This was an emotionally cleansing and grounding story to read after a long term as a teacher in these current challenging times. Providing perspective where needed. Another fantastic addition to our ReadingWell book selection and quite possibly, this year’s summer class reader for Y6.
Libby is a 12-year-old girl, who was born, with Turner Syndrome, this means she isn’t great at playing the piano, struggles to find the right thing to say, can’t have children and takes shots each day to help her grow. Libby is smart, courageous and has a heart overflowing with love for her family.
Her sister, Nonny, and her husband are in the middle of a financial black hole and with the news of a baby on the way, Libby calls upon the universe to ensure her niece will have the best start to life.
Details:
Publisher :Â Puffin (2 April 2020)
Language: :Â English
Print length :Â 282 pages
Page numbers source ISBN :Â 0374313199
Themes:
Growing up, finding yourself, self-acceptance and acceptance of others, resilience, courage, PSHE links and links to science: space and stars.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Sarah is the author of WHAT STARS ARE MADE OF and BREATHING UNDERWATER (coming spring 2021!) Like Libby in STARS, she was born with Turner syndrome. She is represented by the amazing Rena Rossner at the Deborah Harris Agency. She received an MFA in fiction from Brigham Young University and will soon start an MFA in poetry at the University of South Florida, Tampa.
A pithy story akin to Wonder by R J Palacio, illuminating the brilliance of resilience and unconditional love in a world where differences, whilst setting us apart, are not always understood or embraced.
Fans of Sophie Anderson and Abi Elphinstone rejoice – this magical story reminiscent of folklore and myths will captivate your imagination. A great support in teaching the weather, acceptance, hidden strength, courage and teamwork.
Returning home to Shetland, 11-year-old Stella will spend the summer with her Grandpa but everything has changed. Stella is catapulted into a pathetic fallacy: the weather is dismal and Grandpa is lost in his grief for Gran, thunderous, fizzling cloud hangs over him, leaving Stella feeling caged, until she encounters an old woman, Tamar, who can spin rainbows and call hurricanes.
With the help of Nimbus, a spirited young storm cloud, Stella begins to learn the art of weather weaving. But when her cloud brain-fogs Grandpa and The Haken (a sea witch) starts to close in, she realises that magic comes with big responsibilities. She will need to conjure all her courage to weather the oncoming storm, will it be enough?
Details:
Publisher: UCLan Publishing ISBN: 9781912979455 Number of pages: 320 Dimensions: 185 x 129 mm
Themes:
Independence, the meaning of home, and the fallibility of grown-ups.
An aptly timed book, emanating hope in bleak and challenging times.
A degree in Neuroscience enabled Tamsin to establish that while other people’s brains are full of complex thoughts, hers is full of stories. In an attempt to be responsible, she banished the stories and pursued a sensible career, but the stories were persistent. They refused to stay quiet – they crept out in dreams, occupied lunch hours, filled thick notebooks. When nonsense rhymes began to pop out in the margins of her business reports, she knew something had to change. The MA in Writing for Young People provided the perfect opportunity to set them free.
If you had a cloud of your own, what weather would you conjure and why?
Daily story time is embedded in my school, nothing is out on the tables, the children intently listen to the adult read from the class reader. But are they really listening or simply dreaming about the contents of their lunch boxes?
This year we introduced Accelerated Reader (AR), a system to motivate children to read. Each time they finish a book, they complete a quiz on it to check their understanding of it (comprehension). Previously, we used ReadTheory, which is a free online service comprising of short texts followed by multiple choice questions. The benefit of the move to AR is that it ties into our computer based assessment system by Renaissance (yes, our SLT are amazing – no more paper marking).
Looking on Twitter, you will see mixed reviews about AR, I guess it depends on how you use it in your school. For us, yes you can get a reading level for children and guide them to a book more suited to their level, after all we want them to grow as readers but we don’t subscribe to the model of these are the ONLY books you can read, you are a red level reader.
MyON is a tool that comes with AR – children each get their own log in, it recommends a library of books tailored to the child’s previous STAR reading assessment with Renaissance. Meaning that children can independently access, read and understand the books recommended. Another fantastic tool that we have been utilising with MyON is that children can opt to have a page or book read aloud to them as they follow it on the screen. Our struggling readers LOVE this and ask to use it daily.
