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Bedrock Talks from Bedrock Learning
Welcome to Bedrock Talks, a podcast from the team at Bedrock Learning that delves deep into the heart of literacy in education. Hosted by the insightful and experienced educator Andy Sammons, this podcast stands as a beacon for anyone passionate about enhancing literacy skills and understanding its pivotal role in education.
Each episode is a journey into the world of literacy education. Andy brings together a diverse array of voices from across the education sector, from seasoned teachers to renowned academics, policy makers to literacy advocates. All of our guests share a common goal: to explore and expand the horizons of literacy education.
We go beyond surface-level conversations. Our discussions are in-depth, nuanced, and filled with insights that only years of experience and expertise can bring. We tackle a wide range of topics, from innovative teaching methods to the latest research in literacy, the impact of technology on reading and writing, to strategies for engaging diverse learners. Our aim is to provide a platform where the complexities of literacy are unpacked and understood in a way that is both accessible and enlightening.
Join Andy and his guests as they illuminate the multifaceted world of literacy. Subscribe to Bedrock Talks and be part of a community that believes in the transformative power of literacy. Together, let's shape a more literate, informed, and connected world.
Bedrock Talks from Bedrock Learning
38. How can secondary schools crack the reading nut? with Dr Laura Shapiro
What if our understanding of reading development has been missing crucial elements? Dr Laura Shapiro, developmental psychologist and senior lecturer at Aston University in the UK, challenges conventional wisdom about literacy instruction and reading engagement in this thought-provoking conversation.
Shapiro brings a refreshing perspective, explaining how she accidentally fell into literacy research and discovered a fascination with reading as a remarkable human invention. Unlike natural language acquisition, reading requires us to associate arbitrary symbols with sounds – an extraordinary learning feat that becomes automatic with practice. This complexity means there's no magic solution or one-time fix for reading difficulties.
The conversation explores why the "prevention is better than cure" approach to literacy has limitations. While high-quality phonics instruction in early years is vital, Shapiro emphasises that reading challenges evolve as students progress through education. What begins as decoding becomes a complex interplay of fluency, vocabulary knowledge, and comprehension strategies. This evolution means schools must continuously monitor reading development rather than assuming early interventions solve everything.
Particularly fascinating is Shapiro's research showing how reading proficiency creates a virtuous cycle: as proficiency increases, children read more and learn vocabulary more efficiently from what they read. A proficient reader learns more words from the same amount of text than a struggling reader – accelerating the Matthew Effect where the "reading rich get richer."
Shapiro offers practical insights for secondary schools, challenging educators to separate curriculum reading from reading for pleasure. "We can't call it reading for pleasure if we're dictating what children should read – that's reading for our pleasure, not theirs." This distinction frees schools to be more open-minded about what constitutes valuable reading experiences, embracing everything from graphic novels to comedy books.
Have you considered how your approach to encouraging reading might be inadvertently discouraging it? Listen to discover why supporting genuine reading engagement might require rethinking some fundamental assumptions about what, how and why children read.
Dr. Laura Shapiro is a developmental psychologist and senior lecturer at Aston University in the UK. Her research focuses on how children learn to read and the long-term benefits of reading. She has led projects like the Reading and Vocabulary (RAV) Project, which explores how reading ability and practice influence vocabulary growth during the transition from primary to secondary school . Dr. Shapiro also serves as the Director of Research within Aston’s School of Psychology, contributing to the Cognition and Neuroscience Research Group, and recently collaborated on the DFE's work supporting secondary school teachers to read with Jessie Ricketts.
hi everyone. Thank you for continuing to download and subscribe, like and leaving us reviews and sending us lots of feedback in the Bedrock Talks podcast. I'm Andy Sammons. I lead teaching and learning here at Bedrock and we've got a really exciting guest today.
