WEBVTT - This file was automatically generated by VIMEO. Please email info@talestoolkit.com to report problems. Welcome to the September Tells Toolkit webinar and I'm really excited 'cause today we've got Sarah Kingham with us. Just a few things before we get started, um, a big welcome back because I know you've all started a new term. You've got new children, you're settling in all these new children. It's probably that you're absolutely knackered. I know there's lots of other teachers. If you feel a little bit like this, give me a shout out and say yes. Um, I know the teachers I'm coming across that are having their Friday slumps on the sofa. So yeah, I hope the term has got a really good start for you. And I just want to say as well to all the schools out there that are recommending tells Talk a big thank you 'cause we're having lots of people that are coming in now and asking for tell's toolkit based on recommendations from other schools. So a really big thank you. No, we don't wanna think about the mountain that you've got to climb that's ahead of you. We're gonna count down to a half term. Um, but just a bit of a shout out for you. We have opened a Facebook group and that's got all the schools that are using Tell's Toolkit. So if you go onto Facebook and have a look, it's called Talk in Tales Toolkit. And if you send me your email, I'll accept you into that group. And that's for everybody using Tales Toolkit so you can chat with other schools and share the work that you're doing. And it's a place really that you can show off all the amazing work that you've been up to. We are gonna be talking to Sarah today. Sarah King and Sarah Kingdom's. Got loads of great experience. She's worked as a primary English advisor. She's worked as a Dsy head in a large school. She's worked as a national keynote speaker. She's an author and also she's been an early advisor for years now with Hearts for Learning. Um, so um, she's got loads of experience and also she started her own company called Read It Too. And I imagine she'll be telling you a little bit about that when she's talking. Charlotte's just asking please will you say again where we sign in? That's for Talk in Tells Toolkit. If you put talk in tells Toolkit into the search in Facebook, then it should come up and it looks a little bit like this when it pops up. So you should be able to easily find that. So I'm gonna hand over to Sarah now. Hello Everybody. It's nice to meet you. Uh, my name's Sarah Kingham as Kate said. I'm I'm, I'm the founder of Readit two. It's uh, a preschool literacy program. It's like, it's not the same as um, uh, not the same as Kate's about in the same way, but it's about just making sure we get parents and professionals to read stories to children so that when they start school they understand what story is and an know to book is. And one of my passions is how children learn to write. Back a very long time ago when I was a young teacher, uh, I started teaching in Hackney and then I taught in Crete and then I taught in paring and then I taught in Ton Forest where as an English advisory teacher for five years. And I then came out to Hart as as a deputy head of a primary school. I then taught in a nursery school for two years and then I took over a nursery class in infant school. And the last in excess of 15 years, I've been, um, an early years advisor. So I've had quite a lot of experience visiting schools and settings, working with practitioners in all sorts of ways. Um, what I'm gonna share with you today is some of my experience about how children become iterate. Um, and I know this is a webinar, but I'd really appreciate it if you all had a pencil and paper. Mimi, have you ever got one? Because we're gonna have a little of fun to get us going. That's the program that I've set up that um, I'm believe passionately in. It doesn't have anything to it. It just has um, a one-to-one, um, experience reading with children in in preschools and nurseries and reception classes that most vulnerable. They get that one to one they not. But to move on, what I'd like you to do now is please take a tool, take a pencil, things, everybody and I want, I'm gonna show you something, I'm show you that. And what I would like you to do, if you don't have a pencil, use your finger Kates right on a piece of paper. Copy that down with your non-preferred hand. Yes. Why do you think it's shaky and disjointed? Charlotte Charlotte's saying it's shaky and disjointed. How did it feel? Not comfortable. And that's, and that's because you don't exercise those muscles on a regular basis. It's because you are not actually using that so often. So their new muscles that are being held and tensed up. Exactly. I asked you and you do what I told that's correct and children do it. But when you were looking, can I ask a next question? You did that because I asked you and that's what children do. They do things but they don't know why. Why did you write that? I mean, do you know what it says? Which I told you about my career and where I've been working? I taught in Greece for a year and a half. I speak Greek, so that's Greek. So it has meaning for me. And one of the things we know about children and learning is that they try, they our children are meaning makers. Everything they do, they do because it matters to them and they're trying to understand and comprehend it. That was Greek for good morning. And for me it brings back a little warm glow in my heart 'cause it reminds me of the time I live there and holidays I've had there makes me happy. But sometimes when we ask children to do things and they don't know why they do them without the same level of passion or heart and therefore the motivation isn't the same level. Do you know, um, when you were writing it, did you have to keep it in your hand or head up and down to orientate those shapes? Because it's not the same alphabet that we have. And what we know is that if children are asked to do things that they struggle with or they don't understand or they can't do, it doesn't come as easily as when they do understand what they're doing and why they're doing it. And one of the key things I want to share with you today when we talk about children learning to write is the important things we have to actually understand without meaning. Yes, you're right, purely talking about any meaning. Um, but all of us have things to say. We, we