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- Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Serie: Opening Doors series
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
Together with Leah Crawford, Angela Jenkins and Julie Sargent, Bob Cox has compiled this rich resource, complete with vivid illustrations by Victoria Cox, to help teachers enhance their learners' engagement with challenging texts and develop their writing skills as budding wordsmiths.Working in association with the Opening Doors network of schools, the authors address the vital concept of pitching high but including all pupils and how this approach can be delivered in practice. Opening Doors to Ambitious Primary Englishexplains and models top quality ways of thinking, planning and teaching. Theresources, case studies andauthors' innovative ideas on theorywill help you to make primary English vibrant, creative and challenging in your school. It alsoprovides frameworks and principlesfor any school wishing to be more ambitious in developing pupils' speaking, listening, reading, writing and thinking witha greater sense of curiosity and more originality. Opening Doors to Ambitious Primary Englishcontains chapter by chapter explanations of how English in primary schools can be developed in ambitious ways. Supported by research references, examples of pupils' work and illuminating case studies, the book provides teachers with a toolkit of strategies which schools can adapt and apply to their own contexts. The book is supported by the Opening Doors series of books which contain units of work based around selected texts. The authors hope this book will act as a starting block from which to develop an Opening Doors approach to English, and havesuggested key concepts around which the curriculum can be built, with the units providing examples to work from. Suitable for teachers and curriculum leads in primary settings.
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Praise for Opening Doors to Ambitious Primary English
A treasure trove of ideas for time-impoverished teachers. With the turn of every page, I discovered fresh new inspiration that provides endless possibilities. It is refreshing as the book does not dictate one right way of teaching; rather, it empowers teachers to discover the joy and delight of texts and encourages them to take pupils on this same journey!
Claire Martin-O’Donoghue, Senior Education Leader (East), Diocese of Chichester Academy Trust
Enjoyment of reading is a lifetime gift, and this book will enable you to light the spark leading to growing skills, confidence, enthusiasm and achievement in all aspects of English, even in the most reluctant learner. As important, this book will take you, the professional, on a journey which will reinvigorate your passion for exploring new texts, authors and teaching approaches in the classroom. I thoroughly recommend it.
Denise Yates, author of Parenting Dual Exceptional Children: Supporting a Child who has High Learning Potential and Special Educational Needs and Disabilities
This book is informative and exciting, and it contains everything a teacher needs to deliver high-quality English lessons. It opens the door to a deep world of wonder and beauty and provides a myriad of opportunities for imaginative thinking and poetic expression.
Emma Adcock, Principal Teaching and Learning Consultant, VNET Education CIC
The Old English word for ‘open’ is ‘openian’, originally meaning ‘to reveal’ or ‘to become manifest’. Revelations are voiced with expertise and awareness in the newest addition to the ‘Opening Doors’ series – Opening Doors to Ambitious Primary English. This new resource for primary educators offers an opportunity to enroot an ardent approach to the teaching of the English curriculum, ensuring challenge for all. Indeed, this evincing work by Bob Cox and co. offers case studies of primary practice alongside innovative ideas for practical classroom application – an opportunity to set actions into motion, ensuring ambitious teaching and learning of English in the primary setting.
Kelly Ashley, education consultant, author ofWord Power: Amplifying Vocabulary InstructionB
This book provides considerable challenge for both teachers and children but, equally, every support to meet that challenge. It has the potential to transform primary English teaching for the better, and in conjunction with the other key approaches mentioned, open doors for children, not only to a more rewarding educational experience, but to richer lives. No primary school should be without it, and many would benefit considerably from associated professional development.
Gordon Askew, MBE, former DfE Reading Adviser, Founder and Chair, English Hubs Council
Another thoroughly researched book from the inimitable Bob Cox, full of exciting suggestions and resources and supported by excellent classroom examples. The collaboration of experts who have worked with Bob to put this text together have drawn upon their own experience to provide an abundance of ideas which teachers cannot fail to be enthused by.
Janet Gough, Primary English Consultant, former NATE Primary Officer
This fantastic book clearly describes how simple and easy-to-replicate strategies such as ‘link reading’ and ‘taster drafts’ can be used to engage all pupils using even the most challenging texts with high impact. Lots of real examples of using this toolkit successfully in schools provide teachers with practical tips as well as inspiring ideas demonstrating how by removing the ceiling for our students, possibilities are endless.
