WEBVTT - This file was automatically generated by VIMEO. Please email info@talestoolkit.com to report problems. So I'm really excited tonight about this webinar. Um, so we've got Matt Glover speaking with us and, um, I first heard about Matt, actually, we've been working with the school in Australia and there's a lady called Lisa Berman, how I know it's gonna get to watch this other now. It's very excited about it. And she's been doing lots of work with Matt, and she first recommended I check out his books. I did one of the books I've been reading, um, and I was a big fan of his work and I was lots and lots of links with what we're doing with Toolkit, which is all about getting children to create their own stories. Um, there was lots of bookmaking, lots of fantastic stuff around children's story, children's and developing and nurturing children's writing. And Matt's a teacher, um, he was a head teacher. He's been a consultant over 30 years. Um, he's an author of many, many books with a real focus on literacy and he's been talking all over the world. It's actually, I think we've had Skype chats and talks in lots of different countries now already. So he travels a lot. Um, and he talks about nurturing writers, early reading and lots of other stuff. So I'm really excited about this webinar tonight. So I'm gonna hand over to Matt in a minute because I know you want to hear him speak. Okay. Um, but what we're gonna do is at the end of the the webinar, we're gonna 10 minutes where we can throw out some questions. So when you are typing during, I'm gonna take some notes, so I've got it all written down here and then Matt can talk and at the end I can give him all your questions. So I'm gonna hand over to you now, Matt, I'll put your present. Great. Okay. Alright. So thank you so much. It's really, um, nice to get to have a chance to be able to, um, talk of care a lot about, um, just in terms of, um, thinking about how we support, um, young writers. And really as much as it does writing, it's really supporting young composers and thinking about how children compose, um, language in all different areas. Um, and so that's where this seems to be such a connection to, um, the Tale Toolkit work, which is really what we support children's, um, composing of language, right? And so, um, that's what we're gonna think a little bit about tonight is just, um, how we support children in, um, composing language, and particularly when they're making picture books. Um, but, um, really it carries over this as well. So there's a couple things that we want to think about, but um, we think we'll start is just thinking a little bit about this idea about, um, composition. Because whenever we're thinking about supporting young writers, we have to think about how we them both in terms of conventions and in terms of composition. So by conventions we mean grammar and spelling and punctuation and letter sound, relationships and phonics and phonemic awareness and all those things about getting words on the page. Um, but that certainly isn't enough and it's certainly not a prerequisite, which is what sometimes people think is that we have to have those things in place first, and we certainly don't. And so, um, we have to be thinking as much about composition and how we support children in becoming better at composing. And so if we think about, you know, the easiest way to think about this difference between conventions and composition is just to think about, um, your favorite book that you've read in the last year or so. Picture yourself reading your favorite book. My bet is that when you got to the end of that book, none of you said, ah, I love this book. Every word was spelled perfectly right? Um, and it's not that the spelling wasn't important, no one said that, right? That's not what made you love it. What made you love it was really the composition. It's not that, that the conventions weren't important. They were, things had been spelled correctly, punctuated appropriately. You wouldn't have kept reading, it wouldn't have been your favorite book. And at the same time, it's not what made you love it, what made you love it was really the quality of the writing, the composition, right? And it's really in fact how the conventions, the composition and the content all work together to create meaning in a piece of writing. So I certainly care about conventions, but I care much more about composition is the trickier part to, um, to teach into. And it's, um, in many ways the more important part to support simply because that's what it's going to help children become, um, strong writers long term. The growth that they can do in composition, right? Is limitless. Conventions end up being fairly limited once you know how to do those things. And so to think about this, I think it would just make sense that we're gonna spend an hour talking about young writers, that it makes sense to start, um, by looking at at least, um, one piece of writing here. I'm start with a young writer. And so we're gonna start with, um, Kyle, who's three. And so one of the nice things about looking at Kyle's writing is that it helps us think a little bit about the importance of honoring approximations, right? And so, um, here's Kyle's book. So here's Kyle's first page, his second page, his third page, his fourth page, and his last page, right? So just from looking at that, we might be tempted to think that Kyle doesn't know very much about writing, right? We might say, well, Kyle knows how to work across pages in a book, or he knows how to, um, he knows how to, um, fill up a page. Um, he knows the different kinds of marks and shapes on a page. This isn't one of those books, those rainbow, rainbow, rainbow, rainbow, we've all probably seen the rainbow books, right? They're universal. Um, Kyle knows how to make different marks on a page. Um, but the problem is, um, we might think that's about all Kyle knows about, right? But Kyle's actually a very sophisticated writer for the age of three. But we can only figure this out if we honor his approximation. If we say, Kyle, would you read this to me? Because if we didn't feel there was meaning there, we wouldn't say, Kyle, would you read it to me? And as soon as we say, Kyle, would you read your book to me? Not just tell me about your book or tell me about your pictures, but if we say, read your book to me, which communicates what we believe about what Kyle has done, as soon as we say that we learn that the Kyle knows much, much more about writing than we thought to begin with. So for example, um, if we said, Kyle, what, um, would you read your book to me? Here's how Kyle would read his book. So this is a book about, um, a fire engine, right? And, um, just a quick side note too. Um, the words that you're gonna see typed at the bottom of the PowerPoint slide only show up on the PowerPoint slide. Um, I'm, I don't ever take dictation and write in children's books. I'll take dictation at other times of the day for other purposes, but you won't see any adult writing in any children's, um, books today. Um, we'll talk a little bit in a little bit about why that is, but just know right now that only reason why I have the words typed there is because I'm too old to remember the exact text of all these books that I have from all these preschoolers. If, um, Kyle was here today and could read his book to you, um, I wouldn't need, um, the words there. But Kyle's not here. I can't remember. So I have to have them typed there, but they don't show up in his books just on the PowerPoint. So, um, here's how Cal read his book on one of his readings. So he was at Fire Engine, here's the road, no fire engine yet. Here's more of the road, but still no fire engine. Here's the fire engine. It has a horn that goes beep beep. The fire engine starts going slow, but then goes really, really fast. Right now, we know much more about Kyle knows about writing than we thought to begin with. So for example, we know that Kyle is focused and on topic in his writing. This isn't a book that starts off being about a fire engine halfway through becomes a book about dinosaurs. Ends up being a book about going to the park with his mom. He says, focusing on topic, which is a universal skill for young writers. Writers actually at any age. We talk to first graders about being focused in their writing. Seventh graders about being focused in their writing. My editor talks to me about being focused in my writing. It's a universal skill that writers need. We can also tell that Kyle's writing this as a story and that he's, um, this story stays basically the same over time. It changes a a little bit with each reading, but it's always about a fire engine. It always starts going slow, ends up going fast. He's fairly consistent over time. We learn even more about what Kyle knows about writing, if you know what we were reading in his class that day. So we were reading the book Freight Train by Donald Cruz. We were talking about some of the illustration decisions