocabulary was weak. Many of the programmes that seemed written for them were perhaps a little dry in content and structure and although I found a few things I thought might be useful, I still couldn’t find the short, intensive, quick-burst intervention programme that I was looking for until a chance conversation with a Primary school teacher friend. She had been on the one-day Herts For Learning Reading Fluency Project training and said she had experimented with some of the ideas, finding that they had impact.

Booking myself on to the overview training to get a flavour, I had no idea what to expect, hoping I suppose to see something brilliant, expecting perhaps to go away disappointed.  What I got was definitely the former and it led me to sign up for the full project.

The Fluency Project offers a completely fresh approach to reading intervention.  Incorporating a range of powerful strategies, including group echo reading, it is a truly refreshing experience.  Initially I was hesitant about how the group read would go down with ‘teens’. I could see it working with KS2 students but how would those on the edge of teenagerdom cope? Would they be too self-conscious or disengaged for it to work? In reality, this was not an issue. The HfL team had recommended to just ‘go in’ with energy, pace and an expectation that everyone would join in and this really worked. It did take a bit of time to train the students to track the text but they picked it up and they really loved the power of having a pencil and ‘text marking’ as we read.  

For KS3 colleagues there are challenges of navigating a KS3 timetable. Who delivers it? When do they do it? Which lessons should students miss in order to attend? I was adamant that I was not going to take boys out of PE as I thought this would do little for their motivation! Although we used both tutor times and lessons, it definitely worked best for us in lesson time slots as it felt less rushed. However, it was still successful in tutor times if that is all the time you have! You have to be stringent in the expectation that this is twice a week for 8 weeks but if you can get your headteacher to back it, then that is all that is needed. In reality, I got no resistance from teachers; all saw that this was a priority. Consistency was really vital and it does have to be a non-negotiable: students must never be pulled out of reading group because of something else!

And so, we came to the end of our first round; had it worked? I’d heard of the successful figures that had been cited in other schools but was it the ‘treasure’ I had been hoping for? 

Absolutely! The students loved it and many were genuinely sad that the group had come to an end. Their increase in confidence was palpable and their willingness to read aloud more obvious. Some students  re-engaged with independent reading, one girl saying ‘I didn’t read because I thought I couldn’t but now I have learnt that I can I have started to read the books that my mum has been buying me.’ The intervention itself was fun and easy to deliver. You definitely need to prepare the echo reading in advance and the choice of text is really key but there was something genuinely enjoyable about having to use my own inner voice to perform and read with them.  The progress data showed them making gains beyond which I ever thought possible. Furthermore, English teachers have commented on the difference in the engagement and comprehension skills in class of students in the groups.

I am not claiming to be the finished Indiana Jones but I do feel that the Fluency Project has moved me further on in my quest. I am not under any illusion that the gap for these students is permanently fixed. However, we are certainly now on the way. The challenge is to now take what students and I have learned into teaching in all classrooms across the school so that the progress they have made is not lost but built on and allowed to grow further.

The quest continues…

With thanks to Catherine Root for contributing this blog. We hope that KS3 colleagues find it useful and insightful.

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For further details about the project HFL Reading Fluency Project

Catherine Root is Literacy and Reading Recovery Lead at Stationers' Crown Woods academy, a large academy based in Greenwich, southeast London. Catherine participated in the KS3 Reading Fluency Project in summer 2021 and implemented the strategies with students in years 7 and 8 who were struggling with reading accuracy and comprehension. 

I was looking for the Holy Grail - the quest that every school Leadership team has: to find something that would close the literacy gap. Having been an English teacher for 23 years and a senior leader for 13 of these, I had seen ‘literacy’ float around school agendas in a pretence of its significance but in truth anything being actioned having very little real impact. ‘Word of the Week’ may have been displayed in every classroom, students might have access to a well-stocked library, key word lists might well be distributed and displayed but the stark reality was that these things, while ticking boxes, had very little influence on improving students’ literacy levels, even less so for those who had already fallen behind. Worse still perhaps was ‘literacy intervention’ which although undoubtedly offering reading time and pastoral support, also fell short of a high energy, high impact measurable strategy to really close the gap.

Returning from maternity leave, I started a new part-time role as Literacy Lead at a 1700 strong academy in Greenwich.  The main part of this work was to review literacy provision across the school and to launch some reading recovery programmes. As I met the pupils, my heart ached for the students in front of me, whose level of reading was so poor that not accessing their Geography lesson was the least of my worries for them. How do they navigate the world on a daily basis? Read a bus timetable? Send an email? Read instructions? How will they apply for job? Be able to revise for their driving theory test? Do something that an employer requests of them?  In most cases, these children have learnt to cleverly mask their weakness in reading - even more dangerous in the classroom where busy teachers think they understand but do not realise how little they have really grasped.

I wanted to fix it; to put it right once and for all; to find that intervention that would really work! 