Speaker 1:We've got Dr Laura Shapiro, who is a reader in psychology at Aston University, working at the Institute of Health and Neurodevelopment, and she's just actually finished Lots of you will be familiar with the, with the work she's just finished collaborating on that's been published the um, the training for secondary teachers, helping all obviously secondary teachers um support reading in secondary school. She collaborated with with the marvelous Jackie, jessie Ricketts on that Um, and so I ended up looking at, looking up Laura and reading a little bit about what she'd done and it was just, it was just incredible. So for me to reach out to her and then for her to come onto the pod is it's amazing for us. We're truly getting a real amazing list of collaborators and colleagues coming on. So first of all, laura, thank you so much for coming on. It's amazing to have you.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for having me, andy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really, really appreciate you inviting me, so looking forward to it I mean, I think it's really interesting because at bedrock we're an ed tech uh agency. We're actually it's a it's really it's a real privilege to be able to work with experts in the field. We work with jesse on developing our own reading, reading assessment and obviously we work on vocabulary and grammar instruction really core components of that of that reading house and it's really important that we continue to engage with experts such as yourself so we can continue to kind of embed that into our own implementation advice with the schools and with with colleagues and also for our own development of the platform. So to have you with us and to have you, um, giving the time aside, it's just brilliant. So thank you, um. So just a nice general one to start with. What I want to ask you is what, what sparked your interest in reading and what really drives your passion for what, for the work you do?
Speaker 2:yeah, so actually I um came into literacy research almost by accident because I was applying for a job. That was, I needed a job, I needed a postdoctoral job and I'd worked in developmental psychology, I'd worked in adult psychology and cognitive neuroscience. But I didn't really know anything about the study of literacy to start with and I was a little bit reticent because I thought, well, I love reading and I didn't want to take the joy out of it by sort of learning too much about mechanics. But fortunately I changed my mind because, um, and it really grew on me and I think what really sparked my interest was the realization that writing systems are a human invention. It's not something that we've evolved to be able to um process, and it's such a brilliant example of the human capacity for learning.
Speaker 2:Um, and, yeah, I love teaching this because, um, you can give the students quite striking examples. So try, as a skilled adult reader, it's really hard to think back what a significant challenge it is to start with. And so you can show students some unfamiliar some text and unfamiliar orthography, like an unfamiliar language, unfamiliar alphabet, and it's striking that it's basically impossible to interpret until you've been taught to associate the symbols with sounds and then you can link them onto your existing semantic system. So, yeah, I find it really fascinating as a as an example of how amazing we are, as humans, at learning and then becoming completely automatic at something that initially, we're not evolved to be able to do it strikes me.
Speaker 1:It's interesting. I was, I wrote about this the other day, I was doing my son's homework with him and it was what appeared to be quite, quite a simple task for me. It would have been, obviously, he's in primary school and it was stepping into the shoes of a character that they've been reading about recently, and it was so interesting that we had to pick words out and then we had to turn them into, extract them from the context, turn them into you know novel usage of those sentences, and then write about it from the character's perspective, right down to him then needing to write those words down again that I'd written down and had modelled for him. And it was just incredible the amount of scaffolding that I needed to do for him to get that successful piece of work.
Speaker 1:And you, you extrapolate all the way up to secondary school and you can see what pupils are being asked to do, being pulled from pillar to post between different disciplines and different types of reading, different types of writing. It's not, it's almost what you've just said, but tenfold what goes on in a school, isn't it in terms of the amount of disciplines and everything that the pupils are expected to kind of to really be okay with, and that really I mean obviously I think it's lovely about the uniqueness of humanity and the development of reading. So, in your view, why is prevention better than cure in terms of literacy development? And you know what do we do with that. Why is it that prevention is better than cure there?
Speaker 2:yeah, that's a really, really interesting question and something that I'm going to answer very differently now than I would have done when I first started working in the field. When I first started working in literacy research, it seemed blindingly obvious that what you do is prevention, because early intervention is so much more effective than later intervention. If you can, if you can um capture difficulties and um address them before they grow, then obviously that's that's much, much better um. However, I've come to realize that it might be quite a misleading term to use because, although obviously you've got to do your best to make sure that everyone's got the best initial start, you've got to make sure that um the, the starting point, is as good as you possibly can make it. Um, and there's been a lot of focus on early teaching of reading and it's it's improved hugely. So phonics is very, very successful in terms of reducing the number of children who have reading difficulties.
Speaker 2:However, what I've come to realize is that prevention will never be, there will never be enough. You can't, there's no't, there's no. There's no magic sort of there's no magic answer. There's some needs that might be identified quite early, will be very pervasive and will continue, and it's not the fault of the teachers, it's not the. It's not that we're necessarily doing anything wrong. It's just that reading is hugely, hugely complicated and there are many, many underlying processes involved and addressing that. We don't have all of the answers yet we can make things a lot better for a lot of children. So high-quality phonics instruction is very, very effective for almost everyone. There's very good evidence that this has improved early reading instruction. Needs can emerge later because the challenge will change.