that Donald Cruz makes. How does he show us that the train's moving fast, slow? How does he show us that it's day or night? And Kyle has noticed that at the beginning of this book, there's a couple of pages of track, but no train, then a couple more pages of track, but still no train. And then finally his train comes, right? That's exactly where his fire engine book comes from. The pages with the road, but no fire engine. Yet Kyle has noticed what Donald Cruz has done in his book and has then tried it out in his own right. He's noticing techniques that Donald Cruz uses and then trying them out. Kyle's reading like a writer at the age of three, which is another fundamental skill that writers at any age need to have the ability to notice what other authors do and to be able to try it out on their own. We learned even more about what Kyle knows about writing if we were to watch him, um, work on this just for a minute. So let's see if I can switch over here. Yeah. All right. So we'll learn even more about what Kyle knows about writing. Hello? I see that firetruck, huh? I was just wondering what this book is going to be about Because I'm gonna write a book about fast files. That's About fast ones. Yeah. The second, the first one is going to be a slow fire. The next one is going to be a table that like, it's going to be really Fast. Is it gonna be kind of like how Donald Cruise did it here? Yeah, kind of like that. Yeah. Oh, that'll be very interesting because you can do that. Alright, well if Oh, all about fire engine. What's that part? It says all about Fire engine. Oh, all about fire engines. Is that, is those your words there? Okay. And what's this part? That's the fire that, that's, that's the, um, road. Do you see any fire truck there? I you said that's the road there? No. Did he do any fire truck there? I don't see a firetruck there yet. Is he not there yet on the road? No. Then Comes along. I didn't see a fire engine yet. Oh, I see the road. Is the fire engine gonna be on this page? No, not yet. On the fourth page, On the third page Is slow watching come To fast. Oh, come fast. Come to That's what I was wondering. You know, it looks kind of all blurry, doesn't it? You can hardly even see that it's going so fast. So just from that little clip, we now know much, much more about Kyle as Right we know, um, for example, we know that Kyle is the type of three-year-old who can plan his writing in advance. He said right at the beginning, I'm gonna make a book about slow fire engines and fast fire engines. And then he actually did that, right? We can also tell that he has both pictures and words in his book. We didn't know that to begin with either. Um, but now just write words right here. Right? So he has words up at the top here and then the rest of that's his picture. We can't really tell which of the words of the pictures unless we saw him do it. But he has both. He has both pictures and words. He's also very intentional in what he puts on the page. These are not random marks that he's figuring out later on what they are. He's very intentional in what he's putting on the page. In fact, what he puts on the page and what he leaves off the page, at one point he said, Mr. Glover, do you see a fire engine here yet? I said, no. Is there one there? And he said, Nope. He's very specific about what he's putting on the page and leaving off the page. So think about how much more we know about Kyle now as a writer than we did to begin with. Unfortunately when we first saw this page, we now know that Kyle's the type of 3-year-old who stays focused in on topic, who can write a story that stays constant over time. He uses both pictures and words. He plans his writing in advance. He's intentional in what he puts on the page. And he reads like a writer. He notices what publish authors do and tries it out on his own, right? All of which is much more sophisticated than we would've thought when we first saw that. And we would miss all of that if we didn't say, Kyle, would you read your writing to me? Right? When we honor his approximation, we can learn much, much more about what he knows about writing, okay? But in order to also just the other thing that impacts that, the other thing that helps us see what all Kyle can do as a writer is the fact that he's reading this as a picture book, right? It's made our, he's made a picture book, right? By a picture book that means different things, different places. I just mean books that have both pictures and words. But Kyle's made a book, which is different than if he was writing on a journal page or on a single piece of paper. Kyle's making a um, book, right? Which fundamentally changes the thinking that he's doing. In fact, the main type of writing that, um, um, young children will do if we want to help us think about composing is to think about how they're making books. And so I wanna just, um, talk about for a minute why, um, the main type of compositional writing that children are doing is, um, in picture books. And again, I'm making that distinction with compositional writing versus functional writing. Functional writing is important. Functional writing is just the whole idea of getting words down on the page, right? And so, um, if you make agro your list to go to the store, right, to go to the market, um, you're not composing that list particularly, right? You're not writing a beautiful little lead to your grocery list and you're not describing the adjectives that you're gonna use to describe the re buy or anything. Um, you're um, really the only organization is if you're putting it in the same aisles as the grocery store, right? That's really the only composing that was on. It's just getting the words down on the page, which is completely different than making really think about the quality of writing and how we're composing. In order to think about that than we have to be making books. And it's actually not even a book issue. It's really a stack issue. So lemme just talk through for a minute why we'd want to have a stack of text for anything that we're studying or thinking about in writing. So there's a couple of reasons. And this holds true to any grade. We can think about this with young children. We have to be thinking about the same thing with older children as well, um, up through the grades, really at any grade. And so what do we'd have to really think about is this key question in the teaching of writing. The teaching of writing. At any age we'd have to be thinking about this question. What are we reading or studying that's like what we're trying to write. So there are two key parts to that question. The first part is, what are we reading? What in our stack of text, what are we showing students as published people of what they're going to be making? Um, but the skin part of that question is just as important. That's like what we're trying to write, right? What that really means is that there has to be an alignment to alignment between what, um, children are studying, what we're reading and what they're writing, right? They have to be making the same thing. So lemme just give you a couple of examples of this. Let's go out of the, out of early childhood for a minute. Let's go up to grade five for a minute. And if we were in, um, teaching grade five, I wouldn't have students write reports, right? Because I have no place to go for a stack of reports. I'm talking about at least traditional school report writing, right? So there's no place really to go for a stack of reports. I can't go to the local bookstore and ask for the report section. I can't go online and find them. Um, I know teachers said, oh, class, I found the best report over the weekend. I can't wait to read it to, there's no place for you to go. Your school library doesn't have reports. There go reports. But you could study feature articles. I studied all time with grad, right? And we're studying feature articles or thinking of, I'm using a stack of published feature articles that you'd find in children's magazines and all sorts of places. And once we have a stack of feature articles, we can actually study them. We can do some inquiry into report or to feature article writing. We can study the leads, the voice, the word choice, the structure of the organization. We can't do any inquiry into report writing 'cause there's no stack to inquire into. But we can certainly study feature articles. So now if we take that thinking down to the primary grades, right? Young children, um, what do they have the most vision for? What do four or 5, 6 7 year olds have the most vision for? They have the most vision for picture books simply because that's what we read to them most often. They have a vision for bookmaking. They don't have a vision for other types of writing. In fact, that's why this, this issue of vision is why I can get bookmaking up and going in anybody's kindergarten class, preschool class, doesn't matter anybody's class in about 10 minutes at the beginning of the school year by doing next to nothing. I do almost nothing. The less I say the better in terms of the first day of launching books. And the reason for that is because they have a vision for bookmaking, right? They know what books are. Even if you have children who come to you who have never ever seen a picture book before in high schools like that where children have never been in school before, there's no picture books at home and literally the first book they've ever seen is in at school. Well, if that's the case, then we just wait one week to start making picture books. 