Lilian Surgeson is author of Effective Teaching for Anxious Learners – seen, safe, supported, published 2024, Critical Publishing, ISBN 9781915713483
I could tell you that I decided to write this book because of the recent global pandemic, but actually that is not really true. Since the lockdowns, professionals working in education and care settings have become acutely aware of the breadth and depth of the anxiety currently being experienced by young people and children in the UK, but this has been lingering for much longer than that.
The current anxious explosion can be traced back to 2008. The prolonged periods of uncertainty and chaos caused by the pandemic and lockdowns functioned as a catalyst, bringing us to crisis point. Teachers have been left to pick up the pieces, with the additional skills and information they need to do it effectively. The lockdowns may seem to be a long way behind us now, but the effects are still being felt in schools. A friend of mine, who teaches mainstream English, recently told me that she was seriously considering leaving the profession because of the strain of having to deal with anxious learners day in, day out without any real idea what to do to help or how to do it. She said she was exhausted from trying to remain patient and in her words ‘mindfulness kids out of their behaviour issues.’
I have been aware for a while that I have an unusual skill set that makes me adept at working with anxious learners. First and foremost, I am an anxious learner myself. Having lived experience of anxiety gives me an insight into the terrifying hold that it can have over you. If you have not experienced it, I imagine it can be quite bewildering to witness, and also how difficult it must be to see the resulting behaviours as the involuntary results of illness rather than wilful bad behaviour.
As well as being an anxious learner myself, I have also had the privilege of an eclectic career. As well as a number of years as a mainstream maths teacher, I have also taught learners in special educational settings both for learners with cognitive difficulties and alternative provisions for those with social, emotional and mental health difficulties.
However, perhaps the most significant experience was the three years I spent running educational provision in residential care homes. During this time, I worked with the ethos of social care, which is quite different from that of education. In this way, I was able to develop a unique perspective on the importance of educational achievement in improving outcomes for some of the most vulnerable children in the country.
I have been pleased to see the increasing importance of learner wellbeing in education, but a few years ago I realised that for many teachers it remained something separate from what happened in lessons. Mental health support and intervention is vital but as teachers our role is to support, not fix, our anxious learners.
Understanding how to deal with anxiety attacks, in the same way that we are able to deal with asthma attacks, nose bleeds, allergies and other medical emergencies, would be a good place to start. My experience has taught me that as a teacher, you can make a massive impact on anxious learners – through pedagogical strategies and coping mechanisms.
However, you can only do this if you understand how anxiety effects the brain and body, and what can be done to help. I have been meaning to write this book for quite some time. In the aftermath of the pandemic, I decided that it was something that might be needed.
The extract below is from Classroom Talk by Rupert Knight
Chapter 1
Introducingandmappingdebatesaroundclassroomtalk
1.1 Chapter overview
This chapter will outline:
what is meant by classroom talk and the scope of the book;
why an evidence-informed approach is important;
how you can make sense of research in this field;
key debates and questions to be explored.
1.2 Introduction: what is meant by classroom talk and what is the scope of this book?
Take a walk along a school corridor, pause outside a classroom door and listen. There are voices, but whose voices? What are they saying and why? Perhaps a teacher is introducing a new concept to a class and asking questions to check understanding or provoke new thinking. Perhaps the voice heard is not the teacher’s at all, but that of a pupil answering or asking a question. Perhaps pupils are talking to one another independently of the teacher. Sometimes there is consensus, sometimes debate and disagreement. Tuning in and trying to discern the meaning and dynamics of this complex mixture of spoken language might give rise to a number of questions. A first set relates to participation and the learner’s role in this process. Are pupils passive recipients of knowledge, or active participants in the construction of understanding? The stance taken on this determines particular classroom routines and consequently patterns of spoken interaction. A second set of questions concerns the purpose and content of this interaction. To what extent is learning predetermined by the teacher, with pupils guided along a set path? To what extent, in contrast, are pupils invited to engage in open, authentic dialogue? Is talk between pupils purely social and a distraction from learning, or can peer talk be productive for learning? Finally, questions might be raised about the form of spoken language employed in all of these scenarios.
Are there modes of speech that are more cognitively or socially desirable than others and, if so, should talk be an object of learning in its own right? Some positions taken by teachers on these questions may be strongly value-related and embedded in the purposes of education more widely. From this starting point, the aim of this book is to consider the evidence around what is known – and not known – about classroom talk.