Our reading intervention comprises of the child selecting a book on MyON from their account, having the page read to them, followed by them reading the same page to the adult. This support their reading fluency – they have heard how the words are pronounced, where they should pause and expression needed. This echoes our classroom based my turn, your turn, which the children are very familiar with.
On completion of a book, children can then take an AR quiz to check their understanding. They receive their score immediately – their faces light up when they see how well they have done and they ask to read another book – success really does breed motivation.
Children can access their accounts from home as well as in school. In Year 6, we assign reading homework on Seesaw using MyON – they select a book to read, record themselves reading at least one paragraph (this allows us to listen to every pupil in our class and check their reading with prosody progress), they then reflect on how well they read (expression, pace, volume, eye contact – based on the physical strand of the Voice 21 Oracy Framework). Children then complete the book and the associated AR quiz.
Another aspect to AR, that is useful, is the ability to maintain an online reading journal for the children. At anytime, we can log in and view a pupils progress and the books they are reading – be it from taking AR quizzes on their reading book or from MyON.
As I mentioned, daily reading from a class reader is embedded across our school. Upon completing a class reader, the children are directed to complete an AR quiz on it. This will show who has followed and understood the story. Here is a snapshot from my Year 6 class, after we completed our Aut 2 book: Moonlocket. I was amazed at the results because although we read it daily, we only look at the book closely once or twice a week, the other days, we have explore a variety of texts related to the wider curriculum. I would expect them to tune out, as they hear my voice constantly.
The results speak for themselves:
A snapshot from Year 3:
A snapshot from Year 5:
It is clear to see that children are actively listening and gain insight and meaning from adults reading to them – even from books they may not be able to access themselves. I have a boy, who suffers with epilepsy in my class, unfortunately, most of his seizures happen at night time so he comes to school very tired and is quite behind his peers. Often he will have a sleep at some point during the day. He scored 80% in the quiz on Moonlocket.
Is story time embedded in your school?
Do you use AR? I would love to hear your experience with it.
If you would like to discuss or visit a school in Berkshire, that puts reading at the heart of the curriculum, please get in touch.
Our school has been on an epic reading journey to say the least, from no library to an embedded reading culture. You will find reading advocates everywhere – one year 6 teacher promised her class at the start of the year, that she would read one children’s book a week and then place it on the class bookshelf for the children to read. We have been lucky to have two author visits in what can only be described as an exhausting and challenging time for all. Roving Books provided a great service to support our author visits by Stewart Foster and Ross Welford (highly recommend), more on those here. As a result of the huge buy in to reading that we have created, we were lucky to receive commission by way of BOOKS!
As reading lead, I am always thinking of ways to evolve our reading strategy, I don’t think it will or every should be complete, it needs to adapt with the times and needs of our pupils. One area we have worked a lot on recently is weaving non-fiction links to the wider curriculum into our reading lessons. I have blogged about the importance of non-fiction here, Inspired by Ashley Booth’s reading curriculum, I have been trying to collate and devise non-fiction links in a variety of genres (songs, picture books, newspaper articles etc) to support the wider curriculum in our school. This needs to be a whole-school view, where have children been in their learning journeys? Where are they heading? What do they need to know in order to comprehend the world around them? Basically what do they need to know and remember (learning).
Comprehension, I find, gets lost in questions, it is not simply a case of giving them questions to answer, a reading assessment is testing their knowledge – what they know and understand about a given topic. We have an inset day coming up after half term, and as reading lead I amongst others will be discussing non-fiction. When I met with senior leaders this week, we agreed it would be better to demonstrate how to weave links to the wider curriculum into lessons and the importance of hearing it from a variety of sources (not always me) and often. We all agree that non-fiction is important but finding the links can be the tricky part. As teachers, we can be guilty of tunnel vision, only seeing what occurs in our year group. It is therefore vital that onus be imparted to educators being involved in curriculum design, sequencing and an understanding of the key stage rather than the year group being taught.
The task, now at hand, is to devise some sort of curriculum map in an OliCav representation to show how and where the links lie across the key stage. In Year 5 for example, their autumn class reader is Letters from the Lighthouse and in Year 6, children study The Battle of Britain, so we must consider what essential information and non-fiction links are vital for children to know in order to support and extend their learning. Light is studied in Year 3 and built on in Year 6, electricity in Year 4 and again in Year 6. Year 4’s spring class reader is The Firework Maker’s Daughter by Phillip Pullman, invoking themes of fireworks and volcanoes. When children move to Year 5, they will study The Shang Dynasty in history lessons. It is important to make explicit links to both children and adults and to draw on prior learning.
