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.
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Bedrock Talks from Bedrock Learning
18: Navigating dyslexia: A parent's guide - with Sally Collard
What if understanding dyslexia could transform your child's reading experience? Join us as we sit down with dyslexia specialist Sally Raymond, who shares her heartfelt journey into the field, driven by her daughter's struggles with reading. Discover the crucial role parents play in offering unconditional reading support, highlighting how such support can significantly enhance a child's confidence and enjoyment in reading.
Dive into the complex world of dyslexia as Sally explains the brain's difficulty with symbolic language and how it impacts reading fluency. Learn about the concept of unconditional reading support, where parents provide immediate help on any word a child hesitates on, thus maintaining the flow of meaning and making reading enjoyable. Additionally, we chat with Sally about her books and her journey as an author, offering our listeners a chance to understand her creative process and the inspiration behind her work. Don't miss this enlightening conversation that promises to empower parents and educators alike.
About Sally Collard:
Over the past thirty years Sally (a qualified teacher) has studied dyslexia and associated subjects to constantly gain further experience and qualifications in this fascinating and varied topic. She has worked in many different settings supporting learners of all ages, teaching staff and parents to promote approaches to teaching and learning which aim to meet the specific learning needs of the individual. To explore further, read Sally's book.
Hi everyone and welcome to the Literacy Works podcast with Bedrock Learning, or I should now call actually Bedrock Talks podcast, as we're now starting to shift our names a little bit and today we have Sally Raymond, who is a dyslexia specialist. Really interesting guest today, actually. Funny enough, friend and colleague, graham Raymond, who leads our support team, said that his mum has worked in the field of dyslexia and SEND for some years. And because I was we're chatting about my little boy, um, with his dyslexia and I had a half an hour conversation with Sally and it became apparent to me that actually, if as we'll dig into this later on parents with children with dyslexia and SEND, but particularly dyslexia, can often feel as if they they're a little bit powerless to help, a little bit powerless to be able to actually make effect, make effective change for their, for their children, and I thought it would be selfish of me not to share some of Sally's insights and thoughts with, with our wider educational community. So teachers with children with dyslexia, teachers of children with dyslexia, teachers of children with dyslexia. But fundamentally, this is about parents and about what parents can do in today's pod and I've got no doubt this will be brilliant.
Speaker 1:So Sally is a dyslexia specialist. She's the author of multiple books, including Spelling Rules, riddles and Remedies, published by Routledge. We will put a link to that in the description. But I mean I'm going to ask sally in just a moment a little bit about, a little bit more about her background and how she's what she's done in her career. Um, but before I do, um, welcome sally, and thank you for coming on.
Speaker 1:Massive, massively appreciate thank you for asking me so just to give us a sense, just to start off, because I think you know often I've been I you know it comes to backgrounds. It's important to make sure that it's relevant for everyone. I think this is a really important background to share with our listeners. So could you just give us a sense of how you got into this line of work?
Speaker 2:Well, my daughter, who is now over 40 with her own children when she was young she struggled with reading.
Speaker 2:We do have dyslexia in the family, but we wasn't until she started school that I realized that she was really struggling with reading. And the more I found out about dyslexia, the more fascinated I became and discovered that there is a lot that you can do to help. So that's really how I got into it, being a teacher as well. I then discovered how different it is to be a parent and a teacher and the differences involved. And then later on in the time, after getting qualified and so on, I ran courses for teachers but also for parents, and realized it's a very different need for the parents. So I worked with Dyslexia Cornwall for a project for parents and introduced them to what I call unconditional reading support, which the parents absolutely loved, and a week later, when they'd been doing it for a week, it was quite clear it made a significant difference to their children's reading yeah, and we'll dig into that a little bit later on, because I think I've tried it with wilf and it's been, it's been a game changer.
Speaker 1:Um, been a game changer in terms of what it actually does, but also a game changer in both of our attitudes towards the experience of reading together as well. Um, before we carry on with what I really want to just tease apart, there is what. What is that difference when you talk about being a parent versus a teacher? What is it that you, you found there and what is it that you're, you're, you're, you're trying to say there, do you?
