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 through agency and embraced the use of problem solving, I just didn't feel this group of children were ready to work in this way, they needed stronger foundations in number first.
I learned a lot about dyscalculia and big ideas in mathematics and out of that my scope and sequence was born. I had been using numicon for a while and loved this too. My scope and sequence is also available in my TPT store. Again this will be a never ending journey and I already have a few sessions to add into the current version. Good news...if you have purchased it already, any change I make will be available to you.
So for a bit I had to step away from my loved approach and start teaching maths in a structured and explicit manner, because I knew this was what my children needed.
This year I have continued on with this group of children and we are about a term away from finishing.
This is where the point of this post comes in. This term I felt my children were ready to launch into an agency, but also needed to continue working through the scope and sequence. I knew that I didn't have time to do a full blown agency and work through the scope and sequence, so I needed to come up with an abridged way of making this happen for my children.
So having the deep understanding of Agency standing me in good stead, I broke it down to the main features that needed to be included to make the magic happen.
Hopefully you can read the bones of agency that I worked from to merge the world of the imagined, with the world of the explicit and structured.
1) Hooking in - children needed to believe in this world (this is remarkably easy in a play based class)
This was as easy as a portal appearing on the wall and excited discussion about what this might mean, over a few days the portal grew and morphed a little and these changes were noticed by the children, with their imaginations taking over. Because we had been reading about the enchanted wood, the idea of another world quickly became an overwhelming and exciting idea.
After a week the portal had a plea for help attached, this basically said the people of the worlds connected to the portal needed a team of experts to help deal with a mischief maker. The children worked out the green light meant the portal was connected to a world, when it was red it was not connected.
The pretence is that the worlds connected to the portal change (just like the worlds at the top of the enchanted tree)
2) The idea of us being an expert team. The children leapt in this easily and readily let the people of the portal know that we can help.
3) Building the narrative. With the portal established, it was just left to build the narrative. This was largely done through this thank you letter. The people of this portal become our clients. So established as a team of experts, with clients and problems to come, our abridged agency is established. The beauty of this is that the portal can be used for other curriculum areas.
The children met Gaza after the first problem was delivered. He loves pattern problems, but the beauty of this approach is Gaza is not always responsible...meaning our problems can be directly written to fit with our scope and sequence focus.
The portal opens 1-3 times a week and problems take us 15-20 minutes.
This video is an example of how a problem is posed in agency.
This term I plan to introduce a couple more characters...one that wants us to find fives in a specified group and one who wants us to come up with five ways of making an amount. But I will play this by ear. On the days that I am not in the class (two) my release teacher introduces other problems related to her focus, which this term was around fractions.
So the explicit world has merged beautifully with our imagined world. I guess my point here is that the two ways of working can go together beautifully. I believe structured, explicit teaching and teaching through play are symbiotic. They go together and complement each other perfectly.
So if you are wanting to launch into agency, read the book so you understand the ins, outs and whys. If you are lacking in time or needing to run an explicit structured approach, then it is possible to run an abridged agency when children have solid foundations.
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 is many children are still in the same place they were in using a balanced approach.
Phonological understandings are not being attended to and phonemic awareness is being mistaken for phonetic awareness. One of the most important things I learned was about phonological/phonemic awareness, that ability to make, hear, manipulate, blend and segment sounds (sounds not symbols)...there is a big problem with 'structured literacy' teaching if this is being overlooked. In fact phonological skills, or lack of are a big issue for many of our struggling readers across the country. I noticed early on that phonological skills or lack of gave me massive clues around how to help my learners, I just had to know enough to look for them.
I think one of the biggest problems with structured literacy at the moment is that many people don't realise this is not called structured reading...it is an approach to literacy that encompasses everything. No longer should children be becoming great readers, but on the other hand reluctant writers and poor spellers. If structured literacy as an approach is being applied well, children should be progressing on all areas equally...it is when they don't that we are given our biggest hint of specific needs that may need to be catered for. Encoding and decoding are two sides of the same coin and need to be treated as such. Often we will see that a child has efficient blending skills, but segmenting and taking sound to print isn't as strong, or vice versa...having a deep understanding of structured literacy and the science of reading/spelling allows us to be able to do something about it.
There are so many layers that need to be in place before a book is even placed in front of a learner..and then throughout the process there are so many understandings being developed at each stage, that if we are simply using the book, we will come up against hurdles.