Moving beyond the mere ubiquity of talk in classrooms, it is important to question why it is particularly worthy of your attention. After all, while spoken language is the medium through which much teaching and learning takes place, its purposes and conventions are often very different from talk in everyday life. There are three broad arguments, each with its own strand of research, that have been made for a focus on classroom talk.
The psychological or cognitive argument: the idea that learning and development are shaped heavily – though not exclusively – by social interaction. For example, Mercer and Littleton (2007) explain that cognitive development and learning are mediated by cultural and social activities such as talk and that learning can be thought of as the joint construction of understanding through a process of dialogue;
The sociological argument: an interest in principles such as identity, inclusion and communicative rights, whereby authentic pupil voice and ownership of learning have a place in classrooms. For example,
Lefstein and Snell (2011) provide a critique of typical classroom discourse structures in terms of their promotion of a narrow, uncritical acceptance of knowledge and authority;
The communicative competence argument: the idea that capability with spoken language is an essential skill for success in education and beyond. For example, Bruner (1978) notes that such competence goes beyond a grasp of syntax and semantics and depends on the
sophisticated social use of dialogue. For some, this includes valuing the richness of informal language, while for others this has been about the use of ‘correct’ standard forms.
In this book, therefore, you will be able to evaluate arguments for classroom talk not only on the basis of pedagogy and academic achievement, but also in light of cultural, social and political considerations. The case for talk is neatly previewed by Alexander’s (2012) summing up of the understanding of the role played by high-quality talk in the following:
contributing to children’s development, thinking and learning as a form of pedagogy;
closing equity gaps due to social disadvantage;
enhancing employability and social and economic well-being;
promoting democratic involvement in learning and student voice;
helping teachers to assess pupils’ understanding formatively. Nevertheless, such arguments are by no means universally accepted or enacted. Within the UK, for example, the effects of what Sahlberg (2016) calls
the Global Education Reform Movement have been felt. They include increased standardisation of teaching and a focus on prescribed content transmitted in a risk-averse, often teacher-led, mode. Meanwhile, the national curriculum’s (DfE, 2013) spoken language strand within the English curriculum positions talk largely as a skill to underpin reading and writing. This calls to mind Alexander’s (2014) vivid report of a government minister’s caution, during a curriculum review, about the danger of being seen to ‘encourage idle chatter in class’ (p 357). In order to explore the case for talk rigorously, therefore, a careful review of the evidence-base is required.
The scope of this book is primarily the evidence on promoting the use of high- quality talk by pupils as a means of learning. This means that some forms of classroom talk necessarily fall outside this boundary, but this is not a reflection of their importance. For example, teacher exposition through explanation and modelling is a central part of any educator’s repertoire, but will be discussed only in so far as this relates to more interactive forms of talk. Similarly, the all-important social relationships formed through informal peer talk will be considered largely for their value in promoting academic learning. In this book, then, the focus is on spoken interaction at classroom level, across age phases, as a mode of thinking and a means of jointly constructing understanding.
1.3 Why is an evidence-informed approach important?
A detailed account of current approaches to, and benefits of, the use of evidence to inform education is provided by Philpott and Poultney (2018) in this series. It is fair to say, however, that the relationship between research and teaching has sometimes been an uneasy one, with claims that there has historically been a mismatch between the knowledge required by teachers and that generated by researchers (Cain, 2015). In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in connecting teachers more directly with evidence. This arises in part from arguments for greater teacher autonomy, linked to a research-literate teaching community, active as both informed consumers and producers of evidence (BERA, 2014). This argument is strongly associated with the vision of a ‘self- improving’ school system, championed in England, for example, in government reforms (DfE, 2010). While there is much to admire in this school-led stance, it might also be seen as a product of the shift in some parts of the world towards standardisation, measurement, comparison and competition mentioned in Section 1.2.
Some have also called into question an impoverished, ‘what works’ view of what constitutes evidence and how it might be used. Biesta (2016), for example, draws attention to the emphasis on effectiveness and argues that this term has little meaning unless it is clear what an action is effective for. There are many potential value systems and purposes for education, beyond simply improving attainment, rendering a single response impossible.