'cause if they've been in school for a week, they know picture books. That's the only way to survive the first week of school with a group of five year olds. Let's read another picture book to get through 10 more minutes of this very long day, right? If they know, if they've been in school for a week, they know picture books and then they all start making them, I'd have zero expectations about what they do in their first book. And in fact, I don't even know what to start teaching them until they're in their first book. Think about how much we know about Kyle as a writer, just from seeing his writing, from seeing that book. We know what he can do and what we can nudge him on next. Well, until a child's making a book, we don't even know what they can do. That's gonna be our starting point. It's just to go make a book and then we can figure out what comes next. Okay? Sometimes people will say, Shirley, you graduate out of picture books by the time you get into second grade. It's not an issue of graduating out of picture books. I can show you year five students making very sophisticated picture books. The issue is simply what's in your stack of text. And so it's not really an issue of that. You have to make books, right? The issue is that you'd have to have a stack of published pieces of writing to give children a vision for what they would be making. And for the ages we're talking about. That stack is almost always picture books with young children. So that's the main thing we'd be looking at. Um, there's some other reasons that we don't have a stack of texts though. Um, one of the things, the reason is it impacts their compositional thinking. Again, composition is the idea of putting things together to create meaning. And so whether you're composing with pictures, with words, with paint, with clay, with music composition, is the idea of putting things together to create meaning and compositional thinking is the same across those areas. So if we want children to become better at composing with their picture or with their words, we certainly have to help them become better at composing with their pictures, right? And so the compositional thinking children are doing in a picture book, right? Impacts the language that they're using and how they're composing language there as well. And so, um, we'd have to be, um, thinking about how we support children in terms of composition. In fact, it's very difficult to do unless, right? Um, we can look at how they compose language in other areas, but from a writing standpoint, we'd have to look at how they compose language in a picture book, right? In fact, even just that idea we talked about before of knowing whether a child is staying on topic in their writing. Again, I'm not concerned if they're on topic or not. If they're not on topic, I'll help them over time. It's a long-term goal. But I'll help them start to learn how to stay on topic. But I'm not concerned if they do or not. But the issue is, unless they're making a picture book, right? I wouldn't even know if they're able to stay on topic across the pages of a book, right? It's similar to an oral storytelling, right? If children, um, when they're telling oral stories, do they stay on topic, right or not? Again, I'm not concerned if they're not, but we can help support that. And one of the ways would certainly be through bookmaking. We also know there's stamina for writing will be much crater. Children work on a book for much longer period of time, simply 'cause there's multiple pages there. And because we're valuing illustrations. But the other really big reason that we'd want children to have a, um, to be making picture books, to have a stack of text, to have a vision for what they're going to make, is that it's helps them build an identity of themself. As a writer, we want children to see themselves as doing the same things that published authors do. Um, the easiest way I can think about this is with the story of this 4-year-old Molly. So I was teaching in Molly's preschool class one day. We were reading the book, silly Sally by Audrey Wood. We were talking about how Audrey Wood has both pictures and words in her book. And finally after I'm talking about that for a little bit, Molly, this 4-year-old said, uh, that Audrey Wood, she's just like me. She didn't say she was like Audrey Wood. She said, Audrey Wood just like me. Because what she was really saying was, yeah, Donald Cruz, Eric, Carl, me, Audrey Wood, we all make picture books. That's not just nice, that's not just cute. That's crucial, right? Because as soon as you know you're gonna make a picture book, you start to read picture books differently, right? As soon as you know it's that way with any type of writing. If you know you're gonna go write something, then read it differently. Think back to your very first year of teaching and it was time to write your first parent newsletter and you had never written a letter to newsletter to parents before. What's the first thing we all did? Went down the hall, found some kind veteran teacher, and got a bunch of their old newsletters. And when we read their newsletters, we didn't read them. Looking at it from a content, reading them like a reader standpoint. We are reading them like a writer. We are studying. How do people write those? Well, it's the same thing with children. We would want children to be reading picture books, noticing things that authors do that they could try out on their own. So, um, here's the easiest way to think about this. This just, um, this whole idea of reading like a writer. The idea of noticing and trying out, again, as a fundamental skill that writers need, right? I was just, um, interviewing an author earlier today. He was talking about the importance of reading and noticing what other authors do that he could then try in his own book. And so here's my all time favorite reading, like a writer example. Um, so here's this 4-year-old Isabella. So Isabella's made this book and I'll read it to you once, but then I'm gonna go back and show you the reading, like a writer part, the part where she's noticed what other authors do and tried it out. So here's Isabella's book. So Isabella, I was building a snowman. My snowman's finished, it started to rain, my snowman melted, right? So your typical 4-year-old kind of book, well you'll see where hers, um, um, let me go back and read it to you. And you'll see the reading like a writer part. So here's how she actually reads this. It actually goes like this, Isabella, this is the page you don't read. I was building a snowman. My snowman's finished, right? Every time Isabella turns to this page, Isabella says, this is the page you don't read. And so here's what she means by that. Isabella has noticed that every time her teacher reads a book, she talks about that title and the author, they talk about, um, the dedication if there is one. But her teacher never stops and reads the copyright information that shows up in the front of the book. Yet that's exactly what that is. That's Isabella's copyright information that shows up in her book. Just like in this book right now. Here's the thing. No one has ever said to Isabella, Hey Isabella, it'd be really cute if you put some copyright information in your book. Right? Her teacher's never mentioned it. It's the page you don't read. Her teacher has never said a single thing about the copyright information, yet Isabella has it in her book. And the thing is, her teacher is responsible for that happening. 