Ideas for teaching on World Book Day 2021
As World Book Day 2021 approaches, QA Education features a round-up of news and ideas to help your school shine a spotlight on the best-loved children’s tales… Top 10 Children’s Books – Love Reading For Kids If you’re looking for something new to read to pupils this World Book Day, check out LoveReading4Kids’ Top 10 titles: 1. What Did the Tree See? 2. The Secret Lake 3. The Boy Who Made Everyone Laugh 4. A Tangle of Spells 5. The Last Bear 6. Hom 7. The Nowhere Emporium 8. The Shark Caller 9. Cookie and the Most Annoying Girl in the World 10. House of Happy Spirits: A Children’s Book Inspired by Friedensreich Hundertwasser LoveReading4Kids is a fantastic recommendation site for children’s books: reading, reviewing and recommending so that the children can find their next favourite book quickly and easily. Lockdown Learning with Joe Wicks and Sea Shanty star Nathan Evans The BBC’s Lockdown Learning returns on Monday 1st March and as its been announced that schools will start to open up again, Lockdown Learning will continue to support pupils, parents and teachers that need support. Joining the teaching rota for the new term is Joe Wicks, who will teach about the Vikings and the Battle of Hastings, Mr Motivator teaching maths and TikTok Sea Shanty star Nathan Evans, who will teach mini-lessons available on CBBC and Bitesize social media. For World Book Day this year (Thursday 4th March), BBC Bitesize have created a special collection of videos to be broadcasted on CBBC with authors, Jacqueline Wilson and Dan Freedman chatting about the inspiration behind their novels, alongside singer Anne Marie and TikTok star, Lucy Edwards who will share their favourite books. There will also be a live lesson for World Book Day hosted by CBBC’s Ben Shires and Bitesize Daily’s Mr Smith. The lesson will look about themes in stories and how to identify them and will include a live Q&A session with comedian and author of the Little Badman series, Humza Arshad. Lockdown Learning is available on CBBC, BBC Two, BBC Bitesize, BBC iPlayer and the Red Button. Pandemic impact on literacy highlighted by UK Reads campaign On World Book Day, best-selling authors add their voice to World Literacy Foundation (WLF) campaign designed to help children living in poverty to gain vital literacy skills. Blogger Sarah Turner of the Unmumsy Mum book series has added her voice to UK Reads’ literacy campaign ‘Before it’s too late’. Sarah will be contributing to the campaign for World Book Day activities on 4th March. Coordinated by the UK arm of the World Literacy Foundation (WLF), the campaign aims to reach children who, due to pandemic restrictions, are at higher risk than ever before of falling significantly behind with their vocabulary and reading ability. 380,000 young people living in poverty in the UK do not own a single book of their own – UK Reads is determined to change this shocking statistic by reaching 5000 children by this summer with books, reading activity packs and the literacy engagement they need. Sarah said: “If a child struggles to read an exam question, how can we expect them to pass? There are children approaching their GCSE’s who are at serious risk of becoming illiterate adults. Not to mention the younger children living in poverty who are starting school with vocabulary up to 19 months behind their more affluent peers. “World Book Day is one of the most fun days at school – my three boys love to dress up as their favourite characters and dive into wonderful stories. While the day will be different for most children this year, taking part with online school activities, they, just like my kids, will be reaching for their bookshelves and engaging in this lovely day. The reality for thousands of children however, those who live in poverty, is that they won’t be taking part with the same enthusiasm and this is why I am supporting ‘Before it’s too late’.” UK Reads is appealing for donations to help reach children with books and literacy support this year.