Others have called into question the privileging of ‘scientific’ approaches to research, such as randomised control trials (RCTs). Attractive for their promise of an experimental, controlled trial of an intervention, potentially establishing causation, they may potentially fail to take into account context and experience. Connolly et al (2018) reflect these concerns and others in their systematic review of RCTs in education, but also conclude that this approach can make an important contribution to understanding if used appropriately.
A further issue raised with a simplistic effectiveness view is that it may encourage shortcuts and a superficial use of evidence. Meta-analyses involve an aggregation of outcomes from previous studies and the calculation of an effect size for an intervention. They provide an opportunity to compare and even rank strategies at scale (eg EEF, 2018a; Hattie, 2009) but the feasibility of meaningfully comparing disparate research studies around a broad theme and determining a single effect size have been questioned (Wrigley, 2018).
Rather than view these issues as obstacles, they might instead be seen to suggest three implications for teachers.
The need to take an informed and critical stance when presented with research evidence, particularly of the easily digestible, ‘what works’ variety. Research summaries and meta-analyses, for example, can be very useful tools but the story behind ranked interventions needs to be understood;
The importance of going beyond a view of effectiveness as improved attainment to consider the wider purposes of education. This links to the three lines of argument, with their three aims, discussed in Section 1.2;
The value of exploring the research around a subject in some depth and achieving a nuanced and reasonably balanced perspective on the topic. This is largely the purpose of this book and indeed this whole series.
1.4 How can you make sense of research in this field?
Navigating the research field
Substantial research interest in classroom talk dates largely from the 1970s. While there are important antecedents, such as the thinking from the 1920s and 1930s of Lev Vygotsky, even this work became widely known only after its translation into English from the 1960s onwards. The interdisciplinary nature of this research field makes it a complex one to navigate and some of the impetus has come from outside education. Early seminal studies, therefore, include those from a linguistic perspective, concerned chiefly with the structure of language use, rather than its meaning (Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975) and those using a more ethnographic approach, exploring context and relationships (Edwards and Furlong, 1978). Since the 1980s, much of the work has coalesced around two key approaches, characterised by Mercer (2010) as linguistic ethnography and sociocultural research. The linguistic ethnography tradition explores the interaction of language with social and cultural context, while sociocultural researchers focus chiefly on dialogue and collaboration as a tool for learning. From the 1980s onwards, a notable body of work has been the detailed analysis of talk conducted by sociocultural researchers in an attempt to develop analytical frameworks (eg Mercer, 1995). This has led to a degree of consensus around typical forms of naturally occurring classroom talk. Since then, another important focus has become the use of this understanding to articulate and trial more productive models of talk, sometimes in the form of teaching structured repertoires such as collaborative reasoning (eg Clark et al, 2003) and sometimes as broader approaches to pedagogy, such as dialogic teaching (eg Alexander, 2017).
The limitations of research in this field and the possible ways forward are considered more fully in Chapter 7, but it is clear that, within this diverse body of research, there exist certain patterns of emphasis. Howe and Abedin’s (2013) systematic review of research on classroom dialogue finds, for example, a field dominated by Western and particularly UK and US research, with the proportion of UK research increasing in recent years. The same review notes a curricular emphasis on Science especially, but also Mathematics and English. The evidence base is also skewed in its age focus towards primary and early secondary pupils.
In discussing the relative lack of research in secondary classrooms, Higham et al (2014) suggest various possible reasons, including the greater capacity in primary education for engaging with new pedagogies in a sustained and holistic way. Finally, Howe and Abedin (2013) note a preponderance of small-scale qualitative research – unsurprising, given the focus on close examination of dialogue. What is beginning to emerge now, however, according to Resnick and Schantz (2015) is a body of experimental studies, more rigorously testing models of classroom talk and starting to provide evidence of transfer to other contexts.
The research map which follows attempts to represent some key milestones in this research field chronologically, including some examples of important publications mentioned in this book.
A classroom talk research map and timeline
1960 s onward s
Systematic research, usually quantitative and focused on categorizing observable features rather than on meaning. Often associated with teacher effectiveness.
Flanders (1961)
* Galton et al (1980; 1999)
Researching spoken language competence (eg oracy and different ‘registers’).
Wilkinson (1965)
Bernstein (1971)
* Heath (1983)
Mercer et al (2017a)
1970 s onward s
Linguistic research, based on analysis of transcripts to discern language structure and functions.
