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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
28. Teaching early years speech and language with Steph Hammond
Bedrock's Andy and Morgan are joined by Stephanie Hammond, who's a Teaching and Learning Consultant offering bespoke training, auditing and support in pre-phonics skills, early reading, phonics and spelling.
As a Primary Teacher with over 20 Years of experience, Stephanie has worked alongside, trained and coached numerous EYFS practitioners, TAs, teachers, senior leaders and Headteachers to improve outcomes for all.
Stephanie is currently working as a Literacy Specialist for Kingsnorth English Hub, an NPQLL facilitator, School Experience Tutor for the University of Greenwich and an EY Professional Development Programme Trainer (EYPDPT) for Speech and Language UK.
hi everyone. Uh, thank you for continuing to download stream. Listen to the Bedrock Talks podcast from Bedrock Learning. I'm Andy Sammons, the Head of Teaching and Learning, and we have a fantastic guest today, actually, and I'm going to introduce a new colleague first of all today, because she is responsible for having this guest with us. So we have Morgan Arthur. Welcome to Morgan, welcome to Bedrock. To Morgan, who's just joined us this year as a senior teaching learning consultant. Prolific, actually, given the time you've taught. Prolific career in teaching so far, achieved so much, and it's been a delight to work with you so far, morgan, and I know schools have really loved working with you so far as well. So, morgan, welcome to Bedrock and thank you for joining us as well today.
Speaker 1:And we also have Steph Hammond, who is a TNL consultant with a particular focus on early reading and phonics and, I think, really important conversation, this one we often hear at Bedrock. You know our vocabulary curriculum rich, fantastic, you can. You know our vocabulary curriculum rich, fantastic, you can, you know, even when it goes down to the kind of the lowest block, it goes down to year three. But we often have teachers say to us is this suitable for our setting? And I think it's a really important thing to say that actually, readers need to be fluent readers, whatever you want to call that thorny word. I know, and I think what we find ourselves doing is having lots of conversations with schools about where Bedrock fits with schools and the wider early reading agenda. So Steph your voice on this and your insights here would be brilliant, and it's been. We've waited a while to get you on. We've had to line up calendars and so forth, mainly due to my fault, I think. I'm pretty sure it usually is my fault when it comes to calendar scheduling.
Speaker 2:You can take responsibility, that's fine yeah, definitely my fault.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, but thank you for coming on, steph, really appreciate it. Um, so, just to start off with, give us a sense of kind of in terms of this arena, in this area that you found yourself in. What's your background and what what's you know? How have you ended up here?
Speaker 2:um over. Well, basically qualified in the last century um, and then, uh, I've been doing this probably 20 something years now. So um started off as a reception teacher, then worked with key stage one, decided not to go down the leadership route in terms of headship and became an advanced skills teacher instead and that kind of led on to then support over numerous years, uh, various supports, obviously supporting in my own school, but supporting other colleagues and just realizing that actually that's what I enjoy, um, and that's now kind of led on to me being a teaching and learning consultant and other hats as well, but also just having a real focus on early years, early reading and getting children reading. And because of being a reception teacher, I think I'm very passionate about making sure that children have those pre-phonic skills as well as the phonic skills, if that makes sense. That's a big kind of I feel like I'm banging a drum on that a lot and hopefully that will ring some bells with the colleagues today who are listening and hopefully they'll be able to kind of relate to that, whether that's in their own personal life or whether that's through the children that they're working with currently.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so I'm a literacy specialist for the DfE English Hubs and that's my main kind of role. I also met Morgan through the MPQLL so we were running that together, facilitating that together. I do some work for Grenadini with students and my kind of big role role which has made my early years passion more being sort of uh reignited. I guess uh is that I'm currently uh, uh this is a bit of a title early years professional development program trainer, uh for uh for Speech and Language UK. So that's coming to an end in November but but that's training childminders and training key workers in nursery settings on communication, language and maths and PSE and it's been amazing. So I've learned loads just by doing that myself about that world, because I've never been a nursery teacher. I've always been more reception based and onwards teacher.
