Episode 57: Decodable books

Andy Psarianos

Hi, I'm Andy Psarianos.

Robin Potter

Hi, I'm Robin Potter.

Adam Gifford

Hi, I'm Adam Gifford.

Andy Psarianos

This is The School of School podcast.

Welcome to The School of School podcast.

Andy Psarianos

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Adam Gifford

Welcome to another episode of The School of School podcast, and we are so fortunate today to have Katy Reeve joining us. Katy, welcome. You've been on other podcasts of ours, and we're really fortunate to have more of your time. Can you just let the audience know a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Katy Reeve

Absolutely. Thank you very much for having me on. I'm Katy Reeve. I'm an assistant head teacher at quite a large primary school over in Brighton and Hove. I am also a literacy consultant, and I work with parents to support readers at home.

Adam Gifford

Cool. You can help me. I need help, Katy.

Andy Psarianos

Adam needs a lot of help.

Adam Gifford

Is this phrase right? Be gentle, speak slowly, use small words, little bite-sized chunks, all that sort of stuff works with me. What are decodable books? It sounds almost like MI5 style. Look, this is a decodable book and this one's not. What's that all about? Can you just help me?

Katy Reeve

Absolutely. It's quite a hot topic at the moment because obviously the reading framework that came out last year talked about children being given texts that were decodable, so that they could read those books without using other strategies. I think one of the main questions that I've had off the back of that, from lots and lots of teachers, is, "Where can we find these decodable books? What are good decodable books? What should we be using?" I think it's really important to talk about this so that we can put it in a context that decodable books are books that children obviously know the phonic code for, so it will depend what phonic code you've taught up until that time.

So, all books are decodable at some point because you know the code. So, it's been a little bit mismatched that we feel like as if we need to change everything that we do to have decodable books for children to read. But actually, what we're asking is, "Are you teaching your phonic code in your school in the same order of the reading scheme or books that you send home?"

Adam Gifford

It's the truth. That sounds really complicated. And the other thing that jumps to mind is ... I first did my teacher training, and being trained how to support children read. One of the things that was made really clear to me, and I was fortunate, I think I worked with some of the best people in the world when I was trained to teach children to read. But one of the things I learned very quickly is the skill in writing a good children's book. Do you think it would be fair to say that part of the skill of writing a good children's book is using language that is appropriate to the audience that you intend it to be read by? And by that, I'm being slightly facetious, and what I mean by that is that, yeah, there's some big words and words that we use. I don't know, I think of names of dinosaurs and whatnot, but I suppose the crux of what I'm trying to get at is these decodable books, what happens to the books from 20 years ago that I learned to train or learned to help children read with that were written beautifully, and the words didn't seem to be a barrier and still were able to fit in with that whole idea around decoding through phonics?

Katy Reeve

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the danger of taking this at face value. I think if we're looking at children in Reception and going into year one, there needs to be a balance where, yes, some books are going to be based on the phonic code that children have learned, so they will be possibly one to four sentences long, they'll be using the code that they've learned, but there has to be a yin to the yang, so we need, also, for children to take books home that are richer in language, vocabulary, and stories.

And they're two very different skills at that point. So, children need to practise the phonics that they're learning in order to decode, but also, children need to learn that all those other reading skills that are going to get them to fall in love with reading, such as what makes a good story, predicting, following along their favourite characters, et cetera, et cetera, and poetry and rhyme.

So, I don't think you can have one without the other, personally, I think the two need to go on in tandem, so that the books that we read when we were younger, we wouldn't want to say, "You can't take that book home because it's not going to be an appropriate book for you to read," which I think would be the danger if you just stuck to decodable books.

Andy Psarianos

I'd love to talk about this concept of white space in the curriculum, but before we do that, I just feel we need to maybe explain, for people who maybe are listening from other parts of the world and may not be familiar with the specifics of the curriculum requirements in England, which is what we're talking about right now, and what we mean by phonics and decoded. Because phonics aren't used everywhere. What are we talking about when we're saying phonics, and what are we talking about decoding? Just the technical jargon here, because it's quite a complex subject. And I know that we all know, because we're in education, but I have a funny suspicion that a lot of the listeners might not even know what we're talking about.