Speaker 2:think it's a relationship between if you imagine yourself as that child and you're at school, teacher tells you to do something, you behave in a particular manner. You then go home and mom or dad says okay, do you want to get out your reading book and do it? And the reading is something you absolutely struggle with. You don't understand why you're struggling with it. Everyone else can do it. This is ridiculous. You're embarrassed, you're cross, you're tired, because you've usually had a very long day at school trying your best to understand things that you can't understand. You also don't understand what's going on. I think that's another crucial thing that goes up between parent and child, which is a very disappointing one, because there is nothing better than being able to share the reading experience, the language, the plots, the characters and all that side of reading a book. The parents are in the best position.
Speaker 1:So I always say let the teachers teach and the parents put into practice in whatever way they can I think that's a really interesting point because it you know, I've got obviously two children and my little girl is in reception and she's just sort of starting her journey with phonics and things like that.
Speaker 1:And what you can see with libby is that, I would suggest, from what I can glean at the moment, she's on a fairly typical trajectory in terms of a child learns phonics. She is, you know, we now read her ebook, you know most nights of the week and all of those little quirks of the english language, you know of the spelling that she's sort of just able to gloss over them and it's not a barrier for her, whereas with wilf it was really clear from the off that you know it, just the trajectory wasn't there and you shared with me something really interesting about phonics. Now, this isn't this isn't about criticizing phonics per se, but I think your observations of of the, the kind of the inception of the phonics program, is worth sharing. So where has phonics come from? I think?
Speaker 2:that's a really important question to ask. When I first went into teaching, reading had three approaches it was whole word, it was phonics, and it was reading for meaning. And then 80s that sort of time phonics suddenly took over and and of course we know that that's a lot to do with money and funding and all the rest of it but further. So I'm fascinated with all these things. I was fascinated why one of my children could read without any difficulty and another one struggled so much. So I've researched it quite a lot and discovered that a lot of the reasoning behind introducing phonics was that research was done of children who had phonics in Germany. So they're reading German and they found that if they had a phonics program that their progress was better. That's a sort of summary of a complex research that went on. That's a sort of summary of a complex research that went on.
Speaker 2:Then you look at the German language and many of the languages similar to it are the same. They are what's called transparent, meaning that if you want to make the O sound in a word, you use, for argument's sake, o-a, and whenever you come across an O sound you will always use O-A. So once you've learned that phonics pattern. Off you go and you can read so many words In English to make the O sound. We've got note which would have O-E. We have got O-A. Obviously we have got OA. Obviously. We've got times when it's OW. We've got times when it's OUGH. Honestly, we all know, once you start looking at English spellings how hugely confusing and complex it is. And you've just said a very interesting thing about your daughter. Manages to gloss over it. That is how children who aren't struggling do. They don't stop and say, hey, why is that lettuce doing that sound?
Speaker 1:now yeah, and I remember. I mean, whenever I say this to my mum, she always kind of uh, she always says oh no, what are you going to remember from your childhood? Now that I'm gonna you, you're going to ask me about you know some, you know some terrible thing. But I remember, acutely remember learning how to write and spell. I remember being in school and it just wasn't an issue for me spelling it just. I mean I was never particularly bright, I was never near top of the class, it wasn't to do with that, but I just didn't seem to struggle with it. And that's why I think, as a parent, I struggled to relate to Wilf quite early doors with it, because definitely that we'd be doing.
Speaker 1:We'd be, we'd be doing things like you know the split diagraph, and I'd put I, e on on a piece of paper and then put T in the middle, I, t, l, I, l, I'm all, and, and we'd be looking at the same thing and he wasn't being naughty, he just really couldn't compute the split diagraph. Even now he he can read a split diagraph, but it's not because it's a split diagraph, he just knows the word. Now he's learned techniques to circumvent it in a way that, you know, an atypical sorry, a typical reader is able to gloss over. As you say, that's a good thing to have picked up on that. As you say, that's a good thing to have picked up on. That's right, because that's what you have to do, because english is a, is a. I mean I, I'm a, I'm.
