Using picturebooks to broaden understanding…Books for studying Rivers

Here are some stunning picturebooks that I would use to support a curriculum study about Rivers. They are in turns beautiful, poetic, thoughtful and knowledge packed.

Driftwood Days by William Miniver and Charles Vess

Under autumn leaves, a boy watches a beaver build a dam. One of the branches slips away, carried downstream by the river. Through the changing seasons, the branch makes a long, epic journey to the sea, before finally getting tossed back onto shore. Changed by the elements, the branch–now driftwood–lies patiently on the beach, until the boy discovers it once again.

Featuring breathtaking artwork by Charles Vess, Driftwood Days offers readers a beautiful, multilayered story about nature, science, childhood, and change.

A magical and gentle way to introduce the seasons and the cyclical nature of life.

What is a River? By Monika Vaicenaviciene

“What is a river?” an inquisitive young girl asks her grandmother as the pair sits together on the river’s banks. Like many questions posed by curious children, this one is deceptively simple in its asking. Yet, its answer spans the very world itself: geography and history, science and religion, industry and environmentalism. Through author-illustrator Monika Vaicenavičienė’s eyes, the river becomes a vessel for enormous complexity, a lens through which the interconnectedness of our shared earth can be understood.

Thoughtful, playful, challenging. A perfect book for widening understanding of rivers to both STEM and art. What indeed is a River? My favourite picturebook 2021.

River by Elisha Cooper

Caldecott Honor winner Elisha Cooper invites readers to grab their oars and board a canoe down a river exploration filled with adventure and beauty. In Cooper’s flowing prose and stunning watercolor scenes, readers can follow a traveler’s trek down the Hudson River as she and her canoe explore the wildlife, flora and fauna, and urban landscape at the river’s edge. Through perilous weather and river rushes, the canoe and her captain survive and maneuver their way down the river back home. River is an outstanding introduction to seeing the world through the eyes of a young explorer and a great picture book for the STEAM curriculum.Maps and information about the Hudson River and famous landmarks are included in the back of the book.

A brilliant lazy journey down the River Hudson. Wonderfully encapsulate s the changing geography bot physical and human.

The Rhythm of the Rain by Graham Barker Smith

Issac plays in his favourite pool on the mountainside. As rain starts to fall, he empties his little jar of water into the pool and races the sparkling streams as they tumble over waterfalls, rush through swollen rivers and burst out into the vast open sea. Where will my little jar of water go now? Issac wonders. On the other side of the world, Cassi welcomes the rain to her parched village . . . From tiniest raindrop to deepest ocean, this breathtaking celebration of the water cycle captures the remarkable movement of water across the earth in all its majesty. A stunning new non-fiction picture book from Greenaway medal-winner, Grahame Baker-Smith.

A visual stunner. Perfect for discussing the Water Cycle and adds a magical sense of scale.

The Tree and the River

A spectacular time-lapse portrait of humankind – and our impact on the natural world – from a Caldecott Honor-winning master of the wordless form.
For his latest feat of visual storytelling, the acclaimed creator of the Journey trilogy invents, in staggering detail, a familiar world layered with imaginary civilizations. Borrowing from multiple cultures and architectural styles to craft astonishing new humanscapes, Aaron Becker tracks the evolution of our species – and its toll on the Earth – through the fates of a lone tree and an enduring river. River and tree bear silent witness over time as people arrive to harness water, wind, and animals; devise technology and transportation; redirect rivers; and reshape the land. Timely and ultimately hopeful, this wordless epic invites readers to pore over spreads densely packed with visual drama. Fans of Journey, Quest, and Return will leap at a new chance to uncover sophisticated layers of meaning, marvel at intricate details – from holographic billboards to flying machines – and see our precious shared world through fresh eyes.

The focus on one place over time truly helps children understand the role of a River in developing or society and culture.

River by Marc Martin

A beautiful geographical story with lush landscapes and poetic text from an award-winning Australian illustrator. A River follows on from Marc Martin’s incredible A Forest – winner of the 2013 Crichton Children’s Illustration Award.

There is a river outside my window.
Where will it take me?

So begins an imaginary journey from the city to the sea. From factories to farmlands, freeways to forest, each new landscape is explored through stunning illustrations and poetic text from this award-winning picture-book creator.

