Bedrock Talks from Bedrock Learning
Welcome to Bedrock Talks, a podcast from the team at Bedrock Learning that delves deep into the heart of literacy in education. Hosted by the insightful and experienced educator Andy Sammons, this podcast stands as a beacon for anyone passionate about enhancing literacy skills and understanding its pivotal role in education.
Each episode is a journey into the world of literacy education. Andy brings together a diverse array of voices from across the education sector, from seasoned teachers to renowned academics, policy makers to literacy advocates. All of our guests share a common goal: to explore and expand the horizons of literacy education.
We go beyond surface-level conversations. Our discussions are in-depth, nuanced, and filled with insights that only years of experience and expertise can bring. We tackle a wide range of topics, from innovative teaching methods to the latest research in literacy, the impact of technology on reading and writing, to strategies for engaging diverse learners. Our aim is to provide a platform where the complexities of literacy are unpacked and understood in a way that is both accessible and enlightening.
Join Andy and his guests as they illuminate the multifaceted world of literacy. Subscribe to Bedrock Talks and be part of a community that believes in the transformative power of literacy. Together, let's shape a more literate, informed, and connected world.
Bedrock Talks from Bedrock Learning
15. Exploring the Reading for Pleasure agenda with Sarah Green
Unlock the secrets to fostering literacy and promoting a love for reading in your classroom with our special guest, literacy specialist Sarah Green. Sarah, who boasts over 20 years in literacy education, shares her compelling journey from an English teacher to the Trust Director of Literacy for Prosperity Learning Trust. Discover the transformative power of reading fluency and understand why it's crucial to look beyond phonics to bridge the gap between word recognition and language comprehension.
About Sarah Green:
Sarah is an experienced teacher and senior leader, currently working as Trust Director of Literacy for The Prospere Learning Trust in Manchester and former Literacy Content Specialist for The Education Endowment Foundation. She strongly believes that high-quality literacy provision is an entitlement for all pupils, especially those who are disadvantaged, and am passionate about supporting teachers, schools and multi-academy trusts to do this in an evidence-informed way.
Hi everyone, thank you for continuing to listen to the Literacy Works podcast with Bedrock Learning. It's lovely. It's one of my real thrills of the week as sad as it sounds is looking at the stats and seeing how it's improving week on week and people going back over to previous episodes and listening to them, and you know that's great and I hope we're contributing something really valuable to the educational community and we're continuing that today. We've got today I'm obviously Andy Sammons. We've got Olivia Sumter, who's the Director of Education at Bedrock Learning, joining us today for our podcast, hello, hello. And we also have Sarah Green, who is a Liter specialist working across a number of schools and again, really fortunate to have Sarah on. Thank you for coming, sarah, it was my colleague.
Speaker 1:Shout out to Daisy. I know she listens. Hi, daisy. Shout out to Daisy, who recommended Sarah, and I remember looking at her website thinking we'd be lucky. We'd be lucky if we got this one. And here we are, so thank you. It's lovely to have you on, um, and we've waited a little while because of your schedule, so packed um, and we think that from a bedrock perspective, but also a general literacy perspective, to have your voice in here and your insights is is extremely valuable to us and I know our listeners will find it as well. So this will be another one of those episodes where the streams go up. There's no doubt about it. There's no doubt. So could we just start, if that's okay, just by kind of unpacking your background, your role, what led you to, kind of the path that you're now in and your roles in schools?
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well. First of all, thank you, and thank you, daisy, for the, for the, the recommendation, and I've got a little bit of history of the using bedrock, so it's a an exciting thing to do today.
Speaker 2:so thanks for inviting me and yeah, so I am an english teacher by trade and I've been in education for 20 years and taught across a number of local authorities in the northwest and and around 16, 17 of those years in education I've been in some sort of leadership role. So whether that was starting off in the early days of interventions reading interventions to English leadership or see leadership across schools, I was an assistant head teacher and now I'm a trust director of literacy for Prosperity Learning Trust in Manchester. And if anybody has heard of me before, they probably know me from the EEF because I'm a former content specialist for them and when I worked on their kind of campaigns, I developed and led their national campaign on reading fluency, which I'm extremely proud of. Um. One of our key aims around that was really to get people talking about reading fluency. Um, because there's been a huge amount of focus around phonics in the system. Um, and we know that teaching reading is is phonics is important, but it's much more than that.
Speaker 2:So I think we're really successful because we've got policymakers and organizations and schools thinking more carefully about the aspect of reading and I still work with them, with the alumni team and the other content specialists and their research school network. We've got Manchester Communication Academy and research school near us, who I work quite closely with. And then my other hat is that I was one of the first Voice 21 National Oracy Leads back in 2016, I think it was and I've done a lot of work with them on and off over the years. You know took part in what's called the Oracy APPG on behalf of the EEF and no doubt you'll have noticed in the news and in the X world about the or the oracy commission that jeff barton's leading at the moment. I'm very happy to see that happening and and hopefully we can, you know, really influence some policy and practice in the near future I think it's I I love.
Speaker 1:There's two things I'd really like before. I kind of we have, as we said before we started recording, this is semi-semi-structured, so quarter structure interview. Um, can I just ask what's your take on reading fluency and the phonics piece and in you know whether it's primary or secondaries and and how and how you what is, what's your take on fluency and what you define that well?