Sinclair and Coulthard (1975)
* Mehan (1979)
Sociolinguistic research, based on analysis also focusing on the function and meaning of languaage.
Barnes and Todd (1977)
Edwards and Furlong (1978)
Socialconstructivistresearchon learning through scaffolding and contingent teaching.
Wood et al (1976)
Bruner (1978)
1980 s onward s
Ethnographic and sociocultural research with an interest in context and the development of analytic frameworks (eg exploratory talk).
Edwards and Westgate (1994)
Mercer (1995)
* Wells (1999)
Researchingthe impact of productive models of talk (eg exploratory talk; reciprocal teaching; collaborative reasoning; accountable talk).
Palinscar and Brown (1984)
Mercer (2000)
Clark et al (2003)
Michaels et al (2008)
2000 s onward s
Dialogic teaching research, with a focus on classroom culture and community to promote effective learning.
Nystrand et al (2003)
Mortimer and Scott (2003)
Alexander (2017)
Experimental research designs and an interest in transfer of learning
O’Connor et al (2015)
Sun et al (2015)
Alexander (2018)
1.5 What are the key debates and questions?
As might be expected from the preceding discussions about the nature of evidence and the diverse, multi-disciplinary perspectives informing the study of talk, this is a complex and contested field. In this section, a dialogue of contrasting views is offered as a way of introducing some of the key debates explored in the chapters that follow. On the left are justifications for classroom talk and on the right are possible counter-arguments.
Review by Megan Stephenson, Leeds Trinity University
The author presents their research and findings in an accessible and informative way.
Thinking for primary writing is a compelling and insightful book aimed at all primary educators who are passionate about nurturing and developing the writing skills of children through the lens of creative thinking. Copping uses his years of experience and reflective evaluations borne from his PhD research to blend practical strategies with theoretical insights. The result is a creative and valuable resource for those seeking to understand the complexities of ‘juggling’ the knowledge and skills required for our young writers.
The book begins by identifying the authors initial thoughts on how creative thinking could impact on the development of effective writing skills. Copping argues that fostering creativity is the key to unlocking a child’s full writing potential, emphasising the importance of encouraging imagination as a foundation for strong written expression. The author draws on previous research, current theoretical models and an ongoing developing frameworks to support his thinking; making the book not informative, thought provoking, engaging and entertaining.
One of the book’s strengths lies in its practical approach to implementing creative thinking strategies in the classroom. The author provides examples of activities, exercises, and prompts designed to stimulate children’s imaginations and enhance their writing capabilities. These exercises and the planning behind them can be adapted across age phases, ensuring that the book is applicable across all primary settings.
Moreover, Thinking for primary writing delves into the potential challenges that arise when attempting to integrate creative thinking into writing instruction. The author addresses common misconceptions that can arise about children’s ability to combine their transcription and composition skills and offers effective solutions, making the book a comprehensive guide for both early and experienced educators.
The author also explores the connection between creative thinking and other cognitive skills, such as problem-solving and critical thinking. By emphasising the interplay between these skills, Copping paints a holistic picture of how creative thinking contributes to well-rounded academic and personal development.
While the book primarily targets educators, its accessibility and user-friendly format make it equally valuable for parents interested in how children are taught writing skills across the primary national curriculum and provides insight into how they can support their children’s writing journey at home. The inclusion of case studies, teachers interviews and testimonials further strengthens the book’s credibility, illustrating the tangible impact of creative thinking on children’s writing proficiency. Each chapter also provides further reading and a reflective focus question to provide the reader with opportunities to explore content further.
In conclusion, Thinking for primary writing is a thought-provoking and practical guide that successfully bridges the gap between theory and application in the realm of children’s writing. It is crafted resource, achieved as a culmination of high-quality research. This book will inspire educators and parents with the tools they need to cultivate creative thinking and enhance the writing skills and writing attainment of our future pupils.
This book is a must-read for anyone committed to fostering a love for writing and imagination in children.
Thinking for Primary Writing: Improving Creative Writing through Creative Thinking by Adrian Copping Pub Jan 2024, ISBN 9781915713216
We’re all happy its Friday but we’re also SO GUTTED that today is the last day of extracts from Carol Hayes‘ new book.
We’ve saved the best for last so enjoy!
DEVELOPING CRITICAL THINKING
When you are reading critically it is important to distinguish whether what the writer is saying is fact or opinion. Sometimes this is hard to ascertain but consider the following and try to decide whether it is fact or opinion.