Speaker 2:So it's not the case that every child that struggles with reading struggles with phonics. You might have a child who does quite well at reading in the early years, but then difficulties emerge later, and those difficulties could be to do with the nature of the reading. Task changes as you get older. So when you're young, when you're starting to read, it's all about decoding individual sounds and blending them together to make the word. As you develop as a reader, fluency becomes much more important, because you've got to be able to do all of that decoding quickly enough so that you've remembered where the sentence started and you can follow the gist of what's actually happening. And fluency can um, you need sufficient fluency in order to aid comprehension. There's also other needs, so vocabulary um, you need sufficient vocabulary so that there's enough of the text that you're reading that's already in your vocabulary that you can comprehend it and use that vocabulary to learn new words in the text, um, and then there's all sorts of comprehension processes as well.
Speaker 2:So I would say using the term prevention is is potentially misleading. What we should, um, what we should be doing is monitoring um children's progress all the way through. So I I often use the phrase like so reading is a marathon or a sprint, so you can't expect to sort of solve everything in the first few years. It's something that's going to require ongoing monitoring. So you can catch children at the phonics screening check and you'll have a good idea of who is grasping phonics at that point and put in extra support at that point.
Speaker 2:But you haven't solved it. Even if you, even if you get everybody off the ground in phonics, there's still, you've still got to continue monitoring, and that's why the training that just Professor Jesse Ricketts has developed together with practitioners, that's why that is so important, because it's showing how secondary school teachers can continue to monitor reading and look at different avenues for supporting. It's not, it'll actually be a minority of students that will need phonics support at secondary. But there are lots of other needs because the challenge increases hugely once you get to secondary school it's.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because there's often there's lots now rightly so, I feel discussion around disciplinary literacy and disciplinary reading. So you know what reading looks like in, and reading and writing looks like in very distinct subjects, and I don't like the word shortcut, um, but it certainly feels like a. It's a much more direct and explicit means of helping young people to um navigate the challenges of different subjects. So when you talk about the the different challenges as they get, you know, as they increase over the course of a child's school career are you speaking at all to disciplinary literacy there? Is that what you're referring to, or something, something different?
Speaker 2:so I think, um, I think we we need to separate two things. So there's the mechanics of reading. So you're reading prof's, there's all sorts of other considerations, so vocabulary is obviously really, really important, and then there'll be subject-specific vocabulary, um, and then if we then talk about the other strand of it, which is um reading engagement, then that's a completely different question as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're talking a little bit about general reading of texts and what some might term volitional reading, reading for pleasure, but then you're also talking about kind of the subject specific piece as well. That's really interesting. So where do you stand on you know, have you had much to do with disciplinary reading and literacy in your research and in your work, or is it you know what specific things are you looking at?
Speaker 2:So I first got into understanding secondary reading through a longitude, a big longitudinal study called the Reading and Vocabulary Project, which I co-led with Jesse Ricketts project, which I co-led with Jesse Ricketts, and we were really interested in how your proficiency in reading and your engagement with reading um the role that those two factors play in terms of your vocabulary growth going into secondary school um and so we haven't addressed disciplinary literacy specifically, but the work that we've done is obviously really relevant.
Speaker 2:What we've shown is that reading proficiency is fundamental to learning across the entire curriculum. So we've shown that um children who who's reading, as your reading proficiency increases, you're driven to read more books um by choice, and so you'll be reading more in your own time, and that leisure reading will then has has a? Um direct influence on your vocabulary learning. But what we've also found is that as you improve in your reading proficiency, your ability to learn vocabulary from a text increases. So for a child who's a more proficient reader, they'll be learning more words from the same amount of independent reading as a child who's a less proficient reader, and that's partly due to removing some of the barriers to access, so you're spending less effort on the mechanics of reading and you're able to free up resources to actually understanding what you're reading and learning more words from it.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting. I think as well um it. It struck me when I was reading with my, my son's work the other day that we built very specific pieces of the of the right of the reading and then the writing, right down to the point where when he wrote it down because I write it for him and then he copies it into his book based on all the ideas we've done together and even when I was saying I capital, I felt for that letter, I was, I was giving him the spellings for each word. I thought is he going to get annoyed at me for giving? And he didn't, because actually his, his resource was going on the handwriting.