Katy Reeve

Absolutely. Phonics is the term we use, but actually it's really phoning in awareness. It's what sounds are in our language and what symbols match those sounds. And where English gets a bit tricky is that you can have more than one sound ... Sorry, you can have more than one symbol that matches the sound, and that's where children get a bit unstuck higher up the school, coming into end of year one, year two, where it gets a bit more complicated. So, children do need time to practise that skill and consolidate it, so they need books that are having that sound with lots of different symbols. But ... Sorry, I said that wrongly again. So, that symbol with lots of different sounds, they need a chance to master that. But at the same time we want children to have that richness of language and those other reading skills as well, which they won't necessarily get from those books.

And the other term that we looked at as well was asking ... I can't quite remember, Andy, sorry. You said phonics and ... ?

Andy Psarianos

Decoding.

Katy Reeve

So again, that is quite self explanatory, it's just how do you get the code from the letters so you gain meaning from it?

Andy Psarianos

Yeah. Because I think you touched on something really interesting there, Katy. This is a particularly complex thing in English, right? Doesn't necessarily exist in other languages. One of the nice things about the pandemic, if there's such a thing, is everyone's getting to learn the Greek alphabet, right? And Omicron, which in Greek is said, "Omicron", literally means small O, right? O and micro, as opposed to omega, which is big O, right? The two different letters, they have different sounds. It's very clearly spelled out in Greek. And you can decode it. O-micro and O-mega.

But we don't have that in English. We just leave .... Kind of almost seemingly, to someone learning English as a second language, is an interesting thing to watch, because a lot of it is really just historical. There's no rule or regulation behind it, its just evolved in a particular way, right?

Katy Reeve

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Andy Psarianos

So, that's particularly difficult in English, and it's important and critical to learn at an early age.

So, white space in the curriculum. I think we've talked about this before. I remember hearing this in an episode we recorded a long time ago, Adam. People often look at the curriculum as, "This is what I must do, period." And I don't think anybody who writes curriculums writes them ... Well, maybe some people do, but that's not really the intent. The intent of the curriculum is like a list of objectives, in the sense that this is what the children must be able to do by the end of whatever that timeframe is, but it's not the only things that they should be able to do or the only experiences they should have in school.

Andy Psarianos

So, between these pillars that are laid out for you, that say, "These are musts," there's a lot of space for you to do other things and incorporate other things. And I think most teachers, especially teachers who have been teaching for a long time, know this intrinsically. They know that, "Okay, I need to do this, but it doesn't mean I can't do these other things as well." Is that sometimes part of the problem here? Is that we think that, "Okay, well now we've got this new thing, decodable books, so now we must only read decodable books." I don't think that's the intention. Maybe I'm wrong.

Katy Reeve

No, I don't think it was the intention at all, but I think you are correct. I think, yeah, you're right, Andy, that some people have taken it in that way and seen it as this, "We can't just do this because of X, Y, Z which is totally valid, I agree, we can't just send home decodable readers because that also won't give the children a rich experience. I think you're correct in the report, I don't think that was what it was asking in the first place. I think they were just being clear that you need to make sure that when children are starting off on their reading journey, that the books that they take home, they've covered the phonics.

And actually, we were very guilty of that. One of my earliest teachers came and pointed this out when we changed our phonic scheme that we used, so we updated it to sound right. And they teach the sounds in a different order, and we call that systematic phonics here, where you follow one scheme from start to end to make sure you're covering everything. It doesn't matter which scheme you choose, but you must make sure you stick to one.

But it meant that all of our reading books in Reception and in year one didn't follow the same order. So, our reading data really dropped, and our reading standards really dropped, and our early years teachers were looking at why. And then we looked at the books we were sending home, and there were words and sounds that children hadn't come across, but yet we were sending them home for them to practise, and that really jarred. So, I think it's a really good point that as a school, you do have to make sure that the decodable books that you have, you have at least covered the code, so that children can take them home and practise as well.

Adam Gifford

Can I just jump in on this, Katy? One of the major shareholders in any school are parents. I just wonder if you've ever come across parents who have ... Say we have accurately identified the level of phonic decoding in the books, and we've sent those home. So I'm sitting down and I'm listening to my child reading, and they're making the right sounds in response to the right symbols. And they're doing it with reasonable fluency so that, "The dog was ... " That is such a rubbish sentence, I mean crucified that, but just imagine that basically what the child ...