all, we all want to write what we want to write. And often at school teachers and head teachers and, and all sorts of people say, well, today we're all going to learn about not now Bernard, we're all gonna write a story about not now Bernard. And sometimes children don't want to do that 'cause not now. Bernard actually doesn't resonate well with them because they not very much happens at home when particular member of the family reads, not now Bernard. And therefore they, they don't come with the same open heart they can learn. And what we have to be aware of when we ask children to write is lots of things. We have to be aware that formation of spelling and letter sounds doesn't necessarily come at the same time as the ability to hold the tool does, as the, as the knowledge of what you want to say. All those things all have to come together at the same time for you to be a fluent writer. It doesn't mean you can't compose. So the difference between transcription and composition. And so I'm going to just go through a fu slides and share with you that these kind of activities, when you see children playing outside, and I know we all know it, are actually lending themselves with growth, motor control stuff to learning and, and sufficiently fine motor control. And mustn't, mustn't stop children doing these kind of things to give them a greater emphasis on, on writing. These things rolling around really matter. And all these kind of activities help children 'cause writing is a very, very complex process. It's about having something to say, knowing which way to, to orientate the letters that adults can see. And letters are complex. A, a, b, a d, A-G-A-Q-A-P-A six, a nine, all basically a ball and a stick. And to have made the effort to form them. When your body isn't even mature enough for you to hold the tool without it hurting you a little bit like you were doing earlier and you are holding your hand and and trying to hold it tight to copy that word, it's uncomfortable, it hurts you sometimes. And if you're having to do that all day long and your body is not ready for you to do it, we're going to get an emotion or response to that activity which says, I don't like it. When we ask children, we should not be asking children on a regular basis to write things that only we have an interest in or full stop if all the marks they make are wobbly, squirrely, spider, spider legs across the page. So I hope by the end of the session what you'll get from me is that it's really important the response you give to children, how and what you say to children matters enormously. The response you give when they've tried to write 'cause the effort that they've put into it is so enormous. So what I want to share with you is that when we are talking about children in poverty, if they're being given lots of experiences at school that are going to go against, um, against their biological development. So the physiological development is saying, I'm finding this hard holding this tool and they've got lots of other things happening against them. So they're from a low income family, they, they haven't got the right vocabulary and language, they're not actually going to be successful at learning to write. And what they need is us as the adults who are the expert writers to do majority of the writing for them. I'm just going to whiz through some statistics. 'cause I think if we understand particularly for vulnerable children, that actually some of these things don't flow as naturally as we might lack them to flow. So describing for children utterly vital and it's, and it's the number one thing that we do to teach children with writing. What we need to do is plan opportunities for children to have every single day, um, opportunities to to, to explore and develop their fine motor control. And for some children that means developing their, their gross motor control, not their fine motor control. And the fine motor control will only be developed, say through playing with playdoh or with their fingers in paint. Lots of different things that don't involve a writing tool. And, but in instead, adults still scribing what matters to them because learning to write is actually a, is like learning to read. It's a journey from independence to independence with the help and support of another gradually withdrawn. Donald Graves wrote that at least 30 years ago now, and he's the guru on how children learn to write. What what he actually says is that what we shouldn't do is just say to a child, go over there and write that when actually the process is so complex. So if we revisit that process of what you did when you were at call You, you did what I asked you 'cause you're on a training course and children at school are in school and they will do what you asked 'em to do. But if I tell you how many times I visit classrooms where children or teachers decided to ask children to write on Monday, red group on Tuesday, blue group, and often the groups go down in order and by Friday it's the children that really can't write, they can't hold the tool. And just as spiders, mark has been left on the page. I once went into a classroom and it was about this time in the September turn with little boy, literally his fourth birthday at the end of August. And I went up and said, whatcha doing here? He said, I can't do it. I said, yes you can. Whatcha doing? Whatcha trying to do? Well, you have to write about sandwiches. He said, oh, what's your favorite sandwich? I don't like sandwiches. What do you like? I let f And I said, well, are you going write about that? He said, and I can't write it hurt my hand. So I just sat down and wrote and wrote it. And I discussed with the teacher later what we, what we should try and avoid doing is giving all children the same thing to do. And we have to hold onto the fact that children are all unique. And that's why we live with great joy. I say this in inside the EYFS, the only piece of legal, of legal legislative education and doctrine. EYS is the only thing that we are, it is compulsory for us all to follow and we have to follow the unique child. So we shouldn't be asking some children to write if their hands can't hold the tools and they haven't got, or the ability to, to construct things there 'cause actually, and then we have to ask 'em to write about things that don't interest them because everyone else is writing about it. We