Speaker 1:I studied english language at university, so I know about the history of it. You know the fact that you've got french words in it, you've got. You know you've got roman words in it. You've, you've got greek. You've got all of these different, funny, funny languages that have come together to make English. So you're right to kind of pick up on the phonics piece and the idea that actually it's not for young people that really struggle with this. It must be incredibly daunting.
Speaker 2:And they feel stupid. You do feel stupid because everyone else is doing something and you don't even understand what it is that they're doing, let alone how they're doing it. And then the next minute you'll have a different set of words to spell which have got a different pattern in um and split diagraph. I mean, the fact that we're using words like that and the children themselves are understanding words like that shows that we're going into language, and for children with dyslexia, it's the language which they're often struggling with, as much as everything else.
Speaker 1:And I think this is the next kind of thing we really wanted to talk about, wasn't it Was the idea of you know when you first started working with parents. Could you give us a sense of the work you've done with parents? First of all and then I want to unpick you know why they were so relieved. So what have you done with parents? What does a typical piece of work with parents look like?
Speaker 2:well, the main thing that started with the parent workshop is, at one point I'd say to them so let's talk about reading at home. Would anyone like to share their experience of reading at home? And the whole group and there might be a dozen people there who would be chatting quite happily would go silent because I knew very well why. Um, and then I would tease out of them and say, well, I'll just tell you about my, how it was with my daughter. We'd have arguments, we'd have arguments, we'd have bribery, we'd have stress, we'd have all that.
Speaker 2:And all of a sudden, out it all came, and that is what I was trying to get across to the parents is I understand how you are struggling? It's not going to a parent's evening at school, where you often aren't saying those things, because you're worried that you'd be treated as a parent that can't do things properly or can't get their children to read. So I wanted parents to see there could be a different way of doing it, rather than the official, if you like, teaching approach. And so we used to do different things like games, example, um spellings. We'd have mnemonics, would use color.
Speaker 1:I'd give them some insight as to why the brain might be struggling with it and so things like mnemonics, why they might help, um, but just help them to see that there are different ways of doing things yeah, and something I've had to kind of really think about is um, not always, it doesn't always have to be a formal sit down for 30 minutes, and I always think about you know, like now, whenever I, every now and then I'll go to like a boot camp and if someone asks me to do a burpee, I shudder. It's dreadful. Having to do a burpee, I shudder, it's dreadful. Having to do a burpee is just because you're going all the way down to press up, pushing up again the next day. My body is telling me why did you do that? You know, I can't barely get out of a chair and I think that's what it must be like for a dyslexic child If you say you know, do you want to do this?
Speaker 2:It's. I don't feel good at it. I don't feel confident. The other thing to remember is that you are a parent and a child hates to show failure in front of their parents or significant others, which is why often they will do avoidance strategies. There'll be the tears, there'll be the arguments, whereas if you're in the situation where you're chatting with them in the car about a plot of a storyline, you've removed that reading stress, haven't you?
Speaker 1:yeah, and it was. It's interesting because at the weekend he's now started to kind of he does his homework a little bit more regularly because he sees that everyone else is doing it. So he feels that he can do his too. And what I've started to do is kind of subtly just weave in some of the things that you've spoken about, like the unconditional reading, um, and then almost like bolt on a couple of extra, really small bits of of of activities as well for us to do together, like you know, games or something like that.
Speaker 1:And I don't get me wrong, for listeners as well. I'm, you know, I'm not, you know, a male. Mary poppin say I don't do all this every day. I do this this kind of once, twice a week, if that's it. And it's not, it's not all day, every day, but it's. It's just about adapting and doing things that help. That helps the child to feel confident in that moment and he's more able to kind of be OK with showing me that he doesn't know how to do something if it's homework that everyone else is doing. You know, I think that's really, but that. So the next question is is really, I suppose, for particular colleagues, listening, teachers, listening is why do you think it's such a struggle for schools to support pupils with dyslexia? Because the SEND discussion at the moment is a big one and it's an important one and I think it's a really easy rod to beat schools with. Is provision for SEND, but why specifically dyslexia?