Andy Psarianos

This is why Adam doesn't write decodable books.

Adam Gifford

Yeah, that's right. I failed miserably. But let's just say they make the right noise at the right time in response to the words in the book. Is the danger not then that if we do that with a degree of fluency, then immediately, as a dad, I might go, "Yeah, my child can read this. And not only can they read it, they can read it with fluency. And listen, Katy Reeve, I know you're a great teacher and you do loads around literacy, but my child needs to go to the next level. Why is my child sticking around here?" And you say, "Well, ask your child, tonight, when you're reading with them, ask them if the dog has done this." Something that means that I need to comprehend the noises that I'm making. But I think that ... You must have come across that in your time, Katy, that just because we make the right sound in response to the symbol, then therefore that's reading.

Katy Reeve

Yes. And that can be a problem with very early readers as well. Children that take off quite quickly and want to speed through, to get onto the next book, the next book, the next book, and don't want to have that time to talk around the story, they can come unstuck further down the road when they can't get away with that surface understanding, that absolutely that is an issue.

I also think we possibly stop far too soon. And by that, I mean once they can decode a sentence and they can recognise the words quickly, that fluency bridges to them being able to understand what they've read. You can't comprehend if you aren't fluent, because your brain's ... It's patting your head and rubbing your tummy, it's hard to do the two things at the same time. So once the decoding becomes more automatic, that's when you can build on those comprehension skills and gain some understanding.

But we also want that phonic knowledge to go into the writing process, and that isn't going to happen if we move on too quickly, because we want children to be able to break a word down into the sounds, but we also want them then to be able use those sounds within their writing. And that is a real visual skill as well, because often we have to say, "Does it look right?" Because obviously, there is more than one way of writing it, and which sound we are going to use can change.

So, it's quite a complex skill, and I think we need to talk to parents about that in our expectation, that if they bring a book home and they can read it fluently and they can answer questions about it, we need some follow up activities and questions that then get them to put that reasoning into the writing, because that's when that true fluency is there, because they can use that sound and that knowledge to take into the writing process.

And spelling has been quite a massive issue for schools for quite a long time, trying to move children on. We have quite a big spelling list that children look at now that are quite varied. They're not so reliant on spelling patterns. So, children's phonological knowledge needs to be more extensive than ever. And also, we need to, when they're older, still keep curious about, "Oh, I didn't expect that word to have that spelling. That wasn't the sound that I thought was going to come up." But we don't. Children tend to think that was Reception and year one, and we've moved on from that. So we need to keep this curiosity going, and we need parents to help us with that, to ask those sorts of questions as well.

Andy Psarianos

So how do we get parents get parents to help? Because parents can play a huge role here, right?

Katy Reeve

Absolutely. I think the parent role is a huge one. Because at home you have the time. You have the time to do something different that you can't do at school.

Andy Psarianos

The one-on-one time too, right?

Katy Reeve

Absolutely. Yeah, you can choose books that your children are interested in, that they want to read. But also, if there are skills that they need to practise, they won't get that time at school, because that one-on-one time, if it isn't what the other 29 children need to practise, it's really challenging as a teacher to consistently, which is what you need, and daily, be able to practise that skill. So, that is where parents come in. And providing opportunities at home for them to practise those key skills can be really, really life changing for those children, especially if they're struggling readers.

Andy Psarianos

So Katy, and this cacophony of sound in a classroom where ... Classrooms are really quite noisy, actually. How do you do formative assessment? How do you figure out which kids are struggling, especially an audible kind of sense, like phonics, like listening, hearing, making sounds? How do you assess that?

Katy Reeve

Yeah. Well, whole class reading, I think, is the most powerful approach that I've seen used, and teachers are really masterful at guiding sessions. So, it is really differentiated, even though we're looking at the same text. And that's something I believe really strongly in as well. If children are taken out for interventions the whole time, it's as if they're not part of what's going on, and then when they come back into school, into class story, they feel as if they're not part of the in joke that everyone's read in the last story, et cetera, et cetera. So, having children to feel safe and secure, making sure that you get to hear children read every day in some context. So it could be in maths, it could be in science, it could be in history, but whole class reading where you've got one text, can be a really good way of getting underneath the skin of children's understanding. Because you create a lot more time within that session and within the day, to be able to talk and discuss and get round to make sure that every child's got a voice.

