A recent article in the TES, highlighted the Education Endowment Foundation’s view that a high-quality, reading-rich curriculum can offer the means for pupils to thrive after their time away from the classroom. They go on to point out that it can be the best way to close attainment gaps widened by COVID disruption, and also calm teachers’ stress, exacerbated by coping with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
We absolutely stand by this view at the CLPE. Throughout our almost 50 year history of researching practice in language and literacy development, we have always known this to be the case, which is why this approach is at the heart of and runs throughout the training, publications and resources we provide for schools.
This is also why, In July 2020, we produced and released our recovery curriculum teaching notes, which we made freely available, to support primary children with the transition back into school in September. These notes are based on Oliver Jeffers’ incredible and important picture-book, Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth that are still available for schools to download.
Over 13,000 copies of the notes were downloaded and we were keen to build on the positive response to this by continuing to focus on CPD and resources for teachers and schools that emphasise the importance of a reading-rich curriculum to support the learning, progress and attainment of pupils across this academic year.
But how do we fit in time to develop our knowledge and understanding about what this means in practice? Time for staff meetings and CPD training may feel pressed in the current climate, and current guidance may mean meeting together is impossible in larger schools.
Our programme of webinars is designed to help you to provide and manage CPD effectively at this time. Staff may want to take part in webinars in year group bubbles, looking at issues specific to their year groups, whilst also exploring how progression builds across the school. All the sessions are planned at staff meeting length and run from 3.30-5.30pm. We also run a 1.00-3.00pm slot, which could be perfect for PPA.
Our new online programme includes:
Understanding the Reading Journey webinars – these webinars will take teachers through the practice and provision that will enable children to succeed and make progress as readers throughout the primary years, developing decoding and comprehension skills in EYFS and KS1 and moving through to children being fluent, critical, confident and truly independent readers by the end of KS2, with the skills that will enable their future success in KS3 and beyond.
Understanding the Writing Journey webinars – these webinars take staff through the equivalent journey to enable progress and development in writing. They will explore the early motor skills that build handwriting; phonics, spelling and vocabulary development and idea and imagination building, which allow children to succeed as writers in EYFS and KS1. The sessions for Y3/4 and Y5/6 build on this to cover the knowledge of language, grammar, vocabulary and authorial intent needed to write independently with a distinct voice for a range of purposes and audiences by the end of KS2.
You may want to look at a specific area of development for all your staff, based on the research from our current book, The Power of a Reading Rich Classroom.
Reflecting Realities: Nurturing Reader Identity
Poetry in the Primary School
Picture-books in the Primary School
Non-Fiction in the Primary School
All these courses will provide you with examples of one of our quality teaching sequences, so that you can immediately implement learning in your school, as well as links to other supporting resources.
Power of Reading
We have also developed an online version of our flagship Power of Reading training. This programme gives the same opportunities to train you in recognising high quality texts and creative teaching approaches and a deep knowledge of how to use these to develop a broad, rich literacy curriculum across your school, which raises engagement and attainment in reading and writing.
We hope that our new online programme will support you in developing the best practice and provision for children that will enable them to succeed and thrive in these difficult times and that you’ll also be able to make use of our huge range of free resources that all exemplify how to create a reading-rich curriculum in your school.
Visit the CLPE website to find out more about CPD, Power of Reading Membership and free resources.