Speaker 1:Um, I've always been more reception based and onwards. It's interesting. I remember when I taught the A-level language um course and I did a little bit of child language acquisition at uni as well, I remember dreading having to do the analysis on really early child reading discourse and really early child writing discourse, thinking give me, give me an 18th century text and I can analyze the semantic chat. I can do all that. That's easy, but it's really hard. I found it and I've had to really work hard to open my mind up to what early reading and early literacy looks like. Yeah, um, and I says I suspect that that was probably quite helpful for you, morgan, wasn't it Opening your mind up to those? A child's early journey into literacy?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. I think the thing that Steph and I really found was that that crossover between the primary setting and the secondary setting it just doesn't really exist and even with the best will in the world you know literacy is a priority in the secondary setting, know literacy is a priority in a secondary setting. The opportunities to go down to primary and actually get a really firm understanding and knowledge base about how literacy is taught there, so that you can you can build on those foundations, it just happens so so rarely.
Speaker 2:um, so that was a real, a real spark for us to, to get us really talking about the way in which we transfer those skills and build yeah, we were kind of meeting and kind of kind of going well, what do you do? And you're going well, what do you do?
Speaker 1:you know, it was kind of a bit of a meeting of minds, wasn't it, like you said, I mean, you said something that's, I think, quite pertinent, because we've got a number of young people going into secondaries now whether it's the covid thing, missing out on that social interaction, whatever you want to call it who have not had those blocks in place but been put in place, um, for whatever reason. I don't particularly think it's helpful to maybe cover that old ground as such in what covid did and all that type of thing. But let's give us a sense of. You know, my little girl, for example, has just come out of reception, um, and I have to just share this.
Speaker 1:She got star of the day, which was amazing on last week and she bowled straight over to her reception teacher, who was in the next classroom, and said miss, miss, look at what I've got. And that relationship was so, I mean, how lovely. She won't bother me seeing it. She didn't care. She said, miss, can I sit? You know, look at my star of the day sticker. So give a sense what. What happened in that, in that reception room, for her to care so much about sharing that with her reception teacher. And what do those early exposures of literacy, reading and writing look like? What are those most elemental, if you like, blocks that get laid?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I think it almost goes pre-reception, so in the nursery settings and things like that. So what we really want is, obviously we want children that are, you know, being interacted with and having engagement from adults. That's the key kind of drive within early years, which is why she wanted to go and show her, because obviously she likes her and she wants her to, you know, and that bonding and that affinity with another adult and creating that bond is really, really, I would say, the most important part. Whether you're, you know, five months old or whether you're going into year six, it doesn't matter, you know it, it's really you want that person to like you, um, and actually that makes learning more effective as a result. So I think, um, early years practitioners are amazing and they do so many awesome things.
Speaker 2:Um, I think I think the key for me and you know, and I and I do really bang on about this quite a lot is about those pre-phonic skills, and that basically means children from zero right through into from birth right through into school age, that you are thinking about those pre-phonic skills. So can children tune in to sounds within the environment? And I mean, obviously, you know, I'm very aware that you know you might be sitting listening to this or watching this and thinking, okay, well, I work with children who are, you know, year nine, and how does this relate to me? But actually it does, because one of the key areas there are kind of seven different strands within those pre-phonic skills and one of them is about alliteration and rhythm and rhyme talk, poetry, you know. So, again, that's the pre-phonic skill, the pre-skill is that. But what we're saying is that we want little children to be exposed to lots of books, lots of rhymes, lots of songs, opportunities to tell the difference between different environmental sounds, like I said. So, knowing the difference between a bee buzzing and a bird singing, you know, can they tune in too. That is the basic level of you know that's your bread and butter, you know that's what we need to be doing within our nursery settings. But, as I said then, that progression, that's their foundation. Basically, that's the real key foundation. So, having those links with parents and parents and the setting, but also that attachment and that bonding, really, really key. I think Pam Snow, she's created a language house, so it's quite a good model for practitioners to go and look at and it talks about having that attachment and it talks about all the other layers as well that are important. It might be a useful discussion point. You know, when it comes to talking to colleagues, you know, where are these children? What do we know? What's missing. That's always a key element. So, yes, so pre-phonic skills are important.
Speaker 2:A lot of practitioners, um, are having, you know, their reception. Children are starting, uh, you know, september, and sometimes they will look at them and think, you know, and panic a bit and say, you know, these children are not ready for phonics yet. Um, but actually what? The? The kind of the, the general sort of advice is that you carry on with your pre-phonics activities but you also introduce phonics as well. So, um, right, they're running alongside each other, I guess is the best way to say it.