Speaker 2:my take is that for a long time reading fluency was neglected. But we know from all the consensus evidence, even if you look at it from the simple view of reading, look at the reading house, the reading rope we know that fluency is a key part of both word reading, word recognition and language comprehension and you need those building blocks to be able to comprehend and make meaning of what you read. Those building blocks to be able to comprehend and make meaning of what you read. And I think for too long we didn't really see that connection. We know that it's often referred to as a bridge from word reading to language comprehension, but it's almost like you can go two ways on that bridge because it's support, it's that reciprocal support for that. But I think you know, when we started that fluency campaign, it was really about how do we support teachers and leaders to understand what it is. First, because it was misunderstood. So what is it? What does that look like? And then we're really keen to think about okay, what might that look like in primary school and how might that look differently in secondary school? And obviously my predominant background is secondary, so I'm always thinking of it through that lens and I think there's been a lot of work in in, say, the last two or three years in schools up and down the country on this. We've still got a long way to go.
Speaker 2:I think you know schools that have put together things like um tutor reading programs, where teachers are modeling that expert reading aloud is an absolutely brilliant way to start this, and that is no easy thing to achieve either. You know. It's all about implementation and thinking carefully about how that's done, and what we found in some of our schools is there's a lot of kind of front loading of that that needs to happen before it's successful. So a lot of professional development and coaching, observing each other, thinking about what that looks like, because often than not there are teachers who don't feel confident reading aloud in the secondary classroom for one reason or another, and and that requires a lot of care and support, I suppose I think moving forward.
Speaker 2:You know, one of one of my schools started doing the reading program and, for whatever reasons, it wasn't going so well, we had to de-implement it and then we're about to re-implement it again, and that's the messy nature of school improvement, isn't it? But I think, so far so good. We've started to talk about it, but my feeling is now we've got to be um smarter in terms of it's great for teachers to model reading fluency. When are we getting the kids to do it themselves? How are we facilitating that in the classroom? And that's I think that's a real challenge moving forward, but it's incredibly important, especially when we're thinking about students coming up to secondary school, and what does that curriculum and the implementation of curriculum look like in year seven?
Speaker 3:one one. So we hold round tables, sarah, where we invite um english teaching colleagues. Literacy leads kind of leadership from schools to get together in in different regions and discuss the challenges of of implementing kind of an improving whole school literacy. And one of the big topics that comes up time and time again is that secondary teachers feel that through their training, even English teachers feel that through their training, they didn't have that real solid foundations. The teaching about how do we teach reading, the teaching about how do we teach reading. So what, what would be I, I, we had. You know, I've heard lots of wonderful stories about modeling reading in classrooms, using tutor time to model that reading, like modeling the love of reading as well, and how much we engage with reading as teachers. But what else could or have you seen schools do to kind of embed reading fluency and to teach reading fluency and to bring teachers to a point where they feel confident, um, to teach reading fluency to learners? Have you, have you got any kind of success stories that you could share with us?
Speaker 2:yeah, and I would. I would even say that the work that I do with my schools isn't a finished piece of work. You know, we're always developing, aren't we? We're always on a particular journey. I think for me, it first of all has to start off with the understanding of senior leaders about where this fits in reading development and why this is something they need to devote time and effort to.
Speaker 1:And until you've got that understanding with policy and decision makers, there's always going to be the tendency to do things really superficially. When there's not that deep understanding, it turns into a literacy buffet, this kind of you know, oh, have we got so-and-so on the board? As we walk past, does it look like all these surface level things, and they become sort of almost proxies for what you know. It's the old thing, isn't it? You know lollipop sticks and magic. You know mini whiteboards. They were probably once a fantastic idea and in it were really implemented well in their sort of in their genesis. But then it becomes a case of oh, let's walk down all the classrooms and make sure everyone's got the same thing. And I think you're right. It's about it has to start from that deep understanding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and you know we've we've tried to do certain things over the last couple years in in my trust. So one of the things we we talked a lot about over the last couple of years is how do we ensure that all members of staff in our trust, across our schools, all have a similar level of understanding and knowledge around? How do pupils learn to read, learn to write, how do they how's their oral language develop, and so on? So we've developed a bit of an induction package, really, um, and it is an induction package. There's more to, obviously, these areas of literacy over time, but we wanted to kind of just get that, that baseline. I suppose, that minimum expectation that you know, if you're a teacher in our trust, we expect you to know this stuff and to think about this stuff when you're planning your curriculum and your lessons. Um, but then it for me it goes back to what do we mean by effective professional development and professional learning and and I really, really feel passionate about this that we we haven't got this right in schools. We've. We've still got, like you were talking about, the like scattergun approach to literacy. We've still got a scattergun approach to professional development and for me, we've always been told in schools, aren't we? And focus on fewer things and do those fewer things better.
Speaker 2:But my feeling when we come to literacy is we can't just say, well, this year we're focused on vocabulary and next year we'll move on to oracy and then the year after we'll move on to writing. We've got to be really smart and careful with our thinking and strategic. So you know, if you've identified that vocabulary is an issue and that is a problem and there are root causes beneath that, that's fine. But you can't neglect all the other aspects of literacy and language. So if I'm saying, okay, our main push or priority is vocabulary over the next academic year or two years, okay, that's fine. But how is that a golden thread through oracy, reading, writing, and where can we find all those little opportunities throughout the year, whether it's whole school Cpd, whether it's department disciplinary training? How can we get that coherence and join all the dots? So it might be.
