Bedrock Talks from Bedrock Learning

35. Breaking literacy barriers with Kaley Macis-Riley and Laura May Rowlands

• Bedrock Learning • Season 2 • Episode 28

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Host Andy Sammons welcomes two extraordinary educators who are transforming how schools approach literacy: Kaley Macis-Riley, Senior Lead for Quality of Education, and Laura May Rowlands, Head of English. Both working in schools with high levels of disadvantage, they share candidly about their journey to establish thriving reading cultures in an age dominated by smartphones and digital distractions.

Kaley reveals how her school moved away from ineffective silent reading sessions to implementing the FAST reading approach—a structured method where adults model expressive reading of challenging, contextually relevant texts. She explains how they've created the "Samworth Canon," carefully selecting books students wouldn't typically choose themselves but that open new worlds and perspectives. This approach acknowledges that many students aren't naturally reading for pleasure, and instead creates purposeful reading experiences with explicit vocabulary instruction.

Laura describes her school's multi-faceted literacy strategy, including their remarkable success with Bedrock Vocabulary, their vibrant library space, and even a book vending machine that serves as a visible celebration of reading achievement. She emphasises how they've made reading "a joyful thing" through careful text selection and explicit connections between vocabulary across different subjects.

Both educators passionately advocate for disciplinary literacy—teaching students the specific language patterns of different subjects. From science teachers exploring etymology to history teachers explicitly teaching adverbial phrases, they describe how this approach empowers students to articulate complex ideas with confidence. As Laura notes, "When you are given the knowledge of how to articulate yourself...you're more likely to have an opinion and communicate your perspective."

Most powerfully, they speak to the moral imperative behind their work. Kaley emphasises explaining the "why" to students: "The biggest factor for your success outside of socio-economic background is literacy." Their ultimate goal transcends academic outcomes—they're ensuring students can confidently take their place in society, participate in discourse, and avoid manipulation due to limited literacy skills.

For anyone concerned about student literacy or seeking to build a more effective reading culture, this conversation offers both practical strategies and profound inspiration. These educators demonstrate that with the right approaches, schools can nurture confident, curious readers ready to engage with complex texts and ideas across all subjects.

Speaker 1:

Hi everyone. Thank you for continuing to stream, download and follow the Bedrock Talks podcast. I'm Andy Sammons. I lead teaching and learning here at Bedrock and we've got two guests today too.

Speaker 1:

I'm genuinely proud to call them both really close friends and I've been hunting them down, bless them, to come on this pod for ages and lining things up has been next to impossible because they're both so busy. And bless them. They have both agreed to come on in the school holidays, such as their commitment, uh, to literacy and, I like to think, our friendship as well. So we've got kaylee mackis riley, who is the leading curriculum development um a secondary comprehensive school, and laura may rowlands, who I I know laura as laura rowlands, but laura may often crops up in official titles and things.

Speaker 1:

So who is a curriculum lead in English, both of whom, uh, genuinely, I've read things they've written, I've been on CPDs that they've led as well as being friends, that they're both and I don't say this lightly they're both powerhouses and when it comes to English, and they've really taught me ever such a lot about during my time as a director of English and what I've brought into my role at Bedrock, I wouldn't have been able to bring in what I brought in without these guys. They're genuinely brilliant. So thank you both for coming on in the holidays. It does does mean a lot, um, both of you, um, could we just start by getting a sense of what your kind of day-to-day roles are, if we start with you, kayleigh, and then hand over to Laura about what kind, just to give the listeners a sense of what we do?

Speaker 2:

So I'm senior lead for quality of education across a very well a large secondary school of 1200 children in quite a deprived area in Mansfield. We lead on CPD, literacy, curriculum leadership, middle leadership, quality assurance, and literacy is a big remit of mine, um, but I am fortunate enough to have a literacy champion who does most of the hard work when it comes to literature shout out to shannon there, who is brilliant and it's been a black.

Speaker 1:

I mean, I don't work directly with, with your, you guys at the moment, but by all accounts she's just incredible. So shout out to shannon um laura um, hi, i'm-mae Rowlands.