Speaker 1:That's where his resources were going was on the handwriting, and I think we see that at lots of different levels. I mean, right up to when I was teaching English literature very recently, I gave the pupils a very specific structure to write a literary hypothesis, so author, a positive writing in ear, in whichever era comma uses the character or text to, and then verb the adjective, so expose the appalling, you know, whatever impact of, and once I was able to kind of outsource lots of that deeper subject knowledge thinking into a really quite straightforward template, they were able to then engage with the ideas more directly rather than having to worry about every aspect of it, which I thought was really interesting, and what you've, I think, described there as well was almost I don't know if you've come across you may well have done the matthew effect the idea that, yeah, definitely you know, obviously, the rich get rich, the poor get poorer, and that that positive, negative reinforcement cycle can be as a result of socio-economics, scnd, just general.
Speaker 1:You know poor experiences prior with the reading and I think it's when you talk about constant monitoring, I think that's what we're looking to monitor, isn't? It is all the time?
Speaker 2:is that that gap isn't opening up around reluctance to read, pick up a book and that type of thing yeah, yeah, I mean you've you've addressed um quite a few um really important points about reading, um, so so, so my fascination with reading comes from how complicated it is, um, and the number of different processes that are going on, and the underlying the complexity of the underlying processes that you need to do a task. So what you just described with your son so you're your, the structure that you're creating is really important because you're allowing him to separate the creativity of coming up with what he wants to say from the process of writing, which is painful hard work. Yeah, um needs to be learned, but it's that you're able to separate that because there are so many different aspects yeah, and I think it's all about freeing up those cognitive resources.
Speaker 1:We have another aspect of our platform, bedrock mapper, that allows us to, allows teachers to select and sequence words pertaining to a particular topic and subject. That then will teach pupils about the word or check assess whether they understand them. It will then teach, reteach, read and cap, recap based on what they do or don't know, and it will all drive back into their own personalized queue as well as their own personal knowledge organizer and the teachers get access to those words at the back end. You know what are they struggling with and, again, I think it's just so important that that we give due respect to the complexities of our subject. You know we've done it at university.
Speaker 1:We're adults, so much more is automatic, and my son's work is I'm laboring on this point because I just couldn't believe how far ahead on, you know, I had to think in order to scaffold that piece of work for him, and it just really made me reflect on my time as a teacher and what that meant, I mean when it comes to creating that reading culture. Yeah, you know what's your recommendation to schools? What do you think?
Speaker 2:yeah, so, yeah, so that's really important. So I would say um. So a lot of our work is is focusing on secondary schools. Now, um and the DfE training is a really core part of ensuring that there's a culture of enabling reading proficiency and realization that this is relevant across every single subject. The crucial part of the training is about understanding the complexity of the process and how, on the surface, if it looks like a child is struggling with reading, until you do any kind of diagnostic test, you don't know why they're struggling. So the danger is that you can do a sort of a generic screener and pick up children who are struggling with reading. But then then the dangerous that you'd make an assumption that they need extra phonics, for example, and for many children that's not going to be the case. There might be a small minority of children that need that, do need phonics instruction, but for many children it's going to be. The difficulties are going to lie at a different point, so it'll be fluency or, potentially, vocabulary comprehension and um. What that training does is that it it allows teachers to understand, um, how you identify the needs of particular children and and then how you then go away and support that that child, and so, um, part of it is is identifying individual children, but also part of it is is ensuring that as a whole class and that the way that um teaching is done as a whole class is is addressing those needs as well. Um, so that's one side of it.
Speaker 2:So, in terms of proficiency, I think what our longitudinal research has shown is that there is a great deal of need at the transition from primary to secondary. So you can't assume that children arriving into secondary school will be equipped to read an age appropriate curriculum level text. You can't just assume that they have access to that level text. You can't just assume that they they have access to that um, and so there's a lot of barriers that need to be removed before they actually can access the curriculum and understanding that. The barriers can be at multiple levels and it's not necessarily that they don't have the competence to understand it. It might be that the barriers are in the earlier levels to reading fluency, and when you're expecting children to read independently, um, that's that's going to be a big, a big problem for some children. So that's that's on the proficiency side, but there's also the engagement with reading. That's potentially much more challenging because we don't yet know how to support reading engagement. We don't know how to get children interested in reading and develop a love of reading.
