Thank you for your support over the years. I am always made to feel welcome in your homes – glasses of milk or something stronger, cookies or slices of Christmas cake, oats for my reindeer…
However, there’s something I’ve been uncomfortable with that has built up over the years. Despite only leaving one or two small presents in each child’s stocking, children are crediting me with huge mountains of expensive presents. The parents are misguidedly thinking it’s a good idea to give all the credit to me. You need to understand two things:
I only give a couple of small presents to each child. Please do not pretend all the presents are from me. If children whose parents cannot afford to buy tonnes of presents think Santa doesn’t like them as much as rich kids, this is very damaging.
Children need to understand who is spending money on them and be grateful for whatever that parent can afford. Whether it’s big or small. They need to understand that it is not the value of the presents but the thought that goes into them, for them to grow up to be appreciative, decent adults.
I have a small favour to ask: When posting your proud photographs of your children on social media on Christmas morning, in the spirit of Christmas, can you please photograph your child with one favourite present rather than a mountain of unwrapped presents. This way children and parents do not feel pressured to spend money they do not have on things their children do not want.
Dogs are amazing: cuddly companions, snuggling up to us on a night, greeting us with enthusiasm every time we enter the home – even if we were only two minutes while we put the bins out. Furry friends, not judging our awful decisions or fashion sense and forgiving us for our mistakes. Peaceful pals who never say nasty things to people or behind their backs. Dogs are so well tuned into us, they can be trained to guide visually-impaired people, alert people who are about to have an epileptic fit and intuitively protects us from danger.
Most of us spoil our dogs rotten. Our gorgeous girl has the best quality raw feed, carefully chosen natural shampoo and conditioner which is free from parabens and sulphates and a tailor-made dressing gown for after her baths. (I don’t have any of the above for myself!) I even pick up her poos for her. Really, she’s a puppy princess and I’m just her devoted servant!
I have always been concerned with animal welfare and sadly aware of the need for charities such as the RSPCA to fight animal cruelty. During the pandemic, there was a huge glut of people wanting dogs. Respectable breeders, as always were careful who they were sending the puppies to and limited the amount of times the dogs could have puppies according to both the legal and moral law.
However, puppy farms (sometimes called puppy mills), began raking the money in. The exhausted females were bred repeatedly whilst being fed low quality food, and kept in dirty cages or crowded pens. Puppies were given no toys or socialising and certainly no medical care. Even the stud dogs didn’t have it easy as not only do the puppy farmers not want to “waste” money on good quality food, they also don’t want to “waste” time on exercising their dogs and they definitely never show them any affection – quite the opposite. Many breeding dogs on puppy farms never see the light of day. The mother dogs often have the puppies removed too early causing extreme distress as well as health problems for the mothers and the puppies. But what do the puppy farmers care? They are making lots of money and that is all that matters to them. If a dog dies, they’ll get another one (often somebody’s stolen pet!)
When our beloved goldendoodle, Monty died last year, at just three years old, we were as devastated as if he had been a human member of our family rather than a furry one. There’s little difference. The sad irony was, that when I’m upset, I snuggle into my dog, but I had no dog to snuggle into while I wept for him. My only comfort was knowing that he had the best three years any dog could ever wish for. I would much rather he had three perfect fun-filled years living with his doting family, than twelve years of utterly cruel, puppy-farm torture.
Frequently, I donate to local animal charities, but I wanted to do something more. I wanted everyone to be aware of puppy farms. Not only of the cruelty to the helpless animals held captive there, but also the high risk of the poor puppy having a variety of medical conditions which at best cost money and at worst cause death. So I wrote a children’s story to highlight their plight: “The Boy Who Dared” Three boys stumble across a cruel puppy farm. Foolishly, they try to rescue the puppies themselves, but of course the types of people who run puppy farms, are not the types of people young children should cross. Things go terribly wrong and the boys find themselves in extreme danger, having to dig deep inside themselves to find the wit and courage to survive.
It is my belief that most people would not willingly support cruel, criminal puppy farms. Sadly, the public’s ignorance allows these criminal gangs to be able to continually profit from their heartless enterprises. Therefore, I hope that when children read “The Boy Who Dared”, as well as enjoying the exciting adventure, they will also be gently alerted to the sad state of countless puppies and breeding dogs, resulting in the readers never accidentally supporting a puppy farm themselves.
I hope you and your children enjoy my book which can be ordered from any online or physical bookshop and is stocked on the shelf at a fabulous indie bookshop: The Book Dragon in Stockton.
You can read my interviews with two reputable puppy breeders here and here.
If you would like advice on how to buy a puppy safely without accidentally supporting a cruel criminal puppy farm, the RSPCA gives some valuable information here.
You might be forgiven for thinking oracy is the “new” buzzword, but it has been around since the 1960s. However, it is currently enjoying a well-deserved, renewed focus.