Speaker 3:

I'm a Head of English at a school in Southampton called Woodlands Community College. I've been there for about nine years now. We are a really amazing small, flourishing school with lots and lots of different, diverse intakes. I'm Head of English and so within that I lead on the curriculum for English, for GCSE, literature and language. I don't directly oversee literacy but the literacy leader, who is fantastic. She has implemented a huge amount of stuff which I've been really proud to kind of work alongside her with. We also have a small AP which has just come back into my remit. So quite a few different bits and pieces going on there, lots and lots to keep me busy and, yes, it's just really lovely to work here.

Speaker 1:

Amazing. So, yeah, both of you have shared insights and shared resources and various bits and pieces with me when I was working in school, still, and the quality of what goes on in those two separate schools as well worth a look. It's really, really brilliant. So, yeah, massive shout out to both.

Speaker 1:

So we're going to start off by thinking about implementation, which is a big thread, a bedrock at the minute that we're focusing on with schools, and particularly around establishing a reading culture, and I think it's really important to put this inside a framework of the fact that I think we are living in a world now we're growing up, our kids are growing up in a very different world to the world that we grew up in, even 20 years ago, 30 years ago, whatever it was now good, um, and you know smartphones, tablets that they're a different, a different animal completely to what the screens that we grew up with. So I want to put this discussion around a reading culture in modern schools, see it really firmly through the lens of the society that we're living in now. So I guess I really want to just ask you you know, how have you gone about doing that in your schools, establishing that reading culture? And I'm deliberately not using the word or the phrase reading for pleasure, because I kind of prefer volitional reading, reading in order to be able to kind of achieve a purpose or a goal, being able to confidently pick up a book or engage with text with real self-efficacy.

Speaker 1:

So I guess the question I would really like to start with is how have you gone about that? First of all, kayleigh, through a curriculum perspective. How have you approached that?

Speaker 2:

I think, in terms of reading. So when I first got to the school, it was reading for pleasure, so they would have mornings where they would just pick up a book and they would read for 20 minutes. And we know the validity of that in a school where, with teenagers nationally who are not interested in reading, that they're just staring at a page, they're not taking it in, they're not hearing the words, they're not hearing the pronunciations. That was sort of one of my biggest sort of sit back and watch and see how effective this is. We were lucky enough to change the school day, so we did have a staggered school day in my first year. We changed that um, it was, it was a leftover from covid. We don't have a building big enough to sort of accommodate break times and lunch times for all year groups, um, but once we changed the staggered school school day to a consistent start and finish time, we implemented um the fast reading approach, which has been a huge um successful sort of drive for our read and obviously we have shannon who's our literacy champion, um.

Speaker 2:

But I think we've gone from being in a culture of intervention at key stage four where it feels like, oh, it's too late, we need to get these kids to be able to read, to give them life skills, to start from year seven upwards and actually from key stage two, and liaising with our transition leader, with our primary heads from our linked schools and making sure that that becomes part of who we are. But then obviously with that it comes with this idea that it's not just English as remit. I think I've been a head of English in two schools and it's always fallen down to the head of English. Like you are in charge of literacy and actually if we just give that culture that this is English's job I think Jeff Barton talks about it and don't call it, don't call it. Literacy is everybody's job, it's everybody's port of call, because we know that the average exam paper is a reading age of 14 to 18. And that's that's the last statistic that I read. And if you're looking at some of our chronological ages compared to our reading ages in schools across the country, that's not accessible for a lot of people.

Speaker 2:

So it's about embedding that as a disciplinary literacy across the school rather than it just being in English's remit or just in reading's remit. It needs to be across the school. So when we looked at curriculum, leadership and sort of our expectations for learning in every classroom. We acknowledge that learning is a sequence, that it takes time, that we can't expect there to be five rigid things in a lesson, every single lesson. But what we do expect in every lesson is a knowledge recall activity. So we do it now, and then some explicit pre-teaching of vocabulary, and if the etymology and the phonetics behind that is needed because of the level of tier of the vocabulary, then that's what we do and that's something that over the last 18 months we've really seen start to take root in our curriculum leadership.

Speaker 1:

I think that's really important too. We spoke last week when we launched the Bedrock White Paper. One of the things I spoke about to schools was this idea of coherence without reductionism. So you have a coherence. So things like recall, you know, things like playing with the etymology and understanding the roots of the word and the concept. That's something that I feel really strongly about. What? What you said there was really interesting about disciplinary literacy. We'll come to that, that a little bit later, but just talk me through the faster reading. What's that?

