In this episode, Claire interviews Karl Duke at the One Education Literacy Conference. Growing up in Barnsley in a working-class family, a wealth of books were not readily available to Karl as a child but he credits his parents for always encouraging him to read.
After initially training as an illustrator in the early 90s, Karl has worked in primary education for almost 20 years. In his first position at a rural school in Lincolnshire, he became the Literacy lead then successfully applied for a Literacy Consultant post which he worked in for six years.
In this role, Karl delivered national strategy courses in the region including Talk for Writing. He developed materials for visual literacy incorporating film and picture books before returning to school life as an Assistant Head on the Lincolnshire coast.
He has now been the Headteacher at Blyton cum Laughton Church of England Primary School for three years. Since being appointed, he and his team have developed a reading-inspired curriculum which he and Claire discuss in detail.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Picture BooksKarl makes extensive use of picture books in his school. His belief is that quality visual texts stimulate learning across the curriculum. The reading inspired curriculum that his school are developing ensures that children from all backgrounds have access to quality texts. Picture books are fantastic for reading for pleasure across all key stages and the aim at Karl’s school is to get the children to fall in love with each story. They aspire to ensure that every child by the end of Year 6 leaves their school with a love or continued love of reading.
· Sharing the LoveDue to the reputation Blyton cum Laughton have developed as a school who love books, they have had over 1,000 books donated to them in just a few months. This has been brilliant for the school particularly when faced with the issue of funding and is something for all schools to consider.
· Ofsted and Curriculum Scrutiny Karl believes that placing reading at the core of the curriculum can only be a positive thing. The importance of books is very apparent at his school and their influence can be seen throughout so he feels they are taking the right path to ensure it is the right curriculum for them. The teachers, parents and children are all on board which keeps them moving in the right direction.
· Detail DetectivesKarl has come across many children who struggle to find enough to write about and who find it difficult to write in detail. The idea of ‘Detail Detectives’ is to use illustrations from picture books to get children to focus in and look at the details of different parts of a bigger image. He describes the idea of seeing the image as a jigsaw, breaking it into 12 pieces and giving the children 1 piece to study helping them to focus on the details. Children can find it daunting to deal with all of the information in one go. By looking at one piece at a time, they are able to collate a larger number of ideas together instead of trying to process it as a whole. Karl gives copies of images useful for this activity on Twitter and his blog. You can find links to both in the show notes.
· CPDTwitter is an excellent source of free CPD and offers a huge wealth of teaching ideas. Karl discusses how most of his inspiration comes online these days. He heartily recommends becoming a regular visitor of book shops to find good quality picture books, especially independent ones where quirky, less well-known texts can be picked up.
· RecommendationsKarl recommends the author Aaron Becker, particularly his ‘The Journey’ trilogy for imaginative story telling. He also mentions ‘The Arrival’ by Sean Tan for discussing issues around migration and a family starting a new life.
BEST MOMENTS
“It’s important to us that we can incorporate texts that our relevant to our children.”
“As a Headteacher, it is a difficult position to be in. You want the school to move forward quickly for the benefit of all the children within it and th