'cause even though her teacher's never mentioned that copyright page something we don't care about, but instead what she has done a hundred times that year was to say to the class, you know what? You could be like this illustrator. You could use more than one color in your illustrations. Or you could be just like this author. You could try this out in the book that you're making over and over and over. She's helped them develop the habit of mind of noticing what authors do and trying it out in their own writing to the point now that they notice all sorts of things beyond what, um, um, someone's teaching at school. We see it all the time with preschoolers who award themselves calcot medals on the front of their books. They've noticed it and are trying it out, right? And of course, if they can notice those things, then they can notice things that will also help them become strong proficient writers. So just one other thing about bookmaking just really quickly is that then we'd have to think a little bit just about the logistics of this. So when we're making books getting booked ongoing early in the year, um, I'm starting with four to six pieces of paper. I'll never start with three page pieces of three page books, right? Start with four or five, six pages. Um, the reason I don't start with three page books is that most people start with three page books because they want children to write stories that have a beginning, middle end. And the thing is, first of all, I'm not starting the year with story writing, right? Um, in preschool with three and four year olds, I'm, I'm not expecting 'em to ever necessarily write a story. They certainly may, but it's not the starting point. Um, and in kindergarten, first, second grade, um, I don't start the year with story writing either. We'll study stories later in the year and we'll study stories with three and four year olds. It's just, I'm not expecting three and four year olds that they have to write that anyway. So I'm not starting the year with stories. So I don't need three pages. And even later in the year, we shouldn't really be teaching beginning, middle, end. We should be teaching beginning, middle, middle, middle, middle. And Kyle and Isabella and most young children have way more to say that'll fit on three pages. Um, I'm also just using full-size paper, not paper folded over. If I start to fold paper over smaller size or smaller than, you know, I start with just a four paper probably is what you call it. Um, just regular full size paper just folded over paper is just too small. Um, I would presta it because it needs to look like a book and it doesn't work particularly well with a bunch of five year olds to say, here the, um, go get the number of pages you think you're going to need. Keep them all organized and paperclip together and we'll staple them at the end. Instead. It's just much easier to start with a pres staple book. And then we teach 'em how to add pages, take pages out if they have too many or not enough. It's very flexible. And in preschool with three and four year olds are generally starting with, um, unlined paper, um, kindergarten, five, six year olds. Then we'll start to use lines. We actually give children a choice between lined to paper and unlined paper. Alright? So for all of those reasons, we'd be, um, I'd be starting with picture books, right? That that's would be our starting point. That children would be, um, the primary thing that they're making in addition to all sorts of functional writing, all sorts of lists and letters and cards and all sorts of other things. But in terms of composing, we'd be thinking about making picture books. And again, from a Tales toolkit standpoint is that those are, um, the stories that children are creating are books that they've already made, right? And then if they've told an oral story, then one possibility, it doesn't have to be, but one possibility is that those stories they're creating could go across the pages of a picture book. And when we're doing that, we'd start right away just right into a picture book, right? With young children. It needs to be fairly concrete. And the idea of I'm creating this thing over here for something I'll write later with five year olds, they're much more in the moment writers. So that's why we'd be starting just with picture books. Here's a book half at it. And if it's a story they've already told, one of the possibilities could be that story could go in their book. Okay? All right. So I feel like I'm just talking at you. I feel like we should stop and have you turn and talk at all. But just keeping an eye on the clock here and knowing that we wanna save some time for questions, just keep, um, keep those questions in mind and then we, we'll, um, we'll pause in a little bit for some questions. Let me just go, um, to, well, let me go to two other, well, two other big ideas. I have too many big ideas where we always have to narrow this down. Um, I wanna think just for a minute, um, Kate and I were talking earlier and we're thinking about, um, this idea about writing for children or taking dictation. Um, so, um, the easiest way I can help think about this practice, um, and, and the reason that I wouldn't do it, that I'm not writing for children, right? Um, it is easy if I just use this little example here to really explore this idea. It's about 45 minutes and a video clip. And to really think through this, I, today I'm just gonna have to do the quicker version of it, which worries me 'cause it's an important big idea that I hate to do. Um, and justice to write just talking about it for a few minutes. But, um, Ali here, who's written this book, um, wanted words in her book and she asked an adult to write them for her. The adult didn't feel quite comfortable writing right on Ally's book, but then the author adult wrote it down on another piece of paper and Ally copied it. And so, um, which is no different than they have written in Ally's book. And either situation, Ali's not thinking about doing, uh, about really how to write the words. She's just copying no different if someone wrote it for her. Um, and there's some problems with it as well. So this is something I would not do. I don't write in children's books. Um, if they ask me, um, for words for their books, I'm not writing them for them. If, um, they ask me how to spell something, I'm not telling them how to spell it. Um, simply 'cause that doesn't help them become a better speller by just telling them something. Um, the reasons why I'm thinking that someone writing for Ally here, writing Arthur's friend go camping is not particularly beneficial. So one of the reasons is Ally can't read that, right? The words in the book don't serve any purpose to ally there. Even the word go. She's four years old, even though is not her reading vocabulary at that point, right? Nor would we expect it to be the words, don't me have any meaning to her there, right? And they certainly have any more meaning than if she had just written them herself, which she could have easily done. Um, it wouldn't have looked like this. She would've written it with random strings of letters, but would be the same to her, whether someone wrote it or whether she wrote it in random strings of letters. And there'd be bigger advantage to her writing it herself. So first of all, she can't read that. And the second issue though is it doesn't tell us anything about what she knows about conventions. If we wanted to teach her something about spelling or punctuation or conventions or whatever, if we wanted to teach her something about conventions in writing, what would come next for her? What would be her next small step? And the problem is we have no idea what her next small step is, right? We have no idea what would come next for Ally because we don't know what she can do all on her own. The starting point for figuring out what comes next is to first look at what can you do all by yourself. And in this case, we don't know what Allie can do all by herself. We know what she can do all by herself in terms of illustrations. We don't know what she can do all by herself in terms of getting words on the page. So it doesn't give us any information about what Allie knows or where to support her next. The bigger problem than that is this actually represents a massive push for Ally. This isn't a small next step. This is actually, this isn't what Ally can do with a little bit of adult support, which is where learning takes place. This is what Ally can do with massive adult support. Someone doing all of the work for her, right? And the problem is we don't even know how big of a push it is. See, whenever we're teaching, we always wanna be teaching with a small nudge. What's the next small step, right? Um, I'm looking at some of the details to look at things and looking at how children are developing language. We're always, it looks like you're think about and from a language standpoint, what's the next small step in terms of language? How would we help them say a little bit more, a little bit more rich language? We're not trying to go from here all the way over to here all at once. Well, if we try to go from where Ali is, random strings, letters all the way over to the ie. Rule in friends, that's about 14 stages of spelling development down the road. And we just skipped past all of them. The problem is we don't even know how many stages down the road it is, unless we know what Allie can do. So we don't know what she can do, which means then we don't know what comes next for her, which then leads to inadvertent massive pushing, right? Writing something conventionally when she's 14 stages behind that, right? Here's the, um, the, another problem with it is, um, in fact even bigger problem is it sends Allie a very mixed message, right? We want Allie to have an image of herself, herself can do the pictures and the words and what we're communicating if we write for her. Your words aren't good