Speaker 2:So the sort of starting point is getting children to orally blend. So I guess that's the key thing and that might sound like what she's talking about. I don't even understand what those words mean. So that basically means we are saying to the children go and get your bag, and then they go bag, I'll go and get my bag, or go, you know, you can play games around that as well. So, um, you know I spy, or you can get the children to pick up objects that are related to that, those particular um letter sounds. So you could say to the children can you find you know the bag and what sounds can you hear in that word? And then you ask them to do it. That's not showing them any letters, that's just doing it orally. That's the. That's the really important skill. Some children who don't have that skill of tuning in you know the difference between the bee and the bird. They're going to find it really difficult to start to hear the difference between the but and the ah.
Speaker 1:And what causes those difficulties? Because and I'm asking from a personal point of view but also the idea that you know there's a we know, know, everyone knows about the proliferation of, of special educational needs in schools nowadays. And it's just, it's been absolutely fascinating for me because my little boy, um, has gone, he's now in year, just gone to year four. He's dyslexic and it was just so obvious to us from day dot that he, he just his trajectory just wasn't, no, he just didn't. I thought, christ, that some, some of his mates are doing books with letters and stuff now and he's still doing what you probably described. And with Libby, my youngest, she's just much more confident, able to kind of put things together. So what causes some of those dissociations, some of those difficulties at the start? Is it besides dyslexia? Was that dyslexia? What do you?
Speaker 2:think that is, I think, some children.
Speaker 2:I mean one of the things to remember, especially in reception, is, you know, children walk in the door and someone could have been five on the 1st of September and somebody might not be five until the 31st of August.
Speaker 2:So, developmentally, the children, you know, that's something you know as a reception teacher for a long time.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm sure my colleagues would be like, oh there she goes banging on about you know how old they are, but actually so crucial because actually maturity sometimes then helps. So actually they may have been a slow starter but actually as they go along, by the time they get into key stage two, that they're suddenly much more in line with their peers, um, I guess it's about progress. So, even though your, even though your child was not necessarily in line with their peers, actually it's about the stages that they're going through. So, as long as they're going from that you know, pre-phonics and tuning in and all those things that I mentioned into being able to start to maybe orally blend, then start to recognize different um graphemes on the page, so recognizing an s and an a and a t and things like that, um, as long as they're making the progress, that's really for me, that's the key thing and this is the thing where you know I don't know what your thoughts are.
Speaker 1:both of your thoughts on this are around the the concept of age-related expectations. Because actually, you know, I think you're right a year or 10 months at that, at that point in time, six months is a significant percentage of their life. You know it's it gets. You know it's fun to chat into my other half the other day and we were saying we've known each other in our lives for longer than we haven't and that's taken a long time to get to that point. Um, whereas you know it's, it's it gains a quick at that age, aren't they? Six months to a year is a long period of time. Yes, what are your views on that whole idea of age-related expectations as regards to a year group? Is that appropriate? It's not a loaded question, it's a genuine question. Given what you've just said about six months being a long time in their lives, is that an appropriate thing? Um, marker, do you think is, or do we have to draw the line somewhere?
Speaker 2:I think within early years in particular. Um, we're using the early years, you know, the foundation stage, documentation, development matters, and that is quite broad bands for the age group. So that makes it a little bit less um specific in that sense. Um, I mean, there's's been tweaks that the expectation is that they know at the end of reception they would know 10 different digraphs, which would be things like A and I and double E and things like that. So that would be like your marker. I mean, I work a lot with students and we need, I think, as a professional, once you've done it for a long time, then you kind of know what you're looking for. But I think we need some kind of age related expectations so that people have got an idea of that they're setting their expectations high, because obviously that's really important, but also, I think, having that realistic. Well, actually we don't, you know, we don't plod through, oh, I'm at this stage now and now I'm going to achieve this, but it does help.
Speaker 2:I think it helps practitioners to know what's coming next. So if, for example, you're not talking about, say, for example, in phonics, you know you want your child to get to a certain phase in their learning. Obviously, you know you try everything you can to get them to that point, and that's really important, um, but I think when it comes to when it comes to children, I guess it's not about the age, is it? It's about the stage that they're working at. Really, for me, um, I and I'm sure people will be screaming now saying, well, my headteacher expects this and things like that, and I understand that I'm not totally, you know pie in the sky about it, but I think we just need to use that. Where are we? So we have assessment systems in place and we can say we are here with this child, what is next? How can we help them next? And use those documentations as guidance in that way. Um, you know, I'm sure a lot of people would disagree with that, but that's my kind of you know, perspective on it I would agree with that.