Speaker 2:Well, I think the biggest answer to that is that it is a huge subject. The word dyslexia is just an umbrella term for a number of different profiles. So in a class I could have one child who's had a diagnosis of dyslexia, and so I'm going to treat them in a particular way, make sure they always get visual handouts and approach them like that seems to work. There could be another three children who are also struggling. They will have different profiles, likely as not. So what I'm doing for one may well not suit another. In fact that can make it even worse. So I'm a teacher with limited access to training. So let's be honest, in teacher training, it's limited access to training. So let's be honest, in teacher training, it's limited. And then, even if you do on extra training, you may have three hours of the topic, but it's so huge you're never going to be able to get all the different profiles. So teachers often are trying their very, very best to do things but haven't got the equipment, the knowledge, the skills, the experience to be able to target it correctly. Um, so then they can end up with the child.
Speaker 2:Behavioral difficulties is the most common one and that was the one I was most often called in for, because the behavior of the child in its attempts to extract itself from a horrible situation meant they could see that something was going on. So you then got that issue and I did have some teachers would say we can't do anything unless we sort out their behavior. But actually you sort out the dyslexia difficulties or specific reading difficulties. It doesn't have to be dyslexia, but the reading difficulties. Then you'll get the different behavior. So that was another issue.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Because, you know, I remember on my teacher training we were given a link to a very, very grainy looking even then 10-15 years ago, very grainy looking documentary called the dyslexia myth, um, which did the rounds and a number of years, quite controversial at the time, and I think what what's interesting about that is that, as you say it, it's not one thing that it you know it's not dyslexic.
Speaker 1:Dyslexics aren't a homogenous group and you know, for sc, for senkos and for teachers who are a little bit more okay with with, with screeners and things like that in schools, it's what you would call a spiky profile, isn't it? A child often has what's called a spiky profile. So with will, for example, his verbal reasoning is far beyond average for his years, but his numerical and his read and and he's and he's decoding his phonics is is below and and that's what called. That's. For me, that's. My understanding is that that's what causes almost a dyslexia, because there's such a disconnect between what he's able to do verbally versus what he's able to do, you know, kind of, when he's written in it and his numbers and his reading that's his profile.
Speaker 2:But for another child they may have weakness in verbal reasoning as well. So you can have a difficulty, a little difficulty, in a lot of areas. You can have one big difficulty and a huge strength in others. You know there's four real key areas of the the brain when it is decoding and reading, and it can be any variation of the theme, not to mention how you then develop strengths in order to compensate for the weaknesses. So my mother, for example, who was dyslexic but didn't know it, obviously in those days she had a visual memory, photographic visual memory, so she could look at a word and read it forevermore, but she could never spell it, and read it forever more, but she could never spell it. So it's interesting how the brain works to to handle things.
Speaker 1:It is struggling with and and the motivation uh, aspect of it's so difficult, isn't it? Because you've got all sorts of you know familial, uh, relationships with the teachers as well. You've got you know, the home environment, you've got relationships with peers. There's all sorts of things that play into the motivation to be able to do that. So it's not difficult what's stepping out of it to see why some pupils, some learners, would want to exit that very uncomfortable situation, whether it's at home or in a school. If they're being faced with something where they're being made to feel stupid, where they're being made to feel like that, you know they're going to fail.
Speaker 1:So I think that's one clear reason why schools do struggle is that you know the. The level of complexity, um, in a classroom is just, it's just enormous. But the other thing that I would want to sort of pull on here really is if you're a teacher that's inheriting, say, a class list in september or even a new class list in the last last few weeks of this term, what would your advice be, sally, when it comes to starting to kind of climb this mountain? What do you think? I'm not saying that you will have here a strategy that will make things perfect, but what's your advice to teachers?