I looked at various programmes, all of which had merit but all were also tagged as ‘moderate’ in impact. Some were phonics focused but my issue was students who could, on the whole, decode successfully but had somehow stopped developing and reading so that their comprehension and vocabulary was weak. Many of the programmes that seemed written for them were perhaps a little dry in content and structure and although I found a few things I thought might be useful, I still couldn’t find the short, intensive, quick-burst intervention programme that I was looking for until a chance conversation with a Primary school teacher friend. She had been on the one-day Herts For Learning Reading Fluency Project training and said she had experimented with some of the ideas, finding that they had impact.

Booking myself on to the overview training to get a flavour, I had no idea what to expect, hoping I suppose to see something brilliant, expecting perhaps to go away disappointed.  What I got was definitely the former and it led me to sign up for the full project.

The Fluency Project offers a completely fresh approach to reading intervention.  Incorporating a range of powerful strategies, including group echo reading, it is a truly refreshing experience.  Initially I was hesitant about how the group read would go down with ‘teens’. I could see it working with KS2 students but how would those on the edge of teenagerdom cope? Would they be too self-conscious or disengaged for it to work? In reality, this was not an issue. The HfL team had recommended to just ‘go in’ with energy, pace and an expectation that everyone would join in and this really worked. It did take a bit of time to train the students to track the text but they picked it up and they really loved the power of having a pencil and ‘text marking’ as we read.  

For KS3 colleagues there are challenges of navigating a KS3 timetable. Who delivers it? When do they do it? Which lessons should students miss in order to attend? I was adamant that I was not going to take boys out of PE as I thought this would do little for their motivation! Although we used both tutor times and lessons, it definitely worked best for us in lesson time slots as it felt less rushed. However, it was still successful in tutor times if that is all the time you have! You have to be stringent in the expectation that this is twice a week for 8 weeks but if you can get your headteacher to back it, then that is all that is needed. In reality, I got no resistance from teachers; all saw that this was a priority. Consistency was really vital and it does have to be a non-negotiable: students must never be pulled out of reading group because of something else!

And so, we came to the end of our first round; had it worked? I’d heard of the successful figures that had been cited in other schools but was it the ‘treasure’ I had been hoping for? 

Absolutely! The students loved it and many were genuinely sad that the group had come to an end. Their increase in confidence was palpable and their willingness to read aloud more obvious. Some students  re-engaged with independent reading, one girl saying ‘I didn’t read because I thought I couldn’t but now I have learnt that I can I have started to read the books that my mum has been buying me.’ The intervention itself was fun and easy to deliver. You definitely need to prepare the echo reading in advance and the choice of text is really key but there was something genuinely enjoyable about having to use my own inner voice to perform and read with them.  The progress data showed them making gains beyond which I ever thought possible. Furthermore, English teachers have commented on the difference in the engagement and comprehension skills in class of students in the groups.

I am not claiming to be the finished Indiana Jones but I do feel that the Fluency Project has moved me further on in my quest. I am not under any illusion that the gap for these students is permanently fixed. However, we are certainly now on the way. The challenge is to now take what students and I have learned into teaching in all classrooms across the school so that the progress they have made is not lost but built on and allowed to grow further.

The quest continues…

With thanks to Catherine Root for contributing this blog. We hope that KS3 colleagues find it useful and insightful.

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For further details about the project HFL Reading Fluency Project

Kelly Burke is second in department for English at the Thomas Alleyne Academy, Stevenage. Kelly participated in the HFL KS3 Reading Fluency Project in Autumn 2020 and, due to its continued success, has created a performance reading programme for Year 7 and Year 9 students who struggled with reading comprehension and self-esteem. 

‘Reading prosody’ and ‘performance reading’ are two phrases that struck a chord for me whilst attending the HFL Reading Fluency training. As adults and especially English teachers, we take for granted that reading sounds rhythmical and creates images for us; when we read, we are creating voices, adjusting tone, pitch and pace, and visualising settings and characters as if we are watching each scene roll out. I have now discovered how to teach my students to do all of this through reading fluency sessions and thus have witnessed 15 students from Year 7 improve their reading comprehension by an average of 2 years in the space of 8 weeks. It’s hard to believe without witnessing it, isn’t it?

When my Head of Department arranged for us to visit and observe a Reading Fluency session at a primary school where we knew the project had already been successful, I must admit, I was sceptical. Is this another fad in teaching that will fizzle out quickly? How would this work in a secondary school, with older students who have lost that passion to use their imagination? It was lovely to observe a KS2 Reading Fluency session, yet my questions remained unanswered.

Fortunately, at around the same time, HFL opened their training for KS3. I found the training overwhelming in the early stages and had to remind myself that I was doing this training during a pandemic. This meant that resources and training sessions were all run online, which as a community, educators have probably found very resourceful as it saves time and reduces cover requirements, however, I felt like I was missing the one to one interaction. I was quickly reassured when I was contacted by my allocated advisor from the HfL team, who gave me plenty of reassurance, which continued throughout the project. I needed this as I initially felt out of my depth and most certainly challenged, but gained more confidence in myself and my teaching practice as the weeks went on. I soon realised that the HfL team were very efficient, thorough and each step of the training programme is organised carefully and communicated clearly. As teachers, we are of course very busy, so I found it really helpful that the training was structured so well.