In fact I have my own experience with this and this year we again adjusted how we are teaching using the decodable books. We were finding children racing through the early stages, but then coming up against a wall when there were so many new sounds and so many heart words...their actual understandings of heart words, spelling and letter formation were lagging behind their reading, we were not giving them time to consolidate understandings.
So for us it came back to the individual. Teaching specifically the understandings (encoding and decoding) in the stage above the books we were actually using...this means we can work on fluency when reading the text and children are having more success. It is the best of both worlds, practicing next steps in context, but also reading with a great degree of success that gives confidence.
For some of our learners who need more repetition and who are not quite up to building fluency in this way, we've created a staged approach, using materials to encode and decode the speed words in the stories, then reading the text, without the pictures, then finally reading the text with the pictures. This scaffolded approach works well for our learners on stage one and two. I have shared some of these ideas on my tiktok number agents. Tiktok is a great place to get free PLD, there are so many great educators on there!
Everything is slow and deliberate, because let's face it, strong foundations are key and acceleration without these strong foundations is a fallacy. If I rush the building of a house, without putting in place strong foundations, the first time it faces a strong wind, it will fall down. The same can be said for literacy acquisition. We must be using explicit teaching, ensure cognitive load is not too great and ensuring there is lots of repetition.
If schools are putting in place benchmark expectations against age and decodable stage, there is going to remain the angst for teachers around acceleration, the angst around children them not getting where they need to be. Instead we must be guided by the individual and tune into their needs. This doesn't mean we don't strive to help them do their best, but it means we meet them where they are at and build foundations for growth.
That is the next big problem with structured literacy teachers are still trying to apply a reading age to stages and still applying benchmarks for achievement...after six months, after a year etc. This leads to them feeling the same old pressure as before. Pressure to get children to a certain stage based on a certain age is counterproductive for good teaching and learning.
Learning simply does not happen like this, it is not linear, children do not progress at the same rate and do not have the same needs. When it comes down to it applying benchmarks for achievement are not helpful for anyone. Tuning into specific needs and understanding how to help is key. Every teacher at every level of the school needs to have a well embedded skill set that enables them to help learners, no matter their level of progress.
Let's think our youngest learners...there are so many layers that need to be in place before a book is even placed in front of them...and then throughout the process there is so many understandings being developed at each stage, that if we are simply using the book, many children will come up against huge hurdles.
Firstly we need to think developmentally, children have many foundations to put in place well before reading and writing needs to be happening. For many of our children the explicit teaching of reading and writing does not happen till six, or after if developmentally appropriate. Forcing a child to start earlier does them no favours later on. On average, most of our children start engaging with more formal reading and spelling at 5.9yrs (this is just an average...based on the past few years of course many fall either side of this average because that is how averages work)
Providing a rich environment for children to grow and develop in their own time is much more important than anything else. It is this opportunity to develop in an environment rich in language, rich in talk, rich in movement, rich in relationships and rich in play that will pay off in the long run.
These are our current goals, that go with our developmental framework...it morphs into being structured literacy specific as children are ready. There is a link within this sheet that shows you the knowledge we are developing in each stage once children have firm foundations.
Back the the biggest problem with structured literacy right now...the fact that it is being viewed through a narrow lens of phonics and reading. The truth is structured literacy is just a term for an approach, that encompasses so much more than that! The above image is a great one to reflect on.
What elements of structured literacy can be seen in my classroom?
Well, firstly, it no longer happens in a block called reading/writing or spelling, but does happen over the day and the week in small bite sized amounts. Basically pulling apart what it takes to be a writer/reader and teaching explicitly those parts, avoiding cognitive load and making sessions short. (Remembering for me this happens in a room where play is our main way of working, this to me, is still the most important thing.). These sessions may be individual, small group or whole class. These groupings are flexible and change from day to day.
Children in the year before they come to me have experienced a rich environment based on play, storytelling, drawing and talk. They have also had great opportunities to develop fine and gross motor skills, and this really shows! They have come from an environment based on storytelling, an environment where they have been read fabulous stories, an environment where they have explored great vocab and an environment where talk is rich and all around them. Oral language has been the foundation of their learning and play has been given the priority it deserves. In our play based class, children have ample opportunity to self-select writing as an activity and to use it within their play.
In my class over the week, we have short, bite sized sessions, these are not timetabled, but are planned for and happen where they naturally fit into our day.