Speaker 2:You know we're looking at oracy centered approaches to developing vocabulary. You know, voice 21 brought out a great report I think it was last autumn the voicing vocabulary. Great because that's about developing the culture in your classroom to, I suppose, facilitate that quality learning around words and word consciousness. But then we might think, well, where does vocabulary sit within reading development? How do we pre-teach vocabulary? What does implicit vocabulary instruction look like? To scaffold that reading process um, you know, and then and then, what does that look like in terms of um practice, in terms of writing, um, and then retrieval practice?
Speaker 2:Gosh, I was talking about um this with an english colleague this week because we're looking at redesigning the english curriculum, um, and when we're thinking about retrieval practice and the purpose of it, actually, across the key stages and of course, at key stage four, you need to be an expert in the text that you are going to be assessed on, aren't you at the end of that programme? But do you really need to be that expert on them? In key stage three, if I'm studying the Tempest and we're looking at Prospero's character, of course there is a moral imperative. We are going to explore these characters and have a love for reading. You know literature within English. But when we think about retrieval practice and the practices around, do now activities and things like that, what is best for us in English in particular to retrieve? I'm going to put my bets that it's vocabulary um, you know, and if and if you've got a really robust and solid curriculum that maps out the high leverage word that pupils are going to need over and over again throughout their curriculum journeys. How do you then plan those opportunities through retrieval practice for them to explore them, use them, consolidate? Um, and I think that's probably a best bet, um it's an interesting conversation we had this week really interesting.
Speaker 3:Are you really interesting? Are you thinking that kind of subject, specific terminology that is non-text specific? Is that what you know? I'm thinking more academic vocabulary.
Speaker 2:So you know, if we're thinking about tiers of vocabulary, the those words that you know they might have, they might be polysemous, they might have multiple meanings across the curriculum and it might be command words, for example. You know I'm not talking about anything new here when I first started teaching we're talking about command words. I think that's kind of gone by the by and actually that's a huge barrier for success in examinations. Um, I just wonder whether you know when we're thinking about all these whole school practices?
Speaker 2:Um, you know, there's always that desire and and I've had this desire as a senior leader you want elements of consistency across your school, don't you? You know great process, etc. However, for things to be really effective, we have to look at it in a really nuanced way, don't we? Um? And for me and retrieval practice, it's always had a bit of a question mark um at key stage three in english in particular for me, um, and I think we're going to start to think more carefully about how we use that to deepen that kind of vocabulary acquisition in particular, and for our students acquisition, in particular for our students.
Speaker 1:We had a at my previous school, the curriculum that I kind of designed, my team. We had this idea that we had kind of common threads, that we had our eventual texts. For example, inspector calls macbeth, christmas carol about as big a cliche as you can get aqa, you know. But but we had these threads that ran through and we had them displayed up in every classroom. I think it was, as I recall, morality, responsibility, and the idea was that from these five or six golden threads, when we studied the themes, for example man and nature, there was questions coming off them that they could actually directly answer.
Speaker 1:But I, as much as I try to pin the vocabulary down and nail the whole thing down and with retrieval practice, it's the old thing and it's a phrase that keeps coming up. Um, for a number of reasons at the moment. For me is that culture eats strategy for breakfast, and I think that you know it's really important that you need the strategy around your vocabulary, don't you? But actually it's what you said. The bigger piece is what you said there is about training your teachers to actually make the most of squeeze every little last drop out of every classroom opportunity. Um, it's not 10 words a week or whatever it is, it's actually well. Yeah, we are going to do these 10 really important words, but it's all this. It's the enriching stuff around this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that conversation about which words are our high leverage words is is an important one, because I think what you've just said there is absolutely right. I think there are still far too many schools who are mandating. You know you need two to three keywords per lesson. Um, they need needs to be written on the board. The kids need to write them down in their exercise books. Okay, brilliant, what you're going to do with them then, you know, test the next week. Yeah, do kids really understand that? Where that? Where are the misconceptions around it? It's just too much.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've got, you know, the bringing words to life book. I constantly go back to this from you know, the Bringing Words to Life book. I constantly go back to this from you know Isabel Beck and other people. You know that seminal piece of work there and she talks about, you know, let's be sensible, let's not overkill this, let's not overwhelm pupils with words. I think at some point in that book she talks about, you know, 10 new words per week for secondary age pupils.
Speaker 2:You know that's what, for men anyway, but when you think about the experience of a secondary school pupil, that's only two words per day. They have five lessons, you know. So we are absolutely flooding it, and I suppose there are choices to be made, aren't there? There are choices to be made about the really important keywords that we have to teach explicitly, and then, of course, there are many other words that are still going to be taught, but in different ways. So, um, in more implicit ways, incidental ways, through teacher modeling and, you know, kind of discussion and dialogue when you're reading text in the classroom. But it's about those choices which ones deserve explicit time as part of direct instruction, a lesson, and then which ones are going to sit around that, um, you know when we, um, when we talk about mapper with school.
Speaker 1:So for listeners who aren't, uh okay with this, we have bedrock mapper, which is a a lot, a huge repository of exam aligned con with, you know, with content, with activities pinned to them, um, all kind of written and curated by, by, by experts. And what I say to schools is don't sequence where you can choose words to sequence. If you're doing, say, a christmas carol, which is one I always quote don't sequence 50 words in a week. Or don't see pick, pick five. That pick, pick five hills to die on, if you like, pick the five things that you know like.