One of my favourite parts of the training was surprisingly the part where a HFL advisor observed one of my sessions with my group of students and gave me feedback. Of course, it gave me a great boost to get such positive feedback, but it also made me incredibly proud of my little team of students and it was just really pleasant to have an educated, general conversation with a colleague about reading fluency and interesting texts. At this point of the project, I felt quite empowered- you can imagine the journey I went on from less experienced, overwhelmed and nervous, to having secure knowledge, discussing the project confidently and delivering presentations to our school governors about reading fluency. The project was blowing up and we had only just begun!

The toughest part of the project was probably working with children who have low attendance. Unfortunately, if a student is not in school, they miss out and with the fast pace of the project (and general fast pace of school life), it is difficult for individuals to catch up. Fortunately, this was not an issue with my first group who were year 7. However, we have found that rolling out the project with older year groups can pose more issues with attendance- particularly in the morning. Further to this, attitudes towards reading are trickier to influence as teenagers get older, although I did discover, not completely impossible.

One of the best parts of the project, yet also one of the most challenging parts, is choosing the texts. It was great to discuss this with the HFL team and other teachers partaking in the training. Sometimes feedback from students about text choice was the opposite to what teachers had predicted, but you don’t learn this until after use of the text. It is just one of those situations where you think ‘next time, it will be even better.’ And it was… I had great success with ‘Suffragette: The Battle for Equality’ by David Roberts as it was not only a favourite with students but also a non-fiction text, exploring important matters of diversity and equality. I then decided to introduce Frankenstein as the final text - my second group were year 9 students and so it was important that they were exposed to an extremely challenging text. We were not wrong. Off we went with the same strategies we had been using week in, week out and it paid off, as they approached their most advanced text with much more confidence than they ever would have at the start of the project.

We were not sure how this would work with older students, but with a very careful selection process, detailed discussions about pupil suitability with English teachers and the head of year, and as a result of using diagnostic reading tests (combined with my new found confidence in delivering the project) it was a success!

I am excited to have created a Performance Reading Overview with resources for our school which will be used with small groups for intervention throughout the year. This will then continue to be developed into our library lessons, where we are reading plays (an idea I got from a webinar with Dr Tim Rasinski, organised by HFL). The plan is to roll this out within the English department in autumn 2021 and hopefully introduce the strategies to the whole school before the end of the year. I envision geography teachers sharing new and up to date texts for us to use in the intervention; or science teachers saying ‘read it again, but performance read it’ after hearing a child read a sentence; or history teachers reminding students to ‘turn the TV on in their head’ as they prepare their class for a teacher-led performance read. After seeing the data repeatedly come back showing progress, students arriving with smiles on their faces and reading with more confidence, it would be a waste if we did not ensure consistency from lesson to lesson in supporting reading fluency.

As much as my job relies on data, especially data to show progress, I personally have always felt that I am in this job to see the students progress in confidence and enjoyment above what figures may show. One boy was not a typical reader - he only attended 75% of the sessions and he wasn’t on ball with the project to start with - but left me with ‘oh I have definitely improved: I know where to pause, put emphasis on words and understand more.’ And for me, that is what makes this project an incredibly worthwhile commitment.

With thanks to Kelly Burke for contributing this blog. We hope that KS3 colleagues find it useful and insightful.

For further information visit HFL Reading Fluency Project

 

 

Phonics first 

What does Reading Fluency instruction look like in KS1? This is often a question that we are asked in our work supporting schools with their struggling readers in key stage one. If children are in danger of not passing their phonics screening check, we are finding that most schools’ phonics programmes will support them to carefully assess which GPCs a child needs to know next to support them to make progress. This blog from our archives provides some useful, practical strategies to support teachers to grapple with some of the trickier GPCs. For some children, it takes longer to acquire the knowledge needed to pass the Phonics Screening Check and they will need additional phonics teaching, and plenty of additional practice in the form of assessment and application into reading and writing too, to close those gaps and hopefully pass the re-take in year 2.  

Following the Phonics Screening Check 

What about children who pass the phonics screening check but who don’t read fluently by the end of year 2? Children who can decode individual sounds perhaps, who can blend them together into single words, but who struggle with phrasing appropriately when attempting to read longer sentences. These children often revert to reading each word in turn, so the meaning of the sentence becomes lost to them. In this video, produced by the DfE in January, we have some helpful reading behaviours and indicators to look for when considering whether or not a child would benefit from fluency instruction. It beautifully echoes messages in this earlier blog (Reading fluency? How do I teach that?) published in December 2022, based on learning gleaned at the HFL Fluency Expo in October. What is reading fluency then? In that blog, we provided a helpful definition of reading fluency and discuss those reading behaviours that we’re likely to see in a disfluent reader (if you haven’t yet had a chance to read, it might be worth doing so before proceeding). The stories of Alice and Jai outlined in the aforementioned blog and video will be all too familiar to us. Children become adept at slipping under the radar, at masking their lack of confidence in reading and often they are not a top priority for schools until they can no longer hide, perhaps in the run-up to their KS2 SATs paper in year 6. Recent experience working with schools tells us that there are likely to be a significant number of these ‘hidden disfluent readers’ in LKS2, who, as a result of a disrupted education prompted by the pandemic, have slipped under that radar. Identifying these pupils through high-quality diagnostic assessment (perhaps using the multi-dimensional fluency scale developed by Professor Tim Rasinski) is essential for making evidence-informed curriculum adjustments and responsive teaching.  