As you may be aware, the goals that we work with children on are individualised, this means that for some they may be slightly ahead of where we are working as a class...that is ok, because a lot of learning comes from teaching others and repetition is vital! Let me also say, this is not boring, as a teacher I am invigorated by structured literacy and children love learning in this way, they are successful and success breeds success.
1) Formation is a big part of our approach - we use Casey the Caterpillar. The story is playful and making the shapes is accessible for all children. I watch pencil grip during this time, taking into account that for some children, their hand strength (and all the many components that go into pencil grip) may not be there yet. What I did discover this year is that children need to use shorter pencils...so that adjustment can be made easily. Children are also developing fine motor during play as well, so it is just up to me to watch and notice if there is something that needs to be adjusted for that child as and when they are ready for it. Casey also assists them with directionality and the concept of never being able to go back to her egg is one they really cotton onto to. Now the shapes are embedded we we work on combining them to write the letters themselves...or spelling the sounds as I like to call it. Children can be heard saying the shapes as they make each letter. For many this has now become automatic and reversals rarely happen.
Casey is also a really good one to share with parents, it is an easy way that they can help.
2)Phonetic awareness - through our structured literacy sessions we work through the scope and sequence, we use LLLL and the code. We also have a seperate phonological focus at the beginning of this session. Throughout the day, when we have moments, I will put a challenge word up on the board and children will have a go at decoding it. We can then talk about the sounds within the word etc and link it back to what we have been learning. Children can then practice putting this word in a sentence, there is a lot of discussion that comes out of this.
3)Word chain, children love this activity, we do it as a whole class or in a small group and will also share with home so they can use this if they want. We do word chain once a week at least. Children really love this, I keep it well within all of their abilities and in the stage they are working on, so everyone is happy to have a go. During our word chain, children physically spell the words on a whiteboard and we actively talk about the part of the word that is being changed. I use my slinky to reinforce the concept of stretching out the word to hear the beginning, middle and end. This is another good opportunity to put words into a sentence that makes sense. This is also a good opportunity to check on formation and to remind children of our Casey shapes.
4)Dictated sentences...based on the stages we are working on we will use a dictated text. This is a good opportunity to focus on spacing, directionality and full stops. We do this as a whole class once a week and we do this as part of our activities in reading groups. Dictated sentences are not our 'writing' they are part of giving children the tools they need to be a writer. This is not about creativity, it is about the nuts and bolts of writing a sentence. I have noticed a huge improvement in children's independent 'creative' writing since we have started using dictated sentences. Before using a structured approach, many of my learners couldn't keep a sentence in their head, let along remember it long enough to write something on their own.
5)Heart word learning. Children will be working on these individually, but we teach them in class using the approach of taking sound to print and exploring the irregular parts. To assist our collaborative writing, we will occasionally work on heart words that are a bit out of sequence, so that children can access them when they write. For me this heart word learning is so important, when children 'guess' at words like heart words, that are used so frequently, they often form spelling patterns that they then believe to be correct, it is so hard to undo this. We learn heart words once or twice a week as a class, or as relevant to our collaborative writing. It might take a little bit longer to do, but I am confident that no child will be learning the wrong spelling of irregular words and embedding this into how they think it is spelled.
6) Collaborative writing - once a week we will come up with a short story together. This is quite heavily guided by me, because I know what heart words they do or don't know. The collaborative writing is usually based around our storytelling, but not always. We will say the story out loud together. Count the words (it is usually just the first sentence we write together.) Children will have a go on whiteboards, scaffolded and supported by me. We will discuss the features we have learned, like spacing, capital letters, full stops and may learn something new if it fits. I like to use a Nessy video from youtube if relevant because children love these. Once we have written the sentence together, children grab their books and go and write independently. Many will write the same sentence, others will do this, but add extra, while others will write their own story. The change in confidence has been huge for my learners.
From time to time, instead of collaborative writing, we will simply brainstorm ideas and children will go off and write on their own.
7)Storytelling - we have Edward our storytelling puppet, he is loved by the children and visits to tell weird and wonderful stories, full of imagination and great vocabulary. Children will often draw their own pictures in response to this and tell their own stories, I have blogged about this storytelling before and it really is just a time where children are free to be the masters of their own stories. A great balance against the explicit strategies being used. We use storytelling throughout the week as often as we can!