Speaker 1:So for me it's always matthewsian, uh, misanthropic, redemption, transformation, and you could actually say that redemption is a tier two word, but actually in light of a christmas I think we touched on this in it when we spoke a number of weeks ago actually is it more, does it become like a tier three word. And you know, because in that, in specific domain, because the transformation, when you see it in light of the allegory, actually that then transformation in light of allegory becomes a tier three word actually, and redemption does and redemption of mankind and all that sort of stuff, and I think I always say pick five to ten and then say say to your teacher, put them all on everyone's class. And then your teacher thanks. Let's say thank you very much. I love those words. I'm going to add these two or three in for my interpretation and teaching of the text and I think that's really important.
Speaker 2:I do as well, and I've had that conversation many times with English colleagues. Actually, you know, when they've been asked to, on their curriculum plans, isolate out the tier two and tier three words, all with very, very good intentions, but that's very tricky in English and actually it's tricky across the curriculum. And you know, and somebody did say to me this week actually, oh, are we not listening to your two and three vote words anymore in our unit plans? And I'm like well, if you want to, you can do, but you might come a cop at some point because there are so many words that don't necessarily fit in one category or the other. You know, I always give an example of I, I don't know like a word like field, for example. You can stick it in tier one. You know field grass, you know football field, something like that.
Speaker 2:Then you could talk about it as a tier two word, couldn't you? Um, you know, in terms of the field for your job, your profession I work in the field of medicine it could be a tier three word. You're talking about force fields in science. So for me the tiers of vocabulary is a really good starting point when you are thinking about professional development with staff, so they really get to grips with, um, words kind of the meanings, the purpose of words. But for me the focus needs to be more on. Once you've chosen those words, how are you going to make sure there are meaningful opportunities for pupils to engage with them, to learn them, you know, and really deeply acquire them over time? And how? What does that look like in the classroom? How do you use your oracy strategies, um, especially to facilitate that?
Speaker 3:I also think one of the things that we don't talk about enough is what that feels like for the learners. Yeah, so I remember was teaching in East London and I had an amazing class. They were in year 10, we were doing Othello and they loved, they loved it, they loved the story. They were really, really engaged.
Speaker 3:But the kind of the written outcome when it came to writing essays it was, it was really poor because they just didn't have that academic discourse. No, and and I, you know, I did all the modeling and all of that and one of my, one of my students said to me miss, this language is just not for me, yeah, yeah. And so we did a really big project on like breaking down the language, using oracy to to kind of give them that language. It was probably the most empowering half term that I think I was ever. I ever participated in it. It was that was really transformative, like seeing them start to use that language for themselves. They felt so good about themselves and like. They felt just like, oh well, this is I'm. They felt intelligent, they felt capable. And I think we as teachers, we often focus on the benefits of academic vocabulary for us and for like demonstrating outcomes, and actually I think it would. We would do well to remember how good it feels for learners to master this kind of vocabulary as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean gosh, where do I start with that? There's loads of things that that you made me think about now and reflect on. You know I'm thinking about my own son is in year nine, going into year 10. You know the number of knowledge organizers that he's had to look at at some point and and been asked to revise for an assessment. Here's your knowledge organizer. There could be 25, 30 words on there, you know.
Speaker 2:And yeah, it's really important that we have an understanding of all of that, a factual knowledge, but just learning. That doesn't translate, does it, to what we really need these children to be able to do independently. And just when I was listening to you then I was reminded of that traditional approach of word of the week and how that has its limits, doesn't it? You know a lot of schools are kind of thinking about that and how that has its limits, doesn't it? A lot of schools are kind of thinking about that. They want something similar, but maybe thinking about root word of the week now, and actually that sounds a bit more sensible to me, because if you are exploring the roots of words across the curriculum, you're building up that knowledge and actually then pupils are more equipped to be able to decode words and familiar words more independently.
Speaker 2:We built that confidence and then if you've really got a push on on kind of dialogic classrooms and use of ority strategies, then you're giving them opportunities to use it and only when they start using these words, you know, with each other, um, in the classroom regularly are they then really going to get to grips with them. And that's why, when I mentioned about oracy earlier on, it worries me slightly that there's still a lot of misconceptions around oracy in the system. Um, it really worries me actually. You know you're doom scrolling through, um, well, there, was a big backlash, wasn't there?
Speaker 3:this week I was reading on it, people saying that it's a fad. I know.
Speaker 2:How is this a fad? Yeah, it gives me palpitations a little bit, but it's a vehicle for learning and that's what people need to keep coming back to. Yes, there's the presentational talk about, you know, giving presentations in class, debates, whatever but for me, the fundamentals that we're going to get right is how are we using dialogue and exchange of dialogue in the classroom and how are we developing confident communicators in the classroom to support learning, and it has an absolutely crucial role in developing vocabulary but isn't it interesting, sarah, that we are?
Speaker 3:we would you know? We structure, I mean, provide scaffolds for students, written outcomes, and we do that, you know. Oh, I want you to write a descriptive paragraph. This is what we use for descriptive language. I want you to do analysis. This is what an analytical paragraph would look like. And yet we don't really do that for different modes of talking, do we? We don't provide those. Well, I'm sure some expert teachers do, but we don't all do that on the regular, and I think that's another training piece as well, isn't it? How do we better scaffold?