Speaker 2:Um, there are initiatives in primary school that are really, really promising, such as the love to read um project, one led by sarah mcgowan at edinburgh university and um. I was a co-investigator on that project, and there's some free resources for primary level, which really help to create a culture of reading at primary, but secondary there isn't. There are loads of fantastic initiatives out there. Lots schools are um doing great things, but there's not actually any evidence of effectiveness of particular interventions, so we don't know what's likely to be generalizable. Um, my best hunch in terms of engagement is that initiatives where um schools are working together with young people to understand what they want to get from reading are the most likely to be effective.
Speaker 2:And, for example, schools that have a librarian. You have a school librarian who's actively finding out what children want to be reading and supporting them to make good choices in terms of reading. I think that that's. That's great. Um, one important thing is to separate that from the curriculum. So I would say that reading engagement and a love of reading that needs to happen outside, outside of the curriculum. It's not something you can, it's not just the job of English teachers 's, something that's that should go beyond, beyond the curriculum, and it's I would say that all schools really need a librarian. They need resources to try and understand what children want to be reading and to support them that way a lot of what you're saying really chimes with um.
Speaker 1:When I discussed with Teresa Kremen last last year around you know, reading culture, and we discussed at length the idea of our reader's self-concept. What type of book do we tend to read, and it's really interesting. They tend to like to read and it's really interesting. I remember in my time in schools schools you would have the children who would bring books to school with them and they would really identify as a reader. They would say you know, this is what I love, this is all I want. I just want to get lost in this book all the time and they would be so immersed in what they're doing whereas others just obviously be completely at the other end of the spectrum. And I think it's interesting about how we develop that in young people and and look to facilitate that. And I know that the work around the developing a reading culture that they've done is really interesting, about curiosity and discussion around the texts that are being read and also helping them into that world as well.
Speaker 1:You know, I I read a book with my son that he I don't. I don't think he would probably quite read on his own independently. He can and he can get by in it, but actually, in terms of enjoying and engaging with the narrative, it's, it's me that reads to him, um, and it's. I think it's really important that schools take the time to think about the sorts of texts in and out of the classroom that the children are being exposed to. I love the sorts of texts in and out of the classroom that children are being exposed to. I love the idea about the librarian and we work with some phenomenal librarians up and down the country, um, who, who are doing just that? And yeah, I think the thing to ask then I think a lot, lots of colleagues will be listening to this from a classroom perspective. So when we look to connect, you know what you might call ability, prior attainment yeah practice and vocabulary growth.
Speaker 1:how? How do we understand that relationship between you know, as I say, prior attainment and then what teachers can do to really augment that process of growing a child's vocabulary?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what our work's shown is that as you grow in your reading proficiency, you're able to get through more text, you're able to read more, you're encouraged to read more in your leisure time, and then that in turn is a key driver of your vocabulary. So children learn a lot like the the majority of vocabulary once you're sort of late primary through to secondary school, you're learning vocabulary from your reading, largely from written language, and reading proficiency is a really key driver of that. It's a key driver of motivating you to read, but it's also a key driver of helping you to comprehend what you're reading and helping you to understand um. So learn vocabulary from what you're reading. Um, however, reading proficiency alone isn't enough. So it's not just simply the case. If you fix proficiency, then engagement will just happen. Naturally, because in our work we've shown that um, even among proficient readers, very few of them are really describing themselves as a reader like really sort of doing it by choice outside school they're reading as a reader they're told to read.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're reading what they're told to read, but they're not. They're not reading by choice, um, and that is the thing that's really really difficult to fix, um, and I think there isn't it. The problem is there isn't a quick fix. Um, we did run a study where we tried to do it. Yeah, we've tried quick fixes, but I think the problem is it's slow.
Speaker 2:We need to be asking students, we need to be talking to them and trying to find out what it is that. So there are secondary school children out there who are avid readers. We need to find out from them, like what are their motivations for reading? Our avid readers need to find out from them like what are they? What are their motivations for reading? Um, this is something that um charlotte weber in edinburgh has been doing quite a lot of work on some really nice qualitative studies on um, trying to understand the voices of readers.
