Number Agents

 In my little series about literacy, I thought I would meander off a little into the topic of writing.    Writing and reading are inextricably linked, while there are obvious differences, there are many pieces of the puzzle that are the same.  Sadly however, writing seems to be completely misunderstood and it is not yet widely acknowledged in our education system, that writing is one of the most complex cognitive tasks that we ask children to do. I have posted about writing before, a few years ago now, and reading back, there was much I did understand, but a lot I realise I just didn't know.  Since then, my deep dive into the Science of Literacy and more accurately in my mind, the Science of Learning or Evidenced Based Teaching, my approach to writing has changed.    Often writing is seen as just one part of the daily timetable, the teacher models, the children write and that is it.  Little thought is given to the foundations that need to be in pl...

  I thought I would do a bit of a series of posts (as I get time of course) about the aspects of Science of Literacy and how they are enacted in my classroom.   I still see far too much of an emphasis on the Science of Reading being just phonics, there seems to still be very little understanding of what is actually encompassed in this term and the research behind this.  We are all so fearful of using the word 'balanced' we steer clear of this term, just in case people think we are talking balanced literacy. If you look at the very well known pillars of literacy above, you'll see there is far more to all of this than just phonics.  However if you listen to researchers discuss the above visual, you will hear them say that the pillars above are misleading, seeming to apply that the same weight be applied to each.  This was not the intention of the diagram, and it is important to understand, for children to become readers and writers, there does need to be a hi...