Speaker 2:Well, yes, I mean that is a huge topic. But one of the things is talk to the child. Talk to the child, listen to the child, do things with the child. You can read a report that has been done on the child, but that is only one aspect of it.
Speaker 2:There was a lad who was struggling with maths and clearly he was struggling and I could see that partly was his reading in difficulty, so he wasn't able to read the question. But on chatting to him and knowing what sort of things to talk about, I discovered his problem was he didn't know which way round a seven went. He could never remember it. So whenever it came to a seven he'd put another number in, didn't matter what number, so long as it wasn't a seven. Now the teacher had read all the reports and so on and so forth but hadn't picked that up because, if you like, it was buried in the mass of what was going on.
Speaker 2:But once we sorted out not only how to do a seven using a strategy that worked for him, but then we knew what sort of things he needed, he then got confident enough to come along and say I don't understand what common denominator means.
Speaker 2:So it was helping the child realize that you do understand that they are struggling and that they can come to you and say but what about this and why is this happening and why is that spelling odd? That's what led to the Spelling Rules, riddles and Remedies book was because I used to do workshops for teachers. I used to do workshops for teachers and often they would say to me you know, I never realized why hope had to have an E on the end. You know, I knew how to spell it. So it's understanding the nuances. But often it is talking to the child and doing things with the child. The teaching assistants are often more on hand with that, so it might be the teacher that's got the training, but actually the teaching assistant who needs the more access to understanding so I suppose it's not a resource as such.
Speaker 1:It's not, you know, it may be, but in the, in the beginning, it's about cutting through all of that and it's about listening and having, you know, eyes and ears to what the child is doing and saying, and you know, and every time you have an interaction, whether it's with a teaching assistant or whether it's with the child themselves, or whether it's with the book, just looking out for those things, because it's not, you know, as I've said before, as you've shown me, dyslexics are not a homogenous group and there's going to be all kinds of different quirks and compensations and things that a child with dyslexia has done in order to support themselves.
Speaker 1:And I think that's a really important thing to say is that it's just about having open eyes and open ears, really, and and I think one thing that I'm really getting from you today and tell me if I'm wrong but is about the importance of the strength of relationship with the child, more than anything else, perhaps, because it's about trust. It's about because then you can really start the deep work, can't you? Once they trust you, once they've, once they've communicated certain things to you, and you can get beyond.
Speaker 2:Well, I think the other one is identity, because if your identity is the school idiot, the class idiot.
Speaker 2:Then you start mucking about and be the school clown. So one way I like to turn that around is to talk about how successful many people with dyslexia are, so famous. Dyslexics is one of the ones I recommend. Parents look with their child and talk about who those people are and what they did and so on. And Richard Branson is a wonderful person to pick on because he's rich. He's rich and he's famous. And I did have one lad I worked with who wouldn't tell anyone that he was dyslexic because he was embarrassed and so on. And of course that meant that he wasn't telling teachers, he wasn't telling when he went off on to um cubs or whatever, wasn't going to tell anyone else. So we talked about it until I told him about Richard Branson and so on and so forth. So in the end he then was happy to say I am dyslexic like Richard Branson. And he knew then that his peers would understand that, because when your peers are teasing you because you can't spell something, you can't read something or you can't pronounce something, it is absolutely awful.
Speaker 1:So identity as well as relationships, I think, is important it's interesting actually, you know, because, um, when we spoke with theresa cremin on the pod a few weeks ago, she spoke about identity and the importance of reading for pleasure and the fact and the idea that actually that doesn't happen magically but you need to develop a reading identity. So something that wilf and I do is we read. We've been reading harry potter books and enjoying those stories and those characters together, and when he does his homework based on his best book or based on book covers or based on quizzing characters, of course he doesn't read it independently, but part of his identity is that he's a harry potter fan, he loves harry potter and and there's no barrier for him there and I think that's a really important thing is around identity, and every human being listening to this will know that their own self-concept and identity is really important. And having line managers and having heads and having you know colleagues that hold you in high esteem, you know that that's a really important thing. You know that you, that you feel like you can, that you can contribute to the school community, and, and, and and and feel good about yourself, and that's just a common human trait, isn't it? And and.
