Number Agents

 For those that have been following my journey, you will know that it started with play and a massive passion for drama (mantle of the expert in particular.) Number Agents was born out of this, a brilliantly effective way to bring maths to life in an imagined, but very authentic world.   My book Number Agents if available through my TPT store and it explains all the ins and outs and whys of this world.   Last year (as you will know if you have been following this journey) I encountered a class where more than half had entered school with significant developmental needs that I needed to meet, they also had challenges when it came to number, particularly around numerosity...deep understanding of quantity. There are quite a few posts on here about my scope and sequence, so I won't bore you here.  However I was primed to make a change for my children because structured literacy had been part of my journey for a few years at this point. While I loved teaching th...

 It has been quite a few years now since we started this journey, but one huge problem stands out with structured literacy...people simply see it as just a change in reading and decodable books have become far too important in terms of the teaching. With many simply swapping the ready to read books for decodable texts, but continuing to teach the same way, the same problems are coming up.  Children stuck on a stage for what seems forever, letter sounds not sticking, blending and segmenting not happening.   The problem is that the books are being used as the teaching tool, not simply one part of the process when they should actually just be a way of practising and putting into action the skills and knowledge being embedded.   The problem with structured literacy is that many don't actually understand the components of structured literacy.  They think it is just phonics. The layers of learning in many classrooms are still being forgotten and the reality ...

I have reflected before on the why of my scope and sequence.  But very basically the children in my class were the why, they showed me that before anything else, they needed a deep sense of pattern and number.  Just as my journey through structured literacy showed me that children needed that deep phonological and phonemic awareness. It has also been so lovely to hear from our new entrant class of 2022 that the scope and sequence is proving just as beneficial for them as it was for me last year. If you want to know more, there is an old blog post from last April that describes this in more detail. I started this process out of a want and real need to understand why children might struggle with maths and an interest in learning more about dyscalculia.  I avidly read everything I could and listened to podcasts whenever I went walking.  The work of Christopher Woodin really spoke to me and his patterns have since been a real game changer. When I wrote this scope and seq...

 So if you have been following my journey, you will know that I have been developing my understandings of structured literacy over the last five years.  You will also know I am a massive advocate for play and developmentally appropriate teaching, not only that you will know that my journey into structured literacy has also taken me into developing a scope and sequence for maths. If you have been reading for awhile, you will also know I am a big believer in storytelling and that this is my favourite quote. Depending on how long you have been following me you may also know that this all started with play and a need to address oral language, from there everything has spiralled.   You will know that these goals are massive for me and that being developmentally aware is something I am very very passionate about.  I believe we need to be ready for children, that we meet them where they are at and that we must as educators understand the brain. Last year I was in a ne...

 There is such a debate at the moment (not sure if it ever stopped.) Structured literacy vs balanced literacy.  Sometimes however it feels that many argue without even knowing what they are arguing about.  In fact it is becoming increasingly obvious to me, that those that argue against structured literacy have very little understanding of the Science of reading and basically think it is just about phonics. The argument is, children can't just be taught to sound out words...that is not an effective strategy, children need to experience language to be exposed to great vocab, to be surrounded by literature, to love reading...what is funny is this, structured literacy does all of these things and more! The other argument is often from those who have children that naturally took to reading (I had two of those myself) they don't see the need in all children learning this way and believe it to be boring.  Well I can say hand on heart, that even my more duck to water readers...