Just a brilliant way for children to get the changes and understand geographical features.

River Stories by Timothy Knapman, Ashling Lidsay and Irene Montano

Sail along five mighty rivers around the world and open up the giant fold-out pages to reveal incredible stories from history, mythology and modern times.

This gorgeous gift book will take you on a world adventure via the world’s greatest rivers. The Yangtze tells of dragons and dolphins, while the Rhine whispers about castles and Frankenstein. Explore pyramids, tombs and temples by the Nile, and search for lost cities and gold alongside the Amazon. And follow the Mississippi to hear of historic battles and dinosaurs.

Gorgeously illustrated pages fold out to reveal the full length of each river. Make an epic journey from source to sea and soak up the rivers’ amazing stories

Amazing foldouts make this a book to pore over. Full of history and mythology it’s provides a very different take on rivers.

Are you ready to take part in an adventure? To face danger at every turn? To venture into unknown lands? If you are, then Journey to the Last River may be the perfect adventure book for you.

‘I would mention the area’s name, but I can’t. All I can say is that this map would lead the two of us on an expedition into the heart of the unknown, hoping to find the last river for ourselves. What we discovered deep within the rainforest was enough to make me remove or change the place names in this journal – just like the map maker. Soon, you will know and understand.…’

Join the Unknown Adventurer again on this thrilling adventure into the Amazon, which begins with a map discovered in the Royal Geographical Society showing a river that has been mysteriously rubbed out. It leads the Unknown Adventurer and his companion Bibi into a search for this ‘last river’ that will change their understanding of nature forever.

This book is a thrilling tale of a voyage into the Amazon rainforest that looks exactly like a real scrap book inside, with smudged pages, handwritten-looking text and even die-cut piranha bite marksfrom a previous scrape.

The gripping story features encounters with caiman and anacondas, incredible flora and fauna, survival tips and much, much more. The first title in a new series of spin-off adventures from The Lost Book of Adventure.

Just visually stunning with a heart of adventure. I’ve seen children get truly lost in this book.

A school’s New Years Resolution.

As we go into a New Year the hopes and aspirations for we hold are vital. I think we all know that we can’t change the “weather.” DfE and Ofsted will do what they do but we will be ready to react accordingly to that, we’ve got sun-cream, wooly hats and umbrellas at the ready. The response of the new HMCI will be very interesting in the wake of the Ruth Perry inquiry. How that impacts our accountability system is currently up in the air. We have all seen the impact the pressures the system can have, fact is we can’t control the outside school system but we definitely can control the inside.

I do however have a few wishes for the 2024. Ones that we will hope to fulfil in our school.

Firstly I wish for this upcoming year that we, as teachers, act on the principle that education is not only about the mind — but that it’s about the person. The past three years during the pandemic and beyond it highlighted for me that the gaps aren’t what we do in our classrooms. I believe a school must function for the purpose of developing students as whole people, not just merely as empty minds which require regular and constant filling up of knowledge. School just is more.

Children more than ever need schools and they need them to be more. That is not saying that we don’t have to teach stuff because blatantly we do and obviously that is our core purpose, but there is so much more to what we do and we ignore that at our peril. If attendance rates tell us anything it’s that increasingly schools are not meeting the needs of all pupils and that one size fits all approaches are alienating many of our young people who sit on the periphery.

My wish for teachers is that we can truly focus back in our classrooms. That we can can strip away the nonsense and just get on with doing the best job in the world. As a head a huge part of my job is creating the conditions so that is the case. I will be that “crap” umbrella so my teachers can just get on with the job.

I also wish that we can get our children back to that spot where learning is a motivator in and of itself and that we embrace the joy that brings.

I hope that we can move to a place that engagement and excitement in our classrooms are not seen as the enemy. School should be a joy. Children should rush out to tell parents what they’ve learnt, personally I think it’s never been more important that that is the case. Smiles and happiness should be synonomous with school, so I also wish that we make time to have fun, to enjoy the time teachers spend with the children in their class. Great primary schools are fuelled by brilliant relationships.

Is it too much to ask that we find time to laugh? Time to breathe, and wonder, and imagine, and daydream? Time to draw and dance and sculpt and create. Time to rest as well as time to work.