enough. You do the pictures, but you need an adult to do the words. In fact, when I first talked to Ally about her book, I said, ally, is your book finished? And she said, no. And I said, why not? And she said, well, it doesn't have words on all the pages yet. And I said, well, are you gonna put some more words in there? And she said, no, but I could take it home and my mom could help me do it. See her image of, um, herself as a writer is, she can do the pictures, but needs an adult to do the words. And the image we'd want her to have is, I can do the words and pictures. There's one more way to think about it. If Allie came up to any of you and said, I don't know how to draw Arthur, would you draw all of my um, um, Arthur for me? Would you draw all of my pictures for me? Would anyone just turn the page and say, all right, what do you want me to draw next? What should I draw on this page? Lemme, nobody would sit there and just draw for children, right? Well, if we wouldn't draw for a child, why would we write for them? See, the thing is, if a child said I can't draw something, we would teach them strategies for how to draw something they don't know how to draw. We would teach 'em how to think about shapes, how to think about parts, how to think about what color would help convey. Meaning. We'd think about strategies for how to draw something you don't know how to draw. And if a child says, I can't write something, then our response would be, well, let me teach you how to get words in your book. Let me teach you something rather than just doing it for the child. And all of that would mean that we have to have an image of how Ali could put words in her books, right? Because Ali could put words in her all on our own. We'd have to just think about those stages of word making development. So just really quickly, here are this typical stages of word making development. Here's where children start. They generally start with pictures, but no words. Okay? This has pictures and words though. It's Kyle's fire engine book. We saw the words right up at the top there. He has both pictures and words. This page has pictures and words you just don't know which is the picture and which is the words people usually think. The green things at the top are the words. That's actually his picture. His words for the orange ones down at the bottom, you can't tell which is which to some marks for the pictures. Some marks are for the words, but that's how easy it is for children to get words in their books. Um, from there they start to use scribble writing, right? Mountain valley writing. Um, from there children start to use mock letters. These are things that look like, like letters but aren't, um, that have letter like forms to them. Like that's her Madison's name, Madison. But then she has all these other things down here as well. From there, children start to use random strings of letters. And this is a good stage to be in actually, because at least you're getting a lot of practice forming letters. I'm throwing children are writing with random strings of letters 'cause they're getting a lot of practice at writing forming letters. And then when they start to have, um, letter sound relationships and they start to use the letters that correspond to the sounds, they're saying it's much easier to start to do that. Or they've already been forming letters for a while, right? And then from there, children start to use beginning phonetic spelling. Here's Reagan writing about her friend McKenzie. She know there, she knew there was an M at the beginning and then she knew there's some other things. So she put a scribble in there. In fact, here's Ally from Arthur's friends, go camping. Here's Ally. Um, about five months later in the spring of that year, writing car, she has a beginning and ending sound. This tells us a lot about what she knows about, um, spelling right. Arthur's friends go camping, didn't tell us anything. And even now she's still about 14 stages down the road or about now, now about 10 stages down the road from the IE rule in friends. So for all of those, um, so Allie could have gotten words in her books. In fact, that's why I generally want young children to have words in their books right at the beginning of the year. Because the longer they wait to do it, the harder it'll be to do. Instead when it's the first day of school or first week of school, we say, oh, just pretend to put some words in there. They're like, oh great. I can pretend to do all sorts of things. It's incredibly easy for them to get words in the books. And then when iwhenever, I want, I can help them get a little bit better at it. And it's not my biggest area of focus. My bigger area of focus is how are they composing the words. I just don't want them to think that they can't right when they all can. And if we're writing for them or sending them a very mixed message. So we'll see if there's questions around that. I hate doing it that quickly. That's again, the quick version of it. Um, but I want to think about one other thing before we see what questions you might have. And so I wanna just think for a minute about one other key fundamental idea that impacts young writers. And it's this issue of choice over and over. When I was looking at the, um, um, tales toolkit, information and looking, thinking about all that, I kept saying, um, all sorts of things around following the lead of the child, right? And the, um, importance of child of children's ownership over their writing and what they're creating, their ownership over their stories. And so I wanna, um, think about one of the things that impacts engagement, um, and impacts, um, children as writers, especially, um, boy writers. Now, not only boy writers, the things I'm gonna talk about really impact all writers. Um, children who love writing more reluctant writers, less confident writers, boys, girls, it doesn't matter. But there are some boys who are sometimes a little bit more reluctant writers. And so these two things will be particularly important for all children, but especially for any reluctant writers or low energy, low confidence writers. And so the first one is choice of topic. I'm just talk about this one for a little bit just real quickly 'cause it's something I think, um, it sounds like you're already thinking a lot about. I would almost always want, um, well, young children want them to always choose their topic. And in school I want them to always choose their topic. There's a couple reasons why we'd want children to choose their topics. Um, one is that it's, um, impacts engagement. If we tell children what to write about, if we limit their topics in any way, if we told them or gave them a prompt or told them what to write about, we basically would be saying, we don't think, I don't think you care what you're writing about. You'd be just as happy to write about my topic as you would your topic. Right? And I don't believe that's true. Children have, um, topics that they care more about than others. Um, they have, um, different levels of engagement with different topics that were so nice to see people talking about superhero books and all sorts of things that children are interested in, right? Knowing that those will impact children's energy for writing. So we certainly wanna be thinking about choice of topic. Um, we'd also want choice a topic 'cause it doesn't impact what we're going to teach, right? I can't think of any writing skills dependent on topic. It's not like we say, well, I can only teach you how to write a story or I can only teach you how to use a use dialogue. If you're writing a story about a time you were scared, there really aren't any writing that at least I can think of writing skills that are dependent on topic. So one's said we'd want children to be choosing their topic. It doesn't impact what we're going to teach. We can teach the same skills, the same support in terms of language they're writing about the ability to generate topics. It seems like you all think a lot about supporting children generating finding stories. And so finding ideas for stories or for any type of book that you're making is an important skill in being a writer. We'd want. Um, I worry about 10 year olds who will say, I don't know what to write about. I can't find a topic, right? That's often the case because they've gone through several years of school where people are giving them topics, right? Rather than teaching them how to find a topic. See, the thing is, if a child says, I can't find a topic, we can't, I can't find something to write about, our job would be to teach them how to do that. Which seems like a lot of the work you all are doing is thinking about how do we help children find ideas? And so if we give them ideas that's not teaching them how to do it. And really nowhere else in school did we do that. If a fourth grader came up to us and said, would you do this long division problem for me? None of you would for you. No. Instead, you'd be thinking about strategies, you'd