Juliet Skellett, School Improvement Advisor, Royal Borough of Greenwich
As a teacher, I have heard high expectations talked about so many times, but what these look like and how to ensure that children are equipped to meet them are not always made clear. Throughout this book, high expectations are mentioned again and again and my feeling, as a reader and a teacher, was that Bob had the same ambitions for me that I have for the learners in my class. I felt challenged as I read this book, but I found that doors truly were opened and that I was given the skills and knowledge needed to truly enable my children to soar. If, like me, you are passionate about honing the craft of teaching, then this book is for you. Teach English as you never have before.
Toria Bono, primary teacher, author of Tiny Voices Talk, host of ‘Tiny Voice Talks’ podcastC
Opening Doors to Ambitious Primary English does exactly what it says on the tin. Bob Cox, Leah Crawford, Angela Jenkins and Julie Sargent are relentless in their ambition for all pupils to have access to high-quality texts that become part of their everyday reading and writing diet. The passion and the knowledge of the writers sing from the pages in a way that is inspiring and enthusing but also practical and logical with ideas and strategies to take straight into the classroom. The examples of practice were pertinent and the viewpoints of teaching staff alongside the resulting writing of their pupils shows what can be achieved when we remove the glass ceilings in primary classrooms.
Nicola Mansfield, Primary Curriculum Manager, PiXL
Inspiring accounts from classrooms across the country whose teachers use challenging texts, and apply the principles of Opening Doors, will reignite your passion for teaching and prompt you to reconsider the depth and breadth of texts and the very nature of reading. Practical ways forward abound to enrich the teaching and learning of English, so read, explore, apply and set the bar high for all your pupils. This is not an exclusive curriculum, far from it; it is a thoroughly inclusive one which involves teaching to the top.
Professor Teresa Cremin, The Open University
With the renewed focus on reading in schools, there has never been a better time to join the Opening Doors journey. For years, Bob Cox and his team have been working on the promotion of high-quality reading texts in the primary and secondary classroom and how, in turn, that reading can support, develop and improve other areas of the school’s curriculum. Opening Doors to Ambitious Primary English pulls together the team’s wide breadth of research, practice, experience and knowledge of literature into one easy-to-follow and accessible book.
Chris Curtis, English Teacher, Head of English
It is so powerful reading first-hand the experiences teachers and leaders have had in their own school setting. This breaks down the stigma and fear of using ‘challenging texts’ and makes this accessible and achievable for all teachers, and all leaders nationwide. These case studies pave the way for better English being taught, where challenge is key, because ‘challenge’ therefore becomes the beating heart of our English curriculum.
Sara Abbas, Year 2 teacher, English Leader, Mulgrave Primary SchoolD
This fantastic addition to the ‘Opening Doors’ series clearly models how schools can design their English curriculum by putting rich, quality texts at the heart. With an emphasis on high challenge, whilst offering strategies that ensure each text can be accessed by all, the reader is offered a toolkit of techniques to inspire exciting and diverse reading and writing responses. These principles are then exemplified in case studies – written by teachers at the chalk face – that are included at the end of each chapter.
Wenda Davies, Languages, Literacy and Communication Lead, Coastlands School
Reading Opening Doors to Ambitious Primary English provides further consolidation and real exemplification of the content of the five previous books in the series. The key principles and strategies are expertly explained and the case studies to illustrate each element are invaluable: too often, pedagogical texts provide the ‘what’ but not always the ‘how’ and all practitioners, whether they have already embarked upon an Opening Doors journey or have yet to do so, cannot fail to be excited and inspired by the ambition and genuine passion shared by every contributor.
Laura McGeachie, English Lead, Icknield Primary School
As head teacher of an inner-city school with an incredibly diverse community – twenty-four languages spoken – I was determined to be ambitious and not to dumb down our curriculum. The real, practical and adaptable examples in this book are invaluable. The use of challenging, complex texts has ignited passions, stretching and engaging pupils to read more, question more and experience more.
Sam Collier, Head Teacher, Christ Church Upper Armley Church of England Primary School
Opening Doors to Ambitious Primary English is the key to unlock the complete potential of the ‘Opening Doors’ collection of work – each chapter is laced with the intricacies of all the previous ‘Opening Doors’ books, and embellished with further examples of practice, research and knowledge, showcasing the stunning potential that many children across the country have achieved. This book empowers educators to exercise equity in every sense of the word, from enabling dialogic talk to deepen children’s capacity to make meaning from rich texts, widen vocabulary, cultivate conceptual knowledge and reading links to crafting pieces of writing that rival the greats!
Kiran Satti, Assistant Principal, Primary Trust Literacy Lead Practitioner
E
OPENING DOORSto AMBITIOUS PRIMARY ENGLISH
Pitching high and including all
Bob Cox
with Leah Crawford, Angela Jenkins and Julie Sargent
G
For all the primary teachers making a difference today and for the memory of my own at what was then Fetcham County School in Surrey.