What’s been lost in the past few years is more than education. We can recover the education we just need to ensure that we don’t do it at the expense of other things that are important in our schools.

To put it another way in the words of Kevin Bacon in Footloose…

“Ecclesiastes assures us… that there is a time for every purpose under heaven. A time to laugh… and a time to weep. A time to mourn… and there is a time to dance. And there was a time for this law, but not anymore. See, this is our time to dance. It is our way of celebrating life. It’s the way it was in the beginning. It’s the way it’s always been. It’s the way it should be now.”

Using picturebooks to broaden understanding…Books for studying World War 2.

Just thought I’d put together a collection on picturebooks I would use if I were teaching World War II.

In the past I’ve used a range of books to expand understanding about subjects. However the fact is more often than not the real stories are way more interesting than the fiction.

I’m also interested in the small stories, the acts of human endeavour and bravery. I love how we can go from Macro to micro to discussing the big and seeing it play out in the small. I love how these small stories often bring understanding and perspective to often quite amorphous ideas. I also think they are brilliant in helping children understand that their actions however small can make a difference.

So with that in mind these are the books I would use now…

Nicky and Vera: A Quiet Hero of the Holocaust and the Children He Rescued by Peter Sis

In 1938, twenty-nine-year-old Nicholas Winton saved the lives of almost 700 children trapped in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia—a story he never told and that remained unknown until an unforgettable TV appearance in the 1980s reunited him with some of the children he saved.

Czech-American artist, MacArthur Fellow, and Andersen Award winner Peter Sís dramatizes Winton’s story in this distinctive and deeply personal picture book. He intertwines Nicky’s efforts with the story of one of the children he saved—a young girl named Vera, whose family enlisted Nicky’s aid when the Germans occupied their country. As the war passes and Vera grows up, she must find balance in her dual identities—one her birthright, the other her choice.

Nicky Vera is a masterful tribute to a humble man’s courageous efforts to protect Europe’s most vulnerable, and a timely portrayal of the hopes and fears of those forced to leave their homes and create new lives.

This is a wonderful telling of the story of Sir Nicholas Winton. It’s a brilliant true story of how small acts of defiance can make a real difference. Peter Sis has long been one of my favourite picturebook creators and this is possibly his finest yet. It is a quiet story of rebellion and bravery and about doing the right thing. Sis’s illustrations are wonderful and he just inspires exploration into the detail. Inspiring stuff. It also has one of the greatest television clips ever see below. (History/Holocaust links)

Hidden Hope by Elisa Boxer and Amy June Bates

The remarkable true story of how a toy duck smuggled forged identity papers for Jewish refugees during WWII During World War II, a social worker named Jacqueline bicycled through the streets of Paris, passing Nazi soldiers and carrying a toy duck to share with the children she visited. What the Nazis didn’t know, however, was that Jacqueline wasn’t a social worker at all, but a Jewish member of the French Resistance.

Families across Europe went into hiding as the Nazis rounded up anyone Jewish. The Star of David, a symbol of faith and pride, became a tool of hate when the Nazis forced people to wear the star on their clothing and carry papers identifying them as Jewish, so that it was clear who to arrest. But many brave souls dared to help them.

Jacqueline was one of them. She risked her life in secret workshops, where forgers created false identity papers. But how to get these life-saving papers to families in hiding? The toy duck held the answer.

Written by award-winning journalist Elisa Boxer and movingly illustrated by the acclaimed Amy June Bates, Hidden Hope , a true story, celebrates everyday heroism, resilience, the triumph of the human spirit, and finding hope in unexpected places.

It’s a truly brilliant story, the art creates tons of tension and hold your breath moments. Extraordinary, brave and true

Bartali’s Bicycle by Megan Hoyt and Iacapo Buno

This picture book biography tells the inspiring story of Italian cyclist, Gino Bartali who worked with the resistance to save 800+ lives during WWII- eventually named “Righteous Among Nations” by Yad Vasham, the Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel for his wartime work helping to rescue Jews. Hoyt ensures that Bartali’s story is easily accessible to a young audience while illustrator Bruno perfectly captures the depicted time period. A excellent over the timeline, letter from Bartali’s granddaughter, or author’s note at the end of the book make it a brilliant look at a little known story.