teach them strategies for how to do something. It'd be the same thing if they can't find a topic, right? Um, so for those reasons, I would want children to almost always choose their topic. There are a couple instances in schools as children get older that I might limit topics, but for the most part we'd want them choosing their topics. Um, but I wanna go to choice of genre for a minute because that's actually the trickier one to think about. And one that I'm really curious, um, some of your all thoughts on this. Um, and so the way I'm gonna have to think about this first is just a quick background and we have to think about that. There's really two different ways that children can organize writing, okay? So if we were to look at a child's book, there's really two different ways we can organize writing. One is to organize it as a story or a narrative. And then children can also organize things, pieces of writing as lists. So we could have story books or list books, right? And so, um, you know, both of these types of books, right? So for example, um, you have plenty of stories in your classroom. There are books about the time something happened, right? The time Trixie lost her bunny, the time Peter played in the snow, the time the owl babies waited for their mom to come back. Those are all stories. They have story elements, character setting, plot movement through time change, right? Um, there are books about the time something happened, right? Um, but um, that's not all the books that you're reading. Um, a lot of the books you're reading in school, right? And the type of children book that children actually make more easily are list books, right? A book like trucks with zoom rumble, which just tells you lots of things about trucks. It's not even an informational book, it's just telling you a lot about trucks. That's this trained book is one that teaches you lots of facts. It's organized as a list, you know, has a little table of content stuff. Here's the list of all the things that you're gonna learn about. Um, so we could organize writing into two broad categories, stories or list. Well, here's where this starts to have an implication on young children. Then. So let's think about these two young writers, these two, um, 4-year-old. So Brian and Tom are in the same preschool class. Um, they both, um, heard the same writing. Folks read aloud that day. They both decided to go to the ring center and make books later. Um, they both decided to make books about trains, yet their books are completely different from each other. Brian's is a story. It goes like this, a train. The train goes up the mountain, then it goes down, boom, boom, boom, crash flat, the mechanic fixes the train. Screech, screech, screech, right? That book is clearly written as a story, right? It has character setting, plot, moving through time change. Um, the easiest way is it's a book about the time the train crashed. But Brian or um, Tom sitting right next to Brian also decided to make a book about trains. Yet his is completely different. His is organized as a list, right? It goes like this. This is a diesel engine, this is a steam engine. Smoke is coming out of the funnels. This is a steam engine with three wheels. This is a steam engine with a whistle, right? His is organized as a list. We can't say this is a book about the time, right? It doesn't work. It's not a story. Here's where this becomes important then. If Tom thought he had to write a storybook today, it would've been much harder for him to do. If Brian thought he had to make a list book, it would've been harder for him to do. But when they have choice of what type of books to make, children will choose the type. They have more energy for that day, right? And in fact, if you go into a typical class of four year olds, uh, where they're, we've launched a book making. And if you look at their books at the beginning of the year, 80% or more of the books are list books. Books that go like this. This is my mom, this is my dad, this is my brother, this is my sister. Or even more likely, perhaps this is my mom. This is a rock, this is Batman, this is a firetruck, right? Where they're writing, um, random things in there. Those are list books. And we can help those become much, much more sophisticated. I'm not trying to turn them into stories. Storybook are no better than list books and list books are no better than story books. They're just different types of writing. If you go into a typical class of five year olds, about 60% of the books are list books rather than storybook. And, um, first grade, second grade, it's about 50 50. Stories aren't the easiest thing for all children to write right at the beginning of the year. Some children have a lot of energy for story writing, and if we've supported that, children will do that as even more so. But we'd also wanna be thinking about how are we supporting children and making list books, which is another type that a lot of children have much more energy for, which is why I care so much about this whole idea of choice of genre right across the grades. One of the things that I'm thinking about with three and four year olds and 11 and 12 year olds, when in the year do they choose their genre? And when I'm thinking about three and four year olds, I'd want them to always be choosing their genre right? As they go up through the grades and we start to have genre standards, then we'd have, sometimes we're studying genres, and then sometimes we're studying other big ideas in writing where children could then choose their genre. But if we care about engagement, we'd have to think about choice of genre because the two are linked. Children will have more energy for writing when they have topics they care about. And children will have more energy for writing when they have genres that they want to write in, right? And it won't be the same for everybody. Think about all the people who are, um, listening in today. If I had everybody go write for the next 10 minutes, I know two things about what would happen. First of all, all of you wouldn't choose the same genre. And I also know that you all wouldn't, um, um, none of you would choose your least favorite genre, right? Most of you would choose genres that you want to spend the next 10 minutes with. It's true for adults, it's true for children. So absolutely to help students think about stories as one type of books they could be making, we'd wanna be supporting that and doing all those things that you're doing. In addition to that, we'd wanna be thinking about how do we support children in making other types of books as well, especially with those children where story isn't their primary way of com of language, right? Or primary way of composing. You have some children, your, um, in fact, one of the things I always end up doing is watching children on the playground just to see what kind of things they're doing and to figure out where their entry points in for writing are. For some children, dramatic play is a great entry point into writing, right? For other children, high interest topics and writing about things they think they know a lot about are, is a better entry point. And for other children writing about experiences as a better entry point, all children don't have the same entry point into writing. And so we'd wanna be thinking about where those various entry points are, which entry points might help some children, um, or be better for some children than other entry points. And then how we can even use entry points into, um, other types of writing for children. And that's why with something like, um, tale, so certainly would support story writing for children who are much more natural storytellers who would also support for children who aren't as a way of doing that. But we'd wanna be careful not to think that the only type of books that students would be making are stories, which is why we have to be very careful with some of the language that we use. So for example, if we go back to Brian for a minute, if I was looking at Brian's book and I just, I'd only seen the first page, I wouldn't say, Brian, would you read your story to me? Because how can we, how can we tell it's a story after just one page, there's no way we could talk to just one page. Right? Maybe this book goes like this. Maybe it's a train, a boat, a car, a plane, right? Um, it might be a list book. Once we get to this page, and certainly this page, now I know it's a story, and then I could switch to the words story. I can say, oh, read yours. Keep reading your story to me. Like I'd have to be careful with story language. Even like, something like saying, what happens next happens. Next is story language. And I wouldn't say to Tom, here, Tom, what happens next? Nothing happens next. We never see the diesel engine again. It's not a happening type of book. It's an interest. It's a different type of book, right? And so, um, I just have to be careful with my language. And even as much as I think about this, I always