"I LOVE reading... Now" - Content that gets kids hooked on literacy
After participating in a lively debate as part of The Age Schools Conference, I am putting together a quick piece for next week which will detail some of the biggest arguments in the talk, and how best you might defend the Science of Reading in the future.
As a follow up to the post on the read 2 Learn (r2L) project a few weeks ago, I am excitedly reporting back on how our year 1s and 2s at Brandon Park Primary have enjoyed the Mesopotamia unit (discussed and made available via this post). After putting this unit together, it was a joy to support our teachers implementing this for the first time. I particularly loved jumping into both year levels to model a session or two. But the highlight, so far, has been the building eagerness and thirst of the students to learn more.
embedding comprehension within rich content
One of my fears before we had tried out this unit was whether we had pitched the content too high, and that kids wouldn’t “get it”. Luckily such anxieties were unfounded. Even though none of our current Year 1s have experienced a knowledge rich curriculum until now, these students have dived into the deep end, and are not looking back as we explore how one of the world’s earliest sedentary civilisations came to be. Far from being put off by this “ancient history”, our year 1s and 2s have embraced fundamental understandings about:
hunter-gatherer societies
the onset of farming and the role of rivers in its invention (hence meso- [between], -potamia [rivers])
human’s first cities, and the roles people played
the invention of writing, and its importance for law and order.
Some students, who traditionally might have rolled their eyes at yet another reading session, are now asking their teachers "When are we reading more about Mesopotamia?". As Natalie Wexler has so beautifully articulated, when you raise the bar, and make fascinating content the focus, children’s reading comprehension improves dramatically, but so does their LOVE of reading.
Reading content that aligns with and bolsters writing
Another win has been how beautifully students are showing us their learning, and how reading rich content is improving their writing (alongside our writing approach: Write to Learn). One of our Year 1 Teachers, Laura Vigilante, shared some samples today. We have been blown away by what these 6 year olds can already do!
Our units incorporate strategies from The Writing Revolution, an approach which values the teaching of rich content, so students know a lot about what they are writing. While the vocabulary is at a high-level, the concepts from Core Knowledge are accessible and spark our students’ interest.
But how do you meet the curriculum requirements?
Units of work that illustrate the “big picture(s)” behind THE MANDATED curriculum content
A question we are often asked at Brandon Park, is how these units on Ancient History and World Geography meet the Australian or Victorian Curriculum requirements. Our answer is that these units go further and deeper than what we are required to teach, but fill in the necessary knowledge gaps that make it hard to understand the why, how, and so what of the Australian content.
Implementing our read2Learn units now, we know that these broader historical and geographical understandings will give the necessary background knowledge for students to fully appreciate the nuances and complexities within the Australian-focused content we have to teach. In the Mesopotamia unit, students are learning about their own community and society, comparing it to one of the early sedentary civilisations. They are learning, in view of their own society, to appreciate:
the role of rivers and lakes in sustaining populations
how farming allows us to source food without having to move from place to place seasonally
the different roles played by citizens to make a society work
the importance of law and governance
the power of writing and its many functions
the importance of belief and value systems in unifying peoples and cultures.
We are finding this is working better than the traditional “expanding horizons” approach, where students are prevented from learning about global or ancient concepts before they spend adequate time examining themselves, their family, local community, state, and finally country. Sometimes you need to go bigger picture in order to best explain how these ideas are relevant to students and their lives.
Putting that knowledge to good use
What is really blowing us away is how much students’ have become “mesopotamia-mad”! In independent exploration or play activities, students are spontaneously constructing and depicting aspects of Mesopotamian societies, demonstrating their geographical and historical understandings.
Highlights from a Mesopotamian city by some of our Year 2 students. Featuring rivers, canals, farmers, produce, infrastructure, livestock and transportation
The intricacy of the students‘ questions is also noteworthy. Many of our teachers have been put on-the-spot (in a good way), by nuanced questions about irrigation, systems of currency, city governance, commerce, and agriculture. The implementation of this unit is showing us that if you put high-quality knowledge in, curiosity, intrigue and questions come flowing back out. Studenrs rise to the challenge of the content and cannot get enough. An infusion of knowledge is catalysing a thirst for more!
It’s Mesopotamia-fever at the moment in Year 1 and 2
It can be seen in our students’ self-initiated questions, drawings and play explorations.
Students are finding references to Mesopotamia and other ancient civilisations in non-fiction texts in the library or at home. They are comparing these societies to what they’ve heard about Ancient Egypt and Ancient China. They have relished role play games where they could act out being the rulers of a city state, and deciding in groups what laws they should write, in the style of King Hammurabi, one of the first Kings to codify his law into stone.
Students practise their ancient cuneiform in clay. We have done this activity multiple times as students have a myriad of things they want to write about!
Our students’ drawings reflect what they now know about the importance of human-controlled waterways, proximity to farming, the function and terraced structure of Mesopotamian temples (ziggurats), the varied roles within society, and the depiction of society’s rulers as of greater importance and size in Mesopotamian art.
We have sparked some serious curiosity, in a way that traditional inquiry-based approaches have never been able to do at our school. We know we are doing something right when we see responses like this.
How you can get started
The Mesopotamia unit described this week has been made available to any subscriber of this blog. Head to this previous post to read more.
Read 2 Learn Project Launch
As discussed, Read to Learn (r2L) is Brandon Park Primary’s new platform for teaching reading comprehension within a knowledge-rich curriculum. This is an evolution from our work in recent years to teach reading comprehension explicitly and in a way that gets students focussed on in-depth text.
Come along to the free THINK FORWARD EDUCATORS information session to hear about the ambitious project to share our curriculum resources with you, and in which you can collaborate with other schools to produce high-quality units that develop knowledge and reading/writing expertise in students.
Thanks for visiting, and see you next week!
After participating in a lively debate as part of The Age Schools Conference, I am putting together a quick piece for next week which will detail some of the biggest arguments in the talk, and how best you might tackle attacks to the Science of Reading in the future. Subscribe now so you don’t miss it!
ABOUT me
Dr Nathaniel Swain
I am a Teacher, Instructional Coach, Researcher and Writer. I am passionate about language, literacy and learning, and effective and engaging teaching for all students.
I teach a class of first year foundation students, in a space affectionately known as Dr Swain’s Cognitorium. I also work as Science of Learning Specialist in my school.