Speaker 2:

So it's a research study on when students aren't reading essentially and how quickly they can pick up reading. So I read it, originally from Mary Nair, so she did a blog about it and then I read into it quite a lot. It's a Huntington Research School study of choosing challenging books that have a narrative or a character hook that the children can relate to and basically it's not a book that they pick up in the library on their own. So we're not reading Dory the Wimpy Kid or Dork Diaries. We're not reading Harry Potter. We're reading challenging texts that the students can relate to, based on context, and we've created what's called the Samworth Canon. So our school is Samworth Church Academy and with the Literacy Leadership Group so that's the Head of English, me, the Literacy Lead, ta and the Literacy Champion and the Transition Lead we have all put together what we think is beneficial for our context, based on a plethora of data surrounding those books. So is it suitable for our context? Is it sort of relatable for our students? Is it going to open minds and open worlds and what's the reading age of that? So if it is something that they could just walk into a shop, pick up and read, do the test on it or the quiz on it, on whatever program you use, and get 80 percent, then that's not what we're aiming for, um, so we're aiming for books that they ordinarily wouldn't pick up, um, and then a massive part of that is that the adult is the one to read aloud. The child doesn't read, the adult reads aloud. Um, and we've got our tutors doing that for 20 minutes three times a week. Ideally it needs to be 20 minutes every day, but time time is not something that's a privilege in schools, as I'm sure you can remember. So we we have that taking place and then we, what our literacy champion does as part of that is prior to the reading of those texts she delivers. Well, she's created something for tutors to deliver, which is the context of the book, the context of the author when it was written, a bit like you would do when you were teaching a text in english, so that the students can can relate to those characters, um, and I think a big part of so.

Speaker 2:

I'm from Mansfield and that's where I teach. It's a very insular community and I think Intiaz Darker talks about it quite a lot when she talks about her poem Tissue. Is this idea of devouring other people's cultures and devouring other people's worlds and our students. I'm from mansfield. I didn't do that until I was 20 when I moved to asia for a little while, so it's a really insular x mining community and it's about opening those worlds and making children be aware that everyone's different, and that's something that we can empathize with I, I feel I feel so strongly about that and I also really love what you said about how your school is unpacking and helping the pupils get into that world.

Speaker 1:

So, rather embarrassingly, the other week my dad recommended that I read the Shard Lake historical detective fiction sort of semi-fiction I guess you'd call it and I found it in a charity shop alongside another book and I picked it up and within 10 minutes or so I'd given up on it because I didn't have any wider knowledge, any real skin in the game. When it came to reading that book I just thought I can't, this is this, this is away from me. But then I picked up another book by a guy called, I think, ben Smith, called Journeyman. It's like the journey of a low league footballer and because it's a simpler text to read, because I've got lots of knowledge and lots of you know domain, you know experience of that, it was a really easy way to sort of get into that world of, even though it was slightly unfamiliar. And I love the fact that you're you're trying to scaffold the pupils into that, because I that's one of the reasons genuinely why I moved one program out of my school and bedrock funnily enough, bedrock in because I wanted them.

Speaker 1:

If nothing else, I wanted a wide read, a wide range of fiction, non-fiction texts that were going to be read to them and narrated to them, for example. I know that the tutor and the adult doing it is. We did it at my school and it's lovely. But, laura, could you just speak a little bit to what you're doing and maybe if how Bedrock does fit into that, because I have the dashboard of all the Bedrock engagement figures and your engagement figures at Woodlands is is off the charts. So clearly Bedrock is is playing a, a role, a, an important role, it seems like, in your context. But how could you maybe speak to how you're doing it in your school, how you're embedding that reading for pleasure, culture, reading culture in the school, yeah, um, yeah, I mean, we've been on an enormous journey actually.

Speaker 3:

Um, we are very lucky, I think, within um, my context, particularly key stage three, and I completely agreed with what kaylee was saying. You know, moving away from this culture of oh no, they're in year 11 and they can't access the papers, so let's stick some interventions in that and actually moving it down into year seven. I mean reading culture at woodlands now and I and I cannot take all of the credit for it at all because you know I lead through english but our bedrock um, a literacy coordinator, and tash barker, she's absolutely fantastic and she's really spearheaded a lot of this um, and part of part of that is bedrock um, I love bedrock. I'm, I, I you know my own son does it. Uh, he's seven and we we really enjoy kind of doing it um, but what we did that I think is really valuable is that we use it as a homework tool. But also we do have a dedicated period for it every two weeks. So every key stage three class um, and now that I've just had the ap so our alternative provision outs has just come back to me um, actually, year 10 over there are doing it as well as an intervention. So we expect pupils to log on and get their 20 points at least once a week, ideally twice a week, and we are really seeing um a huge amount of kind of progress because of the just the repeated exposure to words.