The Story of Bodhri by Hedi Fried and Sina Wirsen

“Hédi spends her days playing with her dog Bodri in the park, but her quiet world starts to crumble the day she hears Adolf Hitler on the radio. Germany’s leader hates her and her family, just because they are Jewish. And Hitler doesn’t even know them—it doesn’t make any sense. Soon Nazi Germany invades Hédi’s country, and her life changes forever.

Inspired by the author’s experiences.”

“The Story of Bodri” is a true and powerful story, simply told. The illustrations perfectly give it feel of a timeless story and evoke a bygone era. The story is ultimately hopeful, but reminds us that this is a story not to be repeated. Never Again. (History/Holocaust links)

The House by the Lake by Thomas Harding and Britta Teckentrup

“History comes home in a deeply moving, exquisitely illustrated tale of a small house, taken by the Nazis, that harbors a succession of families–and becomes a quiet witness to a tumultuous century.

The days went around like a wheel.
The sun rose, warming the walls of the house.

On the outskirts of Berlin, Germany, a wooden cottage stands on the shore of a lake. Over the course of a hundred years, this little house played host to a kind Jewish doctor and his family, a successful Nazi composer, wartime refugees, and a secret-police informant. During that time, as a world war came and went and the Berlin Wall arose just a stone’s throw from the back door, the house filled up with myriad everyday moments. And when that time was over, and the dwelling was empty and derelict, the great-grandson of the man who built the house felt compelled to bring it back to life and listen to the story it had to tell. Illuminated by Britta Teckentrup’s magnificent illustrations, Thomas Harding’s narration reads like a haunting fairy tale–a lyrical picture-book rendering of the story he first shared in an acclaimed personal history for adult readers.”

A clever journey through a period of time. This historical picture book offers a glimpse of different times in history, but all at the same location: at a little, wooden house by the side of a lake. History happens around the house, and the house plays a vital role in many peoples lives. The book encourages questions and follow-up. It doesn’t give all the answers and is all the better for that. What it does however is allow us to see the passage of time in what was a tumultuous period of history. (History links 1920-now)

I’d also recommend exploring “The House” by J P Lewis and Roberto Innocenti and The Apartment by Alexandra Litvina and Anna Desnitskaya which do similar looks at history.

A Bowl full of Peace by Caron Stelson and Akira Kusaka

Caren Stelson brings Sachiko Yasui’s story of surviving the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and her message of peace to a young audience.

Sachiko’s family home was about half a mile from where the atomic bomb fell on August 9, 1945. Her family experienced devastating loss. When they returned to the rubble where their home once stood, her father miraculously found their serving bowl fully intact. This delicate, green, leaf-shaped bowl–which once held their daily meals–now holds memories of the past and serves as a vessel of hope, peace, and new traditions for Sachiko and the surviving members of her family.

I cannot recommend this true story of the bombing of Nagasaki and its impact on one small girl and her family enough. The story doesn’t shy away from the impact of war on the people involved. It provides a very different perspective on the end of the second World War and highlights the human impact of the actions taken. The story is a beautifully told true story and completely need wider sharing (History links)

Finally I’d add these two fantastic picturebook biographies

Code Breaker, Spy Hunter (How Elizabeth Friedman changed the course of two world wars) by Laurie Wallmark and Brooke Smart

And

Hedy Lamarr’s Double Life by Laurie Wallmark and Katy Wu

Both tell brilliant stories about actions that had much wider consequence. They bring the importance of Women as part of the war effort to the fore and are both absolutely fascinating

These are the books I would use now to supplement looking at World War 2. Hope they are useful.

SATs a perspective…

I know this will probably annoy some people, I know that this will cheese some people off. 

Let’s get this straight, I’m not a big fan of the SATs or the overload of primary testing full-stop. I think some of them are poorly designed and don’t test the thing they aim to test very well. If I am honest there are probably four tests which do a reasonable job of testing the thing they aim to assess. 

1)The Phonics Check, checks pretty well whether children know their sounds and can blend. It however gives us not a clue about whether they can really read. 

2)The Multiplication check will give us a reasonable idea of whether children know their timestables and can recall quickly, especially once they get used to the input method. 

3)The Grammar and punctuation test does a pretty good job of testing pupils knowledge of the complexities of English grammar at that age. Whether children need to know all that stuff or whether it has any impact on writing is a wholly different conversation.