Foreword by Mary Myatt
We are a challenge-seeking species! We like doing things that are difficult, as long as the conditions are characterised by high challenge and low threat.
This is reflected in my conversations with pupils in schools: they enjoy doing work that stretches them. Their observations about the level of challenge they are given can be summarised as ‘We’d like more demanding work please!’
I believe there is a tendency in the sector to make things too easy for too many of our pupils, whatever their prior attainment, in the mistaken belief that they can’t cope. They can!
In ‘“Just Reading”: The Impact of a Faster Pace of Reading Narratives on the Comprehension of Poorer Adolescent Readers in English Classrooms’, Westbrook et al. (2019) from the University of Sussex found that simply reading challenging, complex novels aloud and at a fast pace in each lesson repositioned ‘poorer readers’ as ‘good’ readers, giving them a more engaged uninterrupted reading experience over a sustained period.
Feedback from some of the teachers expressed surprise at the impressive results of the poorer readers as they had thought that these pupils would not be able to cope with demanding texts: ‘I didn’t for a minute expect that they would keep up.’
This research chimes with what the ‘Opening Doors’ series does, which is to walk us through the steps to create lesson structures in which we can honestly say that every single pupil is immersed in rich and diverse literature and language.
When we’re shifting a gear to offer greater challenge to our classes, it’s not just the materials we offer but also the rationale for doing so that matters. Change in professional practice will not be embedded until we as teachers understand the ‘why’ as much as the ‘what’. And this is exactly what this marvellous book does.
It’s also important that we as professionals up our game in terms of our professional and personal reading. It is through the systems and iistructures of professional learning within schools that this work needs to be embedded. All the examples of schools working with the Opening Doors materials show not just impressive results and pupils joyful in their reading, but also an excitement amongst staff for this work, which has been supported and encouraged by senior leaders.
Such work rarely takes off on its own. It needs a collective response and sense of urgency to crack on with it. And when it is offered to teachers in the right way, what we find is that there is a renewed excitement about the teaching of texts in particular, and curriculum design in general. There are very few books that set out the rationale and include examples for professionals to get to work straightaway. Opening Doors to Ambitious Primary English is one of them.
We simply can’t ignore examples of impact like this:
As teachers became more proficient in applying the Opening Doors approach, we found that their choices became more ambitious. At Ravenfield Primary Academy, children in Year 6 compared and analysed the language choices within a range of historical speeches from Shakespeare and Elizabeth I to Winston Churchill. Archaic language and motivational aspects were carefully unpicked to enable the children to understand the context and meaning. Taster drafts allowed them to manipulate language from across the speeches, sparking their imagination to create motivational battle speeches of their own.
The proof of any substantive theory – in this case, the offer of demanding texts, including non-fiction and poetry for all pupils – is in what pupils ‘produce’. In working in this way, pupils get better not just at reading, but also speaking, listening and writing. Most importantly, they fall in love with beautiful texts too. When you have a resource like Opening Doors to Ambitious Primary English, which provides you with the theory, text examples, link texts, concept development, ways of working in the classroom, case studies from schools, all the way through to examples of pupils’ work, it makes such logical sense, that you will finish reading it and want to get cracking immediately!
As Bob Cox says, ‘I have seen lots of lessons where teachers try to elicit responses from pupils on easily accessible texts. The answers given tend to be monosyllabic right or wrong replies and are less iiiabout dialogic responses. No one has done anything wrong, but there was simply not enough scope for learning in the chosen text.’ With a resource like this, I am convinced we can do better.
Mary Myatt, education writer, speaker and curator of Myatt & Co
Foreword by Sonia Thompson
When Bob Cox came to St Matthew’s Research School, it was like meeting the owner of the most wondrous literary emporium. His love of both classic and contemporary poetry and prose, and the possibilities they offer – not just beautiful writing outcomes but for enabling our children to appreciate beautiful writing – engulfed the hall. The session left us feeling that we needed to be even more courageous with our English curriculum, and we quickly began our journey to empowering our children to widen and deepen their knowledge of a more diverse range of authors and poets.
The crux of the ‘Opening Doors’ books is that they are like no other educational textbook. Their identity and purpose is truly enshrined within their name. They take the teacher by the hand and lead them on a journey of exploration. Opening Doors to Ambitious Primary English builds on this concept by offering the explanations, plans and case studies that enable these ambitious explorations to happen. It answers questions, offers challenge and enables diverse and ambitious literacy to become the norm within your setting. As you turn every page, teachers and English leads may rest assured that every word has been carefully and passionately curated by Bob and his amazing team. That is the beauty of the Opening Doors books.