It’s time to shake up how we identify literacy difficulties
When you struggle to read it puts you at a potentially life-long disadvantage, says Bernadette McLean, so it’s time to look at new methods, such as AI, to help identify literacy difficulties. Literacy skills are fundamental to so much of school life and beyond, it is hard to comprehend that each year in the UK almost 148,000 children leave primary school unable to read to the expected standard. Maybe this figure would be easier to swallow if children were catching up during their time at secondary school. Unfortunately, despite a plethora of thoughtful initiatives and the huge amount of old-fashioned, sleeves-rolled-up hard work many schools put in to making this happen, there are still children whose reading ability stops progressing when they transfer to their senior school. It is far from uncommon for a young person to end up three or even more years behind his or her chronological reading age by the time they leave school. Those at the highest risk of being left behind in the literacy stakes are pupils with dyslexia, estimated to be about 10% of children in this country. In my view, these are some of the children who are being robbed of the pure pleasure of getting lost in a good story, as well as being placed at a massive disadvantage when it comes to attainment in exams, motivation, building self-esteem and engagement. As we already know early intervention through testing is by far the most effective approach to boosting reading skills and positively changing children’s life chances, what options do we have for changing how we do things? Time will tell A key thing to bear in mind is that testing a child’s reading skills, ability and comprehension is a very difficult task. There are a whole host of multifaceted cognitive and linguistic processes that come into play. Words being read are transformed into speech sounds, which connect to meaning by matching up with vocabulary or general language knowledge – but it’s not a linear process. All of these activities are part of an information loop which continuously feeds back to a child and strengthens itself over time. Regardless of this complexity, the most widely used reading tests are one-dimensional. It’s for this reason that the phonics test children take in Year 1 – and again in Year 2 if the previous year didn’t go so well – is widely regarded as being problematic. Teaching children to read single sounds or words doesn’t help check whether they can infer meaning or understand. As children grow older, then reading tests often focus on scoring comprehension. But again, a simple score doesn’t tell you how the child is reading, which means two children with the same score might often need very different types of intervention. Friendly algorithms An exciting development in the process of how we test reading and uncover literacy barriers is in the use of AI technology, which helps dig deeply into what is really going on when a child reads. Research on the relationship between reading and eye movements is constantly being updated but, with 5000 scientific studies behind it, the evidence base is strong – tracking eyes picks up minor differences in how the brain processes text on lexical (verbal), syntactic (word order), semantic (interpretation) and structural levels. Therefore, as we track how a child’s eye moves, it is possible to get a view of the linguistic processes going on inside that individual’s head. This reveals a large amount of information about the cognitive interplay and how different components work together. The same algorithms can also be used to highlight the risk of dyslexia, and other reading difficulties, without the need for long assessment times. Making a difference Such detailed information is enormously helpful in practical teaching terms. Imagine a graph with two axes, where horizontal is decoding and vertical is comprehension. Results from this AI testing from Lexplore Analytics can place children at a precise spot in terms of identifying the difficulties they are experiencing with reading, so the right interventions and support can be put into place to help them progress. This is important because methods that work well for non-dyslexic children may actually be confusing or potentially detrimental for those with reading difficulties. There are other benefits to using the latest technology tools to deliver more advanced assessment too, in terms of screening more quickly and allocating specialist teaching resources where they’re most needed. But the bottom line is that if we miss the opportunity to intervene when we can, and fail to ensure children are well equipped with the personalised strategies that are appropriate to their individual thinking style – thus enabling them to decrypt the reading code – then we risk severely letting those children down. This is not something that any of us wants to see happen. Bernadette McLean is an independent literacy consultant for Lexplore Analytics and was previously principal of The Helen Arkell Dyslexia Centre.
English as an additional language: literacy training
Katy Parkinson, founder and director of Lexonik by Sound Training, discusses how literacy training can improve the experience which academics have when attending UK universities… Academics with English as an additional language (EAL) can benefit greatly from literacy education programmes, which improve both their vocabulary when writing and their confidence in speaking to others. Many students who attend our universities who are not native English speakers find that, although there is no gap in their knowledge of the subject matter, they can struggle to keep up with classmates due to a language deficit. This is often caused by accents or dialects being too far away from ‘the mainstream,’ and can lead to a lack of confidence when it comes to speaking in seminars or reading course materials. We have found while working with Chinese students from Teeside University Business School, that our programme, Lexonik, had a profound impact on international learners. We found that following the training, which consisted of six hour-long sessions which took place over six weeks, the average reading age had increased by 27 months. When the reading age improves, this, in turn, improves the learners’ confidence when speaking to others on their course, and gives them the independence to become more literate, working out words on their own which they may not have come across during the course of their education. Literacy training focuses on roots of words Lexonik teaches literacy through a fast, fun version of Latin. It focuses on the roots of words and allows the students to build up words from their key elements, so they can learn what they mean, rather than just learning by rote. There is also a significant amount of recapping and reinforcing, to work at the pace of both the fastest and slowest learners. One of the dangers educators can fall into, when teaching literacy adult learners, is using childish course materials. It is important not to come across as patronising, and to respect the learner rather than insulting their intelligence. For this reason, we specifically tailor our course materials to be adult-friendly, and our students responded well to this. It is important to remember when providing training to all EAL students, particularly those in academia, that we are aiming to plug a language gap, not a knowledge gap. Just as if you went abroad to study, and did not speak the language, you would bring with you a suite of skills and experience, so do these students. They must be supported to be curious, engaged, and feel like they are understood and respected, just as we educators would expect ourselves. See lexonik.co.uk for the range of literacy training available from primary schools upwards.