Speaker 1:So that kind of brings me on really to the idea about, you know, when it comes to dyslexia, rather than it. You know, we've we've touched on profiles and we've touched on what specific aspects dyslexic pupils, learners, might struggle with. But what is going on there? What? What is it that happens that that's causing the trip wire to be tripped, so to speak? When, when dyslexia, when dyslexics struggle with reading?
Speaker 2:What's going on there, that's huge. But over the years I've tried to get that down into something that we can sort of put in a box. But I think it is a difficulty the brain has with symbolic language. So I say to you it's raining, you know that you, you're going to get wet, it could be cold and, oh dear, the picnic's not is going to be cancelled. So that little bit of symbolic information triggers other things. You look at those squiggles on the paper and it says the word hospital. So that triggers all the other.
Speaker 2:Which brings us to the reading approach I have, which is to tell the child a word as soon as they hesitate with it. So if it is the word hospital, it is then triggered. The other information nurses, doctors and so on. The other information nurses, doctors and so on. So maternity unit, if it's to do with the birthing of a child, the arrival of a sibling, for example. So by removing that barrier to the symbols that are presented by the squiggles of letters because they are only squiggles at the end of the day then you are able to access their route into reading, the meaning of reading, which is the important bit absolutely so.
Speaker 1:Take me through this then how? How would I go about doing this with wilf? Let's say he's bought a book home. Actually, I'm just looking at a book on the side that he's brought home from the library. We're reading that later. He wants to read it. I know that he's going to struggle to read that fluently. What do I do that?
Speaker 2:first of all, well, first of all you probably have to say to him we're going to do a different approach. Because sometimes if you do a different way with children without explaining that you're doing a different way, they get all stressed because that's not the way that school tell us to do it. So this is a different way to school may do it and the approach is they get to a word that they are not sure of. As soon as they hesitate, you just tell them the word. So it's the word hospital or whatever, and that allows you to just keep the flow of meaning. It's not you reading to them. That's something different, because they are following with their eyes and they are attempting to decode those words. You're keeping the flow of meaning going.
Speaker 2:So we went to the hospital and the something the baby arrived. If you know about hospitals and you're talking about the arrival of a sibling, your brain predicts what the word is going to be. The example I use in the parent workshop was the horse was in the, and then the word has disappeared and just get people to have a go at what it is and very quickly you realize your brain is already guessing and that's top-down reading.
Speaker 1:I think that's incredibly powerful and what you said there is incredibly insightful, because you know, I was thinking. I've reflected on my own experiences of reading and when I do read I'm not breaking, as you said before. You're not breaking sounds down and then reading the words. You're not doing it, at least you're not doing it consciously. I think you're right. You're not doing it. At least you're not doing it consciously.
Speaker 1:I think what you're right you're actually building on probably thousands of hours of previous exposure to language and all different walks of life and this pro pro process everyone to everyone, listening, unconditional reading support, if you have, if you have a ta or, or you have, or with your own child, or you're a parent with your own child please give it a go because it won't make things magical overnight. But what it will do is, as Sally rightly says, is it will remove some of those barriers and you're more likely going to garner a positive experience with the book, and that's where other positive things can come from. To can go to afterwards as well. It was, it's been brilliant for us. I have to say, um, and as you say, it's not you reading to them, is it no?
Speaker 2:so for the homework for the first week of these workshops was go home and do unconditional reading with your child and then feedback the following week. They came into that workshop laughing and being cheerful and they were just delighted because they'd had a week of success and people were saying my child is asking to read. And any child, any parent with a dyslexic child, will know that those words are magical to hear um, and. But you've got to understand as well that it's. It's talking about it. So why did they use the word intricate rather than pretty? Um, you might go back and pick one of the words that you know they struggled with and say let's just have a look at this word, what's going on with the spelling of it? So you're not completely ignoring the language, the words and spelling, but you're focusing more on meaning and language so that you get more and more experienced with how phrases are used, words are used and if you look at it, you know just sort of one final observation.