Reading fluency instruction to the rescue!  

The good news is that we now know enormous amounts about how to support children like Alice and Jai. Thanks to influential and tenacious educators like Professor Tim Rasinksi and Alex Quigley, we know that reading fluency is the bridge between phonics and comprehension. We know that simply being able to read the words on the page isn’t enough. The STA end of Key Stage One Teacher Assessment Framework (TAF) tells us that pupils need to be able to read most words accurately without overt sounding and blending, and sufficiently fluently to allow them to focus on their understanding rather than on decoding individual words. Children need to be given authentic and enjoyable reasons to read those words, contextualised into sentences, again and again. Repeated reading brings automaticity, one of the key components of reading fluency. For children like Alice, this will be essential. All too often in our work with schools on the HFL Reading Fluency Project at KS1, we meet children who passed the Phonics Screening Check and are still crunching laboriously through the sentences in their reading books. Their cognitive energy is being spent decoding and there’s no space left for phrasing or attention to punctuation, let alone comprehension. We notice that they have particular difficulty with long sentences where word after word needs to be read, and by the time they get to the end, the child has no recollection of how the sentence even began. No doubt this feels all too familiar to many teachers of year 2 children! Just look at the length of this sentence which appeared in the 2022 KS1 Reading SATs paper.  

On an island called Jersey, people make giant models of animals, boats and cars out of flowers and take these models on a parade through the island’s towns. 

28 words! It’s easy to imagine a disfluent reader in year 2 stumbling through this, stamina waning, comprehension abandoned in order to get to the end and take a breath. The good news is that carefully planned teaching approaches can effectively close that gap in a really short space of time. 72% of children in year 2 and 3 on the HFL Education Reading Fluency Project make more than 12 months progress in just 8 weeks with their reading comprehension. This document, produced in collaboration with HFL Education and the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), provides a useful overview of some of the strategies which can be employed whole class, in small groups and 1:1 to support children to build those reading fluency muscles. This KS1 text selection guidance blog offers some suggested texts which have worked brilliantly on the project. You might want to join our 1-day event for KS1, where some of our fluency approaches are shared in more detail.  

Ofsted and reading fluency 

In Ofsted’s Research Review on English, specific reference is made to reading fluency for early readers. There is a recognition that ‘Pupils who can decode accurately but cannot do so quickly will not progress towards reading confidently beyond sounding out words in texts.’ The paper goes on to state, ‘To develop fluency, children need repeated practice.’ We would agree unreservedly with this solution but would take it a step further. Children need authentic and enjoyable motivation to repeatedly practise reading high quality texts. They also need to be explicitly taught how to phrase longer sentences, and how to read with prosody.  

DfE, The Reading Framework and reading fluency 

If you haven’t yet had a chance to take in The Reading Framework, then we would recommend a read. The section of particular interest to this blog is located on page 58 where a useful explanation of the relationship between reading rate – or speed – and fluency is considered, ‘Fluency gives the reader the choice to read at a speed that allows for comprehension and can be adapted to the purpose of the reading.’ This relationship can be a tricky one. If a child is needing to sound out and blend every word, then of course we would expect the child’s reading rate to be low and comprehension to be compromised. We would hope that following some fluency instruction, an increase in rate here would indicate that automaticity was improving and therefore comprehension too. In this case, rate increase could be used as an appropriate measure of success. But some of the children on the HFL Reading Fluency Project slow down. They adapt their reading of a more complex text to allow comprehension to prosper. They insert pauses for phrasing and add appropriate intonation and expression. Like the DfE here, we would rather ‘consider the idea of progressive rather than absolute fluency.’ Children will demonstrate varying levels of fluency, depending on their age, stage, and the difficulty of the text.  

Reading for pleasure and joyful ambition! 

We know that being a reader involves attitudes and behaviours as much as securing cognitive processes (National Literacy Trust, 2017); the will and thrill of reading influences the skill of reading and vice-versa (Hattie & Donoghue, 2016). It’s a reciprocal relationship. Enhancing children’s reading fluency is likely to impact on their desire and motivation to read, within and beyond the classroom, as they learn to enjoy bringing a text to life. The strategy of ‘reading aloud’ which we associate with strengthening fluency is also a key feature of a Reading for Pleasure pedagogy (Cremin,T. et al, 2009 and 2014). 