joke that I had to go through language rehab at one point to stop calling every book that children are making a story. Right? Um, even as much as I think about it, I'll slip every once in a while and say, use the word story right? When I don't mean to. Um, that's something because for the first 20 years or so out of 30 in education, I called everything a story. And it's not, I try to be much more precise with my language now, thinking about this difference between story books and list books. So none of that is to take away from story books at all. I love stories, right? Um, it's just not the only type of book that children would be writing or for some children, even the easiest type of book to be writing, at least as a starting point. And I'm certainly not trained to go one to the other. They're just two separate types, right? And we can help them both become more sophisticated and in both types we can support children's language. All right. So lemme just pause there for a minute. I think we have about are left. Um, like I just am rambling here, so I'm curious if there's other questions. It's, it's gone dark here since I, since I was last on. Yeah. Um, no really interesting stuff. Like if anybody's got any questions, if you start typing now and then we can throw some of those out to Matt. Um, lots of really interesting stuff. Matt. One of the things that um, was really interesting to me was when you were talking about the, the stack and talking about the books, and I think when you said about the teacher who was sharing books and the way she was talking about them, like, you know, when you see these illustrations, these are the kind of things you can use in your stories. Like, is there any other examples you've got of that, of really good ways to talk about the books that you read with children to get them to then think about it in their own books? Yeah, I mean, it's the kind of thing that we're saying all the time. I mean, mm-hmm. Um, one of the things we do sometimes, um, well, a couple things with older students, right? Not with three and four year olds with older students, when we're studying a new genre in writing, we spend the first couple of days of the unit doing nothing but studying our stack of text. Yeah. It's hard to go write something new if you don't know what that type of writing is. Mm-Hmm. So we start off those, that's two or three days of just reading like a writer, of just noticing what authors do. Yeah. Um, in order to start trying it out, it's hard to go right in a new genre if you haven't read it before. Um, a lot of the, um, lessons that I'm teaching both preschool or in, um, kindergarten and up, um, are in as in where I'm modeling things that I'm noticing and then asking, um, and seeing what children notice. I mean, the most common question I'm asking children is what else do you notice? What else do you notice on this page? So we're thinking about the types of things that children notice. So if we model that, then it's relatively easy to support that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Um, I just got a comment through from Amanda and she said that I've just realized that I say story when children are writing their books. Um, could you give us some examples of what we could say instead of story or just book? Yeah, I would just, I just say book. Yeah. I mean, if you wanna be neutral in terms of whether it's a story or a list or you're not sure what it is. Mm-Hmm. I would just say, let's read. I would you read your book to me? Mm-Hmm. Okay. And if I'm reading Books to Children, if it's a storybook, then I say, let's read this story. Yes. And if it's, um, I just never, I never really used the word language list book with young children. It just doesn't roll off the tongue very well. Say, oh, let's read this list book. I'm gonna read this list book too. So I'll just say, let's read this book. And what I'll, how I'll describe them is I'll say, oh, this is one of those books that tells us a lot about something. Yeah. Right. So a book that tells us a lot about something or maybe a book that teaches us a lot about something. Mm-Hmm. All books aren't necessarily, all list books aren't informational books. So some of 'em just tell a lot about something, um, beautiful language to describe something and other books are teaching about something. Mm-Hmm. And if I'm never not sure Right. I just would use the word book because book is neutral in terms of language. I can't go wrong with book. Right. Um, but story means story, character, setting, plot, all those things. It means all those things that you all talk about. Character setting, problem, solution, Mm-Hmm. Those are stories. Um, just, there's lots of books that children read and should hear that are, um, not stories. So it's not an antis story thing in any way. I love stories, it's just trying to be a little bit more precise in my language because it gets to be confusing for children if we say, oh, what happens next? And they're writing an informational book where nothing is happening. Yeah, that's true. Um, one of the really interesting things that I thought came through right across your presentation was, um, the fact there was lots of evidence and information behind the stories and the books that the children have created. So I know for example, lots of teachers will be scribing on work and writing things down to be able to collect that evidence that they need. But actually in terms of the video that you had, the knowledge that you had about the children, then it really came across without having to scribe on, without having to make endless notes that there was a lot of information there and there was a lot of evidence just from the stuff that you have. I dunno if you want to talk a little bit more about that. Yeah, I certainly, it's not that I'm not writing down what children are saying, I'm just cautious about where it is. Right. So if it's writing for me, meaning it's really record keeping. I'm, I'm trying to remember, like I said, I've got thousands of books of scanned into my computer from young children, literally probably a thousand books scanned into my computer. Well, I can't begin to remember all those. Right. For individual, I have to have that written down. And so, but I just don't write it in their book. I'll write it in my conferring notes. Um, I know teachers who will put write it on a post-it note and put it on the back of the page. Yeah. It's not my favorite strategy, but I can live with that one. Mm-Hmm. Any place other than it being written right on the book. Really, I just write in my conferring notes. I just write if it's, if the writing is for me, which what you're describing is it's for the teacher. Right. So remember if the write, if the purpose of the writing is for me, then I'm writing it someplace where I would access it. If I'm writing for a child, then I'd be writing where they could access it. But I'm clearly saying I'm not writing for the child. They can write for themselves. They don't need me to write for them. Yeah. Yeah. So I just write it somewhere else and then I've got a record of what they said. Um, and especially sometimes I'm writing down, um, each of the versions of what children say. So one of the things I'm sure happens in your work is that children are telling stories and you're writing down what they're saying somewhere, not in their book, but somewhere. And as you're writing it down, when they reread their book, they read it differently and they read it another time and they read it differently next time. Right. Mm-Hmm. That young children's books will change somewhat with each reading. In fact, it's not really how much they change or if they change, it's how much do they change. We have children whose books change in the moment Mm-Hmm. And then all these little 9, 10, 12 different stages until they're keeping them absolutely the same every time they read them. Yeah. Well, um, so I'm, we'd have to decide which version am I even writing down. Right. Because they've revised it, they've written it often. Every time they reread it, they add a little bit more, they're revising and starting to say more. Mm-Hmm. And so if you even decide which version am I writing down, sometimes I'm writing, um, two different versions down so I can compare their language from a first reading and a subsequent reading. Yeah. Right. But I'm not trying to cement it too quickly. Yeah. Just got a message from, uh, Kelly saying great professional development have definitely reflected this evening on the powerful message that Matt has shared with us. Many thanks. No, my pleasure. I'm so, I hope this has been helpful. Yeah, No, it's been very helpful. Really, really helpful. It's been very good. So, um, Lizzie said, I think as adults we are quick to jump in and ask children what's next when they mark Macon as part of a book. How do you suggest we approach this with parents to help them support their children's sense of self writers? Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things that happens with parents, I do a lot of parent workshops and one of the things that often happens is that parents not knowing any better. It's not their fault, but they don't realize that there's something other than letters and sounds. Mm-Hmm. They think, well, of course we've gotta have letters and sounds before we can teach them to write. Well. And that's absolutely not the case. You could see each of the books that I shared today. Right. Didn't have, Kyle's the only one that had writing in it. No. Yeah. I think Kyle's the only one that had writing in it. Um, and yet they know a lot about writing, um, a lot about composing. And so we have to help parents understand this difference between conventions and composition. And what ends up happening when I talk to parents about it, is they don't end up saying, how can I get my child to be a better speller? Or how can I get them to write more? What they end up asking is, how can I get them to compose better? And so I think it's incumbent on us to help parents understand that there's more to writing than just conventions. And that the conventions and writing are actually pretty limited. Right. 'cause once you can spell, there's not a lot more to learn once you can punctuate appropriately. That's about it. The composing part of all that is limitless. And so, um, one, the thing that makes the biggest difference when I'm working with parents is to show them pieces of writing that have strong composition in them so they can start to see that Oh yeah. As much as I might be thinking as a parent about what's my child's spelling like, or how many letters and sounds or any of those things, I should also be thinking about, huh, does my child stay on topic? Do their right list books or story books. How much does their books stay the same over time? How are they conveying meaning? How much detail is in their illustration? How much detail? I mean, all these composing things that get at the heart of what you're about with storytelling and what we're thinking about from a bookmaking standpoint that end up being the heart of what Hope children become strong, um, um, writers who enjoy writing. Yeah. That's it. Well, we see often because um, we work a lot with early years with Tell's toolkit and the children are very confident to put marks on papers and to kind of really create their own stories. And I think as they get older, sometimes that gets a little bit more restricted with that need to do it. Right. Yep. Um, yeah, like, so I, I just wondered if you've got any kind of top tips on maintaining that creativity within ideas and also kind of overcoming that barrier of having to get that rightness to their writing. Yeah. I mean there are a couple of, I mean this is this be another whole hour on this one, but Yeah. Um, there are a couple things. One is we have to help children understand that we value risk taking. Mm-Hmm. So as we're sharing writing, if we're only sharing writing and highlighting things that are spelled correctly, as opposed to highlighting risks that children have taken to spell difficult to spell words and have misspelled them, then Right. If we value and celebrate that, right. It make a huge difference. Children are incredibly adept. This is Lily, you know, quote from Lily and Katz about how children are incredibly adept at, um, making theories about what they think adults value. And it's easy for us to inadvertently communicate that we value things being correct as opposed to, um, or, or that we value conventions as opposed to also valuing composition and devaluing their thinking. And so when we talk with children, one of the things I'm thinking about when I'm conferring with writers at any age, 'cause I'm working with three year olds and 12 year olds, is that, um, I have to be thinking about what were, were my last conferences up and what's been my bounce over time of how much have I been talking to you about conventions or how much have I been talking about composition? 'cause if my last three conferences about conventions, I certainly am not teaching conventions. Again, in my next conversation with the child, I'm gonna go for composition Mm-Hmm. Um, and so, and I'm gonna actually teach more composition the conventions just 'cause that's the higher growth area. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds good. So, um, I can see that Karen's typing, so I'm just thinking if there's any more questions that anybody's got. Yeah. But we better let Matt go off. 'cause I think you've got a flight somewhere, haven't You? I do. I've got a little, I already have my suitcase in the car and I'm, I'm gonna walk right out the door, so we'll see what Karen's typing here. Yeah. Right. Um, so I'd love to answer one more if I can. Yeah, there we are. We've got it. Um, I've asked children to read picture books to me after reading lots of books on demand, and I find it really encourages reading for themselves, which is a similar approach. And their stories are amazing. And I often comment on their stories a few days later, so. Yeah. Yeah. But no, it's, it's been really good tonight. Well, and just real quick, so I'm not, and as in Karen's comment there, I'm not sure how much she's talking about them reading their own books or reading published books, but another whole area of conversation, another area of interest is the language children are composing when they're reading published books, published picture books. I ask children all the time. In fact, my day tomorrow will be sent with six and seven year olds asking them to read books to me that they're not decoding. So published books. Um, and what I'm looking for is where they're using the pictures, read those books, how are they composing language and how rich is their language? And so, and how do we support that direct connection to your work? So yeah, absolutely. All the things that we've been thinking about tonight in terms of children composing language, language in, um, their writing applies to when they're composing language, when they're reading unfamiliar picture books. It doesn't work the same if it's a familiar book, but when they're reading unfamiliar picture books, we're asking 'em to read them with the pictures, um, rather than the pictures and words we're asking them to use the pictures to compose. Um, the language composition skills are the same. They're slightly different, but they're the same whole realm. Mm-Hmm. And I lately have been thinking a lot about it than watching how children compose language in dramatic play. And because you'd think that, and I won't go too deep into this, but you'd think that how they compose language in writing and when they're reading unfamiliar books and in their dramatic play and in oral storytelling, that their language levels would line up. And they don't, there are some children who will say much more when they're reading a published book, when they're reading their own writing, and the child right next to them will say much more in their book than they would a published book. And somebody else is using dialogue on the playground, um, when they're playing superheroes, but not using dialogue when they're, um, reading a book or writing a book. And what we can start to do is to raise used language composition in one area to raise the level of composition in another. So yeah, it's interesting to think so. Glad you mentioned that. So interesting to think about that across ranges, across write different realms. And I think as well, like what you're saying about, um, children having freedom just to make marks, I think that gives them a lot more scope to, to create books that have got a higher language level. So I think absolutely. People are having to write those phonetically. You'd get a lot less. Oh My gosh. Yeah. No, that's why they'd have to. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean if we, it's incredibly easy for children to make books. It take nothing at all to get them up and going, making books, but they had to write everything phonetically right from the start. No, all they would, we have to wait. Think about what we'd have to do with Kyle. Let's just end with this. Think back to Kyle, who we started with. If we were gonna wait till Kyle could write all of that conventionally Mm-Hmm. We basically have to say, Kyle, we're gonna ignore your thinking for the next three years until you have enough letter sound knowledge that we can read all of your writing. Yeah. Right. And we wouldn't do that. That's what you're doing so much by honoring children's language and their stories. Right. Because we are valuing their thinking and their ability to be able to compose and composing is not dependent on conventions. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Brilliant. Big thank you for coming out to, and speaking to, I'll say tonight, but it's not tonight for you. I think it's the middle of the day. It's, We have three o'clock here. But, um, that's it. Yeah. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed it.