4)The Maths arithmetic paper gives us a reasonable picture of how children understand and approach a range of maths linked to the four operations.

The rest of the tests to varying degrees are pretty poor measures. Maths reasoning papers are often more about English and interpreting question than the Maths that sits at the core.

The Reading test is a pretty poor measure of reading IMO.

Getting up this morning and seeing SATs all over the news and in-particular the admittedly difficult Reading test I was angry. My anger however was not it seems for the same reason as everyone else. There was anger on the telly that some children who were expected to do well had left the test crying because they hadn’t finished the test. My first thought went to the children who we know are below the expected standard some of them who are SEND, yet they sit through this same test knowing that they probably won’t get to the fictitious imaginary line.

How are we OK with our weakest students taking these “difficult” tests but the moment the “high achievers” can’t do it we start shouting and waving placards?

I also am really bothered that we are building these tests up so much that when something goes wrong children are breaking down in tears. That doesn’t happen unless there is either pressure from home or school in my opinion. That pressure can be for a range of reasons, but children only pick up on it if we make them something beyond what they should be and whether we like it or not if children leave the test  crying we have played a part in that. 

Do I think SATs are good measure of time in primary, definitely not. Making a judgement about a child based on that hour on that day is a frankly poor way of summing up six years in a child’s life. 

Should the data be used in the way it is to vilify schools and compare them against each other without context…again definitely not.

These tests aren’t formative, they don’t guide children’s next steps as the DfE claimed today, their sole purpose is as a measure for primary schools and a stick to beat secondary schools with. This whether we like it or not is a big element of how and why sometimes that pressure is driven down. Surely if this all they are actually for then we have to question their actual value.

Having said that I do believe however that we have to have a responsible attitude towards them. Sadly some hothouse pupils, personally we don’t really talk SATs till February half-term and we don’t properly prep children till after Easter. We encourage children to do their best and be proud of that best whatever that looks like. I know as I look at the children eating ice-cream and playing games that I couldn’t be prouder of them. No tears, no drama. Just children who did their best.

The overwhelming.

The fact is that when you are in the middle of it you don’t truly notice.

When stuff is happening you just get on and deal with it.

At the moment, this year, this term it has been utterly relentless. In some ways I’ve got used to the the lack of of other services to support the young people in our school.

CAMHS don’t make me laugh, most can’t get a referral and even if they do it’s a two year waiting list.

Speech and language, two years for a referral and then non-existent support and signed off at the earliest opportunity.

Early Help, sticking plasters on a gaping wound, willing but massively under resourced.

The Children Protection referral threshold is now desperately high. It feels like we’re waiting for something to break. The lack of social workers and the ever fluctuating staff, mean connections and relationships don’t happen.

Woefully under-resourced SEND provision, every EHCP is a battle and increasingly they are no reflective of real need. every decision from outside is about saving money rather than providing the right support. There are no special school places locally so again we pick up the pieces for families of pupils with significant special needs.

Non-existent community policing, so problems from outside turn up again and again on our doorstep.

Sat in the middle of this are schools. Increasingly being asked by desperate parents for help. We try our best to support, direct, we are often that shoulder to cry on, or that place to share. Increasingly all these worries sit at our door.

We are a small primary, we don’t have a pastoral team, we don’t have an abundance of staff to support, in fact most days there is me.

Our staff are amazing and bothered but everyday they have to do so much to get the children in the right place to learn.

I will always listen, I will always try to support. Daily I collect children and get them to school and deal with the other stuff. Everyday I just do. That’s before you get to the everyday job of running a school, supporting staff, juggling staffing and budgets and the normal stuff you expect as part of the job.

It’s only today, sat breathing out that I realise how bone-tired I am.

It wasn’t always this and the positives of the job still outweigh the negatives for me. We do however need realism from the DfE and Ofsted of what the actual job is because it’s way more than they see.

I will rest up and start again. The meeting are already booked for the first Monday back

Wordless Wonders.

I am a huge advocate of picturebooks and the power they have.

As Martin Galway perfectly put it “They provide a swift democracy, a shared world and experience that can mitigate and compensate for varying levels of experience of the world.”

One of the key aspects about picturebooks is the exploration and the talk they can provide. There is nothing more enjoyable and enlightening than sitting with a group of children and exploring a high quality text. The best picturebooks do that.