Speaker 2:excellent, excellent discourse in our classrooms completely. And if you're thinking about, you know it's a real challenge in secondary schools at the moment, isn't it? Because we're constantly thinking about how do know it's a real challenge in secondary schools at the moment, isn't it? Because we're constantly thinking about how do we meet the needs of all learners in our classrooms, and the needs are wide ranging, aren't they? Sen needs are on the up, on the increase. It almost feels unmanageable for some staff. You know, if we go back to these basics around supporting oral language development and communication in the classroom, then you know, not only are we supporting those with special educational needs or those students who have English as additional language and they might be new to the country and, you know, get into grips with the English language. It is beneficial for everybody and I think that's what we need everybody to understand up and down the country, not in our schools.
Speaker 1:And so something that I've really learned this year because, uh, my son's in year three and he's learning, learning to read, you know, just on the verge of becoming fluent, and something that's when I sit with him and listen to him read is just how messy the whole process is in terms of he'll read a word and then if I think it was the word squeeze he read the other day he was reading it on a carton of something and it was clear that he didn't just in a linear way go. So what, he's he kind of. He looked ahead, then he looked back and he and then he read the next word because he'd only read it a couple of seconds ago. It's messy and I think that then you can extrapolate it to how they write and you can extrapolate to, you know, when they write, if they've got these pieces of vocab and actually what live just said, they're these ways of talking, it will leak, it will drip into the writing and I mean I'm not ashamed to say that. When you know, when it came to vocabulary, alex quickly started talking about it and it was very much I've said this before it was very much like the cool kids are talking about it.
Speaker 1:Right, I'm gonna go and teach misanthropic in my lessons now, and it's a few years ago. I'm not embarrassed to say this. It was about five years ago and it was a happy accident. I've blogged about it openly. Three or four weeks down the line it started appearing in their writing, and then it wasn't just in words. They needed ways of you know, not just banging the word misanthropic in it forced me to then, well, how do you use that word effectively in academic discourse? And then it was all these things happening, and I think it's just really important that we, when we train teachers on these things, that we we help them to understand the interrelatedness of all of these things of talk, of writing, of thinking. All these things have to, you know, and all the models of reading. You know the bedrock reading test, you know the simple view of reading and that we, as I've just been reading about that, based on the you know our new reading test. And then we've all these things have to knit together, don't they? They have to?
Speaker 2:of course they do. Of course they do. And you know I'm I'm extremely biased, but I often wonder what, what would happen if you kind of just shut out all that noise around, all the teacher learning kind of practices and trends and things like that? What if you just focused on on oracy, reading and writing in your year? I wonder what would happen. Um do?
Speaker 3:you know that, so did you read the report about that came out this week around and it's kind of saying phonics is responsible for the death of reading for pleasure. And then there was a lot of commentary about well, yeah, you know, of course it is, Phonics is not the approach that we should be taking. And it really made me think like there have been. There is clear evidence that phonics has had a demonstrable impact on on on outcomes. So what, like what do you think about that? This kind of separation of the skill from reading for pleasure?
Speaker 2:um, I think it's in the same category as when people talk about oracy as being a fad, you know, or trying to separate out. You know which one's more important teach, talk or people talk. I think phonics is incredibly important. We know that. There is a solid evidence base around that you can't really enjoy reading if you can't read, and and that is a huge you know that's. That's a fundamental. And you know the best teachers who are teaching young children to read are teaching them using those kind of really structured phonics systems. But they are encouraging that love of reading and storytelling alongside that and having that kind of reading culture. It's not a one or the other, they have to go together. Yeah, I mean, for me it's really tricky.
Speaker 2:I think there are many proficient readers in secondary school who don't necessarily enjoy reading, and I think times have changed and we've got a real challenge on our hands. It doesn't help that there hasn't been a decent library provision in many schools for the past few years. You know, I think schools are working harder to make sure that's brought back. But then we have to think, you know, how are we using that effectively? How are we getting pupils through the door of the library, making them what you know, go in there and think that there's something in there for them, um, but you know, I don't know. I think all the work of theresa quemnin and we've been looking at the, the reading for pleasure stuff for some of our schools it is really important, but it's not a dichotomy, it's not an either, or is it? Um, I'm always conscious of that that kind of idea that in order to enjoy reading, you've got to be a good reader. That has to be a priority, doesn't it? And phonics is a massive part of that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I totally agree, and I also think the reading for pleasure agenda runs the risk of isolating certain groups of learners as well. Who is it?
Speaker 1:pleasurable for.
Speaker 3:And actually for certain populations in our schools who aren't confident readers, like like you say, it's not pleasurable. And if we're only focusing on that, are we missing? Are we missing interventions that need to take place? Are we missing something you know? Are we missing knowledge gaps? You know reading, reading gaps. I think it can be a kind of blinkering um agenda sometimes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I was. I was just going to say about the word pleasure as well. You know, I get pleasure out of reading during the, the term time when I'm reading about what I love and that's literacy and teaching and and my profession. You know, I read a book on holiday and and that was my reading for pleasure, it was my escape from my work.
Speaker 2:And there are different purposes of reading, aren't there? And those, you know? There are always going to be some students, especially old ones. They're not going to want to pick up a book and think, oh, I can't wait to do that. Some are going to have that kind of that motivation already, aren't they? Um, but I say to my son, because he doesn't want to do that, I said well, you've got to think of the purpose, of why you're reading that and what it's going to do for you, and develop those habits related to that, in the hope that over time that will be a realisation for him and as he gets older he will want to pick up a book himself or find the joy, and find the joy in it.