Non-fiction is not just a factual book, most texts (fiction, picture, songs, articles) are based on facts – The Highland Falcon Thief series by M.G Leonard and Sam Segman provide children with a rich knowledge and understanding of locomotives through the narrative of a mystery story, supporting and lending itself to discussions or teaching about The Victorians or the Industrial Revolution. The Cogheart series by Peter Bunzl is a steampunk story set in the Victorian era, the sequel, Moonlocket supported our light topic in science with its reference to refracting diamonds and also brought their previous learning from Year 5 bubbling to the surface with constant reference to the moon phases and constellations, not to mention opening to door to exploring escapology (the antagonist being Jack Door – a notorious escape artist – aptly named as pointed out by one of my pupils after the thieving birds). This lead us to explore a fact file on Houdini, the picture book Escape from Pompeii (links to volcanoes in Year 4) and a newspaper article about Alcatraz. This also tied in quite nicely with formal writing in English, supporting their learning of newspaper articles. From this we looked at the picture book: Tuesday, which has no words, we devised inferences about the story, linked and wrote paragraphs to varying newspaper article structures based on the pictures. If the picture was best suited to a witness statement or the title for example.
The shift will be from a focus on the class reader to how the class reader can support and lend links to the wider curriculm.
Non-fiction needs to be the thread that ties the curriculum together.
What are the best links you have found to support children’s learning?
We want children to know and remember more, knowledge is power and is the epicentre of education. There is an array of evidence depicting that background knowledge is vital for reading comprehension. The more children know about a subject, the easier it is to read a text, understand it, and retain the information for later recollection. (Alexander, Kulikowich, & Schulze, 1994; Shapiro, 2004)
If comprehension (understanding from reading) comes from knowledge of a given topic, we need to incorporate more non-fiction or related texts linked to either the class novel or the wider curriculum into reading lessons. Covering topics such as: evolution in science, The Battle of Britain in history and cartography in geography once a week and expecting children to retain this knowledge for later retrieval (learning – Nick Hart recently blogged more about this here) is setting them and us up to fail.
Implementation of non-fiction texts into the curriculum
We can implement more non-fiction texts by adapting our reading lessons slightly – by reducing an in-depth look at the class reader to twice a week (alongside daily story time) and spending up to three days on non-fiction texts related to either the class reader or the wider curriculum. For example, if Moonlocket by Peter Bunzl is your class reader, it involves a notorious escapologist (Jack Door). Lessons on Houdini, Escape from Pompeii (picture book) and a newspaper article about absconded Alcatraz prisoners would expose children to a variety of genres and texts, whilst providing them with the background knowledge needed to make greater links with the class reader and the world around them. Allowing them to engage in conversations and file away the information for later retrieval.
If it lends itself, the three days could be spent on one text (going deeper rather than wider): Prisoners of Geography (2019) by Tim Marshall is a great addition to support cartography in Geography lessons. Children could be given a country in pairs and instructed to extract the information from the text, following this, they could present their findings to the class with an oracy focus. As children present their findings, the audience could be directed to provide feedback on certain oracy skills (volume, pace, eye-contact etc). The Girl of Ink and Stars by Kiran Millwood Hargrave is also a great book to support a cartography unit and beautifully written. Explicitly pointing out links and drawing on prior learning enables all children to engage with a text and become analytical, lighting up those connections.
Non-fiction texts need to be weaved into the curriculum throughout the school seamlessly so that it is not seen as a bolt on but rather the thread that ties it all together.
Sourcing non-fiction texts
There is a vast array of non-fiction and related texts for the wider curriculum – you can find books for topics here. I have found a lot of books through reading or recommendations on Twitter – there is an army of teacher readers just waiting to share great books (@Rosemarycalm, @MrsCanningKS2, @redgierob to name a few) . GetEpic is a free online library brimming with non-fiction and picture book texts on a rainbow of subjects. Lovereading4kids provides a lot of extracts for texts in a digital format so you can display them on the IWB as you read and discuss them. Literacy Shed + is another invaluable source for quality texts linked to the wider curriculum.