have to know what the children need. And what we have to do really is know what, what writers need. And writing is made up of two components. Transcription, which is the physical component, the secretarial side of writing and composition, the intellectual. Now most children have got something to say 'cause we all, we live in a world of story and they do have a story to say. But again, the story shouldn't be about, um, what they've done at home. It shouldn't be the old fashioned show and tell that's the wrong story. The story needs to be about what's the child can actually have a view on and say, when we talk about how children actually learn to write what it means to learn to write, writing needs the following. It needs confidence and competence in speaking and listening. It requires a good vocabulary and a well-developed auditory memory. It requires a familiarization with written language, which you only get through hearing. And the the repeating of favorite stories, it it, it requires knowledge of letter names and shapes. And again, lots of children with the phonic programs that are out there but only can enter year one, some of them. And they dunno what the letter names are. So if you're working with nursery children, it's a really good idea to just tell the children that, that, um, that this is the, this is an A and if you, if it's necessary, tell them it sounds like it sounds like, but actually tell them the letter names much better. They enter reception with a great knowledge of the letter names. So reception teachers can teach the phonics of the sounds fresh and new and build on the letter knowledge of the so for writing. Just why some of them won't be able to write this time and term with an understanding of the phonic knowledge involved in connecting with spoken words into written words. And that's really hard and you really only have that and you when you know what pH and are and spelling is. And you've had lots and lots of stories and books exposed to you. So a really good way of doing that is a shared piece of writing on a daily basis, on an easel on paper, not on an IWV, not when your hand covers it. And, and the children can't see what you just were doing actually on paper. Um, and that's really, really powerful. So finally, the last thing that writers and writing requires is an ability to hear the sounds of the English language and understanding the ways in which speech sounds are represented in writing. So in a way that's what phase one phonics is about. It's about children needing to learn to listen. It's about music movement and memory storytelling, learning from print and tuning into sound from a logical awareness, knowing why the realization the work can be taken apart and put back together. Only really once a child can hear, say, and remember a range of sounds, are they ready to link those sounds to particular letters and groups of letters and actually write. Now I say all those things, but that's when I'm talking if you like, about directed writing. And what I would say is that as long as you are teaching, writing and teaching, writing is about scribing and voicing what you are doing at the same time. Um, so I had a slide here on transcription, but I know that actually a lot of you know about the work of Alice Bryce cle. So I'm not going to go over that. Just to suffice to say that if a child can hold their body weight, like this piece of research that's been done, um, but I did a long time ago and it really does work, is if a child can hold their body weight for up to five seconds like that and they can draw a diamond starting at the same point in both directions, that usually means that they can write and orientate all the letters in the alphabet that they like to leave when they come to write. And you can then direct them just to write if they can't do all those things, actually what it's saying is that you should let them explore writing and guide them and put your arm around their shoulder and help them to do it. You shouldn't ask them to do lots and lots and lots of writing for you when it's your agenda because it's gonna hurt them. And the memory there is going to be an associated memory. But that's something we don't like, unfortunately, we know particularly with boys that their brains are very active but their physiological development slots in later. So what we don't want to do is actually force things that then go against their, their physiological development. So just to throw a few quick pictures out, some of the things we might want to do, like to develop finger skills in hartfordshire, something that we created many years ago was something called Pji, P-H-Y-S-I-G yn. Um, Charlotte, I think you're probably correct, but I think what you're gonna find is that a child can draw across, but I bet you they can't then draw a C and a Z and an S. Whereas if you get them to draw a a, um, a, a thrombus if you like, and you start at the top and you bring, and you don't move the hand off the page and you bring it down and up back to the top and you then do it left ways or using all the muscles in the hand so that therefore it's easy for them to draw all the letters. Uh, so here's just opportunities of things you can do to help children before they actually master the actual, the pen on paper bit composition is a little bit like, um, composition is creating beyond what you are able to physically write yourself. So having, having what you say shaped by practitioners through the, the verbal conversation, the asking children what they're doing and and, and having that written down for yourself and others to read. So it's having practitioners listen to you and scribe your ideas and that's what's really important, having, having ideas shaped. So one of the things that I regularly do with children when I visit schools, it sounds really awful what I'm gonna say, but when I do it before Austin, when I've asked to go and help someone, when I go in at course three, what I'd often do is find a child who is playing any child and playing anything. And I'd ask them what they were doing and what their game doing. I get really excited and then I'd say to them, so tell me your story. And they'd say it's a monster and he's going up to the moon, can answer a question when he goes to the moon, does he wear pajamas? And I wait for the child to think and process it and then I'd say, well what color are