Speaker 3:

Something that I found to be really like geeky and very interesting is that being able to download the like what each class is generally looking at, because obviously you can arrange people you know. So I teach um a couple of bedrock lessons. I don't really teach that much key stage three, but I have um. I have a top set year seven and I have a lower prior attaining year eight group and the range of abilities you know you can have pupils in there on block three and pupils in there on block seven or eight um, but what you can do is you can download and look at the words they've been using and then that can feed into um your do now um. So we have a similar process at the start of lessons as kaylee does.

Speaker 3:

Where we have do now, we explicitly pre-teach uh vocabulary and that is, you know, kind of come back to and looked at. Certainly in english we have kind of not keywords because I think we're all a bit beyond that now, but certainly high frequency words that are going to be useful, uh, when it comes to looking at the big ideas. So, for example, when we're looking at um, when we're looking at war and rhetoric, we explicitly teach the word futility and we talk about that, you know, in in lots of different contexts. Or uh, for example, we might talk about the word uh, tyranny or something being tyrannical, but then we would explicitly kind of make links. Make links between you know that might be you're talking about ozymandias and you're talking about um, you know a tyrannical leader. But then we'd make explicit links to maybe what they're studying in history. Or also you know things like saying you know the tyrannical sun beat down upon the heads of the workers when they're doing some creative writing or something like that. So it's about kind of having building that word power but also making sure that it's applicable in in people's minds to a range of different situations, because there's no point if they can understand what um uh say. For example, the word catalyst, um, absolutely is something they should be using in english and in history. Uh, but also that are they making that link with the fact that that's definitely a word that they'll be using in science as well. So it's about having that kind of whole school approach. So I really like bedrock vocabulary from that perspective In terms of other things that we do that have been really successful in terms of just building a culture of reading in school.

Speaker 3:

Our library is my favourite place in the school. It's bright, it's airy. We have two extremely knowledgeable librarians. It's bright, it's airy. We have two extremely knowledgeable librarians. We have a team of people librarians who are completely invested in kind of reading and showing books that they're liking and having posted around the school for that and that really does build interest. And you'll often see, you know, when we start a new topic, um, we have bookletized curriculum, um, and we'll have a list of recommended reads, for example, around uh with. So, yes, seven have just started a the world of willard and introduced shakespeare unit and we'll look at, you know, the dark lady. We'll look at um lots of other texts that are just around reading around that topic, and those books will fly off the shelves. Those books will have a waiting list, um, because people want that.

Speaker 3:

Um, we've got um, I know that uh, natasha barker are um our literacy coordinator. She managed to get some funding for a book vending machine which is in pride of place, um, as you walk into the school, uh. But that is very much a kind of I want to have a reward when they've got to, for example, a certain number of books read or a certain number of kind of words that they've read, because we have programmes that track that we've accelerated for you to as well as Bedrock. It's a badge of honour, quite literally, because they have a nice shiny lapel badge but they get to go and choose a book and that is a real kind of. It's become an occasion, it's become something to celebrate. And you know that that takes quite some doing actually, and it's been, it's been the work of a little while, um, but other things we've done, um, I'm, you know, I know that we we're kind of moving away from that idea of reading for pleasure. If it's imposed, is it reading for pleasure? But have um time, drop everything and read.

Speaker 3:

We have that in years seven, eight, nine, but often that is actually led by something that is a specific nonfiction topic that is chosen and that rolls through kind of once every week or every two weeks. I don't teach those year groups, so it's difficult. I never get to kind of actually have it in practice, uh, but that again, that's that set up. It's topical. Um, again, the teacher is expected to whatever. Whatever subject it is, they're expected to read that pre-teach the vocabulary. Pupils have a copy with line reference numbers so that you know, everybody is able to access it and listen to it and it's just quite a joyful thing. Actually now reading it in the school has become a nicer and more popular thing and you know, historically it kind of wasn't.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think I'm going to say something now which might not be universally popular, I suppose, but I think I'd like I don't want to. I want to just call something out here. What you're saying both of you, the commonalities of what you're saying is really in line, I suppose, with, I guess, isabel Beck and the idea of wordplay and the idea that you are empowering teachers to go through that evolution of not being scared, not shying away from words and making those cross-curricular links. And actually, if you're reading a question and the word crucial is in that question, not being scared and not assuming too much just to slow the lesson up and say what does that mean? And by the same token, you're doing that in a more profound way when it comes to kind of those curricular links like the world of will and all that type of thing. That sounds amazing. But I guess the reason why that is so important is that things like book vending machines, things like lanyards, those types of things, certificates, as much as they're amazing and they are amazing they're an important, emblematic part of the wider strategy. And I always say with schools who are doing bedrock do the celebration, go big on rewards and do the celebrations and celebrate, not just you've done your homework. Here's a badge it's. What does that homework represent? What does that 20 points represent? That you've prioritised that.

Speaker 1:

What you're talking there about. You know the faster reading, or you know scaffolding texts or whatever it is. It's not just about we're doing this. We, you know scaffolding text or whatever it is. It's not just about we're doing this. We're all compliant. It's actually. It's what this represents. It's about building the vision and the narrative around what literacy and reading represents in your school.

Speaker 1:

And one of the things I really wanted to get both of your opinions on was particularly when you look at something implementing something like this and I get a sense that it's a lot of it's about building a vision, building a narrative around what you're doing for your communities and your something implementing something like this and I get a sense that it's a lot of it's about building a vision, building a narrative around what you're doing for your communities and your young people do you feel that disciplinary literacy in your settings is beginning to play a role, beginning to take hold, or is that something where you feel actually we've got some of these macro things going on, whether it's bedrock, what faster? I mean, whatever it is, you know, dear. Do you think the discipline literacy is now the next part of your journey? Whereabouts does that sit with you in your schools, kaylee? What about you?

Speaker 2:

um, well, I went into a lesson a science lesson last week, um, and I raved about the exposition of vocabulary, um, and I've just got the email up now. Thanks so much for this lovely feedback. You missed the bit on etymology of the word decibel. So that's how much it's rooted into our school. Now, it's not necessarily consistent no, school's consistent but there is an expectation that students, like they do in MFL, call sort of speak the words that they don't know.

Speaker 2:

And I think what you said about teachers not being afraid to stop and slow up the lesson and not make assumptions about knowledge is really important. But I think what's also really important in a context like ours where literacy is low, um, I know nationally it's low, but in our, in our school, it's particularly low. If you look at our NRSS scores, um, it's for the teacher to go. I don't know what that means. Let me Google it. I don't know how you pronounce that.

Speaker 2:

So I you know it's been a running joke that I'm from a disadvantaged background. I didn't learn words by being exposed to them, necessarily, because my parents were working umpteen jobs at a time, but I learned the words that I know through reading. So a good friend of all of ours. I guess Lindsay Borden once laughed me out of office when I said Catholicism and not Catholicism, and I think it's this accepting that actually I'm an English teacher but I don't know all the words and you know, you can be a science teacher and you can not know where the Latin is Modelling that, modelling that, absolutely Modelling, that's okay.

Speaker 2:

And I think a lot of our students switch off when they can't. You know, they use they use behavior as a path of least resistance to get removed from the room when they can't read what's on, what's on the screen. Um, and I did. I remember when I was a trainee teacher I did a really really interesting piece of training with AQA when the new spec was just coming out, or I think it was just before the new spec came out. So, like we're talking a long time ago, like early in my career, and it was a poem and AQA blacked out all of the words that weren't accessible to students' national reading age and it's stark like the amount that they cannot access. So if we're asking them, you know Laura's got a really, really rigorous knowledge-rich curriculum. If, if we're asking them, you know Laura's got a really, really rigorous knowledge-rich curriculum. If we're asking them to look at some of those booklets that Laura's created, without that pre-empting of vocabulary it's impossible to access.