There is also considerable evidence that reading aloud to children enables them to process challenging content, text features and vocabulary – even in subjects not normally associated with reading aloud, such as science and technology (Heisley and Kukan, 2010). Reading aloud from challenging texts, perhaps those with archaic or unfamiliar features, or complex narrative structures, for example, is a proven scaffold which supports all learners in engaging with ambitious literature (Shanahan, 2020). As a member of the Opening Doors* team, reading aloud is one of a number of access strategies we advocate in implementing an ambitious English curriculum, where equity and excellence go hand-in-hand.  

Co-authoring this blog, as a guest, has provided a joyful reminder of the interconnectedness that pervades the art of teaching reading and being a reader. No wonder so many graphic representations of reading show the different aspects combine and work together, from Scarborough’s Reading Rope (2001) to the EEF’s Reading House! Whatever the composite image may be, we know that fluency is an essential piece of a beautifully complex jigsaw and as the DfE video tells us, we owe it to children like Alice to “stick with her until she can read fluently.”    

 

 

Please consider joining us for the next round of the HFL Reading Fluency Project to find out more about these transformational strategies:

HFL Reading Fluency Project or email reading.fluency@hfleducation.org

Kathy Roe is the Deputy Lead Adviser for the Primary English Team at HFL Education. 

*If you’re interested in finding out more about Opening Doors, please visit the website, or look out for our new book published in April 2023 Opening Doors to Ambitious Primary English: Pitching high and including all (Bob Cox with Leah Crawford, Angela Jenkins and Julie Sargent) 

Angela Jenkins is co-Chair of the National Association of Advisers in English a national network of professionals, learning together through sharing knowledge and expertise. We host regular opportunities for members (and guests) to engage with researchers and educationalists. Find out more here. We would love to welcome new members!

And just like that, it’s that time of year when World Book Day is fast approaching! Your plans may be a little different this year but there are still mathematical opportunities just waiting to burst out of bookshelves everywhere.

In our previous World Book Day blogs we focused on books with a strong maths theme such as ‘How Big is a Million?’ and ‘Equal Shmequal’. For this year’s blog, we have chosen books that pupils may be more familiar with, which are not specifically ‘maths’ themed but have lots of mathematical opportunities within them.

To get in touch with the HFL Education Primary Maths Team about our blogs, resources and services, email us at primarymaths@hfleducation.org.

 

Here are just some of the maths opportunities we found hiding on our bookshelves within some popular children’s books…

Pick 1: ‘The Snail and Whale’ by Julia Donaldson - recommended by Rachael Brown

A fishy tale about an unlikely friendship between a rather small snail and an incredibly big whale!

Maths challenge:

Did you know blue whales can be up to 30m long?

How many handprints can you fit along 1 metre?  When I tried, I could fit 11 of my handprints along a strip 1 metre long.

I know 3 x 11 = 33 so I know 3 tens x 11 = 33 tens

30 x 11 = 330

A blue whale could be up to the same length as 330 of my handprints! 

Humpback whales like the one in the story can be between 13 and 16 metres long. How many handprints would that be?

Pick 2: ‘Holes’ by Louis Sachar - recommended by Gill Shearsby-Fox

Stanley gets wrongly accused of stealing a famous baseball player’s trainers and gets sent to Camp Green Lake Juvenile Detention Centre. However, there is no lake, just desert and his punishment is digging holes. 

Maths challenge:

The holes that Stanley has to dig have to be exactly the same size as his shovel – his shovel is 5 feet (150cm) long.

If the hole he digs is the same depth, width and length as his shovel:

• what shape is his hole?
• what is the area of the base of his hole?
• what is the volume of the hole he digs?

Stanley is in tent D’s digging crew. There are seven in the tent and they all have to dig a hole every day. What is the length / width / depth / volume of all the holes they dig in a day / a week / a month / a year?

It is very hot at Camp Green Lake and Stanley and his crew only get two canteens of water a day. If each canteen holds 1.5 litres of water and they dig for five hours a day, how much water should they drink an hour? 

Pick 3: ‘Freddie and the Fairy’ by Julia Donaldson - recommended by Charlie Harber

A delightful tale in which Freddie is rewarded with wishes after rescuing Bessie-Bell the fairy. Unfortunately, Freddie mumbles and Bessie-Bell has problems hearing correctly. What could go wrong?

Maths challenge:

In the story, Freddie receives some ‘unexpected’ gifts from Bessie-Bell the fairy.

Can you estimate the size (height or length, whichever is greater) of all of the different things that Bessie-Bell gives Freddie?

• how could we show that in a graph or table?
• which type of graph would be most appropriate?
• what could the scale be? Which unit of measurement?
• how else could we order them? (e.g. weight, most ‘wanted’ pet – class survey)

Can you think of other ‘gifts’ that Freddie could have asked for?

Where would they belong on your graph/table?

Pick 4: ‘Guess How Much I Love You’ by Sam McBratney - recommended by Nicola Adams

Little Nutbrown Hare and Big Nutbrown Hare spend a little time before they go to bed, trying to show how much they love each other. Turns out, love is not an easy thing to measure.

Maths challenge:

STRETCH!