Exposing our children to high-quality texts is like giving them a gift. Once unwrapped, the opening up of their imagination, through the power of words and illustrations, is a sight to behold. For me, this literary gifting should never be the preserve of the favoured few. I am wholly convinced that it must be available to every child, regardless of circumstance. Opening Doors to Ambitious Primary English will not disappoint. There is more richness, more depth and even more literary gold.
Sonia Thompson, head teacher/director, St Matthew’s Church of England Primary Research and Support Schoolvi
Contents
Acknowledgements
Our partners
Opening Doors to Ambitious Primary English is all about impact in classrooms, so this isn’t just a list of acknowledgement and thanks but a way of highlighting the schools and organisations that have worked with us – and each other – to develop ambitious English as a norm in their communities.
We can only mention some of you here, but the collaborations made represent thousands of teachers and educationists intent on building equity and excellence, not just in words but in their classrooms.
And:
Crown House Publishing – without whose unstinting interest and skills this book would never have been possible. Thank you!
Straight ahead of oneself, one cannot go very far …
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Introduction
The ideas, resources and case studies in this book will help you to make primary English vibrant, creative and challenging in your school. It also provides frameworks and principles for any school wishing to be more ambitious in developing pupils’ speaking, listening, reading, writing and thinking. There is an emphasis throughout on application, adaptation to context and links between theory and practice.
Opening Doors to Ambitious Primary English explains and models top quality ways of thinking, planning and teaching which can become a norm in any classroom. It is the opposite of occasionally including an extra challenging unit or offering tricky literary texts to just one group. All pupils have an entitlement to challenging texts, fascinating poetry, or non-fiction in various styles. All pupils can continue to learn about spelling patterns, word derivatives and grammar within the context and beauty of a text. No one should feel excluded and everyone can be aspirational.
How can this be done? We want every teacher reading this book to appreciate that there are numerous creative and fascinating ways in which an English curriculum can be designed to ensure that every single pupil is immersed in rich and diverse literature and language. We want to show how varied learning dialogues and new knowledge planned progressively can be the entitlement of every primary pupil.
Our case studies demonstrate how key principles and a toolkit of techniques can open doors to opportunity via high pitch approaches, with a huge range of access strategies built in. Schools adapt our ideas and feed back to us, creating a genuine knowledge-growing community, one which is focused on rationales and concepts for teaching English. As Eaglestone (2021) observes, ‘knowing a discipline is not simply knowing its content, but involves understanding the wider concepts that frame the discipline itself’.
As you turn the pages of this book, you too will become involved in this community as you question, adapt, debate and consider new perspectives. The wonders of a high-quality literary text enable all of us to contribute our own imagination and puzzlement as we work 2out how best to utilise it to teach our pupils about English language and literature.
Chapter by chapter, we seek to show how ideas and texts – pitched high but accessed by all – can become part of the everyday diet of the classroom. Ambition is rightly admired as a tangible ethos in schools and is often visible via displays, assemblies, websites and aspirational messages, but where ambition is actually fulfilled is in the quality of the teaching in the lessons themselves. We have seen astonishing writing and improved comprehension when teachers have fully exploited the opportunities that challenging texts offer all pupils.
You can dip into any section in your own way. You will notice many cross-references to other chapters, because understanding language development is more of a cognitive field rather than a linear progression. However, we would advise reading Chapter 1 first as it provides the background for the rest of the book. After that, you can follow a narrative from big principles to strategies and specific applications via the chapter headings. This book is all about providing explanations and case studies which explore how top-class primary English can be designed and delivered to every pupil. There is a continuous emphasis on inclusion – for example, strategies like taster drafts offer the potential to deliver spelling, punctuation and grammar in context.
The teaching and learning of English is much more coherent when scaffolded around quality literature. In this way, pupils can be taught, for instance, how to build suspense, what a metaphor is or how connotations spin wildly in our brains, rather than simply ‘doing’ a book, ‘covering’ a poem or ticking an assessment box. Above all, we and our schools model how the reading of quality texts can be linked explicitly into the curriculum instead of being marginalised. It is a matter of social justice and equal opportunity that children access a wide range of books from past to present, from across the globe and from picture books to classic literature.
It is you, the teacher, who makes the difference, who intervenes with that much-needed support and scaffolding, who inspires, who cares and who laughs with your pupils. High-quality English texts offer so many more openings for this to happen.
The ideas and examples in this book have been inspired by education research, case studies from the Opening Doors network, the application 3of Opening Doors strategies and principles, and the combined knowledge of the four educationists who have written the book. There are already 80 units from the five previous books in the ‘Opening Doors’ series which may interest you too.