they? Are they stripy or spotty? And then I might ask him, does he go to birthday parties as your minster, take a present? I ask him lots of close questions for the child to think. And then once the child's done, lots of processing and they start to laugh at me, I often describe what they've said and I, and I summarize what they've said, but I've shaped it through my questions. I summarize it intimately, depending on the unique of the child might be five words, it might be three lines. And I get make sure that as I write it in front of them on a piece of paper, I'd write one word. So my, so that verbalize what, what's happening next? My, and I say it's having space after that my space monster. So my monster something about your monster, my monster and the space wears. And I'll tell them where I stashed on the page and I show them as I model that I'm moving my, my my words across the page until I get to the end. And I get to the end. I'll say, oh gosh, I've run outta paper. Do you know where I go next? And I might go back and I might go, I might tell them or I might just float naturally depending on what ability the child has. But the key for children is to have adults who shape and describe what what you are trying to say. So when I'm working with teachers, I encourage them to plan what they want to do. And one of the things I always encourage teachers to do if this teacher's here has done it is, is plan for time to talk. And so in an adult directed teaching time, when you maybe have some holding tasks, the holding tasks might be you might direct a group of children to go over there and on the table you put things you know that would interest them. And you ask 'em just to chat and story care it shape it if you like. And because you have been doing story shaping with the children, the children know how to help it with each other. So the more you are saying to children, tell me about that. But not just waiting things to come back. Then being curious and making suggestions, asking them what what's going on. A bit about that final analogy with the, um, the monster and wearing pajamas and go to the moon and what presents might take to a birthday party. Those kind of things. If you are interested in knowing a bit more about that, if you look at my read it two, um, online and on YouTube there's a clip of film one's called Conversations with Books and it's how you get children to talk about that. How when children do talk, you leave enough time for 'em to process what the ideas they're trying to say, but also how you can encourage them by suggestion. My view of visiting lots of schools is that suggestion is the one thing that teachers often feel is cheating. And as long as you don't, um, make them do something, but you make suggestion like, would you like to do this? Or you ask them questions like I just illustrated suggestions, a really good way of of taking those interactions, which are the primary way children learn through the way we communicate with them. Um, and even if we just have a little conversation and let them fly our interactions and suggestions is the one aspect that often people forget to forget to put in directing children in child initiated before, not in child initiated learning in adult direction to talk to each other with particular resources is a lovely way when you've model that. So what what what children actually need in order to be good writers is practitioners who talk with them enriching their voc vocabulary. But in adult directive it's really important that we don't stand back sometimes that we do just carry on talking. There's now new research out to say that more chatty mothers, the more chatty a child's mother is, the more the more neural pathways are connected. And that's really interesting, isn't it? So if mom doesn't stop da from birth onwards, the child is at all. Interestingly, there's also research published very recently. I only found it maybe, I don't know, about six months ago, that babies hear words even when they're asleep from adults who they know whose voices of the, and you are right Kate Charlotte talk with and not at absolutely, I feel I'm talking actually at the moment. But that's, that's obviously how it has to be. And let me tell you what Professor Michael Rutter says. He says, he talks about the plasticity of the brain. Um, the healthy child has the highest synaptic di density. What he says is that the brain, how the brain work developed is, is hinged on a complex interplay between genes and experience. And that the early experiences we have in our life have a decisive impact on the architecture of our brain. And then it becomes the nature and the capacity of who we are as adults. So what he's, one of his key things is he says early interactions don't just create a context, they directly affect the way the brain is wired. And brain development is nonlinear of quite different kinds of knowledge and skills. What we, what we need to know is that if we don't give them big words, they won't know about those big words. If when we're talking to children, we don't, if they come up with say, talk about a dog, we need to know that they our job. Sometimes it's about that enrich that vocabulary in order of them to become iterate readers and writers. And if they talk about a dog, maybe they also, we need to tell them about the comma and the poor and the vet and, and the, the tail and use other vocabulary. We, it's our job to enrich those children's vocabulary. Only when they have a rich vocabulary, well they know other words to use when they want to make choices in writing it is important. It is important that we remember our powerful role in talking with children. Listening to children is something lots that people don't do. On my read it to training, I do a lot of work on the tune that listening as well as on emotional development and on how children learn to read and the children learn to write. So it's a, it's a training program for practitioners. If anyone's interested in learning more about that, it's something I deliver on my program, but it also is about how adults spend 10 minutes in the most, um, productive way on a one-to-one level child was disadvantaged or who needs adults and learn to talk to them. Lots of children, you know, when I've done training, I've discovered have never been lots of adults, don't have never been heard, dunno what to do that to be listened