Speaker 1:I'd be here, interested to hear what you think about this. So you look at phonics and you look at it. You know just sort of one final observation. I'd be interested to hear what you think about this. So you look at phonics and you look at how phonics is taught and you know and we and in this country that all the data says that we're good at teaching phonics and that's fine, whatever you look at phonics, then you look at fluent reading. For a typical child with a non-spiky profile who doesn't struggle with symbolic language, actually, there is that patching up and that glossing over of all the quirks of the language to get to fluency, and it happens, whereas a dyslexic child that's not going to happen, is it? So I think this. I'm not an expert in this field by any means, but it seems to me that unconditional reading support is doing some of the glossing for them. Yes, it is. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:It's shifting to the meaning rather than the decoding of the symbols, so it's top-down, and if you are reading, as you said, you rarely do the phonics bit yourself because you're now a fluent reader, so you're actually reading for meaning and it's only meaning that makes it rewarding absolutely, I think that's really important.
Speaker 1:And, um, and I think that's a you know, you look at, for example, the stories that young people are read when they're young and they love those on. They're told and they're not being asked to read anything. They love the meaning. You look at what we watch on television. We watch for the story we watch for to be captivated, don't we? Um, and I think that's really important. So, um, when, when it as, as we kind of close I'm aware that I'm taking up lots of your um, what would, if we were to distill and I would love to get you back on to, you know, for a more school focus rather than parent focus, if that's okay, but if you were to give parents and distill your top tips, what would that advice be?
Speaker 2:to relax and just access the children to the enjoyment of the story and the people and chat about it. Let school do the teaching, you are doing the experience of it. And it's the same. If you had a child with a wooden leg, you would lift them up and carry them over the stile. You wouldn't insist that they've got to do it every time. And just consider the, the journey in the, the knowledge of the, the text, rather than trying to make it difficult.
Speaker 1:Um, enjoy it I think that's really important. Is it because I've? But both my other half and I, we both um, we're both, I suppose, what you might term academics with academic backgrounds, and so I I've now got to put aside some of my own um, I'm not saying dyslexia dyslexics can't be academic. What I'm saying is is that it's triggered me when, when we'll struggle with some of his reading and he's writing, I'm thinking, oh my god, I want to make sure he can do all this stuff, but actually he will.
Speaker 2:But sometimes it's about getting out of the way of that and just enjoying for enjoying sake, and I think that will help because I think one of the problems you often have is we give them books to read that are lower than their actual age. So we're giving this child of nine a book that is pitched at a seven-year-old. Well, that's absolutely awful. Yes, they might be able to read it, but they don't engage with it, whereas you've got a child that's interested in motorbikes and you get a motorbike magazine and read unconditional support with them. Unconditional just means we don't have any conditions here. We're not going to only help you if you struggle after three seconds. It's absolutely unconditional.
Speaker 1:I'm going to help you whatever you want me to do, and yeah, and I think that's underpins a lot of what you were saying earlier about the relationship with the child. Um, because I know that when I struggle with things, even at bedrock, I'm getting used to various other operations of how things run, and I've got colleagues who have been you know I'm not going to make anyone anyone an embarrassment, but they've been so kind and supportive of me this year and I know that I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now and and having the impact you know for, hopefully for schools and for teachers, if they hadn't been supported for me in areas where I wasn't as proficient and that's. I think that's a really nice place to leave it and I hope well I know it won't be the last time we speak. So thank you so much for your time. It's been wonderful having you on.
Speaker 1:We'll link to Sally's books in the pod description. I know it's a cliche, but please make sure you subscribe to the podcast everyone because it helps us understand and get even more guests on and it helps us know what's popular and you know we love the feedback and thank you for listening. It's been great. Big, biggest thank you to Sally today for coming on.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Sally. All the best to everyone.