• how wide can you stretch your arms?
• how could you measure your arm span (distance between middle fingertips on each hand with outstretched arms)? You could use a measuring tape or think of a more creative way!

COMPARE!

• have you ever noticed the relationship between your arm span and your height? 
• what about between your foot length and the length of your lower arm?

REACH!

• how high can you reach?
• how does this compare to other people in your family?
• what is the difference between your reaches?

HOP TO IT!

• how high can you hop?
• how far can you hop?
• how many bunny hops could you do in a minute?

Pick 5: ‘The Boy at the Back of the Class’ by Onjali Q. Raúf - recommended by Siobhan King

The empty chair at the back of the class is now occupied by Ahmet.  As the nine year-old refugee is able to tell the story of his journey from war, his friends make plans to help him.

Maths challenge:

Ahmet helps his friends learn more about him by sharing his escape from war. He draws important parts of his journey to help him tell the story.

You will not be travelling as far as Ahmet, but you can still share a journey you have taken by mapping it and drawing important parts.

Draw a map of a journey in your home or when you are out walking.

Think about the directions you take and how far you travel.

Can you give instructions to someone else to take the same journey?

Over half of the world’s refugees are children.

Can you find out about their journeys?

Pick 6: ‘Charlotte’s Web’ by E.B. White - recommended by Laura Dell

A pig called Wilbur, who is the runt of his litter, is raised by a girl named Fern.

When Wilbur is sold to Fern’s uncle, he makes a new friend in Charlotte, a spider.

Maths challenge:

Have you ever looked closely at a spider’s web to see how beautifully they are structured and the patterns that they create? I have drawn 2 of my own webs based on Charlotte’s.

• one of my webs has 4 lines that cross (or intersect) in the centre and one has 3
• one of my webs has 3 shapes similar to an octagon which increase in size and the other has 3 hexagons
• I can also see lots of shapes which are similar to triangles!

What other spider webs can you design?

Are there any relationships between the amount of shapes that you can see and the number of intersecting lines?

Look closely

My web, with 4 lines that cross, has a total of 24 smaller lines.

My web, with 3 lines that cross, has 18 smaller lines.

I know this because I have counted them all but I wonder if there is a better way to do this.

Pick 7: ‘The Twits’ by Roald Dahl - recommended by Gill Shearsby-Fox

A story about the most horrid couple ever! They love to play tricks on each other and catch birds for bird pie. But can the birds, with help from the Muggle-wump monkeys, get their own back?

Maths challenege:

Shrink! Mr Twit makes Mrs Twit think she is shrinking by adding disks of wood to her walking stick. If he adds 3mm to them every day, how much longer would the walking stick be after a week, a fortnight, a month and a year? How tall would it be if it started off 600mm long?

Up and away! Mr Twit then tries to stretch Mrs Twit using balloons. 60 balloons are enough to make Mrs Twit fly away. How many of Mr Twit’s balloons do you think would be needed to make you fly away? Or one of your parents? Or a younger brother or sister? An animal - big, like an elephant or small, like a mouse?

Branching out! To catch birds for their bird pies, the Twits put glue on a branch of their tree. One day, they catch four boys instead of birds. If four boys’ bottoms filled the branch, how long do you think the branch was?

Pick 8: ‘Return to the Hundred Acre Wood’ by David Benedictus - recommended by Doug Harmer

Christopher Robin was at school. But during the summer holiday, he returned to the forest to visit his friends Piglet, Tigger, Pooh Bear, Owl, Eeyore, Rabbit and Roo and they had lots of adventures.

 

 

Maths challenge:

• if Christopher Robin started at his house, he would have to walk 6m + 2m + 3m + 11m + 16m to Eeyore’s House. This is 38m.
• how far would he have to walk to visit each of his friends from his house?
• who lives the furthest distance apart?
• where would you like to walk?

Pick 9: ‘What the Ladybird Heard’  by Julia Donaldson - recommended by Nicola Adams

The quiet, little ladybird that lives on a noisy farm ends up saving the day when the prize cow is nearly stolen!

Maths challenge:

Ladybirds are a type of beetle. They have six legs and two sets of wings. Some ladybirds have no spots and others have up to 20 spots.

How many spots do you think the ladybird in ‘What the Ladybird Heard’ has? How do you know?

Can you draw or make your own ladybird?

How many spots will it have?

How many spots are on half of your ladybird?

How many spots are there altogether?

How many legs are there on each page of the story?

Which page in the book has the most legs on it?

Pick 10: ‘The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch’ by Rhonda and David Armitage- recommended by Laura Dell

Each morning, a delicious lunch is prepared and sent to Mr Grinling, the lighthouse keeper.  However, the basket of lunch doesn’t always make it to the hungry lighthouse keeper…

Maths challenge:

• this lunch box is designed using food from one of the lunches in the story that Mrs Grinling sends to Mr Grinling
• what fractions can you see represented in the diagram?
• design your own lunch box using the fractions. You could use halves and quarters like in this diagram
• what other interesting fractions can you use?
• what if your lunch box wasn’t square shaped? What would this look like if your lunch box was a rectangle or maybe a circle?