How Bookbuzz promotes a love for literature
QA Education magazine editor Victoria Galligan speaks to the team at Bookbuzz about how they engage young people with reading and promote a love for literature… How and when did Bookbuzz begin? Bookbuzz is a reading programme suitable for school children aged 11 – 13, regardless of their reading ability or learning needs. Developed by BookTrust, the UK’s largest children’s reading charity, we support schools to encourage reading for pleasure. The programme began in 2012. Five years on, over 150, 000 students from years seven and eight take part every year, receiving their own book to take home and keep. Who funds the programme? Thanks to the support of the Bookbuzz authors and children’s publishers, schools can buy Bookbuzz at the subsidised cost of £3 per student; receiving one book for every student, picked by them, 34 brilliant books for the school and a pack of practical resources including posters, bookmarks and tips to encourage reading for pleasure. Bookbuzz offers students the element of choice, allowing them to find the right book for them and get excited about books and reading. Where does the programme operate? Bookbuzz can be purchased by schools in England and Northern Ireland. Can you give some examples of your success stories? From running ‘book-tasting’ sessions, to getting heads of year to battle it out and make the case for their favourite book, we’re amazed by the dynamic ways schools approach choosing their books. And that’s so vital. Reading’s a really sociable thing – and this is a great way to get students talking about books. “Once my students have all chosen a book, I tell them about Bookbuzz Breakfast! I invite Year 7 to attend a ‘breakfast’ in the LRC. During the breakfast, selected pupils will stand up and read a passage from their chosen book to whet their classmates’ appetites…When all the food is gone, I give out the books and students settle down to read their book until break time.” “It’s a great way to make being part of Bookbuzz feel really special. After the breakfast students often come and borrow the books they did not choose.” Clare Thompson, Learning Resource Manager What plans do you have for 2019? An expert panel including school librarians, teachers and children’s booksellers are currently selecting the 2019 titles and we are looking forward to announcing them in May. Every year we see teachers and librarians using Bookbuzz in ever more creative ways to build a buzz around reading for pleasure in their schools. We can’t wait to see the programme in action in September 2019. To find out more about BookTrust’s Bookbuzz programme visit: booktrust.org.uk
Picture News – taking the weekly news agenda into schools
The 24/7 news cycle, social media and ‘fake news’ make it hard for even the savviest to keep up with what’s really happening in the world. Picture News is the simple yet brilliant new resource that enables schools to encourage children to question what they hear and read, to think around key issues and topics and develop ‘healthy’ news mindsets. The Picture News team consists of qualified teachers. Each week they choose the latest big news story, turn it into a vibrant A2 poster with a thought-provoking question and create an assembly plan with British values, Key Stage1 and Key Stage2 focus cards. The materials are available to schools as a download or printed and posted direct to the school. Promoting British values Since 2014, teachers must promote five key British values and their promotion is inspected by Ofsted. To achieve ‘outstanding’ status schools must engage with and promote these values in a meaningful way and the Picture News service builds consideration and discussion of these values into all of their teaching materials. Picture News is the brainchild of Early Years educational expert Katie Harrison, a mother of 3, based in Yorkshire and a former primary school teacher. Katie specialises in teaching Philosophy and Religious Education and is passionate about helping children understand and think critically about life’s big questions and issues. She also worked for a number of years in Education Sales and Training and founded Picture News with her partner Rob Harrison in 2015. Since launching the service has gone from strength to strength with more than 1500 schools signed up. The Picture News service is available in three levels suitable for: Early Years Primary School, and Years 7, 8 and 9 Schools can subscribe to the Picture News service as a hard-copy or email service with prices ranging from as little as £50 per year for email only access, to £300 per year for the full service where they receive posters and all materials in the post and via email each week. For more information on Picture News, see the website here.