Two years ago, there was a lack of reading in my school….the library was turned into an extra classroom for Year 6….we had carousel reading lessons, you know, the ones where the teacher works with the least able group, everyone else mucks about or interrupts every 5 seconds and no-one gets any work done….the headteacher resigned, it was the blind leading the blind.
Cue a new school year, a new headteacher – Ofsted visited (in October) and we receive the dreaded but expected requires improvement. As with new leadership comes many changes, all for the better in my opinion, carousel reading was abolished and a new reading strategy – the full post can be found here – is implemented amongst many other things. The library returns – hurrah! Not only do we get the library back but we have a brand new, modern library, which is now adorned with author messages and is a bright and colourful welcoming space. It is a area of the school loved by many and I am lucky, as reading lead, to manage it (along with my many trusted Y6 library monitors, who take their job VERY seriously).
As reading lead, it is my passion and vision to put reading at the core of the curriculum, if they can’t read, they won’t access the rest of the curriculum, luckily for me I have a very supportive leadership team, we are actively encouraged to take risks and try new things. One of the ways to encourage a love of reading is by bringing authors to life – inviting them into the school! We are so lucky that we have a very supportive and active PTA, who agreed to fund not one but two author visits (we are a three-form junior school with around 400 students).
Ross Welford working with Y4
We were thrilled to invite authors Stewart Foster, award winning author of Checkmates, All the things that Could go Wrong, Bubble Boy and a new entry available here for pre-order The Perfect Parent Project, and Ross Welford, Time Travelling with a Hamster, What Not to do if you turn Invisible, The Dog who Saved the World, The 1000-year-old Boy and The Kid who Came from Space come to our school. Stewart Foster delivered an assembly to Year 5, who were in awe and had lots of questions to ask and conducted workshops with the three Year 6 classes. One such class, mine, he tweeted about a funny encounter with a pupil, which has inspired him for a character. At break and lunch he was surrounded by children and in his element signing books and having a laugh with the children, who were buzzing with excitement. Ross worked with the four-Year 4 classes, inspiring them to write we had Roving Books in to sell Ross’s books, which I highly recommend. The books literally flew off the shelves and Ross stayed until he had sign every book.
I’ve been to schools where I’ve turned up and they have no idea who I am… it was 180 odd fully aware, and engaged kids. So huge thanks.
Stwart Foster
There was a buzz about books and adults noticed how children were grinning from ear to ear and excited to be reading their new books. One parent tweeted:
The Mini-pieser has been so inspired by not one but two author visits in the past week! Thank you for organising @KellyLBuxton & @MrNickHart. Thank you for inspiring @rosswelford & Stewart Foster!
If you were considering getting an author in, I highly recommend it.
This is one of those books, one of those you simply can’t put down – gripping from start to end. A tale of love, friendship and belonging with the sour twang of loss and suffering, that makes this book devour-able. Vivid descriptions written with poetic poise put the reader in dramatic settings akin with primitive nature from nomadic and settlement clan ancestry.
Immersive character descriptions give this book a rare and evocative feel. I found myself championing for Oak: a seemingly insular, conceited and far removed from tribal belonging character, who undergoes a rebirth – a transformation of character. Son of the Deer clan chief Oak grows resentful of his friends, who are play carefree as he is finally ready to hunt and learn the ropes of leading the clan. But this summer tragedy strikes, the goddess is not appeased, the rain has not arrived, leaving the land barren and crop free, his father has fallen out with the Bear chief and now the land is divided.
Simmering with resentment.
Horse Boy
With no animals returning due to the drought, the Deer clan become interested in a strange breed, they have not met before: horses. As battle ensues, Oak becomes separated from his clan with a skittish young horse for company. They must trust and work together to find their way home, back to their homes. It is through this bumpy and perilous journey that realisation dawns for Oak: that status might make you a leader but respect and understanding earns you followers.
Horse Boy is reminiscent of folk lore and tales told around campfires as the flames dance and lick the star-speckled night sky. Tales meant to make children’s eyes grow wide with wonder and intrigue.
I really loved the rhythmic flow of the writing in beat with the story like a horse galloping through a field graciously. You could feel the soft, warm dusk breeze blow on your cheek and flow through your hair.
This story has a lot of great writing examples that I will be sharing with my Y6 class. Grab your copy here.
