Inspiring Primary Learners

Insights and Inspiration Across the Curriculum

Roger McDonald, Poppy Gibson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780429656330
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Inspiring Primary Learners offers trainee and qualified teachers high-quality case studies of outstanding practice in contemporary classrooms across the country. Expert authors unravel and reveal the theory and evidence that underpins lessons, helping you make connections with your own practice and understand what 'excellent' looks like, within each context, and how it is achieved.

Illustrated throughout with interviews, photos, and examples of children's work, it covers a range of primary subjects and key topics including creating displays, outdoor learning, and developing a reading for pleasure culture. The voice of the practitioner is evident throughout as teachers share their own experience, difficulties, and solutions to ensure that children are inspired by their learning.

Written in two parts, the first exemplifies examples of practice for each National Curriculum subject, whilst the second focuses on the wider curriculum and explores issues pertinent to the primary classroom, highlighting important discussions on topics such as:

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• Reading for pleasure

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• Writing for pleasure

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• Creating a dynamic and responsive curriculum

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• Creating inspiring displays

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• Outdoor learning

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• Pedagogy for imagination

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• Relationships and Sex Education

This key text shows how, even within the contested space of education, practitioners can inspire their primary learners through teaching with passion and purpose for the empowerment of the children in their class. For all new teachers, it provides advice and ideas for effective and engaging learning experiences across the curriculum.

Part 1

The primary curriculum

1 Empowering communication through speaking, reading, and writing

Deborah Reynolds, Sarah Smith, and Kat Vallely

Critical questions

• When in the Early Years environment, how can you show children that you are actively listening to them with more than just your ears?
• When providing children with talking opportunities, what skills do we need to encourage them to use?
• When was the last time you felt fully included in a discussion? What made the conversation so inclusive, and what skills were you drawing upon?
• What perspective(s) do you take your values around reading from?
• How many children’s picture books can you name with a BAME character or author that have been published in the past five years?
• What purpose do children (and adults) have to write in the classroom?
• Who is the audience for the writing?
• In what way does the writing connect to children’s own experiences?

Introduction

The subject of English in the primary school has been the focus of great debate for educationalists, politicians, and the general public. The news agenda is focused each year on the percentage of pupils in Year 6 who leave school ‘being able’ to read or write. Of course, those of us who work in education know that the vast majority of pupils leave being able to read and write. Whether they are able to meet an arbitrary mark in an outdated testing system is another matter. English, or ‘literacy’ as it is sometimes called, is on the political agenda. ‘literacy’ is seen as a valuable commodity which correlates with economic growth. Therefore the ability to ‘measure’ literacy has increasingly become important in order to justify the money spent on it. Successive governments have put education at the top of their agenda and made changes in order to evidence success. It could be argued though that the changes have led to an increasingly skills-based curriculum for the children in our schools.

In this chapter we will explore the areas of talk, reading, and writing to show how schools can develop inspiring learning opportunities based on principled pedagogy which permeate across the school to create meaningful learning experiences for the children. We start by exploring the spoken voice, introducing the practice at St Thomas a Becket Primary School before turning to look at how a love of reading can be developed through the case study of Ealdham Primary School. Finally, we focus on writing and how writing for meaning can create a desire to write for both children and teachers.

The spoken voice

Talking about what you are doing, in order to understand and learn, has been considered an important and effective part of good classroom practice for a very long time. As a primary pupil in the 60’s, the expectation was to talk not only about what we were doing as we worked, discussing and justifying our thoughts and ideas in our groups, but also to be able to organise and present our work to others in the class and wider school community.

From the Bullock Report (DES, 1975), through the work of Douglas Barnes and the Hackney Link project (1991) to the work of Robin Alexander (2010), talk has been researched and proven invaluable to children’s development and understanding. Indeed, included in the national curriculum of 1990 was a whole section on speaking and listening, heightening the profile of talk even further. In the new national curriculum (2014) this was changed to ‘spoken voice’, offering statutory criteria across the primary phases. Although this is still centrally important to every primary school teacher, it could be argued that, in the current standards-led and accountability culture, finding space and time to ensure the pedagogy of talk is embedded in classroom practice is becoming more challenging.