Good luck in the search for maths hiding on your bookshelf! We think there is maths to be found in every book! We’d love to know what you find. Let us know @hertsmaths.

 

I bet you are thinking “but I do talk about racism” and I am sure - especially in the last 18 months, that you have. However, it is becoming apparent that whilst ensuring diversity and inclusion remain a priority for many schools and settings, ensuring that an anti-racist provision is being offered is not being addressed as effectively.  

I identify as a white cis –gendered woman and by writing this I have had to recognise my privileges, unlearn certain behaviours and address my biases which I may claim were unconscious, until they weren’t. This is something that all white adults working with children should be doing and let me tell you it is not easy, but do you know what else is not easy? -  being excluded, abused and overlooked because of the colour of your skin.  

“They are too young to recognise race.” This is a common but inaccurate comment frequently made about children in the Early Years. 

Did you know…? 

• by 3 months of age, children are drawn to faces that share the same race as their main caregiver 
• at the age of 2 years, children use race to reason about people’s behaviours 
• by 30 months, most children use race to choose playmates 
• expressions of racial prejudice often peak around 4 and 5 years of age 

“Young children notice and think about race. Adults often worry that talking about race will encourage bias in children, but the opposite is true. Silence about race reinforces racism by letting children draw their own conclusions based on what they see. Teachers and families can play a powerful role in helping children of all ages develop positive attitudes about race and diversity and skills to promote a more just future – but only if we talk about it!”  

The Children’s Community School, 2018

 

 

“We talk about racism when an incident occurs.” This is like saying we don’t put a speed limit in place until someone gets hit by a car. Talking about racism should be seen as a preventative rather than a consequence. The challenge can be how to initiate these conversations and luckily for us, at last, there are resources available to support this. The tiney guide to becoming an inclusive, anti-racist early educator is free to download and provides guidance on celebrating diversity, promoting inclusion, and challenging racism and all forms of prejudice. 

There has been an increase in children’s texts available that explore race, culture and ethnicity both factually and through non-fiction. If you have obtained any new resources, how accessible have you made them? Are you ‘saving’ them because they are shiny and new? How is that going to help start conversations if they are only pulled out periodically to expose children to this concept? Imagine having a different colour skin to your peers and the only time that you see any resources representing your community is during the ‘celebration’ topic or when someone else in the class has excluded you from a game for the way you look.  

‘Children learn and develop well in enabling environments with teaching and support from adults, who respond to their individual interests and needs and help them to build their learning over time.’ Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage, 2021. Therefore, resources should be available and accessible for children all the time. This will encourage children to be curious and ask questions and adults will be able to engage with children more appropriately. 

 

 

“We cannot just introduce diverse books and media. We have to model these behaviours and dismantle and contest racism and ingrained biases in our own words and actions.”  

Pragya Agarwal, Wish We Knew What to Say: Talking with children about race, 2020

“We treat everyone the same.” If you gave everyone the same cake, would you expect them all to eat it? Including the person that is allergic to eggs, that you know the cake was made with. Or would you offer an alternative that did not contain eggs? With the EYFS reforms there is even more an of emphasis that all adults should have a secure knowledge of the children they are working with. Whilst allergies might be difficult to identify, colour and ethnicity is much more obvious. Being ‘colourblind’ is not an option and should not be promoted. Celebrating differences whether that is skin colour, interests, hair style or skill set brings attention that to the fact that every child is unique.   

 

 

To ensure you are fully meeting the needs of every child you must be reflective of not only your practice but of your full being.  Ask yourself… 

• are your biases/stereotypical ideas impacting on how you interact with children?  
• is this having an impact on how you support children or the assumptions you make about their attainment?  
• do your cohort truly see themselves within the learning environment and not just through tokenistic displays and ‘festival/celebration’ topics?  

These are difficult questions to ask yourself, but they are important and require a level of honesty you might not have faced before. It is OK to feel uncomfortable and upset. This is part of the process, consider it an internal therapy if you like. What is not OK is not doing ‘the work’ and by now you should know that ‘the work’ is what will enable you as a practitioner to recognise injustice and be able to talk to children about racism.  

If you are looking to improve equality, diversity and inclusion in your EYFS provision, you might be interested in the new HfL Equality and Diversity audit. For further details please contact earlyears@hfleducation.org

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References: 

Tiney - Our guide to becoming an inclusive, anti-racist early educator 

The Children’s Community School, 2018 

Pragya Agarwal, Wish We Knew What to Say: Talking with children about race, 2020  Publisher: Little, Brown Book Gr

 

It’s a well-worn adage that not all superheroes wear capes but as we come to the end of another unrelenting year for school governors it’s clear you are the unsung heroes who work voluntarily and tirelessly for your schools and are as stretched as any other profession as you grapple with all the challenges schools are faced with.