Speaker 1:Whenever I've done sort of training for multiple schools or maths or anything like that, I've always said, actually, fundamentally, assessment is about the, the question, two questions where are we now and what do we need to do to get to the next stage? It really is as simple as that. And if your curriculum speaks to that, if the young people in your class, their experience speaks to that, I think that's just really important for everyone concerned. I totally agree with you. So I mean, it's one of those things, isn't it? Where do you see the major trends now when it comes to kind of early years reading? You know we keep hearing that phonics is. You know our level compared to other countries in Europe is good and all that type of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What's your view on where things are in the UK at the minute?
Speaker 2:I mean, there's been a lot of changes, would say, in the last probably three years, so within sort of you know. Just to put a bit of context into it. So, um, if you were a reception teacher, say five years ago, then you would obviously be teaching phonics. I used to teach phonics, you know, every day, um, and sometimes twice a day, um, and then you would have a kind of smattering of phonics recap and refresh throughout throughout the day. Basically that's, that was what my practice was. Um, that's still expected to happen, um, but, uh, there's, there was a shift in um dfe guidance, so we used to use a document called letters and sounds and that was a government document. We then had some changes where basically they were saying it wasn't fit for purpose anymore and partly because it was quite open and I think people interpret it in different ways. So the key messages I would say currently are about fidelity to a scheme, so fidelity to a programme, to a progression. That's a big, big, big focus.
Speaker 1:And what does that mean specifically for teachers?
Speaker 2:so that means that, uh, within a school, I would go into a school and they would be a certain program, certain um. We'd call it an ssp, so synthetic, systematic, synthetic phonics program, so they there would be a program that the school was using. So if I went on their website it would be read write ink or letters and sounds or sounds right, etc. Etc. There's about 30 plus now that have been registered programs. So a school would you know. That tends to be. My question is what program are you using? Um?
Speaker 2:I do audits, early reading audits in schools, and so you know we really are focusing in on are you sticking to this or are you going off on a tangent? So there is the expectation that you are following the progression, that the expectations are really clear. So, within a classroom, now I would say the fidelity is pretty good in most schools. If a school is getting a really good phonics screening result and that means sort of 80 percent plus for their year one children, then generally you could say that you can stick with the program you've got because obviously it's working. But some headteachers got quite nervous when the DfE guidance came out, so and chose to go down a scheme route which is you know, which is more, I'd say probably more common than not now.
Speaker 2:Um. So again, you know, if you're a secondary colleague and you're thinking what do I do, then I'd go to your feeder schools and ask them you know, what program are you using? What phonics program are you using? What spelling program are you using? And then kind of use that as a, as a guide. Um, because obviously they'll be sending up assessments and things for those year seven children.
Speaker 1:I think where it gets really difficult and, morgan, I'm sure you'll speak to this is that when you're working with, you know, a number of primaries into a secondary. Yeah, that's so difficult to be able to scale the challenge. I mean with the best people in the world even I've seen with schools where they've got one primary feeder. Even that is difficult, let alone multiple. So how on earth do secondaries cope with that in your view? I mean, I feel like I'm putting you on the spot there, but how on earth do you cope with that?
Speaker 2:I mean I'd go, I'd probably do best bet, to be honest. So, for example, if you I don't know how many feeder schools you say you've got 30, say I would literally just find out what the majority use and then go with, go with that as a model Um in terms of I'm just thinking about, I'm thinking about those children who are coming into year seven, who are not readers yet, you know, and what we're going to do about that Um. I mean that's where the whole fidelity idea comes in Um. You know if, if they're using a program and then they've been getting maybe um catch up and keep up sessions, you know, within school, within primary school, even in, say, year six, when they then go to secondary, it might be like, oh, let's just scrap all that, let's start something different. Actually it'd be useful to know what they've been, what they've been using, so that then that can then, like morgan was saying earlier, like we can just roll that over and that would be. I mean, that would be amazing in terms of the evidence, for it's about the cognitive load basically. So you know and that word is overused, I know, but that's where it's coming from is that we are.