Within this section I will present a case study from St Thomas a Becket Primary School to celebrate how they ensure that talk is central to teaching and learning. I present the case study from an observer’s point of view, having had the privilege of visiting the school and seeing how talk was embedded in the school from the Early Years to Year 6.

During my time visiting St Thomas a Becket it was clear that there was a determination to create a culture and practice throughout the school, to not only use effectively in the classroom, but to ensure that, as the children progressed through the school, the skills needed to make talk for learning successful were developed. This was evident from the Headteacher, Bernie Greally, who told me that she sees talk as ‘one of the most complex areas for children to develop’. She is determined that from the moment the children enter the school they are ‘allowed’ to talk and have effective role models to develop the confidence and skills that lead to success. In addition the Deputy Headteacher, Jo Cooper, said that the inclusion of role play, Drama, and storytelling over many years, as well as the use of structured spoken word games and talk partners, group collaboration, class discussions, and debates, has built a philosophy within the school that has become part of their culture and practice.

The case study below documents my reflections as I visited classes in Early Years, Key Stage 1, and Key Stage 2.

Case study on St Thomas a Becket Primary School: Early Years and Key Stage 1

In the Early Years, I observed that within the free flow environment, the adults were listening carefully all the time. It was almost a physical thing – eye contact, a tilt of the head or a nod, a smile of reassurance – an action actually signalling to others around that they were listening to what one child was saying. This informal practice was constantly taking place throughout both the inside and outside areas. The Early Years co-ordinator told me that the children do not need to be asked to talk, in fact stopping them is sometimes near impossible! However, the adults listen and monitor how the talk is being used, scaffolding and modelling, asking questions and clarifying in order for the use of talk to be effective and focused on learning.

When the children came together for more focused activity such as fruit-time discussion, games, story, etc., the talking was more structured. However, I saw the children being asked to notice how things were said and why and how that might help them know what was going to happen, or what they thought about it. Talk itself was being talked about and modelled. All children in the Early Years were involved in singing, rhymes, dancing, shouting, explaining, and describing. All were building vocabulary, as well as understanding that what they say is important and interesting.

The Deputy Headteacher told me that as children move into Key Stage 1 the experience in the Foundation Stage, of talking being an important and taught part of the learning process, is built upon. The skills are described and discussed more directly, and the children begin to understand why they are asked to talk about their learning.

In the Year 2 class, I observed the teacher giving the children many opportunities to talk for a range of reasons and situations. The feedback written in their books from the previous lesson was read and shared with a friend, while the teacher, Emma Taylor, had conversations about the comments with several individuals. The talking opportunities were short; Emma told them how long they had, reiterated the focus and the purpose while she praised them for the skills they were using, reminding them of the skills they were using. Throughout the lesson she told the children why she was asking them to talk about things, reminding them of the purpose of the discussions.

The children in Year 2 knew how talk partners worked, but more than that, it appeared that many of them knew why the talking helped them. There was mighty enthusiasm for contributing to the feedback, many of them using statements like ‘I thought that … but’ or ‘when he told me that, I didn’t think the same’. I could hear some of the games and discussions I had observed in the Early Years class being used here. They were obviously beginning to consider the process of learning through talking, as well as just saying something themselves.

Both the Headteacher and Deputy Headteacher were passionate when we talked about the developmental journey that the children take at St Thomas a Becket. They are determined that talk is used across the whole curriculum, emphasising that, as a staff, they were continually considering the role talking plays in the wider curriculum, moving on from the routine of talk partners, to make the discussion part of the learning process valuable. They talked about the skills and understanding that children need to develop not only about what kind of talking to do, but also how it helps understanding.

From this case study you may wish to consider what skills Emma, the Year 2 teacher, was praising the children for when they were speaking with their talk partners. Also, you may want to question when was the last time you really listened to what a child was saying to you, and was able to extend their thinking through the conversation you shared.

The development of talk and the centrality of it in the Early Years and Key Stage 1 is crucial. The passion of individual teachers supported and exemplified by the senior leaders in a school is paramount to ensuring genuine conversations take place. At St Thomas a Becket Primary School it was clear that teachers were developing language though creating a stimulating environment and through giving the children opportunities to imitate (Skinner, 1957) the language they were hearing.

Language was used as a tool for l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART 1 THE PRIMARY CURRICULUM
• PART 2 WIDER ISSUES AND DEBATES
• Index