8)Digging deeper into storytelling. This year I am learning about talk for writing. We did one last term based on the Itchy Witch and it was fantastic. When we are in the midst of this, we will be having short sessions each day. If you want to find out more, here is the website. https://www.talk4writing.com/
This term we are looking at the picture book Chalk. Writing the story to go with the pictures, retelling this and then innovating to create our own.
9)Individual 'structured literacy' sessions. These look different for each child, once a week they meet with us and we go through a lesson together, starting with what they know and then teaching explicitly the next thing they need. This might be phonics based on their stage, a spelling rule, heart words relevant to their stage, speed words based on the book they are learning, code words based on their stage, paper texts or decodable books.
10) Fluency books. Children take home two or three books each week at a stage below where they are working with us, they practice these daily with the goal of fluency, comprehension and understanding punctuation. When we meet with them, we tune into these books and feed back to parents how they are going.
11) Specific bite sized sessions daily for phonics as a whole class, largely revisiting the first 5 stages of sounds. Then we focus in small groups on the stage we are working on. Individually children then have their own specific sessions as needed.
12) Chapter book read - whole class. Last term we read Amelia Jane, this term we are reading the faraway tree. Of course it goes without saying that we read lots of wonderful picture books too.
These are the writing priorities we have set as a school to guide us when working with children and what we are looking for. Year levels are just a guide as we know children develop at different rates.
The biggest problem with structured literacy however is that it is still seen as a fad by many and totally misunderstood. This means programmes are being implemented with little understanding and we will only get what we have always got, with the same children having the same problems.
The problem with this is that structured literacy will be made the scapegoat and shelved by many schools only to go back to an approach that has been failing far too many children.
The reality is there is no issue or problem with structured literacy, when done well it can be transformational for our teaching and life changing for our children, we've just got to understand it enough to really do it justice in a classroom.
This video below is a great one to share regarding the components of Structured Literacy
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 sequence (as I was teaching it) I also wrote the next sessions..after I saw how well it it was working for me and really wanted others to be able to teach in this way.
At the time I thought it might last for 6 months if that. But I started last year in March and am still working my way through it with my class that started with me. It has had a huge impact, but we are only up to session 52 (of 60). Granted we only work in this way two - three times a week, but I think the scope and sequence is more like 1 year - 18 months worth of learning. Once I am completed session 60 I intend to go back through all the sessions and add to them or change them according to what I learned.
We are currently on session 52 (grouping) we are likely to stay on this session for at least the next two weeks...repetition is key, children need to explore the same concept in a range of different ways many many times. This is true for any learning.
As I sit and watch them working with visual images, I can't help but be blown away by the strategies they are employing independently. This is even more impressive when I remember that many of these children didn't have a sense of number when they started, couldn't look at a group and make a good guess at how many there could be, and would often grab a handful when they only needed a couple more.
This term we have opened a modified agency, based on a portal that connects us to many different worlds. It fits well time wise and means we can do this and continue to work on our scope and sequence...all within the world of our play-based class.
This scope and sequence has really gifted children a sense of a whole and its parts...friends to ten, doubles, using five, they all make sense. Number bonds are really deeply understood as is the concept that problems like 3 + 5 and 5 + 3 is the same and that if I know these, then I know the reverse, 8-3 is 5 etc. Now we are also developing the understanding that 5 x 3 and 3 x 5 gives us the same whole. Flexibility with number is coming through loud and strong.
I have spent longer on grouping than intended and so have made up more visual images to go along with this, I will add the pack to the scope and sequence at some stage.
The key is the patterns and spending a lot of time consolidating these...the woodin patterns seem so simple, but for many these patterns have given them something to really establish their understanding of a whole and its parts. Now we are further into the scope and sequence, some children are beginning to express groups in different ways, while those that need to will still defer to the patterns.
If you are picking up the scope and sequence for the first time, follow the sequence, combine sessions if it makes sense for your class, but don't skip, don't pick and mix...it is intended to be cumulative, so trust in the process.
I don't advocate worksheets and we don't work in math books. We use whiteboards, markers and materials...along with this talk is key, lots of sharing and lots of reflecting.
To say I am happy with where we are at is an absolute understatement...this has to be one of the best things I have done in my career and I am very happy with how everything is going.
The reflections below are just some of the understandings we have been developing.