Speaker 2:

We've got year sevens doing a rhetoric scheme of work in English and if we're asking them to access the Aristotelian triad, all Malala's speeches, emma Watson's speeches, we can't ask them to do that without pre-empting that, that need for disciplinary literacy, if you take that outside rs. So we're a church school, so rs is a compulsory requirement. They all do an rs in gcse and it's one of the highest literature courses in in gcse computer science it would blow your mind how much in computer science really really hard um subject to learn literacy-wise as well as everything else because of the literacy that they're exposed to. So I think there's an ethical, there's a moral obligation and an ethical obligation that when students are taking these options, we need to tell them. We need to say look, if you don't read, you're not going to access this course.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and you look at, I mean the other day, when you come to work at bedrock, there is a certain level of um you, there's these online aptitude tests that you, that you do, and when I last did one of these aptitude tests it was like you know, um, adam has six apples, josie has eight. How many days are they in february? It's like that level of literacy, like being able to hold multiple ideas but then being able to hold multiple perspectives in mind. I think you're right. There is a moral imperative on us to be able to more forensically and be more guided by the science and supported by the science about how that looks like in schools and in lessons.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think we you know, laura and I both work in sort of high deprivation areas no-transcript stalls and circles in a theatre. My kids might not have known what a circle was when I was working at the previous school that I was at. Apart from, it's a circle, you know, it's a shape, and if we don't expose them consistently to that, that, that cultural capital through literacy, then we're doing them in a service and we're not leveling that playing field and that's something that literacy has to do.

Speaker 1:

And also I think I said this before it's not about teaching every tier two word and predicting that that you can get, but it's about being but modeling that level of curiosity about, well, all right, stalls and such and such theater.

Speaker 1:

I can actually still work back from there and think, well, that must just be different parts of where you sit and like being curious about how those words are functioning in the context of the sentence. I think that's. You know, I'm going to forget when I first it might have even been one of you two spoke to me about tier two vocabulary all those years ago and I went straight up to my room and thought, right, tier two Macbeth words, and I was completely missing the point as to what tier two could do for me in the context of that text and my broader subject. Um, laura, what are your thoughts about disciplinary literacy and where that sits? At least you know? I know you don't look after literacy across across the school, but what are your views on that as an educator and as someone who leads a core subject? I?

Speaker 3:

mean it's, it's crucial, isn't it? And I think as well it's something you know. I think we're over this idea now that literacy is just an english problem. Okay, we know that it's not. But something I'm pretty proud of in our school is that actually teachers and it's actually the two subjects that really spring to mind not to do a disservice to anyone else, leading leading a subject to my school but history and science, they are really explicit about fiction and non-fiction. So sometimes, you know, I will see, because I don't get to get into as many lessons as I would like to because I'm you know, I'm not, I'm not a senior leader, I'm not a literacy leader, but I will sometimes see in the staff room. You know, oh, there's a page that's been photocopied out of the new scientists and I think that's that's something that they're being exposed to in science. It's fantastic, um, but absolutely they would never have picked up, necessarily, and read. And you know, we do have those things that I've and we do have, you know, newspapers and all sorts of things that people can go and look at and that is growing. But unless they are exposed to domain specific, wider texts, how are they ever going to kind of access that unless they're shown kind of where to look and exposed to it.

Speaker 3:

Something as well. That, I think, is just one of my favourite words anyway, but history, they explicitly teach adverbial phrases and they specifically teach ways of kind of answering some of the the higher tariff questions in the history GCSE. Um, and there's because I I think the word fell off the wall or something and I said to you, um, the head of history, why is the word sluggish on your desk? And she said, oh, we teach that for you know, talking about getting the economy going in the 1930s or something. I'm not even sure what it was, but I just thought what a great idea. Like sluggish, what a great word. I mean, it is a good word, um, but being able to kind of, uh, manipulate language like that and and and kind of show that language is important to play with and and know and understand and use effectively, is going to lift not only your history results, not only your science results, everything as well, because we know that the more you read, the the better you are at being able to kind of manipulate different bits of information and the better you're able to articulate those ideas.

Speaker 3:

And I do find that, um, when you are given the knowledge of how to articulate yourself in a particular way, perhaps you can do it in a different. You know, you're more likely to have your opinion, you're more likely to be able to communicate and argue your perspective. And actually that goes beyond school, doesn't it? That goes into, actually, am I a person that can share my opinion as an adult? Am I a person that kind of has something to say about lots of different things? I'm not afraid to say, because I've got that mastery of that language, so I think that you know. To go back to what you were originally saying is disciplinary literacy across all subjects yeah, absolutely, have we got it right? I wouldn't say anyone's got it completely right, but there are absolutely things that we know are working and are joyful to kind of observe and to be around.