This week I’ve seen the true impact of wordless picturebooks. In our Targeted Mainstream provision class they have been using “Quest” by Aaron Becker. This has transformed a group of children who did not write, have the language to write, or want to write into children who bounce into writing lessons full of language, and ideas and desperate to write.

Wordless picturebooks are a special breed they are at their best when we co-create the story together, when we explore the detail. When we notice the nuance, when we roll the language of story around the image. Creating time to talk and explore starting with our youngest children is so important.

Mary Roche’s wonderful “Developing children’s critical thinking through picturebooks” would be my starting go to for both practical and theoretical ideas on this with the stated aim to develop readers “who can look beneath the surface and challenge any assumptions and premises that may be hidden there and who can examine their own assumptions and discuss them with others.”

It’s not a luxury to spend time digging in and exploring a text and that it often feels that way is a sad indictment on the pressures of our curriculum.

Wordless picturebooks are unique, anybody who has ever used The Arrival by Shaun Tan will both know the power of it and the immense depth of emotion and story held in those pictures, the only way to unleash it is through talk. Wordless picturebooks are drivers for language and understanding, they are equally perfect for driving writing.

Top Tips for Diving into Wordless Picturebooks

TALK (Encourage Discussion)

With wordless picture books it is all about the talk. The beauty of these wordless picturebooks is that there is much less pressure to read the story in a set way. Pause, discuss the pictures at length without feeling that you are interrupting the flow of any words. So take time to talk about the pictures, follow up on the children’s observations, build vocabulary, make connections and ask questions.

IMMERSE (Introduce Rich New Vocabulary)

One of the obvious ways of using wordless picture books with your child is to tell the story which accompanies the pictures in your own words. Wordless books are perfect for introducing and developing new vocabulary. As well as explaining the action in the picture, don’t forget to also describe what else you see in the picture, using as many detailed words as possible. Describing the pictures encourages us to use language that is different from how we normally speak. This will expose children to a rich variety of language. We are the guide here, children will start to take over.

EXPLORE (dig deep and go beyond the pictures)

Ask the children open ended questions about what might be happening and why. Be sure to give children plenty of time to think about their responses. When children reply, repeat what they say and add more information. Give the detail…expand the ideas. With wordless picture books you can focus on much more. How does the picture portray action or emotions? How can picture clues help children understand more of the story and support their inferences. Encourage children to also think about the colour choices and mood of the pictures. Why do they think the illustrator used a particular colour or technique?

STRUCTURE (storytelling)

Wordless picture books are a great way of teaching children about basic story structure and the sequencing of events in a story. This will start to give them an understanding of basic story structure. Talk about the different elements of the plot and the sequence of these events in the story. Encourage them to summarise a story. When you’re reading the story, try using simple words and phrases like ‘next’ and ‘then’. These linking words help children catch the idea of the flow of a story and how to tell a story in order.

PLAY (encourage children to be creative)

You don’t always have to tell the story in the same way. If there is more than one character in the book, tell the story from different perspectives. You can make up a different story every time. Encourage embellishment. With older readers let them develop motivation and characters. Encourage details and settings build the complex from the simple.

INSPIRE (wordless books can open doors to writing)

Wordless picture books can provide the perfect foundation for writing. Children can write descriptive text to complement each picture, or a selection of pictures, they could add dialogue to the characters in the story, they could describe dramatic action and build tension. Don’t forget writing is 90% talk if children can’t talk it they can’t write. Acting as a scribe for a child is still the child writing, who cannot write yet.

Some Brilliant Wordless Wonders to get you started…

Aaron Becker is a perfect starting point…his Journey trilogy is fantastic and Stone for Sascha is a wordless History of the World and a tale of loss

Shaun Tan is more capable of telling a whole story in a single picture than almost any illustrator. The Arrival is a wordless masterpiece

Bill Thompson books are vividly illustrated and dynamic full of action, emotion and flights of fancy. Perfect for young and old

David Weisner is a visual master. Just a perfect wordless storyteller.

Suzy Lee does character and emotion better than anyone. Her on the simple stories are full of emotion and depth.