Speaker 1:I love your take on this.
Speaker 1:I think that's such a healthy way of seeing it because I think it's almost like a that the reading for pleasure agenda runs the risk of focusing on the, the end point for some people, when actually it's almost like you know you, you see someone who's you know looks million dollars, is slim, wearing a nut, you know wearing nice clothes and whatever you think, well, I want that, but actually you don't see all of the stuff that underpins it.
Speaker 1:You don't see the stuff that actually the reality might not be what you think it looks like. And we've got this sort of odd idea in some sectors of well, reading for pleasure means all the children are having this wonderful time with books and then that's leading to bright and fulfilling futures for everyone. And I'm not saying that's never the case in reading for pleasure is necessarily a bad thing. But I think it's I, I genuinely I. The reading for pleasure agenda I don't mind saying it concerns me because I think it puts I think it puts the the eggs in all the wrong baskets. I think it should be about proficient, confident readers, because only when that's the case can you then begin to explore. You know, reading for pleasure only when that's the case can you then begin to explore you know reading for pleasure.
Speaker 1:That and that's the thing I think we've.
Speaker 2:We've got a duty in schools to be promoting and finding ways for um motivating students to engage in them, you know, and something like the tutor reading programs in secondary schools are a great. They're well placed to do that, aren't they? In terms of creating those community of readers, um enjoying reading with um a member of staff who might not necessarily be your english teacher, um, but it comes with its challenges, doesn't it? You know, and there are. There's a place in the english curriculum, um for reading for pleasure, and, and one of the things I was also talking to a colleague this week about was okay, we've chosen these texts. When we're reading English curriculum, what's the purpose and the goal of reading each text? Are we studying that, you know, in a detailed way, maybe a Shakespeare text, or are we reading this text because it's a vehicle to develop the conceptual knowledge and themes that you want to explore?
Speaker 2:And if that's the case, does that need to be a faster read? You know thinking about the stuff of university research, you know making those choices, and actually then you've got a balance, haven't you?
Speaker 1:and then you've got a chance of really hooking some of those students who might have been less reluctant readers, um, previously yeah yeah, my son, as I said, my son is on the verge of becoming fluent, but what I, what I don't want to do is sit there every night and say we're reading for pleasure. Tonight you're going to read this many pages to me. Actually, he's got a borrow box account, uh, with his local leads card and, uh, he downloads audio books and he listens to those and he's got um access to that and he loves it. He's got he reads fiction he and that's the other thing, by the way, is he's not particularly keen. He listens to fiction. Sometimes he prefers non-fiction and we've got all these, I think, reading for pleasure. Sometimes we're under risk of having all these funny little, uh misconceptions and preconceptions attached to them about what that looks like and what the type of reading, and that sort of thing completely completely and actually reading for pleasure.
Speaker 3:Really, you could rephrase that as independently motivated reading.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think I heard um david I once say something like it should be reading for betterment, or something like that. You know, it's about getting you to that next place you want to be. And yeah, it was like you're saying before. It doesn't have to be fiction, does it? You know? I get a lot of pleasure out reading nonfiction articles, educational books, that sort of thing. I do get pleasure out reading fiction, but I have to manage that with work and holidays and there's a time for each one for me.
Speaker 1:And I think that's a really nice segue into kind of one of the final parts of the conversation I really wanted to touch on today is when, in your experience in the schools you work with, in your lengthy experience in education, where do you think at the moment the biggest barriers for schools are? So you know Liv touched earlier upon you know a language, rich culture, you know reading, culture, that type of thing.
Speaker 2:What do you feel are the biggest barriers to achieving that? Wow, ok, I think the biggest barriers for me are more generic kind of system barriers, maybe senior leadership barriers and knowledge around that. I think the first thing for me is around the the status um of of literacy leadership, and it's one obviously I'm going to feel really passionate about. Um. I know that we've got new qualifications that were funded and might not be now like the mpq and for leading literacy and that's that's helped lots of teachers, a lot of early careers. You know teachers coming out there the second and third year teaching, but I feel that there's still not that priority um at national policy level around supporting literacy leadership in secondary schools um and why, what, why, what, what's it?
Speaker 1:I mean, I'll just call it. I'm trying to tease something out there. I'll just ask the question do you think it's because the focus is on outcomes rather than the long game of literacy, and it's much easier to evidence an outcome than it is to? I'll just, I'll just ask the question.
Speaker 2:I think so, and I think it's because it's tricky and it's difficult and and it's uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:It's uncomfortable, isn't it, having all these nuanced conversations and you know when, when I work with lots of schools because obviously alongside my roles that I do lots of consultancy as the literacy coach and when I'm working with schools, sometimes there is a real battle. Battle when you're discussing with senior leaders about what the priority needs to be, and I think you know what it always comes back to accountability, doesn't it? So let's think about the, the dreaded Ofsted, you know, I I think the, the Ofsted report that came out recently, the telling the story one. I actually thought that was a very reasonable report. It's very long report but it was very reasonable um, and I hope that senior leaders start to listen to it because some very sensible messages in there.