Let’s consider the range of roles governors are obliged to take on; Chair, Vice Chair, Committee Chair, committee member, link role, panel member, governor, trustee - on top of this we have training, reading, directives, reports, plans, minutes, emails to factor into our lives where we may be working, caring, parents, grandparents, retired or otherwise. This in itself, in my opinion, qualifies all governors and trustees as heroes but we should then consider what ‘superpowers’ are required to carry out the role. I make no apology for the ‘superpower’ label for those skills given the range required and the audience to which they play out to – we need to be present, articulate and confident when dealing with CEO’s, Headteachers, Senior leaders, teachers, non-teaching staff, Ofsted, HIPs, pupils, parents and the wider community – in what other volunteer role would so many audiences need to be embraced, nurtured and understood? So, to those superpowers:

Listening, empathy, understanding, supportive, critical friend, challenging, being inquisitive, persistence, willingness to compromise, risk awareness, sense of purpose, visionary, deal maker, conflict resolver, peacemaker, trusting, clear communicator, public speaker, confident leader…..

Now we may not as a board have all those skills individually but collectively, we need each and every one of the above to be a skill of at least one board member or more, how we then harness these ‘superpowers’ for the greater good of our school, ensuring that all the right energies are applied in all the right places and with the right people begins to explain the almighty challenge faced by governors and their boards.

It is the accumulation of all the requirements above that lead me to the serious point of who is looking out for the wellbeing of board members. It’s not possible that all the above can be accomplished in a voluntary role without cracks appearing. The Chair may be able to offload to the Headteacher but more often it will be the other way round and who do other board members turn to when things just frankly overwhelm them? I think it’s vital that we find ways to express our feelings and frustrations in such a way as to support each other whilst not identifying individuals if they wish to remain anonymous. Setting aside 15 minutes at an FGB meeting to allow governors to discuss concerns they may have, how they could be resolved, and maybe advance suggestions could be channelled via the clerk to create a virtual notice board of anonymised points to discuss. In this way individuals can be reassured they are not alone, I am sure most frustrations felt by governors are common to all governors and will hopefully instil a sense of joint purpose and support and reflect a healthy and open approach to life as a governor.

By way of conclusion can I suggest we take a moment to recognise what we individually, and collectively as a board, bring to the table – the abundance of quietly delivered good governance that supports our schools on a day to day basis but equally recognise we need to look out for ourselves, and our governor colleagues, and not be afraid to speak out if we aren’t coping. At Herts for learning we have the Helpdesk, Chairs Service, Clerks Service and advisors to be that helping hand and catch you when you may be wavering about what’s best to do – contact details are at the end of this blog.  

One superpower we don’t have is to reverse the effect of climate change or the impact of the cost of living crisis, but we can make steps to ‘do our bit’ regarding the strategic challenges of reducing our school’s carbon footprint and understanding the consequences both for schools and pupils of the cost of living crisis.

Climate

We surveyed Chairs at our June strategic briefing and just under 50% had started discussions on the climate challenge, including 7% having concrete action plans in place but with 50% saying they had not had any board discussion to date. Clearly with so many more ‘immediate’ pressures facing schools this may have moved down the agenda but given that we know many schools in Hertfordshire are taking positive steps towards reducing their carbon footprint maybe the time is right to get this on your next agenda. We did some number crunching and if all boards in Herts stored their minutes electronically on Governor Hub, with Chairs electronically signing them rather than printing a set to be stored onsite, that would save approximately 36,000 printed pages of paper and 4500 signatures – one small step maybe but evidence of leading by example! All Herts schools have been sent a wonderful document called Hertfordshire Schools Going Green with schools sharing examples of the work they have done on going green – use this as a catalyst for starting the conversation at your next board meeting!  

Cost of living

With Utility bills soaring by £10,000’s for many schools plus food and general supply costs on the rise school budgets are going to be under more scrutiny than usual with limited resources having to be stretched thinner than ever. Equally there is the impact on school staff with the cost of travel to work plus pressures on the home budget all coming at once. For pupils’ school may be the only place of warmth they have and school dinners the only hot meal they will eat, together with family budgets being stretched when it comes to uniform, clubs and school trips. Parents and carers will be making difficult choices of where they cut back with all the additional wellbeing and mental (and physical) health consequences. As governors we need to be asking about the support that is being offered, how are we reaching the hardest hit families, how can we reduce the impact on pupils learning in-school and at home?

It’s never truer than now that your school needs you, please know that you are admired and appreciated by many for the service you give, but as with many others involved in the governance of our public institutions it can at times seem an uphill task. The reward is, as with so much of public service, knowing that you ARE making a difference to the lives and outcomes of those that lack a voice and rely on you to be their advocate and to champion their cause. Take pride in your school’s successes and stand together to face and deal with challenges and critically remain united when things aren’t going to plan.

Finally good luck to all schools with their SATs and exam results, when they come qualified comparisons can be made against 2019 but maybe better to view as a benchmark going forward. Nevertheless, it’s time for some data crunching!!

To contact us please use the following:

Governance Helpdesk – 01438 544487 

Governance Training – 01438 544478

Or email as before - governance@hfleducation.org