I found it interesting what you were saying about white space, actually, because I think if you ask teachers what their biggest challenge is they often say it's time.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah. There's just too many things in the curriculum and they just can't get through it all in the time that they have, with the number of students and all the challenges and everything. What are some of the things to get around that? How can you wrestle that time back into your daily routines?

Katy Reeve

Well, I think it's about a different way of looking at it. As you said, I think it's about seeing, learning more as a whole, so that we are not having to have science, geography, history lessons. We don't do English in the morning and a topic in the afternoon. It's often doubling up. And if you can really immerse children in a topic and really develop their vocabulary, the reading skills can come through that topic work. We don't have to have separate reading sessions in order to do that. And I think you can make far more time by having that real cross-curricular approach where it's based on building knowledge. Because once children have the knowledge, then they can write, they can read, they know the context of the text that they're looking at. So, all the pieces start to fall into place. But if you're jumping around from topic to topic and subject to subject, then I think you're missing loads of opportunities for that learning.

Andy Psarianos

Go on, Adam.

Adam Gifford

No, I was just going to say the other thing that is complementing what Katy's saying is, I think you asked about formative assessment before, Andy? I think being really sharp with your assessment and not thinking that the only time I can assess a particular subject is during that subject. And like Katy is saying, if you recognise that in a text that you are looking at ... You are all looking at the atlas or something, and there's a few sentences that are descriptive sentences, and you realise, "Oh, within that, there's some of the work that this group of children have been looking at or maybe struggling with," is it possible just to walk past the desk and say, "Can you just read that for me for a second?" Or something that just gives you a little bit of an insight so we're not waiting for things.

And I think that idea around assessing all the time and being really confident with our assessment is a skill that takes time. But if we understand or we know what we are looking for, for the next steps for the children, then they might appear in all sorts of different places. And I think making those sorts of decisions, not waiting for, "We've got a reading session next week where we'll go through and see what they know." If there's opportunities to find that out beforehand, because then the assessment time that was scheduled or that specific subject time can just be used to learn something new then. We're not waiting, we're not wasting time to find something out when we may have an opportunity that might arise out the middle of nowhere.

Katy Reeve

Yeah. Teachers are assessing all the time, and adapting and changing within the lesson that they're doing, aren't they? They're looking at where are the children at with their understanding, and adapting and changing it as they go along. So, when you speak to teachers about their class, they know their children so well, do we really need some of the formal assessments that we're putting in place? I think it's an important question to say, "What has it added to the picture? What information has that given me? Is it useful? How can I use it?" When I speak to teachers, often the answer I get is that it's firming up their decisions, their judgments that they had anyway. So sometimes it might just be the confidence or they feel they need proof.

And we've removed the learning goals over here and in Reception now, early years practitioners are free to make those observations rather than having to write everything down. And when you talk to those teachers, they know the children inside out and backwards, and they're spending more time, then, playing with the children, being able to make observations, getting involved in the environment, rather than having to take opportunities to just assess them and write it down. So hopefully, that will filter up the school.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah. Environment is an interesting idea, right? It's this notion that the teacher's ultimate responsibility is to create an environment where learning can take place, and not necessarily be ramming learning down the throats of all the children, right?

Katy Reeve

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Andy Psarianos

That's something that ... It's a mindset. I think most modern day teachers are aware that that's really what education is supposed to look like, but I think it's something that parents and non-educators ... But people who have tremendous influence over the education system are not necessarily aware of, and they still have this very archaic idea of some teacher with a blackboard and a piece of chalk telling all the children what the right things are, right?

Katy Reeve

I hope not, but possibly yes. I'm sure they do. Yeah.

Andy Psarianos

I think a lot of people do still think that. And there's still a lot of educators who are arguing for a bit more of that in the curriculum these days. If you follow Twitter, which I try not to, because usually it's generally just a bunch of really angry people in my opinion, but if you spend a lot of time on Twitter, you'll see that there are a lot of radical people with some pretty radical ideas. Extremists on either end, where some people really still think that those very, call them teacher led ... I don't know what the right ... What's the right terminology for that? I don't even know. Because whatever you say is going to be wrong in someone's mind. But that sort of archaic telling as teaching, just telling everyone what the right answers are and hopefully everyone will remember, versus the extreme, just put them all in a room and let's see what happens kind of ...