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 new entrants - year 2 class (mostly NE/Y1). I experimented with writing, finding what my programme needed to look like in order to build strong foundations. For this level, along with the mechanics of writing, which I will mention soon, storytelling takes the fore. The building of oral language, of vocabulary, of the ability to tell a story, to wonder in using our imagination is absolutely crucial for our earliest learners, the writing of a story isn't what it is about in that first year.
I did become really aware last year however about all the different skills that need to come together in order for children to have enough automaticity in the mechanics of writing that they are then allowed the freedom from cognitive load to really be 'story writers'
What I do know, and have known for a very long time, is that many children are put off writing forever and become 'struggling' or 'reluctant' writers because too much has been expected too soon and not enough explicit, scaffolded teaching has gone on. For many this also happens when they are expected to write, when they lack the hand strength, realise this process hurts, and then in turn end up hating writing.
Something I have also become very aware of over the last few years is cognitive load and how this plays a role in the success or lack of for our learners.
This year I have stepped into a year 1-3 class. I have a real opportunity to break my 'writing' programme down into its parts and truly begin to analyse what is absolutely necessary and how it all fits together.
If you have not already, have a read of this article, great to have the research backing it up.
As a staff we have also been working on the development of writing...I very much believe the first three to four years are about building strong foundations. This is a big body of work, one that we will continue to reflect and build on. It allows us all to understand what a child's pathway may (or may not) look like through school, but also honours that all children progress at different rates and that is ok.
So to the core parts for my writing programme this year, this very basic jigsaw gives a bit of a starting point idea.
Firstly, what I have discovered over the last several years is that the business of learning to read, spell and write is much more complex than I ever gave it credit for. For a few children literacy comes naturally, or appears to. But for most explicit teaching is required. Funnily enough, both my children took to literacy naturally and loved reading and writing...however they would have benefited from explicit teaching because now as adults, spelling is a weakness for both of them. I also think of myself, if I had been taught the spelling rules, it would have made a massive difference to me at university, spelling was always easy for me, but when up against a word I have not seen before or do not have context for, I lack the understanding of the very rules that would have helped me.
It is not just about the children and their needs though. As teachers we have to deeply understand what it is we are teaching, when we need to teach it and why. I think we feel that we know how all this works, but the deeper I dig, the more I realise I just didn't know. The learning I have been doing in other areas lately around the brain is very literally blowing my mind!
So what does my writing approach look like at the moment, based on what I have learned so far?
Well, firstly, it no longer happens in a block called writing, but does happen over the day and week in small bite sized amounts. Basically pulling apart what it takes to be a writer and teaching explicitly those parts, avoiding cognitive load and making sessions short. (Remembering for me this happens in a room where play is our main way of working, this to me, is still the most important thing.)
Children in the year before they come to me have experienced a rich environment based on play, storytelling, drawing and talk. They have also had great opportunities to develop fine and gross motor skills, and this really shows!
In my class I can then break writing down further....over the week, we have short, bite sized sessions, these are not timetabled, but are planned for and happen where they naturally fit into our day.
As you may be aware, the goals that we work with children on are individualised, this means that for some they may be slightly ahead of where we are working as a class...that is ok, because a lot of learning comes from teaching.
1) Formation - we use Casey the Caterpillar. The story is playful and making the shapes is accessible for all children. I watch pencil grip during this time, taking into account that for some children, their hand strength (and all the many components that go into pencil grip) may not be there yet. What I did discover this year is that children need to use shorter pencils...so that adjustment can be made easily. Children are also developing fine motor during play as well, so it is just up to me to watch and notice if there is something that needs to be adjusted for that child as and when they are ready for it. Casey also assists them with directionality and the concept of never being able to go back to her egg is one they really cotton onto to. Once we have worked our way through this, we will move to more formally writing the letters themselves...or spelling the sounds as I like to call it.
Casey is also a really good one to share with parents, it is an easy way that they can help.
2)Phonetic awareness - through our structured literacy sessions we work through the scope and sequence, we use LLLL and the code. We also have a seperate phonological focus at the beginning of this session. Throughout the day, when we have moments, I will put a challenge word up on the board and children will have a go at decoding it. We can then talk about the sounds within the word etc and link it back to what we have been learning.
3)Word chain, children love this activity, we do it as a whole class and will also share with home so they can use this if they want. We do word chain once a week at least. Children really love this, I keep it well within all of their abilities, so everyone is happy to have a go.