Why is it so important? Because as the educationalist, James Britton, said in 1976: “Reading and writing float on a sea of talk.” In other words, our children need to have strong oracy skills as a foundation for reading and writing. I would add to that – our children need to have strong oracy skills as a foundation for learning. In the Bloom’s Taxonomy, the top level includes evaluating and analysing. This requires a high level of oracy to be able to carry out effectively. Having a large, sophisticated vocabulary, being able to articulate your thoughts and ideas clearly, is a necessity to be able to achieve high grades in exams, succeed at interviews and win at life.
The ability to converse meaningfully and eloquently is also highly important for socialising, which in turn helps with mental health. Too many of our children spend time staring at screens rather than playing out where conversation can happen more naturally, therefore we need to make sure we fill that gap in school. When a person is unable to put their point across effectively, they feel undermined, marginalised and unheard. A lack of oracy can cause misunderstandings and frustration, often resulting in arguments or violence, ultimately impacting negatively on the child’s self-esteem.
Most of us know our rights. We know we have the right to be heard, we have the right to voice our opinions. Sadly, that does not necessarily mean that people know how to express that voice. All five of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs involve the person being able to express that need. To be able to explain what is wrong, why they are falling short of the minimum requirements and to be able to ask for help.
Therefore, for all of the reasons above, oracy is an incredibly important skill to develop. There is some information about oracy interventions on the EEF website: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit/oral-language-interventions However, simply inserting oracy as an intervention is not enough. Oracy should be taught explicitly, and it should also become an integral part of teacher pedagogy. Look out for my future blog on how to do this. In the meantime, wherever you currently are in your oracy improvement plan, here are ten fun games you can use to enhance oracy within lessons:
Power Line: When given a controversial statement, students line up according to how much they agree or disagree with the statement. They must then try to persuade people to join them from the other end. This promotes cognitive and social and emotional oracy skills.
Swapsy: After the Power Line, teachers select the more able students to swap sides, so they have to think of arguments and reasoning against their own ideas. This helps to stretch and challenge higher ability students.
Pass the Panda: Only the person holding the panda (or any other soft toy or even a soft ball) can speak. This helps prevent people talking over each other. The person speaking chooses who to pass the ball to. This helps self-regulation and turn-taking.
Rip it Off: Each student has a small card divided into three. Each time they contribute to the debate they remove one of the sections. This prevents the same person taking over too often. It also encourages and allows quieter students to take part.
Rocket Ship: When a question is posed, nobody is allowed to talk or put their hands up for 10 seconds. The teacher puts a silent countdown clock on the whiteboard. This allows and promotes thinking time.
Steal a Stem: Sentence Stems are put in the middle of the table. Students choose which sentence stem they want to use within the discussion. Once a stem is used it is gone from the table. This encourages students to vary and further sophisticate their sentence openers.
Balloon Debate: Everyone is in a hot air balloon but it is losing height. They need to get rid of weight. They can choose to be themselves or a famous person or a character from a book, play or film. Each person needs to persuade the others that they should be allowed to remain in the balloon and somebody else sacrificed over the side. This promotes cognition and social and emotional oracy.
Why?: One student in a group explains a fact or an opinion. Another student holds up a card saying “why?” The student needs to explain further or pass on to another student. The aim is to be able to answer as many “why?” questions in a row as possible. This extends thinking, improving cognition.
Erm… You’re Out: A student has to talk about a topic for two minutes. They cannot say filler words such as “erm”, “err” “um”, nor can they use phrases such as “you know what I mean”. Neither can they not speak for more than two seconds. This improves fluency.
Sell it to Me: The teacher gives a very boring object to each student on the table except for one who is the purchaser. Each student then has to try to persuade the purchaser to buy their object. The purchaser can only buy one. This contributes to cognitive and social and emotional oracy skills.
When you visit a restaurant with your friends or family, the waiter doesn’t force you all to eat the same meal. Instead, you choose something appropriate for your individual wants and needs. Aunty Ann has a small appetite so selects a meal from the children’s menu, Cousin Yassa is vegetarian and selects a cheesy pasta. Big Dave is into body building and looks for the large steak. Grandma isn’t hungry but fancies a sugary desert.
Likewise, when a student’s reading age falls below their chronological age, we shouldn’t dish out the same literacy fodder to all the students. The intervention teacher will need to diagnose each student’s individual needs and satisfy that requirement.
Students who have a standardised score of 85 or below, often need a phonics intervention, but not always. Therefore, they should have a diagnostic assessment to ensure that is the right intervention for them. Similarly, if they have already had one particular intervention and it has made little or no impact on their progress, there is no point in repeating the same intervention. Therefore, schools need to have a menu of interventions to choose from, matching the appropriate intervention to the students’ specific literacy needs.