This is more difficult and could fall into both camps, as it depends upon your definition of the word ‘good’in this context. If you are saying that Letters and Sounds receive Government support as a ‘good’ way to teach reading, this may well be fact. However if you are saying that most teachers consider it to be good for their children, this is opinion.
You can see from this that critical reading requires a different approach to that of reading a novel or a magazine. You need to actively engage with the text in a sustained manner, to learn from it rather than simply be entertained by it.
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Oh Thursday has come around so quickly and it genuinely saddens me to have to say that this is the penultimate extract from Carol Hayes’ book ‘Language, Literacy and Communication‘.
Each chapter in the book is filled with diagrams, case studies and points of reflection to encourage and promote critical thinking- this extract is a good example of this.
Critical Questions
With a colleague consider the following.
Look at the picture below by Lewis, aged 3 years 5 months. What do you think you can learn about Lewis’ stage of development from studying this?
Can you guess what Lewis feels is the value of having recorded this?
What kind of setting/environment do you think would encourage this type of communication?
What do you think this child understands about writing at this stage?
Comment
Lewis is at a pre-schematic stage, when there are connections between the circles and lines that make up the drawing. There is a clear attempt to communicate an idea. In this case he has gone beyond the basic ‘tadpole’ shape or ‘head-feet’ symbol. Interestingly in this case he has omitted the arms and this is common at this stage (Jolley, 2006). It could be that his preoccupation is still with the face, which is quite detailed, including ears.
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In this lovely snippet, the text discusses the mechanics of the hearing process. Enjoy and please email with feedback!
Do we acquire language through the eye or the ear?
When you listen to someone speaking, you are not only taking in information from your hearing and auditory processing, but you are also watching them, their physical gestures and mouth movements. Without this capacity to combine the visual sense with the auditory, you would be limiting your ability to understand the information from the receptive language. This combining of information across the senses is called ‘intermodal perception’ or ‘intermodal co-ordination’. One example of this is your ability to understand who is speaking when you hear spoken language.
Most humans are much slower than a computer at numerical calculation or recalling numbers or facts, but humans far surpass computers at language related tasks. Pinker (1994) suggested that the ear, as miraculous as it is, acts like an ‘information bottleneck’ constricting the hearing process. In the 1940s engineers attempted to produce a reading machine for blind and partially sighted people, but discovered that merely isolating the phonemes in words and then sticking them back together again in an infinite number of ways to form words, was completely useless. As real speech is understandable at between 10-50 phonemes a second, this showed that it was not possible for you to ‘read’ speech in this way, at approximately three phonemes a second, (approximately the same speed as a ship’s radio officer ‘reading’ Morse code). To illustrate this, when we hear the tick of a clock we hear each individual sound, if this were speeded up to 20-30 ticks per second it would sound to the human ear, as a continuous sound, as the spaces between the ticks would be indistinguishable from each other.
Speech is a river of breath bent into hisses and hums by the soft flesh of the mouth and throat.
– (Pinker, 1994, p 163)
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Lewis was six years of age and the youngest of three boys. Two of them learned to read quickly and apparently effortlessly, but Lewis could not understand what all these shapes on the page really meant. In school the teacher was found him ‘hard work’ as he had become the class ‘clown’, distracting other children, noisy and inattentive. Lewis spent most of the day on his own with a craft or drawing activity (which was the only thing that he appeared to be good at). The other children were surged ahead, but as he found reading so difficult most of the traditional school subjects began to leave him behind. Colouring and craft kept him occupied, but really what Lewis wanted was to be able to read.
At night Lewis sneaked a torch into his bedroom and when his mother put out the light he would get out a book, and under the covers would surreptitiously try to make sense of the words in front of him. Often he ended up crying himself to sleep, having found the task just too difficult.
Critical questions
Lewis’ experiences are in line with many children that have dyslexia, now consider the following questions:
How do you think this made Lewis feel?
What effect do you think this had on his social / emotional development?
How could this have influenced his life choices and experiences?
What do you think would have helped Lewis and his family at the time?
How could the teacher have made Lewis’ experience in the classroom more stimulating and challenging?