Speaker 1:

I think it's so important because it for me what disciplinary literacy has done. It's funny actually that, kaylee, that you referenced the jeff barton book, because I think that's an often under quoted book now, maybe because it's maybe because it's a few years old now, but I love what he did in that book, jeff barton, and the idea that we haven't done literacy. It's the very reverse of that, and I think what disciplinary literacy has done is it's helped us all realise, in subject specific areas, that we've got skin in the game, and that includes, by the way, english teachers, who you know writing like a. You know the literary critic, you know writing in a way. That's actually, as you say, it's funny, you should say, about the word sluggish, because the other day I was leading a disciplinary literacy session for a whole school and I thought you know what? Get out of your comfort zone.

Speaker 1:

Go on the AQA website, go and download a top tier answer for a subject not of your own in your own comfort zone. Stop using a Christmas carol every two minutes, andy, and go and do something different. So I downloaded a top tier history answer on the history of medicine module and I thought all right, then you've got your linguistics degree. What are the linguistic components of this top tier answer? And lo and behold, adjectives, significant adverbs, arguably, adverbials, arguably all of that. It's so important to be able to actually pin your colors to the mast and help young people find that voice in that subject, whatever that is, whether they stop it after year nine or whatever. It is just giving them a way to express themselves. I love that. I love that point because, funnily enough, I did an interview on the podcast it's going to be released soon with Aaron, our CEO and founder, and he's actually got a really emotional story similar to kind of yours, kayleigh, in terms of your relationship with education, and he said it was a teacher that changed his life and I said how. And he said she connected my voice to my brain. All of these things I was feeling and I had opinions on, but I couldn't verbalize or vocalize or even begin to find a language to understand myself.

Speaker 1:

I think that was quite emotive for me to listen to him saying that, because if you think about what that then looks like in history, in DT, in French, all these different things, emotional literacy underpinning academic literacy is so powerful and what you're talking about in both of your separate contexts. One of you and what Woodlands you know. Laura, your school is a prolific bedrock vocab and grammar user. Kayleigh, I know that you more directly oversaw it last year, but you and I often quote you don't know this, but I often quote your school's MAPPA implementation because you use MAPPA at Sandworth to get the most crucial concepts in front of the learners that need it most, and I often use that as an example and I think it's just whatever that looks like for whatever different context. It just sounds like you've got so much going on for your young people and they're getting a good value for money, if you like, when they come into your building. So I guess the thing that I really want to finish with I'm wary of time is a lot of curriculum and literacy leads.

Speaker 1:

Listen to this pod. If I could ask you and put you both on the spot, sorry, for what would be your biggest, single biggest tip for leading literacy, leading that so very important, if not the most important agenda at a school. What's your one tip? What would be the one hill that you would choose to die on, if nothing else, when it comes to literacy and learning and curriculum? Laura, you first.

Speaker 3:

Modelling, modelling reading. Absolutely, the adult needs to be modelling reading, choosing texts that are not texts that people is going to pick up necessarily by choice, but absolutely modelling the intonation, the speed of reading, the tone, pre-teaching that vocabulary and I can see Kayleigh now laughing because I'm sure she's going to say exactly the same thing.

Speaker 1:

No, you can't say the same thing. It's been taken, kayleigh, it's been taken.

Speaker 2:

It's like an echo chamber chamber, isn't it sitting in this room? Um, it's really interesting because I was reading to scarlet scarlet's you two know, but just for the podcast listeners scarlet's, my seven-year-old daughter, who is an avid reader.

Speaker 1:

Um, just for the listeners. Scarlet is probably one of my favorite human beings. Like I regularly ask kaylee to send me quotes or snippets or something that she said, she, she is hilarious and amazing. Anyway, carry on um.

Speaker 2:

So she, I was reading to her last night and I'm the monster doughnuts or something that she gets on a reading reading subscription that she got this month and she's like mummy, can I just stop you a minute? Yeah, sure, you're expressed. She's got a bit of a list. You're expressed, brilliant, um, which, because I was doing all the voices. So I think get the to. My biggest tip is tell them the why so when you tell when you.

Speaker 2:

So all of what Laura's just said was what I was going to say. Now I've been put even more on the spot after being put on the spot because she's nicked all my ideas. But tell them the why so you, if you quote that, you know you talk about them. Don't sit there and go when the Matthew effects address. This isn't this.