4)Dictated sentences...based on the stages we are working on we will use a dictated text. This is a good opportunity to focus on spacing, directionality and full stops. We do this as a whole class once a week and we do this as part of our activities in reading groups.
5)Heart word learning. Children will be working on these individually, but we teach them in class using the approach of taking sound to print and exploring the irregular parts. To assist our collaborative writing, we will occasionally work on heart words that are a bit out of sequence, so that children can access them when they write. For me this heart word learning is so important, when children 'guess' at words like heart words, that are used so frequently, they often form spelling patterns that they then believe to be correct, it is so hard to undo this. We learn heart words once or twice a week as a class, or as relevant to our collaborative writing.
6) Collaborative writing - once a week we will come up with a short story together. This is quite heavily guided by me, because I know what heart words they do or don't know. The collaborative writing is usually based around our storytelling, but not always. We will say the story out loud together. count the words (it is usually just the first sentence we write together.). Children will have a go on whiteboards, scaffolded and supported by me. We will discuss the features we have learned, like spacing, capital letters, full stops and may learn something new if it fits. I like to use a Nessy video from youtube if relevant because children love these. Once we have written the sentence together, children grab their books and go and write independently. Many will write the same sentence, others will do this, but add extra, while others will write their own story.
7)Storytelling - we have Edward our storytelling puppet, he is loved by the children and visits to tell weird and wonderful stories, full of imagination and great vocabulary. Children will often draw their own pictures in response to this and tell their own stories, I have blogged about this storytelling before and it really is just a time where children are free to be the masters of their own stories. A great balance against the explicit strategies being used. We use storytelling throughout the week as often as we can!
8)Digging deeper into storytelling. This year I am learning about talk for writing. We did one last term based on the Itchy Witch and it was fantastic. When we are in the midst of this, we will be having short sessions each day. If you want to find out more, here is the website. https://www.talk4writing.com/
I have not yet had professional development on this, but there are loads of resources out there to support you.
Play
Loads of writing happens in play. Children frequently make cards, signs, their own stories, label pictures etc etc. Writing happens in authentic contexts and it is fabulous!
Assessment:
I hate that word, but for want of a better title, have used it. We do still do a writing sample each term and I use this to work out collective and individual need. We also have our individual sheets based on each stage that are a great dynamic tool to use with children. I do like to use Heidi Songs writing progression sheet to as it informs us a lot developmentally.
So in essence the heart of what I do in terms of storytelling has not changed. But alongside this I am now laying the foundations explicitly for children to have automaticity over the skills they need to be able to free up their mind to write.
I am really enthusiastic to see how this all pans out this year as we are already seeing superb progress. I am also noticing children are really loving writing much more than they did and it is appearing more in their play.
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 LOVE this. They love learning heart words, they find it playful, they have success and my own two duck to water readers could have done with structured literacy, because let's just put it this way, spelling isn't their strength. What it isn't is boring. It is not drill and kill...children experience success and really enjoy the process. Who doesn't love feeling successful?
That's the other thing people don't realise actually, this isn't just about reading, it is as much about spelling as it is about reading....show me a very able reader and very often they will be a weak speller...they need this too.
But I digress, the point of this post is to show you structured literacy in photos....to show you what a term has encompassed and to help you see this is not phonics. This is a structured, systematic way of explicitly building successful well rounded readers and writers, who are excellent communicators and can use what they have learned to help them in their day to day existence. No more 'reluctant' writers because they have been forced into writing before they had the hand strength to do so, or the understanding. No more children who believe that reading is not their thing. No more undoing poor spelling habits because children have just been allowed to free write without any direction.
I will just ensure I do acknowledge that structured literacy occurs at our place through a developmentally informed lens and within a play based environment.
So what has this term looked like?
Well for a start it is all about the individual...our goals can be found here....Individual Goals
The important thing to note here, is these are individual...the little assessments or observations along the way inform us. This means if a child is struggling with fine motor, it would not be appropriate for us to expect them to hold a pencil for longer than they actually want to. If that child is struggling with gross motor etc it may be more appropriate for them to stand and practice drawing on a window. The steps in allow us to make modifications and scaffold children individually, within our whole class sessions. If a child has just started exploring and developing phonological awareness it is more appropriate for them to story tell out loud from a picture. Equally if a child is developmentally advanced and comes with a lot of understandings already, we can engage with them where they are at.
