Transcript
How can attendees embed learning from the conference back in their schools?
Nikki Gamble: Today has been such a rich and exciting conference, and there will be something here for everybody. I think it’s about identifying your own priorities, realising that you can’t put everything into place all at once, so selecting from today your key priorities and putting one or two things in place, then coming back and revisiting at a later date and trying something new.
James Clements: I think there were two things. So the first is to think about all that I’ve been offered in different seminars and the different talks and the panel discussions, and to have a little look and try to compare that to what’s going on at school in the current situation. And rather than trying to do everything, drill down to just one or two things and do them really well, and then plan in a couple of months’ time to try to do some others. The other thing which has come to me from all the sessions I’ve attended would be the power of reading aloud, and from listening to everyone speaking today, everybody has talked and is really excited tones about how powerful it is to stand up - right up to the oldest children - and read aloud to them and share really wonderful stories with them. And if I were going back to school on Monday and it wasn’t something we had embedded in our school from Reception right up to Year 6, that’s the first thing I’d do, is bring back story time for every single child.
Stephanie Austwick: Well the first thing is to think about ways of hooking children in, hook them into a book, tantalise them with a little bit of excitement before you even open the books. I can’t wait to see what’s inside. Perhaps set up a story corner. In my session today, I will invite delegates into the story corner and then I will read to them. Always read with expression and enthusiasm, because that’s what really gets the children interested, and use picture books. I love picture books.
Lindsay Pickton: Talk to each other constantly, talk to colleagues about the enjoyment of reading and how important that is. Be clear though that just asking children if they enjoy reading, getting them to self-identify, doesn’t give you the whole story. Some children might love to have stories read to them, but they might self-identify as hating reading because their word reading is not very good. And other children will self-identify as loving reading when what they really mean is they like reading to adults and getting stickers. So do use pupil voice to find out, but filter that through your knowledge of what children are doing. I think be aware of your role as the adult in guiding children, guiding children towards book choices. I think it’s absolutely fine for children to choose to read whatever they like. Never, never tell a child, ‘that book’s too easy.’ Never tell a child ‘that book’s too hard.’ Never tell a child, ‘you can’t have that because you’ve read it already’, because reading books that are too easy or too hard, or books that you’ve already read, are all things that people who enjoy reading, they do them. That’s normal behaviour, so to change that would be a very bad thing. But at the same time, we have to differentiate between the books that children chose for themselves and the books that we guide them towards. Very often those are two distinct areas and if we say ‘but this child only wants to read princess fairy books’, ‘this child only wants to read Horrid Henry’, that’s fine, that’s their free choice, but what about when I’m working with them? And that needs to be a different thing, because otherwise we’re potentially putting a ceiling on children. How will they know what to choose unless they encounter certain things? We need to guide them towards those things, in order to expand their pleasure.
Mike Dodsworth: My biggest piece of advice for teachers coming away from the conference today, from the gathering, is to allow yourself time to reflect. And don’t be too worried about implementing too quickly some of the good ideas you’ve heard. Allow them to implement themselves, to present themselves, at the right time. Much of the messages that I’ve been hearing today, throughout the day, from a variety of practitioners and thinkers and speakers and academics, is that these will make sense to you when the time is right, with the right context. Or sometimes the context will come unexpectedly, but certainly all of the messages will become apparent in the classroom at some point.
David Reedy: The advice for developing reading for pleasure; number one, are you reading aloud to your children every day? It doesn’t need to be for long. Secondly, have you got a really good class library with a book display somewhere? And thirdly, do you ask children what they’re passionate about, and then direct them to things that they can read about what they love to do?