to when I've done the activities. I've done this training, I've had adults crying because that's the first time they've ever been listened to. So listening to children is important and you are right Charlotte. So important not to presume children know things. I was recently, if you have an opportunity and you're interested, going to look at my films online. On my, on my read it to channel on Harry's story. Harry was in as part of the my two program. He was in preschool in play playgroup and he had lots of stories read to him through playgroup, none at home. Um, but he'd had Diaz Zoo read to him for a year on and off on a daily basis for a year when he went into nursery and I finally read it to him, he was getting more confidence. I hadn't seen him for a while. And he came up to me and I said, where did we find the, where did we find this animals? Do you think it was a lion or a tiger who just said to me on the farm because the nursery had just taken him to the farm. Um, and he presumed all animals lived on a farm and he had no idea what his zoo was. My view is if you have iwb in your classrooms, one of the things I tell all my teachers in child in shared learning, you should turn it off for reading and writing and drawing. And you should not always, but often have it, have it off or have it on just to stream, um, bits of film, of other parts of the world that might never have seen. So if you are talking and doing work on animals, don't presume they know that an animal might live in a, in a jungle, they wouldn't even know what a jungle is. So it's really important that we actually contextualize these things, you know. And so lots of not lots teach I've worked with, if they're setting up a role play and it's going to be about a sea scene, they might actually stream some boats and water so children can see and get a context for their play and develop their language and ine adults engaged by talking about that as well. So what what children need is practitioners to understand the physical skills. I'm gonna go through this very quickly. Good gross motor control, strong risks, strong fingers, the ability to draw a diamond. They also need practitioners who really recognize this, the massive significance in the daily story time. Um, yes and Kate's right, there's lots and lots of description language tells toolkits why I'm working with them coming in 'cause I love it. Really imperative not to remove the story time. So many children don't have stories at home anymore. 19% of parents admitted of underage that they don't read to children every day, 19%. And yet we know that reading to children enhances everything. Knowledge, language. Um, and here we've got, you know, reread and reenact favorite stories. Children can learn toolkit, but they need those daily, they need practitioners support children is to play with language and laugh. We teachers who and practitioners who understand the phonemic stages children go through as well, they need to learn phonics, but only a fun and enthusiastic and interesting way. And it's important in your graphics area always to have lots and lots of environmental print put up on the wall. You know, encouraging little children, three, four and five year olds a weekend for encouraging their parents to bring environment print into nursery or reception is, it's so easy, it's not difficult. And Charlotte, you are right. Storytelling schools is less and less as results take over. But do you know what? You get better results if you read stores every day with no question of it. And what we're spending little time after doing now is promoting story, reading a quick story at the beginning of day book that might take three or four minutes and then four children go home a good 20 minutes every day. And individual children who we know don't have stories at home should be getting that in in your schools with you. So they need practitioners who support them as they develop into writers. And and that comes through scribing for them, articulating the process, the writings go through. So shared writing as as a, as a as a as a class every day when now as a teacher, when I took early years, every single day I wrote, I wrote a sentence in the board. It might just be, it is raining Jovi's five today we like ice cream, but I wrote it every day and the children will help me. And I'm sure that when I was able to do it, I was able to do this. This is the handout I want to share with you. Really the majority of you know of, of the session is that shared writing. And I wrote this handout 26 years ago when I was delivering training for the English advisory teacher. So what I understood about what shared writing is, and I've delivered training on shared writing right up to um, secondary school. So I have been into loads secondary school departments in Harre and I've gone into SCS section to talk how children learn to write. You can't just sit down and make a child in a blank piece of paper, right? Even with infants and even with tiny children, even with children we work with, we should never just present them with an a four piece of white paper and ask them to write never. We should always have a range of different sorts of papers on the table. Tiny mini ones, long strips of paper, different colors, sometimes not always, um, but definitely different sizes and different shapes. And we should always give them a choice of what they'd like to write on. So exercise books, you know, sorry, the first response an adult ever should make to a child when they write is the response to what that child tried to say. And only after that should the response be to the conventions, the transcription, the conventions of written English. Because if every time you a child has shared a piece of writing with an adult, the first thing you adults said was, oh good, you've written an STI and we're doing those spellings today. Or join good and you wrote in the right order or you've written that one the right way round, the child won't want to write again. And so it's really, really important that when we are teaching children to write that we ourselves model you make mistakes, which is why imperative as an adult, right? A sentence a day, particularly in reception in nurse, I always say twice a week didn't take more than five to 10 minutes to do. But you just talk about where you start and you talk about the directionality in line. You talk about spaces between words, full starts, letters. Now, the reason I say this is that some children get it, they just get it 'cause they're into it and they haven't had any negative stuff. My own daughter, my youngest, um, she had really good fine motor control from a terribly young age, but her best friend who was a boy who was born through it before her and still best friend and they're 21 now, George couldn't write anything. Um, so Kitty didn't need to be told about the directionality in the spaces because her ability to write meant that she could do it. 