Speaker 2:Um, but if we are not prioritizing the leadership of literacy and thinking about how that infiltrates every aspect of education, then we're not going to be in a different situation, are we? You know, I still come across schools where the literacy lead has been given a piddly little tlr um and no time to do it, and it's just not fair. It's not on um and it's a second year teacher.
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness, yeah, and they're struggling that was me 16, 17 years ago.
Speaker 2:And you have to start somewhere to get that so-called ladder, don't you? Well, actually, you know it should. It shouldn't necessarily be that that early career teacher who's in the second, third year, whatever well there needs to be a team, doesn't it you? Have to have the expertise at the top yeah, and that's another thing.
Speaker 1:Um, that came out of the leads round table was the idea that these piddly tlrs people are kind of um, colleagues are desperate to show what they've done with it, and that's where you run in, fall into the trap of gimmicks, of of little things in gone classroom walls, of things which just only barely touch the surface, if that, and rather than thinking really deeply about it.
Speaker 1:And I think you know, I'm delighted by the way that disciplinary literacy is becoming a thing in schools and I'm delighted by that because I think that it's. It's helping, if nothing else, it's helping colleagues across subjects to know that they've all got a bit of skin in the game here and that it's about. You know, they might drop dt I'm sorry dt teachers they might drop history, they might drop geography after, whatever it is, after year nine. But I think there's a moral imperative for you to try and apprentice young people into your discipline, up to the age of year nine, you know, or whatever it is, and we need to be celebrating that. We're professionals with degrees, with deep knowledge in these subjects. I just don't think that gets celebrated enough.
Speaker 2:And it's really interesting when you have conversations about, about subject curriculums, um, and where, reading and writing and vocabulary, and or is he fitting with them? And from, unfortunately for many leaders, it's still that, oh, you know, we might not be ready for that, yet we're not quite got to grips with the curriculum or the Ofsted recommendations.
Speaker 3:Oh, I don't have curriculum time or space for that time or space for that?
Speaker 2:absolutely. But you know, have curriculum time or space for that? Absolutely. But you know, if you think about the support that's been put in place for primary schools through the English hubs nationally, you know where is the support for secondary schools. You are never going to improve that literacy and language provision in secondary schools if there aren't the systems and the opportunities to be supported to do that. Unfortunately, it is luck of the draw, depending on how how much somebody reads, what their status is in terms of leadership within the school. I think some of the best schools um that have strong literacy provision are the schools where those who are tasked with leading on CPD and teaching and learning are also literacy experts. And sometimes you know I was joking about this the other day in some respects take the literacy word away. You know Jeff Barton years ago said is it useful to call it?
Speaker 2:literacy, and that's still the case. You know, literacy is learning, and that's still the case. You know, literacy is learning, um. And unfortunately, when we look at lots of learning frameworks, um and there are brilliant ones out there we use the great teaching toolkit in our trust, um, which is fantastic, evidence-based. But what saddens me all the time is there's never an explicit reference to reading or oral language or writing. That's the problem, because unless you're a literacy specialist and lead on teaching and learning, you're not bound to make those connections, are you? But it'd be great if we had some, some sort of regional hubs that can support with disciplinary literacy, because if we have some great cpd on that professional development, you know that's the potential to be transformative.
Speaker 2:And sorry to interrupt you, liv, I'm just going to tell you about one example. So one example is a school in my trust I don't want to name them, they're called CHS South and they've been doing some great work around disciplinary literacy and over the last three years we decided to take a very different approach. We got to the point where we've done so much whole school, cpd, everybody in the hall together that we felt we've kind of maxed this out. Now what are we going to do to really tip it over and give that responsibility, that knowledge, to subjects to really develop this themselves. And it was a bit of a luxury really because, me being their trust director for literacy, I had some capacity.
Speaker 2:But we developed a programme whereby every term so three times a year every subject teacher would have a disciplinary literacy cpd session in their subject area and we've had different foci throughout those two or three years and we've now got to a position where they've got that baseline understanding knowledge and curriculum leaders and assistant curriculum leaders feel confident to be able to drive that forward themselves. Well, imagine if you had that bigger scale, a national scale that's. You know that's got real potential. But we have to invest in that, don't we nationally?
Speaker 3:but also we have to be bold about that in schools, about where we're putting our time and our money resources and then if you had that kind of framework, it would stop this scattergun approach of, well, we know, we've got to throw everything at. You know, literally in inverted commas absolutely, well, actually, what's research-based, what has worked in other settings that's comparable to ours, let's, let's, develop a national framework for what works. Yeah, just doesn't. It doesn't exist, does it?
Speaker 1:and I, and I must just ask um, because when I first reached out to you, sarah, you said, actually that's funny, I'm a big Bedrock fan, you know, and it was a genuinely complete happy accident I thought, wow, this is incredible. If you wouldn't mind, would you be able to kind of just maybe give us, just before we finish, a bit of a brief rundown of your history with Bedrock and how you've seen it work in schools, and it would be, I think, a really useful insight for people's Bedrock partners or not. Just to hear that, I think would be really useful.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. My own experience started about six years ago when I joined the trust that I'm in now and I was quickly seconded to a school that really needed some support. They were on a rapid improvement journey and of course one of the priorities for us was looking at literacy levels, improving reading on limited resource in terms of staffing and there wasn't a lot of staff expertise around how pupils learn to read and how we can really rapidly improve that on a big scale. So originally it was to help us plug this literacy gap and we knew that tier two vocabulary was one of the biggest barriers for those pupils. We knew that that was a key part of any sort of reading age assessment. So it was a bit of a no-brainer really, and we were also looking to tighten up what the library curriculum looked like. We wanted to develop a carousel kind of curriculum. We also wanted to improve homework in English, so Bedrock kind of fit the bill at the time.