Speaker 2:What we want is within phonics. We want the children to learn the different graphemes and blend and segment those together, but we don't want them to have to process the system of this is what a phonics lesson looks like, so it always looks the same. So we always come in, we always do this, we always do this, we always do this, and that then becomes quite subconscious. They don't have to process that information. It's just this is what we always do. And then the idea is that then becomes quite subconscious. They don't have to process that information. It's just this is what we always do. And then the idea is that then the new learning that happens is about the segmenting and blending and the reading and et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1:Something that really strikes me and I've really had to come to terms with this over the last few years is that I just thought it was a case of you learnt your phonics, then something else happened. And it was a case of you learnt your phonics, then something else happened, then something. It was very, very linear yeah but it really isn't, is it?
Speaker 1:and some I've read that you know there's so many aspects to reading that are kind of intertwined. I know that I understand that we need to get learners decoding and doing that, but I think it's really interesting when so here's an example my little boy has um uh wilf has. He's got an e-book that, because he's slightly behind in his reading, he has to read um each we're going. He needs to read each week, but he's picked a book from the library that he absolutely loves and he needs some support to kind of read it with me. It's like one of those ones where you can choose the plot.
Speaker 1:You know he loves it oh yeah he detests reading his ebook because he and I remember speaking to Trisha about this, I think it's kind of um, his his reader identity is like, well, I don't identify with that. But I don't identify with that, with that experience. He loves it and I'm I'm kind of loathe to push him on those ebooks. I know they'll have a place and I will always push him, maybe a few times, a few times a week, yeah, but I'll always say we'll do a lot more of the thing you love than the thing that you find difficult. What, what, what's your view on that in terms of you know the reader identity and yeah sure.
Speaker 1:I think that's a really difficult one it is really difficult.
Speaker 2:Um, and I also think when children get into key stage two, the the idea of them reading maybe a decodable text, they can fight against that because it feels babyish to them.
Speaker 1:I think about. Think about the learners in secondary who start doing phonics programs. I mean, I mean, often some of those learners are quite compliant yeah, that must feel so, you know, so, you know, just literally have it. So yeah, sorry I cut you off there, go on.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm just. I was just literally thinking. You know that the, you know there are. There are texts that you can access that are that have been kind of created for children that are still working at that kind of phonics level but are in key stage two and beyond. So there are texts that you can access. This is where the balance comes in, isn't it? Because, as a literacy specialist, we, you know, I run a course on transforming schools reading culture, which is based on trees of crime and work, and you know I run a course on transforming schools reading culture, which is based on trees of crime and work, and you know we're talking a lot about the love of reading and the joy of reading and becoming readers and things like that.
Speaker 2:So, as you know, for your own child, you don't want to be going, you know, ripping the book out of his hands and saying, no, you cannot read this because this is not your book, your book.
Speaker 2:Within school, within primary school, what I would say is that we have the children have a decodable book and then they generally have a sharing book.
Speaker 2:So, for example, I, you know the sort of guidance would be that you wouldn't expect a child, who is not at that level yet, to read that picture book, whatever it is that they've chosen, or the information text they've picked up about tractors or something, but the adult would share that with them. And then that's where that love and then that's where that going back to that attachment and that bonding part that I mentioned that's where you're sitting together and reading is really important. So it's, you know, this is your book, you read it, this is the book that we share together and I think that's absolutely fine. And I think, you know, for him being older, you know we want him to want to pick a book up. You know, and I understand that maybe you know he's frustrated because he wants to kind of move on, but, and obviously he needs to be practising those skills. So I guess that's more, you could see it more as like a practising activity. And then the reading for pleasure part.
Speaker 2:The reading for joy and all that.
Speaker 1:I mean, and then Morgan putting you on the spot here what on earth does that look like at secondary school?
Speaker 3:It's a really, really difficult tension, even when you get up to secondary, because that's when you really see that gap between your children that just devour books and can't get enough of them and are reading age appropriate stuff and are looking for challenge. But then more and more children sort of drop off a cliff. So if you don't catch them really early on and find them something that they love and something they can really get stuck into, um, by the time they get to year eight, that's it. You're, you're forever struggling to get students reading again, so you kind of want them to read something they like. But also we need to fight the fallacy that reading is always enjoyable and actually sometimes reading is really tough because reading is a type of learning and so communicating that message with secondary school children after they've been reading books that they love or they've had some really sort of um, intense decoding support, is a real, real challenge.
