Research School Network: “Reading floats on a sea of talk”

I have this quote inspired by James Britton, perched high on the top of the children’s reading den in my classroom. In this den they relax, self-regulate, chat, act out stories, read… and talk. Britton tells us that talk is the foundation upon which ALL else floats, not just reading. How then, can we not prioritise it in our early teaching?

Our children have come back to school with starting points lower than ever before, so we simply have to prioritise language and literacy, but how?

The EEF guidance report Preparing for Literacy, offers seven recommendations for how to achieve a consistently excellent approach to early literacy. In this blog, I’ll be talking about the first recommendation which focuses on developing children’s communication and language skills.

Many of us in schools have picked up this guidance report, or have perhaps been sent it by leaders in our schools/​trusts. I’d like to share what we have been implementing in my phase, which I hope will be a useful insight for other’s of you in a similar position.

Language should be prioritised

Language and literacy gives the children the creative language and secretarial skills needed to learn in all subjects. It supports self-regulation; children can identify, name and describe their emotions. We need children who are happy and can understand and describe their world.

Teach Vocabulary

The EEF guidance report describes the importance of teaching vocabulary explicitly – especially important for narrowing the disadvantaged gap. We carefully select Tier 2 project and literacy words which we will explicitly teach, with Makaton actions and symbols. We prefer ​‘quality over quantity’ and rigour- revisiting the same words often, rather than listing lots of them untaught on a planning document. We cross reference them between different lessons so they see and hear the word in the stories we read, the lessons we teach, the daily interactions in play. And then they ultimately use these words themselves. We display them because whilst they may not be decodable to the children (yet) they show curiosity about the print and symbols, ask about them, and adults have them ready at a glance to include in their interactions as they play.


Talk with children (and not to them)
- a.k.a ​‘The end of ​“Ooo what are you doing? What are you making”’

I cannot go very far into a blog about communication in the Early Years without mentioning the highly regarded book by Julie Fisher – ​‘Interacting or Interfering?’. I had countless ​‘take-away’ actions after dipping into this book and cannot recommend it highly enough. One instant hit for me, was to stand back and listen before you jump in. Like many other schools, we have a project-led curriculum in my phase, rather than purely ​‘in-the-moment’. So, it’s even more important for us to listen and respect the child’s interactions first. By jumping into their play with an ill-timed, off-their-topic, awkward and ultimately unhelpful question or exclamation, we just put the children off and actually hinder their learning. Better to first listen, take your time to understand the moment you are joining and offer a genuine interaction which clarifies, elaborates, reminds, suggests, extends or expands, with the care and respect the children deserve. The guidance report offers suggestions on how to open up these high-quality interactions using sustained shared thinking. One easy idea I’m looking forward to implementing, is having these SST ​‘interaction prompts’ displayed for adults. We are also going to be undertaking an audit using the SSTEW scale (Siraj-Blatchford et al. 2002) this year to help us asses how effective our Sustained Shared Thinking is, and how high the children’s Emotional Wellbeing is in our phase.

The range of approaches to developing language and literacy

Our timetable is watertight, not a moment is lost. But the children wouldn’t even realise how tirelessly we work to improve their language and literacy; for them, they just love it all. Here’s some of my favourite bits of our current and upcoming literacy diet:
· Child-initiated writing in play
· Talk for Writing (Pie Corbett)
· Shared Reading (Beck, Quigley)
· Guided Reading (2 – 3x per week)
· Helicopter Stories (Trisha Lee)
· Phonics
· NELI intervention (a government supported ​‘covid-catch-up’ programme)
· Fine motor and handwriting (sand, shaving foam, malleable, writing books etc.)
· The Message Centre (Bottrill)
· Wellcomm Intervention
· Tales Toolkit (talestoolkit.com)
· Access to a specialist Speech and Language therapist
· Small group work. Whole class work. Interventions. 1:1
· Daily parent reading mornings (currently on hold due to covid)
· Story time
· Rhyme of the week
· Books as ​‘welcome to school’ gifts (bed-time story books for each child)
· Lending library

This seemingly long list is completely manageable (most days!) and carefully interwoven through the week across Nursery and Reception.

I look forward to writing my next blog where I’ll be sharing our approach to the EEFs second recommendation- Developing a balanced approach to Early Reading.

Everything floats on a sea of talk. So let’s get talking and let’s get it right.

Aimee Stephens