We can adjust what we do, based on individual need.
This is not holding children back, it is scaffolding them and supporting them right where they are, and giving them what they need next to assist their development, wherever that may be.
I should probably also say, along with being developmentally responsive, we are also applying a trauma informed lens, we understand how learning works, how the stress response impacts this, how a child's age developmentally may be different to their chronological age (this applies to all ages) how regulated we need to be, along with the child in order for learning to stick.
The individual goals are very important to us, they travel through the first three or four years at our place and allow us to see and cherish progress. They are something that have morphed and changed over the years and a result of the work and research we have engaged in over the years.
A great starting place for anyone wanting to know what structured literacy actually encompasses, is Scarboroughs rope, start by understanding it is not just phonics and move on from there to learn more.
Images of structured literacy in my class - Term 1 (Year 1-3 class)
Storytelling with our friend Edward, fun for exploring language and the structure of stories. The children love him!
Heart word learning, sound to print. Say the word, identify the sounds, talk about the irregular parts, spell it down, practice and say the letters out loud in order, put it in a sentence. Done both whole class and then individually or in a group dependent on stage. Children do not learn words visually, for heart words we still have to map the sounds. Heart words are words with irregular spellings (may be that we have not yet learned that pattern) not sight words that children have mapped and stored away because they have seen them often. Learning to spell them (encode) greatly helps the reading (decoding)
We work together to write dictated sentences from the story.
We use counters or other things we can manipulate to explore the alphabetic code
and assist children to consolidate the sounds they need for that stage. For many, building the word and pulling out the sounds they need, really assists progress.
Each child has a home/school book. In here we practice speed words, heart words, things we need to practice that they can also work on at home.
We do this as a whole class, and children LOVE it!
The ability to tune into the word and the part that needs to be changed is a real skill that assists their spelling greatly.
A new addition over the last two years has been the Magic Caterpillar, we finished learning the shapes last week and now are using these to revisit the sounds and spell them with correct formation...I am noticing a big difference!
Talk For Writing - Storytelling
This term I have been playing around with this, deepening my approach to story telling and it has been awesome. Drawing from the story, learning the story off by heart, retelling the story, planning out parts of the story, performing the story out loud for the class and other classes and then writing our own witch stories. Lots and lots of vocab development, exploration of new words, heaps of scaffolding, and just pure joy. I was surprised that children loved working with the same story all term, they just ate it up! Fits brilliantly with mantle of the expert and is something I will continue refining.
Collaborative writing, that children then went and worked on independently.
The start of our planning.
Love using decodable books, the scope and sequence was something that was new learning for me several years ago.
This term we have read Amelia Jane and now then the class voted on this one, so far they are loving it!!!
Of course we also read a wide range of awesome picture books!
Regular practice. We do have explicit writing sessions that sit alongside our storytelling sessions. Two different approaches with the same ultimate goal. In our explicit sessions we look at how sentences are formed, we explore spacing, directionality, punctuation, heart words we may need, how to generate an idea. We work together and then children move off to write on their own. I am already noticing the mix of storytelling and the explicit approach is coming together to mean that as children gain fluency, they start to readily add detail to their own writing.
Exploring the speed words first in a story is assisting fluency when reading. Also a great opportunity to explore now vocab and the meaning of words.
When we work on heart words, we use blocks or counters, or dots to symbolise the sounds in the word and talk about the irregular parts.
Using the counters to build the words from the story helps as a scaffold for those that need it. Others may be writing dictated sentences that go with the story.
For children that struggle with the size of their writing, but are able to make it smaller, I find drawing a shape to keep the writing inside, helps.
love the visual nature of these cards.
We use these as a class and link them in with our handwriting and phonetic sessions when working within the stages.
Love these decodable books!
This might not seem to link in, but we use discussions a lot and this helps not only to develop oral language tunes children into noticing and questioning, developing this ability is a wonderful asset to all areas of learning.
This works in our play-based class, it works for us when applied with a developmentally informed lens, it works for all and is absolutely essential for many.
This does however come down to teacher understanding, because while children respond to different approaches, we need to deeply understand what it is we are doing, how learning works to be able to provide experiences that will work for the specific need a child has.
I feel like a detective some days, but wow is it rewarding when you can find the specific need and work on an approach that will help!