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Hello everyone. We have decided to do yet another week of extracts from Carol Hayes book ‘Language, Literacy & Communication‘. This book has received of positive feedback and is commonly credited with being accessible, interesting and necessary, so we thought WHY NOT SHARE a few snippets with our followers!
“I really do like the way that key ideas are explained in an accessible way, while drawing on the research literature. There are also some useful case studies/observation material which could be used.”
To begin the week, we have an entry from Carol Hayes the author.
There are of course, many books written about language development and sometimes students complain that there are too many and that they are dealing with an overload of information. This book however, is written to help to guide students through this and to point them in the direction in which their research can take, by breaking the area down into manageable “chunks” and then drawing these together into an understanding of the holistic and political nature of language development.
Learning more than one language is of particular Importance, in particular to the children of Wales, where a culture of bilingualism has been enshrined in the Early Years Foundation Phase. Students in the Principality often complain that appropriate texts to accompany their courses do not directly refer to education through the medium of Welsh. This book tries to address their particular concerns and integrates this with a general discussion of bilingual and multilingual learners.
Critical thinking is vital to students in higher education and is certainly the difference between a pass and a first class degree or post graduate acceptance. Yet this is an area that students struggle with and tutors find hard to teach. I frequently hear tutors bemoaning their student’s lack of ability to move beyond the descriptive stages. One intention of writing this book was to offer carefully structured activities to guide readers through this complex area of academic development and encourage them to use their practice knowledge to relate theory to practice. These pedagogical features within the book help the reader to go beyond using the text as a ‘gospel’ of information and encourage them to question the unquestionable, thereby enhancing their capacity for critical thinking through a subject specific framework.
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To celebrate this awesome time we’ve got an amazing short-story for you written by Naomi Riley-Dudley, a Creative Writing masters student from Loughborough University.
If you’re a teacher, have a go at reading it to your class. If you’re a parent, why not read it to your kids before bed? If you’re a student, then read it to your mates! If you read this and enjoy it you should definitely SHARE it- after all that is what this week is all about!
This is a great little story about a kid named Arlo who just doesn’t quite fit in at school. Keep reading to find out why!
How to be human
Okay. Breathe, you can do this. Inhale. Exhale. You are normal. I opened my eyes, studying my reflection in the mirror. I smiled, exposing my pointed orange teeth, trying to be positive. I just wanted to fit in. Ever since I’d been on this planet I’d felt out of place. Today was my chance to change everything and I was terrified. I adjusted my purple blazer, staring at the Townsend Church of England School logo emblazoned on it. My blue hands were poking out the sleeves – surely everyone at school would notice. The bare walls of my bedroom were judging me, their simplicity mocking the complexity of my situation. I looked at the clock (what a strange thing time is; where I come from it’s a feeling that cannot be measured; we move to our own beat and dance to sounds that our tears make as they fall to the ground). I needed to leave for school, but the angry rain was falling onto the loft’s arched window, its muskiness filling the air. The sky was grey; even the sun was scared to show itself today. I really wasn’t ready for this. Putting my raincoat on I braced myself for the February downpour. My rucksack was heavy. I wasn’t sure what I needed to pass as human so I filled it with stationary and books. It still didn’t feel as heavy as my brain pounding in my skull.
The school gates were in front of me and I couldn’t remember how to be human. As I walked down Cavan Drive I could hear the thud of my heart and feel the thoughts in my head moving in time with my footfalls. Thud, thud, thud. They were all red, dripping from my hair like hot wax down a burning candle. The muffled sounds of children in the playground talking were painful. My ears became numb, doing their best to forget what sound was. A boy looked at me and smiled. I felt exposed but smiled back, isn’t that what humans do? I tried to focus, putting one foot in front of the other, my grey eyes scanning for the main building. Everyone around me had already endured this place for 3 months; I had so much catching up to do. After spotting what looked like the office, I tried to prepare myself for this interaction. The off-white floor tiles kept squeaking against the rubber soles of my shoes every few paces.
“Hello, my name’s Arlo. Today is my first day and I was told to report to the office once I got here.”
“Ah yes, according to our records you’ll be joining Mr. Heath’s year 8 tutor group. I’ll take you over now. Oh and here’s your planner. The bell won’t be going for another 5 minutes so you can have a look through it.”
“Okay thank you,” I tried to make my voice sound nonchalant, to hide all my fears.