Speaker 2:

Don't do the statistic stuff that I do in CPD with teachers. But if you say to them that the biggest factor for your success outside of socio-economic sort of background is literacy, it blows their mind. And if you put that into, you know statistics of how much more you might earn a month. Kids love that. You know you might. You could earn x amount of thousand pounds more because you read more.

Speaker 2:

Um, and I did this with my year tens last week. So we were talking about um. So when my year tens miss, how do you know so many words? How do you know that they're a lovely, lovely group but they've got quite high need, um? And I said, well, I don't know, I guess because I read so much. So, like, do you reckon that's why you care so much about loads of different types of people? I said, yeah, I think so.

Speaker 2:

I says, and the way that you articulate yourself and the way that you speak comes down to what you've been taught over time. And there's, there's a girl in my class who, again, significantly high need, and they turned to me that's why her assessment was so good, wasn't it because she's always got a book in her hand. I was like, well, it's not just that. I said it's, it's also about the fact that that that particular student wants to and understands the why. And you know it's, it's about them understanding. So you know, if I'd have just bought the faster reading initiative in to choose time reading and gone, that's what you're doing, yeah, without any context. No, they're teenagers, they're not gonna go. I'm not. And, believe me, our students have got some spirit, just like my child um, you know, they're gonna say I'm really me, because she gets it from my dad.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, um, but it's, it's knowing the why. And also, I think, to go back to the point that we were talking about earlier, like having students be able to articulate themselves, you've got to think that one day our students and again I'm talking about somebody who works in in a deprived background it's going to sit around a table with somebody who's not from a deprived background and there needs to not be able to be a known difference. So then you know there needs to be a table to be a known difference. So then you know there needs to be a table on which everyone is welcome and it's inclusive. And that's what our classrooms do. When you introduce literacy as a sort of non-negotiable and I hate that phrase because you know autonomy is important but literacy isn't negotiable across the curriculum, it's not something you can opt into no all life.

Speaker 2:

You know like exactly you can't opt into no, all life.

Speaker 2:

You know like exactly you can't opt into not reading, because the reality is that, outcomes aside, they're really important for child's progress but actually, like in life, to be successful, you can't not read because you will be manipulated, you will be vulnerable, you'll be exploited and we've seen that time over time. You know sort of I'm not going to get political, but there's, there's been things done on both sides of the political spectrum where people have been manipulated through their language. Um, and we need to expose our children to a plethora of different manipulations, be that left, be that right, be that midwest, because if we do, if you centralist, not midwest, there you go. It's my literacy again, um, if you, if you do that, then you allow them to find their own voice, you allow them to understand the world as it was, as it is now, and for them to go. This is my place in this world and that's it's really important. Like, our children have a place in this world and they need to understand what that place is and we need to guide them.

Speaker 1:

I think that's just so amazing what you just said there, and it speaks to something I read recently the FFT data lab. I was quite upset when I read recently the FFT data lab. I was quite upset when I read this. When you look at disadvantaged pupils, for example, who don't achieve a four in English and maths, it's not just that they're not achieving the four, it's that the findings were on the analysis that they were significantly more likely to be further away, like quite a way off, when they're not achieving it, than their peers. So what we're talking about here, yeah, it's a little bit like bedrock homework, like drop everything and read or whatever. You know those things that are really important. You know under the skin with the why they are vital. But it's not just about the qualification, it's about the fact that what wow, never mind not getting the four, you're not missing it by a mark, that you're missing it by quite a profound level that's gonna prevent you from functioning in society, let alone walk through a job interview, you know, with a minimum level of qualifications or whatever.

Speaker 1:

There's something more profound going on here and there's a genuine reason apart from being genuinely like, I am proud to call you both my friends, but, at the same time, there was a reason why I wanted to speak to both of you together, because I think what you're doing in two completely different locations in the country but what you're doing is you're fighting, really commendably, for the rights of young people in your communities to to access the curriculum and to and to take their place in society, and I think that you know both of you, um, do brilliant stuff, and if there's that that's not worth getting out of bed for every morning, I don't know what is. Having said that, you have got out of bed this morning, come on to this podcast, um, in your holidays, so I don't want to take up any more of your holidays. Both of you, thank you so much for coming on and we'll hopefully get you back on again at some stage, because that was really inspirational. Thank you so much for coming on thanks for having us.

Speaker 2:

Yes, thank you so much.

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Andy Sammons

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