Professional Crocodile by Giovanna Zoboli and Mariachara Di Giorgio is in my opinion pretty much perfect. With a delicious twist

Jon Arno Lawson collaborating with a range of illustrators create brilliant emotional wordless narratives

Henry Cole creates delicate stories full of detail and emotion.

Guojing is just wonderful. Her books use graphic novel styling to tell beautiful complex emotional wordless stories.

There are loads more, here are some more of my favourites…

The Jack of all trades.

Reading some posts today and I totally get where some people are at. Increasingly the job is removed from the job I applied for. The pressures have never been greater. Sometimes it feels like a knife-edge. At some point it becomes impossible. These are good people who have driven to this point by a system that is crumbling around them. Schools have filled the gaps, but we all know that’s not the same as having the right resources there. At some point inevitably something will be missed and the consequences could be dire.

My job itself has dramatically changed in the last few years. It was already changing but COVID led to a fundamental change. In a post-COVID world, as cuts have bitten into other services I find myself stepping into roles that frankly I do not have the skills to do. Don’t get me wrong I make a grand cup of tea and I’m really good at listening, I also have biscuits. On occasion I have been known to give a mean hug, but let’s get it straight…

I am not a Social Worker! (We have an endless parade of supply workers, who come and go and there is no consistency.

I am not an Attendance Officer! (I love the data though)

I am not a Parental Support Advisor! (They vanished in 2017)

I am not a Prevention Officer,

I am not a counselor!

I am not a Police Officer!

In the last three and a half years many of these services have been stripped away. We haven’t seen a community police officer since 2019, ours (who wax brilliant) got another job, no sight nor sound since then.

The impact on my most vulnerable families has been dramatic. Let’s get one thing clear I am not in any way blaming any of the people doing those jobs. I see they are run ragged on a daily basis, they have case loads and workloads they cannot possibly keep up with. We are sadly the ones however who see the impact. It impacts on how our children enter school. It impacts on our pupils ability to learn. Rightly or wrongly we have stepped into the void. To be fair my deputy and I try to keep this from impacting on the staff so they can do their job. I worry hugely that this stops us getting on with the job of running a school. We never seem to have enough time. Then again I don’t think anybody does. As a school we are vigilant, we do something called ’60 second monitoring’ which helps us keep an overview of the challenges. We adapt provision to support those young people so they can learn.Our priority is to ensure our young people are safe. As the external support has dropped we see more and more children at risk.

The problem is for many of our families they don’t know where else to go for advice and support. Some are crying out for help. They just often need someone to talk to and a bit of time. However increasingly they need someone to help them.

I have visited doctors with families to help them get the support they need, I have been to court to help parents fight for their child’s entitlement to disability living allowance. I collect children daily to make sure they get into school and then take them home at the end of the day. I have helped them access food banks. We do this because it ultimately helps our young people get on with their job of learning.

Getting CAMHS support feels nigh on impossible. There are massive waiting lists after referral and in many cases they are just rejected once they finally get seen. We did a counsellor in school (We found the money) but now we can’t afford that. Fact is really we just scratch at the surface of the need.

I know some people will say that it is not your job. Thing is by us doing the things we do, we support our most vulnerable children in accessing their education and I still firmly believe education is the key. If we didn’t do the the things we are doing, some of our children would be lost to education.

I do have some skills, my Dad’s teaching me the basics of plumbing has been massively handy, and my time served cleaning schools while I did my degree means I am a dab hand with a mop.

Point is you can only do what you can. Anyway whether I wanted to or not, I couldn’t do it any other way. It’s what the job is. I know in some ways I’m lucky, our school is part of a trust which supports its heads brilliantly.

So to those who’ve hit that wall, I wish good health and bright futures and also thanks for highlighting the current increasingly impossible demands of a job the we love. If we want the best people leading our schools we need to look at how the system supports and sustains them rather than drives them away.

I know what I like and I like What I know. (genre booklists for Y5/6)

I’ve been thinking a lot about genre and how this can sometimes support young readers in making book choices. Understanding the conventions can add a security in choice, a bit “if you like this, you might like that”

As a child I was very much addicted to Sci-Fi. It was what I read, Tripods, Doctor Who novels into John Wyndham then onto Philip K Dick and then Asimov. Knowing those books led me to read more. Finding an Author that was mine was a gateway to further reading.