Recommendation 7 in the Education Endowment Foundation’s “Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools” guide states “provide high quality literacy interventions for struggling students.” It further recommends “tiers of support.” Over the years, I have used a variety of different literacy interventions. As a result, I have cooked up a menu from which I can select the best intervention to meet the needs of each student. There are four important considerations when selecting an appropriate intervention:
M = Measurable: You must be able to measure the impact of the intervention to truly know if it is working and therefore worth the time and money spent. In addition to the intervention specific assessments, I always cross reference against reading tests to check they correlate.
E = Explicit: The intervention should explicitly teach what the student needs, rather than a blanket intervention for all.
N = Number of sessions: Intervention is a big commitment from the student’s point of view – if they are missing subject lessons or using up their own free-time, they need the time to be spent efficiently. Therefore, the length of individual sessions and how many sessions they need to make progress, is an important factor.
U = Useful / Ubiquitous: Literacy is in all subjects, including non-academic subjects. Consider whether the intervention is positively impacting literacy across the whole curriculum.
😊 This is the cuckoo in the nest. I dispute that this is an intervention. Rather, it has two different but incredibly important uses: The STAR reading test is a diagnostic tool to discover, not only their reading age but also which areas of literacy they need to work on to make progress so that you can select the appropriate intervention from the menu. There is lots of additional data which can be taken, including growth/progress and zone of proximal development. Through the use of quizzes, Accelerated Reader is a fantastic monitor of whether students have actually read and understood the texts and also how many words read which indicates an estimate of time spent reading. After all, practice is an important component of intervention. Most students find the short quizzes fun. I recommend Accelerated Reader and STAR Reading to be used in conjunction with any and all interventions being run in your setting. ☹ Must be delivered correctly and closely monitored to be effective. Can be time consuming for the administrator and can be costly. Initial set up is a huge task for the librarian. Limits the choice of books although there is still a very wide choice. Often administered incorrectly. See my blog here on how to use it effectively: https://rachelcoverdale.com/2020/11/23/accelerated-reader-the-marmite-of-reading-programmes-across-the-uk-and-possibly-the-rest-of-the-world/
40 minutes x twice weekly for 12 weeks. Groups of 4 students.
😊 This is designed for students who are able to read well but appear to misunderstand what they’re reading. Inference is a common difficulty for students with ASD. Students are explicitly taught the reading skills of advanced readers. Enjoyable, snappy and easy to set up.
😊 Computer based engaging game-based learning. Can be continued at home. Excellent for differentiation for mixed ability groups as students are given moving individual goals. Students enjoy building streaks and reaching goals. Lots of data and progress reports available.
☹ Close screen usage. Headphones required if more than one student in the group. Missing human interaction where an adult can explain in a way that students with individual learning styles can understand. Yearly licence fee applies.
6 weeks (one session per week). Sessions 40-60 minutes long. Groups of 4 students.
😊 Used for coasting middle ability and stretching higher ability. Can also be used as a follow on from Lexonik Leap. Highly engaging. Greek and Latin roots of words, prefixes and suffixes, morphology, subject specific vocabulary (Tier 3 words), building academic language. Intervention has own assessment to measure and, in my experience, has consistently had a huge positive effect on reading ages.
☹ Delivering staff must be trained by the company and there is a yearly licence cost.
6 weeks (one session per week) Sessions 40 minutes long. Groups of 4 students
😊 Ideal for very weak learners. Students love it. Short, snappy activities, particularly good for ADHD, Dyslexia and EAL. Intervention specific progress assessments which in my experience have been reflected in reading tests.
☹ Deliverers need to be trained by the company and there is a one-off cost for purchase of resources.
😊 Fun quick. Lots of light bulb moments. Rules to learn and follow for life. Repetitive and short, ideal as a starter. Intervention-specific assessment for progress measurement.
20-30 minutes per day, 4 days per week. Up to one year depending on starting point. First 4 modules 1:1 then groups of 4 thereafter.
😊 This gives the new phonic sounds first and then uses them in the short text followed by short activities. It is extremely thorough, cementing students’ learning.
☹ Students use lots of booklets which need to be bought from the company. Training and licence costs also.
😊 No cost except purchase of books of your choice: everyone reads the same text. The difference is that only the teacher reads out loud because the point of it is that students hear the story read correctly with pace, intonation and expression. It’s best combined with Reciprocal Reading.
☹ No specific measure of progress. Should be aimed just slightly above students’ current level so difficult to be effective for everyone in mixed ability settings.
One hour per lesson. 44 lessons available depending on starting point.
😊 A fantastic reading programme, very easy to use, suitable for small groups and with rapid results. Each day’s book is spit into fiction and non-fiction with relevant questions at the end. Once bought, can be used again and again. User friendly. Regular assessments to measure progress.