From the start, our aim has been to show that pupils enjoy fresh literary challenges more than the standard texts, and this can make the Key Stage 3 programme of study simply the next stepping stone in their reading journey rather than an intimidating step up. We hope you will come away more confident that there are clear route-ways to ambitious English for you and your pupils, and that you can adapt our principles and strategies into a highway to excellence that suits your school.
It is our belief that pupils respond well to high expectations. The key – as we have seen over our long careers – is the difference that a great teacher makes. When excellent ideas are disseminated across a school, local authority or trust as guiding principles, not dogma, teachers have the autonomy and freedom to apply strategies as they see fit – and that is confidence-building for a career!
Enjoy opening the doors to opportunity for your pupils, and be inspired by schools like Icknield Primary in Luton, where Lisa Kennedy and Laura McGeachie have recently set up their own training hub:
At Icknield Primary School, we continue to be excited and motivated by the opportunities our Opening Doors journey affords to both our children and staff. Through visits to other schools to share practice and regular INSETs to refresh and develop key ideas and approaches, our curriculum continues to be enriched. The successes we have experienced thus far have inspired us to share our journey with others: we are in the process of becoming an Opening Doors hub, which will hopefully enable us to spread the word and facilitate mutual support between schools who are genuinely searching for excellence.
Our vision of continuing professional development (CPD) is one that involves us, as writers and educationists, as sign-posters, so that schools like Icknield spread their inspiration further afield. Across the UK, workshop leaders and teaching and learning leaders for trusts 4and local authorities are exploring the key principles, pedagogies and tools which are making primary-phase English exciting and accessible.
All of the key texts referenced and illustrations featured support your work in the classroom and can be downloaded at: www.crownhouse.co.uk/opening-doors-ambitious-primary-english.
Part 1
Key Opening Doors Principles6
Chapter 1
Pitching High and Including All
Bob Cox
The research strongly suggests that it is good to find learning difficult – within reason. We may, in fact, be more likely to remember difficult concepts that we have had to grapple with, puzzle through, or work hard to understand initially than easier ones.
Megan Mansworth, Teach to the Top: Aiming High for Every Learner (2021)
In an ambitious English curriculum, high pitch and high expectation approaches should be visible in every resource and in the sequencing of units. They are integral to all of the ways in which doors can open for your pupils. Dr Megan Mansworth’s quote above condenses much of what we encourage and what we see in schools that are committed to challenge for all – that difficulty, once embraced, leads to strengthened memory and understanding. There is nothing more fulfilling than grappling with new concepts under the guidance of a great teacher.
You will learn more about the concept of using concepts as you read this book. There is no definitive list of such concepts in English, but imagine you are teaching an aspect of English rather than ‘doing’ a text. You might want to teach how to build tension, how structure has supported meaning or how effective personification has enhanced the beauty of a poem. All of these concepts can enhance your attempts to pitch high – for example, you can teach tension-building by using a simpler part of the text with one pupil and a challenging part with another, but every child is learning about tension. 8
Highlights from high expectations history
In a long career spanning many years and various contexts, I have found the phrase ‘high expectations’ to be a constant presence in the educational landscape. In the 1980s, when the national curriculum was introduced, the advice around so-called differentiation was to teach to the top and not the middle. It wasn’t always interpreted in this way, and it jump-started a long process in which lesson planning sometimes distilled the high pitch moments into a discrete ‘extension’ box, diluting the depth of learning for those outside the targeted group who never reached the extension. The debate continues today in a different form, with ‘age-related expectations’ interpreted by some as a quality standard around which a teacher can be partly assessed and by others as a guideline above which a lesson should always be pitched.
By 2001, the National Literacy Strategy was well established in primary schools, but some of the same tensions were still apparent between curriculum coverage (which often occurred in a step-by-step way) and the instinct of teachers to include additional provision, at least for those then termed ‘gifted and talented’.1 Interestingly, the Key Stage 3 National Strategy: English Department Training document implied a continuation of the rigour of the strategy into secondary schools:
The main point to draw out is that our first assumption should be to maintain high expectations of all pupils, and not to trap those working below expectations in permanent remediation and those who can go beyond expectations working only to expectations of the average. (Department for Education and Employment, 2001: 97) 9
In 2006, the renewed primary framework for literacy and mathematics implied that more emphasis was needed on challenging expectations. Changes included:
create a clearer set of outcomes to support teachers and practitioners in planning for progression in literacy and mathematics, to help raise the attainment of all children, personalise learning and secure interventions for those children who need it