Speaker 3:Um but, it takes a very special pitch to to get that, get that right I think what you said there's really interesting and I'm um.
Speaker 1:Over the summer, um, I did a lot of reading about this and myself about comprehension in young people, and I love this. There was, there was a, there's a kind of a continuum that one colleague talked about, which was turning readers from tacit readers into reflective readers, and I think there's a certain amount here that we need to model as the adults in the room of actually um, read. As you say, reading is tough because sometimes I read a page and I might my mind might have floated off, I might have misunderstood a word, whatever it is, and just because I have to go back over a paragraph or a sentence doesn't make me stupid. I'm a 38 year old bloke with a couple of degrees and I do that. You know, like it, and I think learners, readers, often feel there's this kind of fallacy that you have to move across the page and and then you move down. You're like some sort of chat, gpt, generative AI, you know if that you know. Good, it's not like that, is it?
Speaker 1:And I think what you're saying more, um, steph, when it comes to the early years, is that kind of intertwining of looking at things and then matching sounds and experiences and and the fact I was saying just before we started recording everyone that it's been interesting to see Libby, my youngest, reading a book because, like when she struggles with a word, she's so confident that she'll just stop reading it and then she'll make up the rest of it based on what she thinks is the case. And but that's because that's her. She can really start. You know, she's starting to. That's her. For me maybe it's just me wrote into glasses. She's starting to read between the lines, she's starting to infer, and of course we go back over and we look at the decoding. But it's really interesting is that there's all sorts of soft experiences. Isn't there, like kind of those indirect experiences that learners need to go through in their reading journey? Right?
Speaker 2:I think it's interesting you're saying about intertwined and things. Obviously, the reading rope which is, you know, referred to lots of times within, we know, with the link between comprehension and record and word reading, you know, none of this is easy. I think that's the key, really isn't it? Know, none of this is easy. I think that's the key, really isn't it? None of this is easy. So you know, it's not easy for children to learn to read or to comprehend or to recognize words, blah, blah, blah. But actually as practitioners we've got to be able to pull those part apart and go what am I directly teaching? So I would say, within most primary schools, the expectations with the phonics program is that you are using phonics to teach children to read, but alongside that, you've also got the language, comprehension, the receptive language and expressive language side of things. You know, you've got the sharing stories at the end of the day, or you know many stories throughout the day that you're then talking about, that reading between the lines and the comprehension side of things, and so all those layers, you know, from that pre-phonic skills right to oral blending, right through to them actually reading words. That's one part, isn't it? It's just one small part of what we're talking about and that's where the reading rope, I think, really helps to kind of go.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I'm following this planning, I'm doing this program on. You know what, I'm, I'm following this process, but actually, which bit am I doing? You know which bit? Which bit am I pulling out here? Um, and you know, yes, there's a lot of it is holistic and a lot of it is all linked together. So you know, sharing stories, as you can tell, I'm a big fan of that, you know, and you can get so much from that. But I guess it's not just about you know the drilling, is it? You know the drilling of the? You know what's happening in the story, what's the main character, all, what's the main character? All of those sort of things.
Speaker 1:It sounds an awful lot to me and I could feel free to disagree with this. It sounds an awful lot to me like the early form of disciplinary literacy, the idea of being kind of really explicit about what you want your young people to know. I mean, I did a TPD last week for a school where I deliberately went onto the AQA website onto the subject of history, which is not my subject, and I looked, I downloaded a top tier answer and I thought, right, what are the discourse markers? What are the tier three items? What are the tier two items in here that could be explicitly sort of reverse engineered and almost what you're saying there is about what's the discipline of the discipline of comprehension, what's the discipline of decoding and actually being? Would you have I got that right in terms of being really explicit?
Speaker 2:about what it is you're trying to achieve. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a bit of a push and pull at the moment. The reading framework guidance from 2023, I think it is. You know, there's a lot of, I'd say, for secondary colleagues. If you haven't looked at the reading framework it's guidance from DfE then please do, because it's now been updated so that there's information for Key Stage 3 as well. So it's definitely worth looking at that. But there's also audits in there which colleagues can obviously dip into and have a look at. But I mean, I think they're trying to move away from the idea that, for example, there's a program called Vipers which focuses on, obviously, vocabulary, et cetera, et cetera, and each lesson is breaking it down to smaller parts. So I think they're trying to move away from that so that it is more. You know, you're teaching it more generally.