Speaker 2:But we also need to talk more broadly to young people and try and find out what they might be interested in reading and be a bit more open-minded, I think about.
Speaker 2:This is why I think it's quite important to separate reading for pleasure so reading engagement from curriculum reading, because then we can be much more open-minded about what counts as reading and I would say, like so librarians I've spoken to are quite open-minded about, say, graphic novels, for example, that there will be a whole section. Some schools will have a whole section in their school library for graphic novels and that's great because that will there's some children that that will trigger their love of reading. Also, thinking about comedy as well Not making sure that secondary school students don't feel constrained to read stuff that looks really grown up. I don't think it's a problem if you're reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid all the way through secondary school. I mean just as an example of a book that that Anne Chiltern often seemed to love. But um, so, comedy and yeah, just not making assumptions about what it is that they want to be reading.
Speaker 1:I've got a couple of questions there, then. Do we need to let go of the fact that volitional reading for pleasure should be challenging then? Because that's often cited, you know, children reading dire of a wimpy kid, um, in year 10, you know, like when they're 14, 15. Is it not better that they're challenged and they're what? Would you let go of that then?
Speaker 2:I, I would let go of that. Yeah, because I think, um, what really matters is the fact that they're reading. Given, given it's such a, it's so difficult to get children to read for pleasure, you shouldn't be undermining any of that. Like any reading for pleasure, any any reading that they're doing out of choice is a is brilliant and should be encouraged, and they're not going to read it, they're not going, so they won't get the satisfaction out of it. If brilliant and should be encouraged and they're not going to read it, they're not going to. They won't get the satisfaction out of it if it's not challenging for them, so they'll. Challenge is part of their experience, isn't it? So you don't know, and you don't know what they're getting from it as well, because, like with graphic novels, for example, you can reread them. Many children who read graphic novels, for example, you can reread them. Many children who read graphic novels, we're rereading them over and over and over again and they're getting something different from it each time and they're using their own imagination, do you?
Speaker 1:think that the problem with some of this reading for pleasure outside of the curriculum, the problem might just be that with the advent of mobile phones, technology, social media, that there's just a whole new wave of things that will give them a buzz, that they're just not getting the same reinforcement because there's so much else out there that they can get it from. And also parents will feel the same about their own children being able to be occupied for long periods of time. Is that part of it?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think. Well, we're really up against it um trying to compete with digital media, um. So that that is a huge challenge and but there are long periods of the day when they're not, they don't have access so so most schools will not allow phones devices and in the school day, so there are long periods when children could be reading and that's and that's a strategy that's often used in secondary school. So drop everything and read is um. So making time for reading in the day when you're not distracted by devices, um, and many young people themselves recognize that they are healthier when they're not checking their phones all the time. So, and it's possible, I mean, I'm just I'm wondering whether we just have to um. It's almost like take a deep breath and sort of hold out because culture may change in the future. Like there is an unincreased awareness that um being constantly on our devices isn't healthy, and young people are aware of that as well.
Speaker 2:It's not, I think the thing with um. Basically we we can't call it reading for pleasure if we're dictating to children what they should be reading, because then that's not. That's reading for our pleasure, not theirs. It's um. I think we need to give them a bit of space. So obviously they need structure away from screens. Because if you've got a device, like any, any, all of us are addicted to our devices and if the device is there then we're going to be distracted by it.
Speaker 2:So you need to, obviously you need to structure their environment so that they have got freedom away from their devices. But then you also have to let them make choices about what they want to be reading and sort of value those choices and try and get to the bottom of why they're making particular choices. And then that's that's where the librarians are so important, because then they can um, take it in different directions. So you can figure out what a child is enjoying reading and then get them to try different direction, different avenues that might make enrich that more. So you can like, if diary of a wimpy kid is your starting point, a librarian would be able to sort of point them in a direction of other literature that they might enjoy as well. As then they're getting the, they're getting the breath. But you need the starting point. I think you need to get hooked to start with.
Speaker 1:I completely agree. There's nothing quite like it for me. I mean I. It happens too seldom for me, unfortunately, when you, when you're hooked into a book and you just don't want to put it down.