Speaker 2:For us it was a bit of a no-brainer. For us it was a bit of a no-brainer and and actually within within 12 months we saw huge gains in in reading ages. I think it was we. We increased the number of students with a reading age in line with chronological by 12 percent in in the first year, which was massive, and I'm now I'm not saying that that bedrock was completely responsible for that, but it played a part in that without a doubt.
Speaker 2:And you know, fast forward six years down the line there are other schools in my trust using um bedrock now as part of key stage three provision. It's not an intervention, it's part of a provision for all um to help to develop academic vocabulary, um, and I think when you use that alongside a really strong intervention offer, that's when you've got the best chance of improving those reading ages which we know. That's what lots of schools are striving for. Of course, on average we would. In the schools that have implemented it well and that use it as part of a wider approach, we see on average uplifts of 10 to 15 percent in those numbers of students reading at chronological age that that's.
Speaker 1:That's not unusual, uh, you know when, when the information or when the implementation is strong and schools uh are able to kind of share with me their reading age data, and I can triangulate that for them. Time and time again, we see it, we see the correlation between high engagement, consistent engagement and relationships between chronological and reading age.
Speaker 2:It's there time and time again and when we first started using it, like six years ago, in particular, we saw some of the greatest gains um for students with send and students um from disadvantaged backgrounds. You know when we were looking deeper in that um. But anybody knows knows me well, knows that I I don't really like online platforms for english and literacy. I'm not a lover of them and that's because, you know, in the 20 years I've been in education, I haven't come across many that are well suited to the domain. But this is the only one and I'll be really honest about it.
Speaker 2:This is the only one I do recommend because I feel it works as a targeted vocabulary program with a specific purpose. It's not trying to be a catch all and you know we use it for a specific purpose, and you know we use it for a specific purpose. So you know, if you use it in isolation, it's probably not going to be as impactful as when you use it alongside what you're doing in the classroom and your targeted intervention approaches. But I like it. I speak highly of it.
Speaker 3:Interesting feedback, sarah, that's great I mean a lot of the time.
Speaker 2:Thanks for saying that. Yeah, well, it's honest you know there are I've had a battle over the last few years to um quote dylan williams phrase de-implement um some online platforms that have been there historically that are clearly not having much impact at all. So you, you know everything has to be reviewed, doesn't it? You know the implementation, the evaluation cycles are really, really important and if it's not working for you, you know you've got to get to grips with why, before you throw the baby out of the bathwater.
Speaker 1:We spend a lot of time in my teaching and learning team engaging with schools, with various stakeholders in schools, to kind of help say look, please don't sit at your desk thinking that because you're the bedrock lead or you're the assistant head or the literacy lead or whatever, that the impact is completely on your desk. It's not. It's up to us to help you, you know, understand the impact that's been made and it's up it's up to us to help you potentially de-implement. Look at something smaller scale, look at the longevity of what you're trying to achieve, and I think that's the difference. I agree with you completely. I think at worst, if you put pupils on bedrock, they get a decent deal because it's a great platform in terms of synonyms, antonyms, the connectivity of words, the cultural, the richness of the experience. But when you really start to see it is when schools begin to look at the knowledge trends and look at the words and the holistic assessment and they start to use that to leverage their teaching and their planning. I've, I mean, my big thing this year level uh, probably had me talk about a million times is beginning to use chat, gpt alongside the knowledge trends and the holistic assessment to create resources at scale.
Speaker 1:You can say write me 10 words. You know, look at the knowledge trends, write me and you know the words they're struggling with. Write me 10 questions. You're a teacher that's just studied romeo and juliet. Write me 10 questions. Include these 10 words inside the questions multiple choice questions about the plot of act, one scene, one um. And then you could say to it now, provide ukrainian translations crazy, uh and format it as a table and you can do all this and your thinking power goes into the, the prompt, rather than all of that time go and you've got all the time. You're infusing the, the insights that bedrock's giving you. The same with mapper, by the way. You can look at, look at the words that they're struggling with and, yeah, so if anyone does hear that and is interested in us working on that with you, we'd be delighted to show you around and and and help you with that as well. But thank you for your genuine, honest and insights there, because we're not perfect.
Speaker 2:I think there are better things that we can do with it. I really want to think about how we developed a bit more of a coherence between that and the vocabulary curriculum within subjects as well. I want a big focus moving forward around you know the words that we are choosing to teach in our curriculum areas and working with other subjects to see where the connections are, and the connections with Bedrock is a part of that, I think yeah, um, and that, I think, is a lovely place to end, because we've run over and we've taken too much of your time and it's been, it's been amazing what a lovely conversation to have.
Speaker 1:Um, so, yeah, we massively appreciate your time and, uh, if you, if you want to work with us on a you know a trust level type thing and you want us to you know things to help you with, and you know we'd love to collaborate. We think you're fantastic and we'd love to hear more of your insight.
Speaker 2:You're welcome to come in any time.
Speaker 1:Great, I'd love to have a lovely rest of day and weekend. Thank you very much. Thanks.
Speaker 2:Olivia. Thanks, andy, see you soon, bye.