'cause she had good fine motor control and she was a really early reader and she saw it 'cause she was having stories read to her constantly. But children don't get it. And the handwriting's ginormously large, you know, shouldn't be told with a space, a finger space between their words. Because some children have ginormous fingers when they're talking in comparison to the pencil and they do really big letters. And when they move into being, um, actually writing properly, you, you'll know which child's being told to put a finger space because they have little word, big space, a little word, big space, little word, big space. But they need verbalizing things. So sometimes need it to be verbalized to them. There are no harm in verbalizing it to the whole class when you are doing it. Also, when you're writing words up there, talk about words within words. You can talk about families within words. You can put your finger over a word and say, look, I can see in inside that word. I wonder if you can find any words like that when you are looking at words. So there's so many things you can do when you are sharing writing, when you are scribing for children. And what then happens is that teachers in, in the program that I've done lots of work on and har on writing, what are you doing this weekend? You can write a sentence up there and then children want to help out. They want to come and write it. This is a place for writing on a whiteboard and photograph of what the children have said. And as you can see, they want to say things 'cause every day they've seen those things written. And here's an example that I've showing before about some children who were doing construction. And the teacher would actually put up a clip behind them of a water scene to give the construction value. And then at the end of that process, the teacher was able to write with a child very slowly word by word, we have made a submarine. This all came from child initiated learning. We need a roof, we need some windows. We need something to see in the submarine rot, Maddy. So the children have done that based on their story and their interests. And when you are scribing for children during child initiated learning, 'cause it's their learning and they love it, they're far more motivated to want to do it again. Again, again, much higher levels of engagement when it comes from them. You are right Kate. They do have that. Then when you display it there and another adult comes in, that child can read it. 'cause it wasn't written all at once. It wasn't we have made a submarine, it was we space. What do we say again? We, what do you say next? We have, okay, we space, we have, what do you wanna say next? We have made, we have made, we have made a we have made a submarine. I'm gonna put full stop in there because you just said that the end of the sentence. What's the next one Begin with, with we again, we, we space. We space need a let's go back. We have made this up. We need so process. Um, slowly going through it, slowly they remember it. So what some of the things I used to do in and tiled off the quite so much. Now I would go in and I would write something like that down with a child the day before the inspection, maybe not nearly so long, maybe just the first five words. We made a submarine and i I make it so much value, I'd take it to the trimmer and I'd decorate it around the outside of the child mite. I'd mount it on black sugar paper that you can see up teacher's seat. Go and get a paintbrush and wrap it in ribbon blue tap right next to it as a special pointing marker. And then I'll make the child read it back to the class. So all about adults, I've asked their parent or parent to come in and read it back to them. And the next day I'd say to the teacher, when oted come in, what you actually do is you say, oh, yesterday and Maddie did a lovely bit of writing here and he what your story write yesterday. Tell everybody child will go over with their pointed stick point to all the words. Slowly read it back. And then I'd say, if anyone else wants to make a submarine, we've got some enhancements for the child and she learning here and you could do this, this, and this. And the osted would always come back and say fantastic use of ascribing children's ideas in children shared learning to support them in their literacy development. So when you do it like that, it has context and meaning and children are meaning makers and searching for meaning. That's what we have to do. Okay, here's a story I went in to help, um, a teacher and she said she struggled sometimes with children shared learning. And the boys got so boisterous with the, with the construction and no one else was really allowed to go there. And she never knew how to take it on. I took that picture and I went up little girl and I said, what's going on here then? And she said to me, those pirates aren't gonna land in my island. Said no, they really aren't. I said, what's gonna do about it? She said, that's what I don't know. So I said, come on, let's go. Let's just go and let's go and write a poster saying, um, keep our pirates. And she said, but I can't write. She said, but guess what? I can went find the biggest bigger sugar paper could. And we, so, so eventually between those two blocks of paper and we were, you should have seen the boys, this is, this is in October of reception year. And they were really shocked and they said, we can write. And as you can see by those images, they haven't got good finance motor control. Their, their pencil control wasn't good because that was, that's their, and they were passionate about telling their story and see them having scripted it. And then later another little boy done news and I said, wow, that's amazing. What is it? And he was telling me to, I asked permission, I said, would you mind if I wrote