Speaker 1:I often I have audible and I also have a kindle and I often spend my time because there's so much choice trying to find something that I I'm really hooked on, because I know that when I get hooked on, whatever it is I'm listening to or reading, there's nothing quite like it, because, no, nothing, no technology beats your own imagination and I think and that's that includes your fiction and non-fiction it includes your own excitement of your emotions as you're reading and passing something which is which resonates, um.
Speaker 1:The final question I wanted to touch on today was around phonics in secondary schools. I think at bedrock we're hearing it more and more. Bedrock is um, the great thing about bedrock is that, in order to get that bridge into reading a wide range of fiction and non-, the texts are underrated and there's lots of scaffolding around the vocabulary activities and that type of thing. But obviously we're not a phonics platform. You know, if you can't decode whatsoever, then it's a different piece of work. But I don't think that's where phonics should stop, necessarily in a secondary school. And I just wondered what your thoughts were on that around phonics only being for small group interventions. Do you think we could get more out of phonics in secondary schools in that sense?
Speaker 2:I think phonics should be quite rare in secondary.
Speaker 2:I think it's not something that needs to be taught in mainstream classrooms because it won't be the statistically it's not going to be the problem for most children in the class um, but it does, but a few children will definitely need phonics support.
Speaker 2:The challenge there is that there isn't one intervention that we know is effective at secondary level, and the problem is because um the internet, the phonics interventions are basically borrowed from primary and so the prince I. I think the phonics interventions in secondary need to be the the job of a specialist teacher who actually has the understanding of the principles that they need to be addressing and also understands the secondary context, understands where those children have come from, like what experiences have they had in the past, what exposure have they. So obviously, a child who's um come into the uk education system, um from somewhere else is, and who hasn't actually had phonics instruction, that's completely different from a child who's been in a uk primary school all the way through and has had all of this exposure to phonics. It's a really completely different situation for that child and so it's really really challenging and there isn't a quick fix. There are huge numbers of interventions out there, but there isn't one that we have solid evidence that it's effective at secondary level.
Speaker 1:And that's quite worrying, isn't it? Because you think, if a child's literacy is so impaired so as to need phonics instruction at secondary, you'd have thought we need something really effective at that point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it might be that they've missed out. It might be that they've missed out. It might be that they've missed out because at higher levels of primary they might not necessarily have been. The phonics might not have continued for them at that stage. This is so. These would be um pervasive reading difficulties. That needs a lot of that, will need a lot of support from specialist teachers, and it might be that that was missed out for them. So it might be that they were given the support in um key stage one, but then it was.
Speaker 1:They might have skipped a few years and so then and yeah, and and in my experience, uh, with with my son, my son's um dyslexic anyone long-term listening to the show will know that I say this every, every episode. He's dyslexic. So, um, he needs regular repetition think you know he does toe by toe and things like that. But regular repetition, regular recapping, regular reinforcement and it's quite difficult to do that at scale, um, I think, in a school.
Speaker 1:Um, there's so much of what you've said today which is just amazing and so interesting and what a common thread, just to finish on that I really think you've pulled out is the, for me, is is the import, the importance of listening to young people about, about reading and not being frightened of what we might hear. And, yeah, you know, and the other thing that I hadn't really considered is the idea that we remove reading for pleasure from the curriculum, so to speak, and it becomes really not reading at our pleasure but reading for their pleasure, so that whatever that sense of intrinsic motivation is, that we're looking to nurture that as much as possible. I think that's something you've really challenged my thinking on today, so thank you so much for that it's great to hear.
Speaker 1:Thank you, it's been a fascinating conversation. Uh, laura, thank you so much for that. Oh, it's great to hear. Thank you, it's been a fascinating conversation. Uh, laura, thank you so much. Um, I'd love to have you back on as you do more research and and and hear again from you, because it's been just been such a pleasure. So, thank you for giving up your time.
Speaker 1:Um thanks, andy, that'd be great yeah, thank you so much, um, and can everyone please continue to subscribe to the pod? Um send, send me feedback. Other guests you'd like to have on? Um. It's a. It's a pleasure. It's one of my favorite parts of my role here at bedrock, so please continue to engage with the show um email. In that type of thing it's always a pleasure until next time. Bye for now.