With that in mind I started to compile some lists for children in our school. In our curriculum we ensure a range of texts are read to classes both in diversity but also in genre. The hope is to expose children to different authors and genres so that they can find their “author”, their “genre”, the books that sing to them.

I chose these books because I love them. This has given me a route to discuss the books with children. Talking about books is almost as important as reading about them. The books are on display, with other by the authors. Being a passionate reader is a little bit like collecting football stickers or Pokémon. “I gotta read ‘em all”

Here are the Book lists so far… these lists are genre starters not end points.

Science-Fiction

Horror/Scary

Real Life

Historical Fiction

Adventures

Animal fiction

Fantasy

Genre Defiers

Mystery and Thrillers…

Hope they are useful…

It’s the same old song…a neverending story!

“Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel”

Windmills of your mind.

EduTwitter is a merry-go-round, an ever spinning waltzer churning round and round.

Month after month the the same people spin out their never-ending mantras. If you don’t agree with them you are the enemy, you hate teachers.

Pens, haircuts, uniform, silent corridors, exclusion on and on. Trotted out at regular intervals to keep their twitter stock high. Unmet needs used as a punchline to their approving audience.

If you disagree, you are slapped down, if you dare to criticise you are shaming schools. Dissenting voices from the one true way are turned into pariahs.

The problem is I disagree with most of it. I am the enemy. …

Some children do have unmet needs, I see it every day with our pupils with communication and interaction difficulties.

Some schools do have ridiculous, expensive uniform policies , which despite their arguments bear little relation to the world of work.

Not wanting silent corridors does not mean that all is chaos and there are no standards.

Some schools do exclude too easily (I’ve seen it happen in our local secondary school when it was academised.) exclusion is thrown around as a threat for often quite minor misdemeanours.

I also get there is a difference between secondary and primary.

I’ve also seen a wide range of successful schools, many that I’ve nicked ideas from and some that I’ve hated.

I visited @chrisdysonHt’s school, it was great but I wouldn’t want to replicate it. It was its own unique phenomenon, powered by the force of nature that is Chris. Our school is very different and that’s OK.

We’re stuck in a loop and we’ll never agree, fact is dig a little deeper and our differences are often rather less than they seem. Cut the sides and the hyperbole and we’re not really that far apart even though sometimes people try to make it a chasm.

SATs Madness/Sadness

Why do we do this to ourselves?

Looking at twitter today and seeing the SATs madness in full effect. Threads of links to activities all for prepping the kids for those tests in the middle of May. Panic strikes, they are happening. They are not going to be cancelled. AAAAAAARRRRRGGGHHH!!!

Why do we do this to children?

Tweets about piles of SATs papers being sent home for children to practice, links to the best revision books, booster classes in full effect in some cases two or three a week.

What is wrong with us?

After the last two years we know that kids may not be where we would want them to be, yet we seem happy to define ourselves against a set of tests. This year is an opportunity for honesty. Just keep teaching using the tests as a measure of where the children are. A litmus test on the impact of the pandemic in our schools. We will all be at different points. That’s OK.

Except that’s not what is happening. For a range of reasons, the pressure is building,

Systemic fear, Ofsted are on the way, internal MAT pressures, Local Authority pressures, our own pride. For a host of reasons, we are all about to jump through the SATS burning hoops. We are a profession driven by accountability and we’re willing to sacrifice the truth for a better test score.

Will the stuff stick? Probably not.

Will it over-inflate where our pupils are at and what they can do? Probably yes.

Will it help us get it right for the children next year and the year after? Definitely not.

Will it create even more distrust in SATs from secondary colleagues? Completely.

I’m not anti- doing the SATs. For the first time I felt they may actually give us something useful, a measure of impact of the last two years. They won’t show us that though. In our panic we’ve decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater and stepped back onto the accountability treadmill.

Just don’t tell me you’re doing it for the children, because the last thing they need is practice SATs and booster classes. What they need is teaching, lots of teaching that doesn’t stop in May.

If we learnt one thing last year when there was no SATs, its that children were more ready for secondary and that pupils didn’t drop off after the arbitrary line.

Prep them a little around how the tests work. Then let what will be, be. Ultimately for the children an honest set of results will be more helpful to them.

SATs are the most important they’ve ever been this year for the children but not in the way we imagine.