30 minutes x 5 days per week. Approximately 5-6 months.
😊 Designed for students with dyslexia. Works well for EAL. Great for very low ability Students work at own pace.
☹ Should be taught 1:1 so not as many students can benefit.
All opinions are my own, informed by 8 years of delivering literacy interventions and 5 years of teaching English. I am not sponsored by any of the above. Links provided are for your ease of use and not affiliate links.
Whereas your children might be fighting with each other at your house, they go their grandparents and act like little angels. Whilst they might argue at the dinner table with you, eating at the grandparents is a relaxed affair. Even though they will refuse or cry about having to read to you, they’ll pick up a book voluntarily to read to their grandparents.
What is this strange phenomenon?
It’s time. Plenty of time.
Those retired oldies don’t have the stress of managing the cleanliness, education, nutrition, mental-health, physical exercise and everything else you have to manage for your children.
Grandma and Granddad have been there and done that. Now they’re retired: relaxed, chilled, taking it easy.
So, when you’re trying to listen to your unwilling child read painstakingly slowly, whilst cooking a guilty but fast, non-nutritious meal and simultaneously trying to remember what important appointment you needed to make and for which one of your children… Grandma and Granddad are pottering around their immaculate home looking for something to do.
You arrive at their picture postcard bungalow early Saturday morning with your PJs on under your outer coat, your wet freezing hair piled on top of your head, hoping desperately it looks like a trendy “scruffy-bun” dragging three half-dressed, sleepy, crying children along with you. The grandparents are already at the door and delighted to see you all. As you leave, the stress and frustration that is part of being a parent and house manager, leaves with you. The door slams shut and the tranquil peace of Grandma and Granddad’s home wraps itself around your children.
Instead of their usual arguing and fighting, the children sit down together and tell their doting grandparents about all the mundane things that interest them. Grandma and Granddad who were bored and frustrated and stressed when you were a child are now relaxed and genuinely interested in what the children have to say. The children pick up on that: there’s no competing for attention because they know their grandparents have time for all of them.
Grandma and Granddad give your children biscuits and juice for breakfast. “Where is the nutrition in that?” you berate them down the phone. “They’ll be off their nuts running around screaming and fighting!” But they’re not. Because they’re at Grandma and Granddad’s. Grandma and Granddad are magic.
After a while Granddad sits in his chair to read the paper. The smallest child sits on his lap so Granddad reads her a story book instead. Middle child comes and listens. Eldest child asks Grandma if he can read to her. “Whaaaat?” you stutter down the phone, “but I can’t get him to read anything, we fight every night, the school’s constantly nagging me.” Grandma didn’t have the boring school reading books. She had some picture books that were written for parents to read to children, not the other way around. If you asked the school, they would tell you the words are far too difficult for such a young child. Grandma doesn’t know this. Eldest child doesn’t know this. Eldest child believes he can read this. It’s his favourite book at Grandma’s that she has read to him a million times before. He knows every detail of every picture. He is able to remember or guess most of the words. Those he doesn’t know Grandma fills in. She doesn’t care about breaking the phonic sounds down. She doesn’t know about graphemes, phonemes and split diagraphs. She’s just enjoying spending time with her grandchild.
Later Granddad shows all the children a new book his neighbour dropped off for them. They all look excitedly at the cover and try to guess what the story might be about. Granddad reads the first page with all the children looking over his shoulder at the words and pictures. The youngest doesn’t quite understand what is going on, so the middle child, patiently and importantly explains it to her. He then guesses what is going to happen next. Granddad reads on and middle child is delighted to find out he was right.
Grandma and Granddad have just used a combination of Pace Reading, Reciprocal Reading, Modelling and Scaffolding. But they didn’t know it. Grandma and Granddad had time. Time to read to the children. Time to let the children read to them. Time to talk with the children. Time for the children to take their time. This is the magic of grandparents. This is the secret: Time.
Schools are catching on to this Grandparent-effect. Recently a 100 year old WWII veteran was awarded a British Empire Medal in recognition of his volunteer work helping young children to read at his local primary school. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-65113207 As he points out – the benefits go both ways. He began to volunteer after his wife passed away and it brought joy back into his life. Sometimes people are short of conversation when visiting elderly relatives in care homes or hospitals, having the grandchild read to them is a pleasurable space filler for all present and then stimulates conversation around the book. There is a charity that asks school children to read to elderly people who don’t have visitors https://silverstories.co.uk/ showing that it is both sides who benefit.
So next time you berate yourself because you weren’t patient enough when they refused to read or read really badly to you, cut yourself some slack, and pack them off to their grandparents for a couple of hours. The grandparents and grandchildren will love spending time with each other and you can sit down for ten minutes with a cuppa, knowing everyone is happy and safe, before you return to tackling the one million jobs you assigned yourself this weekend!
Rachel Coverdale 