Katy Reeve

I've heard it as chalk and talk and guide from the side, are two terms that I've heard before. Yeah.

Andy Psarianos

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Adam Gifford

Catchy. Yeah.

Andy Psarianos

Chalk and talk. I like it.

Katy Reeve

But I think with everything, it's about finding that balance. It's about both can be very useful. Both can, if they're done well. I think that children need knowledge, and for children who especially haven't had rich life experiences, our job sometimes is how can we impart that knowledge in the fastest way possible?

I've used an example before with teachers, when we look at Paddington and Paddington Bear, I'm going to give children who don't have the knowledge of what a train station is that knowledge really, really quickly. I'm not going to embark on the conversation of, "Have you been on a train?" Because we're going to be half an hour and they'll have all, half the class will have half went off, we'll find out where they've gone. So there are times when, actually, we want to impart knowledge really quickly and we need to find the best way of doing it. But then at the same time, children need to become independent learners and have the confidence to be guided through that process so that they're not reliant on the adults as well. And also, they don't become passive learners because that can be another problem with too much talk as well.

Adam Gifford

Can I just jump in and get one thing off my chest with the decodable books? I was traumatised by one of the shining lights of phonics and development in the UK. I won't name this person, but it was a professional development thing, and it matters not whether she knew I was from New Zealand or not. Oh, I have just given away ... 50/50 now. But I remember going through and being asked to make the right sounds, and my vowel sounds are a little bit different to a lot of people, a lot of my colleagues who grew up in this particular part of England. And therefore, a lot of the children that were there as well.

And I think just one thing as a kind of request and to keep in mind, is I found it very difficult to physically make the right sound, the sound that she wanted. It was humiliating, and I didn't find it particularly helpful. And yeah, everyone got a good laugh, so we can at least applaud her for that. But what I would say is that what it did do is it would be difficult for me with a dad head on, to then sit down and do phonics with my children. Because I would be petrified of getting it wrong and making them make the wrong sound or not doing that or those sorts of things.

And I just think that if we want ... Reading is often one of those lovely, shared experiences that we can have with children at home, so it would worry me if that's not addressed with lots of our parents and people who are caring for the children out there, that they might struggle in the same way that I do to make the right vowel sounds. And perhaps, I think it's a school's responsibility just to alleviate that, because there'd be nothing worse than alienating because I can't make the right sound. Does that make sense? You can tell that this hit deep, can't you?

Katy Reeve

Yeah, absolutely.

Adam Gifford

It was awful.

Katy Reeve

Absolutely though. And I think there are times when you have to be really honest and say, "I just need to go and check that sound because I'm not a hundred percent sure." And that's absolutely fine. We would do that with any other teaching, and making mistakes is all part of the process. But regional accents as well, I'm sure that ... Well, phonics does change depending on where it's taught, because yes, you could say that is the sound you should be making, but for the children who have an accent, for it to make sense to them, that has to be taken into consideration.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah. Hey, I think that's a whole podcast on its own. I think we need to come back and talk about that.

Katy Reeve

Yeah.

Andy Psarianos

Because it's you as a parent, Adam. What about you as a teacher?

Adam Gifford

Sure.

Andy Psarianos

What about regional ... And we're talking about regional accents, we're not just talking about international accents. Within Great Britain, there's a tremendous variation, or North America or wherever you go, even probably within New Zealand, there's different local accents. And when you're teaching phonics, that's kind of important. We need to consider the implications of that somehow.

We need to wrap this one up, guys. So, I'm going to say, once again, thank you, Katy, for joining us and sharing all your wisdom. And Adam, you as well, you're very wise as well. Thank you for coming again.

Adam Gifford

Thanks, Andy.

Andy Psarianos

And of course, thank you to our listenership. Thanks everyone for coming back and listening again.

Katy Reeve

Well, thank you very much for having me on. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Andy Psarianos

Thank you for joining us on the School of School podcast.