I was quite shocked when I read this book, Manor High School sounded like a nightmare gone bad. Bullies lying in wake to torment unsuspecting pupils, who it would seem would not hurt a fly: those in the school choir/band, library monitors and chess club members. Basically a throwback to cliques of geeks and cool kids but in order to be classed as cool, this meant getting detentions, knowing little, disrupting classes and thriving on belittling others.
For one pupil- Rosalind- this is exemplified as she suffers from select mutism (SM), she has so much she wants to say, wants to fit in desperately but the words get stuck, anxiety rises and renders her speechless. Labelled as painfully shy, pin balled from therapist to therapist and on the receiving end of bullies taunts and ridicules daily-she classes herself as a nobody, insignificant and invisible.
With the help of her dying younger brother, Seb, she creates a blog to fight back on behalf of all the nobodies at Manor High, giving a voice to all the unheard pupils in the school. However this goes terribly wrong, highlighting the dark and dangerous side of social media.
Being Miss Nobody by author Tamsin Winter is an evocative and heartwarming story about finding inner strength for children from a child’s perspective. It doesn’t have the ever common happy ever after ending that a lot of stories have, it has an element of real life and handling setbacks, which is why I feel it is such a powerful story to share with children.
The situation in the world is currently very strange, I can’t say I understand it all but what I do see as a teacher is the ever rising need for well-being, pastoral and mental health strategies. Reading has always been a way of escaping the real world, to momentarily live in a land far away, where possibilities that previously seemed out of reach suddenly become accessible, if not a given.
Reading enriches the brain with new ideas, thoughts and notions. It adds to elevating imagination, broadening perspectives and fueling vocabulary rich diets. Reading can be so many things: pleasure, insightful, supporting, emotive and therapeutic.
Lately I have read a few books that relate to real issues, by real issues I mean situations that children find themselves in for a variety of reasons: the bullying battlefield of high school, navigating the trends and cliques, dealing with serious illnesses and more recently those suffering with select mutism (SM), which I will admit before reading Being Miss Nobody by Tamsin Winter, I did not fully comprehend the stress and anxiety someone might be suffering at the mere thought of saying or rather not being able to say ‘hi’ to someone.
These books could be a life boat to someone suffering in silence and I feel every classroom, every library needs to have a set of books on hand to support those in need and adults need to be aware of such books in order to recommend them . Books written about real issues for children from a child’s perspective could be the warm blanket and cup of tea needed to guide them through, to let them know someone understands them and they are not alone.
Some of the books, in no particular order, that I feel are a must and I will be adding to our KS2 Reading Well section of the library (let me warn you, that take you on a raw and emotional journey through the turbulent lives of children) are:
1. Wink, Rob Harrell (cancer survivor)
2. Being Miss Nobody, Tamsin Winter (select mutism and high school bullying)
3. Checkmates, Stewart Foster (ADHD and bereavement)
4. Jemima Small Versus the Universe, Tamsin Winter (being overweight, incredibly smart and dealing with high school bullying)
5. The Boy at the Back of the Class, Onjali Q Rauf (child’s perspective of the refugee crisis)
6. A Star Outside my Window, Onjali Q Rauf (subtle faces and endless impacts of domestic violence)
7. Bubble Boy, Stewart Foster (a story of kindness and empathy, about a boy, Joe, stuck in a hospital bubble due to a rare condition)
What books do you feel are must have for a Reading Well section?
Where the Wilderness Lives by author Jess Butterworth is a story filled with adventure and nature, intertwined with magic and folklore but grounded by the trials and tribulations that accompany childhood.
There are so many aspects this book lends itself to, vibrant descriptions take you on a journey through dangerous waterways, dense forests and the hidden depths of Wales.
Who knew giving a talk at school about living on a narrow boat would lead to a race of survival through the wilderness.
For four children and their dog, Willow, their story unfurls when a safe is uncovered whilst cleaning the canal. Although the safe is locked, they feel it holds hidden secrets. That night a thief comes looking for the safe. The children flee on an epic journey of survival: taking their boat, Newt, as far as it can go before travelling on foot through the forest with only a backpack full of essentials. Eventually, they find themselves lost on a mountain with an impending snowstorm brewing.
Will their determination and sheer grit be enough to save them? Where the Wilderness Lives will resonate with fans of Kathrine Rundell’s The Explorer. This is a great book to support topics in and out of the classroom, notably nature, the environment, survival and courage. Another win for leading female characters surviving great ordeals.
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