down what they are? Can I write some labels because I don't really know often like that to know what it was. And he told me, steering wheel, there's a flag and that's the bottom of the ship. But we wrote it word by word like I just showed you. The teacher did this, these children's passion, particularly boys for writing was really, really powerful. And they were wanting to to learn. And over time what we found was if you write most of the sentence and read one little word 'cause you think they newly can do it later on in the school year, they start filling it in and getting more confidence. So it's a lovely way of incompetence to children. And here we have another child. This was about four children all having different bits, but each of those children could read their little words so they could read the pirate bit. And Naomi's Sea monster. So it's four different children working together. And she and she put this up on the board and the children adored it and it was sharing with everybody. And I went back to visit the school seven weeks later and each child could tell me exactly what was going on in those pictures. So what often is good to have is just having paper apps so that children can have a go when you've done scribing. Um, and, and what you'll find is children who become interested to summarize supporting children in writing. I, I believe that a good thing to do is to get children excited about writing or writing. And so we need to plan activities to develop children's spoken language and know that our job is to enrich that vocabulary, not just reinforce what they give us. We have to sometimes teach other words, do some what we do in har Sure we take some pop music, uh, a piece of music that the teacher, the practitioner enjoys and we do upper body stuff in the classroom to music also in the midline and developing the fine motor control. Um, I believe we should do five a day. And that is read five books repeatedly through the day so that you can have moments maybe when they first come in after you've done active learning, before you start a group time, you quickly read a quick text. It doesn't have to be a long one, but just enough and have key text you read regularly. My feeling is that drawing, if you can get children to do it with their fingers, with paintbrushes in sand and with pencils and felt pen, doing some drawings every day is useful Scribing for children, shared writing, book making and giving options to write in meaningful context in role play. And I haven't deliberately haven't done that today because obviously I could take two days to do training and writing. Um, and opportunities for practitioners describe for children and engage with them during their play. Thank, thank you Sarah. So has anybody got any questions they'd like to ask? Sarah, do you want to just chat through what your program is? The read it too? Okay. Yeah. So read it too. What I do is I train teachers and teaching assistants and preschool leaders who work with the two to four, two to 5-year-old age grade on how children become literate. So I give a lot of the background on how children learn to read. Um, and actually there are ways they, things that they need and, and ways that we can support them. Uh, the first response Charlotte to a child's writing should be, um, to what they've tried to say. And you should only ever write on a piece of work if the child actually, if you've asked permission, sometimes the child doesn't know what they've said and then, then the question is what should you say? And you should just go back to where they were and talk about things with them. And you should be pleased that they've made an attempt. But once they have no, they, they need a response onto the content, otherwise you will turn them off. And motivation's the biggest button that can be turned off a lot. Mm-Hmm. So that, that's really important. That's, It fits, it fits really well actually what we say in training for, because we talk about the fact that often a child will go to a teacher and the first response from a teacher is about think spaces or capital letters or full stop. Absolutely. And it really shouldn't be. Yeah. No, No. And then it kind of takes away that whole purpose for writing, which is really important. Does, Yeah. So yeah, it's great to hear you say that. Yeah. It's so important that it's about what the child wanted to say. So back to my reading program. So read it two, uh, trains adults to inspire Children to love reading and learning. Um, so basically what I found out was I felt pregnant when I was adept on just finishing being an advisory teacher before I became ad deputy of large primary school in Harre. And my daughter was reading The Guardian at three years, three months. But I never talked did phonics with that. And I never hot house her. I worked full time and the child mind, I didn't do anything. All I did was in those brief moments I had with her was talk about everything in the same way I would, I would, when I was talking to her about do Kota and bending down, I would talk to her about words in books and as we walk down the road, I point things out and I made loads of little homemade books with her, took pictures of our family members and would describe on them who they were. And I talked about things in a very natural way, unpacking the shopping. I'd talk about the letter, what the things, what she thought might be inside a tin and talk about pictures, tell you something, but so do what? And she was such a good reader. I was fascinated how that happened. But I loved story time and she did as well. What was interesting was that when I then um, became an early years advisor, when I started working in nurseries and schools and preschool settings, there were lots of occasions when I thought just, just reading stories to children and verbalizing those things would help all these children. And then I began doing lots and lots of research. So my read it to program is based on lots and lots of research. Mm-Hmm. For example, less than 6% of parents and preschool teachers, leaders, adults, any of us ever point at words when we're reading on a one-to-one with children. Yeah. So children learn, some children learn to think that those squiggly things are unimportant because we've ignored them, but they're present. But a parent wouldn't ignore a plug socket that was on, they'd go and say Don't touch that. The