Speaker 2:But I think, as practitioners, we, you know, we can go on to autopilot. But I think, as practitioners, we, you know we can go on to autopilot and I really feel like we need to go. You know, quite often I've had conversations with well, why are you doing that? And then the answer is well, because I've always done that, you know, and actually it's like, like we said at the very beginning, we were talking about that idea of you know. You know, you, you go from where the children are. So it's you know the year three teacher going. Well, I've always taught this this way, so I'm going to just do it. It's like, well, actually your children are coming up and you've got children you've got 10 children out of 30 that haven't passed the phonics screening from year one, so their phonics knowledge is not where it needs to be. So actually, you go from them. You don't go from where you think you need to go. You follow, you know you follow the assessments, don't you follow that?
Speaker 3:you go with the children and I suppose stuff if we were talking about you know those age-related markers earlier. If teachers aren't really aware of the specifics that need to be taught, how are we going to ensure that students are meeting those markers? Yeah, you could have a child that's missed a whole chunk, a whole step in that journey and we're just pushing forwards and actually they've just they've just missed out on something.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, absolutely. And I think that that's where things like you know knowing your curriculum because sometimes if you're following a scheme you don't ever look at what the expectations are for the national curriculum you just go oh I'm doing this now, today I'm doing this, or today I'm doing this, actually having a focus on um, really really knowing where you're going and why you're doing what you're doing. So, for example, secondary colleagues, you know we talked about the idea of what's the phonics programme. You know having an expectation from the national curriculum of by the end of Key Stage 1, children should know this when it comes to their phonic knowledge. That's your marker, that's your. You know my Year 7s have just walked in the door. How many children have I got that have, maybe are well below um where I thought they would be in terms of the expectations for that um, you know, for that year group.
Speaker 2:But actually, what do I do and I think that's the bit perhaps for secondary colleagues from talking to morgan when we did the mpqll together and we were kind of bouncing ideas around and trying to get kind of you know what do you do in your setting. What do you do, I think, for secondary colleagues? You know. Subject to be honest, key stage two colleagues. You know, they that I would say a lot of key stage two colleagues don't understand that process of where you start from and how you read. They kind of want to kind of pass, go and just skip straight into spelling program type activities, you know. So let's teach them about the different rules for this type of spelling and actually they'll have children that still need those pre-phonic skills but don't have that subject knowledge and I think that's the.
Speaker 1:That's the issue I think it's all about that sort of sense of compassion that we need to have for our learners, isn't it? And you know, I say that as a teacher myself it's constantly trying to break it down for them as best you can and being, you know, the idea that you've got your guide points, your signposts, you've got your points where you're kind of you know, benchmarks perhaps, whatever you want to call, call it. But I think it's about schools trying to make space for themselves, um, to kind of make sure that they can attune to what's in front of them, because, certainly from my perspective, the situation is getting more complex in terms of special educational needs and and there's a real I mean my little boy's school it's interesting that I think the way that they're responding to supporting him and other people who I know can struggle is changing and they're getting better. And I think schools are because they're having to deal with the reality of, you know, it's not two or three, it's actually more. Not going to be, it's going to be five or six in every classroom, and that's not, that's 20 percent%. You know of lots of classrooms.
Speaker 1:So I would love to speak to you again, steph, if that's okay. I think we could. I mean we could go. I could go for hours, but I've been told I've been told half an hour max and we're already over. It's been such a privilege talking to you this morning and I hope that we can set some more of these up. We're looking at doing some more receive pods in the next few months, um, and I think you'd be a fantastic person to have on those as well.
Speaker 1:But it's been amazing, uh, thank you so much, and thank you to morgan for coming on as well. It's been lovely having a couple of your insights as well, been really great. Thank you, um, please, uh, if you're still with us. Thank you very much and well done. Gold medal in the post. Can you please make sure that you continue to like, subscribe and send us emails at education at bedrocklearnorg? We love getting the emails. It's really helpful to kind of steer guests and things like that for the future. So, until our next episode, thank you very much everyone for tuning in and listening and all that type of thing, and see you next time.