I followed this strange woman down corridor after corridor, getting lost in the posters adorning the walls. Who was Oliver Twist? Why was someone comparing Mice to Men? This was going to be a long day. Finally she stopped outside a dark wooden door, opening its dull metal handle. Mr. Heath didn’t look anywhere near as scary as I thought the teachers would be. I read that they were evil, preying on the vulnerability of aliens like me. He smiled and I smiled back without thinking, maybe this wouldn’t be so hard.
“Hi Arlo, I’m Mr. Heath. How are you settling in so far? I’ll get one of the other students to give you a full school tour tomorrow, but for today I’ve paired you with Ethan. You’re in all the same classes so he can show you the ropes.”
“Okay thank you.” Luckily didn’t seem to notice that I hadn’t answered his question, or if he did, he didn’t bring it up.
I sat down at a table near the back. There was a successive shrill sound that I soon realised was the bell. It was happening. Quickly I put my planner on the beech table and started flicking through it, trying to look busy as I heard the other students getting closer. The chair next to me screeched on the wooden floor as someone sat down. I knew I needed to look up.
“Hey, I’m Ethan, you must be Arlo!” a friendly voice said.
“Hey, yeah I am” I said, trying to match his tone.
“Cool hair, that’s how I want mine to be!”
I couldn’t believe he liked my long hair, I guess I liked it too but it was one of the things that made me different.
“Thanks. Have we got chemistry first?”
“Yeah come on I’ll show you where it is.”
* * *
Walking home I couldn’t believe that I’d survived my first day at school. But more than that, I couldn’t believe how much I’d enjoyed it. Ethan was just as alien as me, and it was such a relief to know that I wasn’t as alone as I felt. When I got home I ran to tell mum about my day.
“Hey you, you look happy! Told you moving schools wouldn’t be as bad as you thought! And I’ve spent the day trying to make the house look more homely.”
“No mum, you were right. I had a really good day!”
I sprinted up to my room, happy to know that the way I see myself isn’t the way others see me.
– Naomi Riley-Dudley, February 2016
Hope you’ve enjoyed that as much as I did reading it this morning! Check out our book ‘Beyond Early Writing‘ to see how you as a teacher can ensure that your students can one day write a plethora of great stories too! For details on any other title go to our website where all books are 15% OFF.
Otherwise please feel free to message in with any questions for us or for Naomi at hannah@criticalpublishing.com
Hello fellow humans, I hope the week has treated you well and I hope the weekend treats you even better!
Jonathan Glazzard and Jane Stokoe‘s book ‘Teaching Systematic Synthetic Phonics and Early English‘ (wow what a mouth-full) explores ways in which teachers can increase attainment and achievement in all aspects of Early English. The book highlights how important it is that learners stay engaged, enthusiastic and committed and in turn teachers must ensure that they are implementing the best practices possible to improve standards.
Education secretary Nicky Morgan has recently announced (see here) that students that fail to achieve a C grade or above in their GCSE English must now retake the exam.
Your free extract from a book that, in the current climate, is absolutely necessary.
CASE STUDY
Lucy is a trainee teacher, undertaking her first placement in a Year 2 class. The children are learning about alternative versions of traditional tales. Lucy decides to use the text The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. The children enjoy listening to the story which is written from the wolf’s point of view. After reading the story the children are asked to sit in a circle and consider the story. In particular Lucy asks them to think about whether they think the wolf is giving a true account of the version of events. The children are firstly given thinking time and then time to talk through their ideas with the person sitting next to them. Lucy then runs a whole class Community of Enquiry where the children listen to different ideas in the circle, build on what other people have said and offer their own responses. Lucy does not dominate the discussion and she lets the discussions evolve, occasionally prompting them to think about specific points. The children are fee to agree or disagree but know that if they disagree with someone’s point of view this must be done respectfully and they must explain why they do not share the same opinion.
What support would children need to reach this level of maturity in their discussions?
How could you use this approach across the curriculum?
Critical reflections
Some teachers embrace talk and communication in their classrooms. Their classrooms are busy, lively places and talk is used across the curriculum to promote learning. Other teachers in contrast tightly control children’s talk. Why do you think this is?
Critical points
This chapter has emphasised the importance of:
creating a rich language enabling environment which provides opportunities for talk and communication;
extending children’s language development;
planning opportunities for children to use language and communication across the curriculum;
early identification of children with speech, language and communication difficulties.
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