plug socket my program is about is about that. So where it's been implemented and have the greatest levels of success are in primary schools where they have preschool on, on site or alternatively they have a, a deputy of a nursery and I'm doing some work in ham soon and school doesn't even have either of those. They want to start it in reception. And I've got schools who are doing it in reception year one and year two we train teaching systems up to year six and they're relieved from their duties up there for half an hour a day and they come down to the nursery Mm-Hmm. Or 20 minutes a day and they have a daily one-to-one reading experience with a child. Mm-Hmm. Obviously from who's been received pupil premium, but also have a children whose parents maybe are too engrossed with their professional lives to spend much time with them. Yeah. And they and they want an emotional attachment. Yeah. So if you're interested in my Readit two program, um, please have a look at my website. And there's a little film on there of the schools. I've done quite like it. Mm-Hmm. And um, I'm really excited to be doing it And it's great to hear all the things you've been saying today. 'cause when you talk about story scribing and giving the children a chance to talk things through, I think that fits with a lot of the work that's going on in schools with people using Tell's Toolkit. So I don't know what people think about how this fits in with Tell's Toolkit and how you're using it already. Because I know Sarah's been into school and you've seen TeleTalk at being used, haven't You? I've seen it in operation and I really liked it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is why we got to get to get together as well. That's we got together. Yeah. So it's been really because we met first at Teach First and we've met at Enable conference and, and um, and you've been through to sharing a nursery and seen there. I've seen it. Yeah. It was lovely to watch and it's a fantastic structure for children. It's fantastic structure and they need that structure and the children who have no stories at home need to even more. Yes. And the work of Don Holdaway, he does so much stuff and you know, um, recently I was really fortunate to have been included in a book that John Richland wrote for United Kingdom Literacy Association. One of the things I did in the late eighties when I was teaching myself, I was working with advisory teachers both in Hackney and in Harringay where I worked on how to improve children's writing. I began collecting all the children's, um, writing that they'd ever done. So Alex, when you were talking Alexandro talking about Donald Graves, if you know back his work about starting, when you say reception, you want your two children, instead of telling him to write about making sandwiches, you actually ask them to start with just to talk with someone else what they'd like to write. And you model all the sorts of things people can write. Shopping lists, first invitations, letters, all the things people do write. 'cause most people don't write stories every day. They do other things. They have a story to tell our lives stories. And we finish this webinar, we tell someone else about what we've done. We're telling a story. It is a story. He says, you start with a very small piece of paper and you let a child just make a weekly mark on it that they can remember what it is they want to say because the process of writing's really hard. They've got to remember what it is they want to say. Plus they've gotta remember to move their pen from left to right and the end of the page come back to underneath it to put spaces between words to orientate those complex letters. And it's gonna hurt them because truthfully, they're not ready to write until they're six or they can do that diamond. And 10 years ago I did a project in Harre with about 10 schools. And what we did was we tested every child in those early years to key stage one who actually could do that diamond and hold them well, hold them properly. And, and, and there were children in year two who couldn't do that. And what I would say is they need the adults describe for them and then leave a gap and let them just write one word but not make them do things that set themselves up for failure. Yeah. Oh please. Can you demonstrate the diamonds? Yeah. That all in one fell swoop. That's one fell swoop. And then the other one might be going back the other way. I'm struggling on the other thing. But the truth is it's with their, with their, with the pencil. You are doing that Yeah. In one fell swoop. And it's got to be one action. If you wanted children to do that, would you get them to follow a line? Would you demonstrate it in sand first would About Doing that or you you wouldn't, Well you could demonstrate in sand you could do anything you want, but you generally, you wouldn't nearly always know when a child is ready just for other things they can do. They do Sarah. Yes they do. They should be able to do it both ways. 'cause thes both ways on paper you put your hand on paper and try it, your feel the muscles you're using. And that's where it's come from. It's the muscular action because it's the muscles you're putting on the pencil. But what children need is they don't need not to be told to draw. They need to be, they need to be encouraged to do things, but with a range of different materials and not linked to writing. And, and they, and they just do for a little bit and then they drop the pen when it hurts them so that they learn. But what we don't want to do is direct 'em to do something when they've already got to contend with the complexities involved in the processes in their brain. Yeah. Involved in trying to construct something to say. And going back to when you wrote Call Mary, just now that if you keep looking up and down and getting that the right way, even I don't get it right when I write up for training on the, on the training room board. Usually that's what I do. Even I have to keep looking at it and yet I speak Greek and I can read it and I've written it maybe 150 times. Yeah. Because writing something it's hard is really complex task. It's really Hard. It's really hard for them. Um, I think we're coming up now to eight o'clock. It's gone quick. It's gone really fast. Yeah. Thank you Very much. In touch. If you Yeah, if you were interested. I do travel around and.