Book Review: 'The End of the Sky' by Sandi Toksvig

It's no secret that one of my favourite books for children is 'Hitler's Canary' by Sandi Toksvig, so when her agent offered to send me a copy for every one of my workshop delegates at Reading Rocks I could hardly say no. In fact, I also asked for an extra copy so I could read it myself.

'The End of the Sky' picks up on many of the themes that Hitler's Canary covered, albeit in a completely different historical setting. The story tells of a family fleeing Ireland in the 1800s, hoping to make a new life on the west coast of America. The story chronicles the terrible journey that many of the pioneers would have made on the Oregon trail and doesn't shy away from the loss and sadness that was experienced by them.

As I read I kept reaching for Google to find out more about the book's contents: Choctaw 'Indians' sent foreign aid to Ireland; the John Bull was a steam engine made in England and shipped in pieces to the US without any instructions as to how to put them together; the Allegheny Portage Railroad really did carry canal boats up and over the mountains. This book really is an education, especially for children living in the UK who will have very little idea about the journeys people made as they looked for a new life.

The book's main theme is family, and how others might become part of a family. It deals with loyalty, loss, resilience, racism and probably must crucially, feminism. The female characters really shine in this book, but never in a forced way - it just celebrates a variety of achievements and abilities from holding a family together to leading a whole wagon train safely across a desert, to preventing a buffalo stampede to cooking delicious food. Toksvig's gift lies in highlighting and exploring current issues in an accessible and non-threatening way, as well as providing plenty of opportunities for her readers to learn historical facts.

The book is a little on the long side and unevenly paced: at times the story seems to be a little too drawn out (perhaps deliberately as it does give a sense of the journey west taking a long time) and at other points, particularly towards the end, the book feels rushed. When compared to 'Hitler's Canary', 'The End of the Sky' is not as well written and has a more sombre mood overall - there are fewer light, hopeful moments which help the reader to keep going.

If you're looking for a book with a strong female lead for upper key stage 2 readers then this would be a worthy addition to a growing selection of books in that category - it has the potential to change the perceptions of both boys and girls when it comes to gender stereotypes. It also provides a fascinating insight into a significant part of UK and US history, times and events which are generally ignored by the UK primary curriculum. Overall, 'The End of the Sky' is worth a read, but prioritise 'Hitler's Canary' if you've never read any of Sandi Toksvig's books for children.

The Problem With Your Class Novel

OK, I'll admit right away that I'm not about to lambast the time-honoured tradition of choosing and reading aloud a book to your class. Actually, to me, doing that is almost sacred - it's an absolute must for so many reasons.

So, if you don't currently read a novel to your class, make sure this half term is the half term when you start. But I suspect I'm preaching to the choir here, and if that's the case, there are a couple of points to bear in mind.

When do you read your class novel? Is it given priority or is it on a if we've got time basis? A practice seems to have arisen that could be seen as cheapening the act of reading for pleasure: reading the class novel at home time. Potentially, children could begin to see reading as something only done to kill time and, whilst that can be true and valuable, it might be a damaging attitude to be inadvertently generating. Given that 3pm is the time when many teachers will read perhaps the only book that their children are truly invested in, I think it's worth challenging, even if it is controversial. 

Unless you are totally committed to safeguarding that time for reading, there are so many pressures on that end of day slot - giving out letters, sorting out things to take home, assemblies and just a general end of day feeling. What would happen if you brought your class novel time to the beginning of the day, or the start of the afternoon? From my own experience I've found that it is the best, most relaxed, most inspiring way to start a morning or afternoon of learning. It can calm, focus and provide a shared experience which can feed positively into the rest of the day.

Another way to ensure that reading, particularly reading of a shared text, is prioritised, is to link it to your curriculum. This will depend on your school's policy but there may be opportunities to link to your topics or your English work. Again, many of you will already be doing this, but I think the raising of another point in relation to this might be helpful.

Be careful not to over-rely on your class novel, particularly during your English lessons. Yes, class novels are a great way to support the teaching of SPAG (I wrote about some ways of doing that in October 2017's Teach Primary Magazine), writing composition and reading skills but if they are all that is ever used, children run the risk of not being exposed to a wide variety of reading materials. 

An easy way to get around this is to use your class novel as an anchor point to which you link other texts, fiction and non-fiction. Find other books, stories, excerpts, leaflets, articles and so on that have links to your class novel and then use them throughout your curriculum. If you've selected your class novel well, then children will most likely be invested enough to want to read linked texts as well, which in turn might help them to better understand the class novel.

Conversely you might want to consider reading a novel which is not at all linked or used to teach anything else. This will be much more likely to develop that reading for pleasure.

For those children who are preparing for statutory tests, for a chance of success it is probably crucial that they are not taught reading skills solely through the use of a class novel. In the tests they come up against unknown texts and, regardless of difficulty, they are less likely to want to read them in a meaningful way - in comparison to their class novel they won't be as interested or invested in those texts. If all they've ever had to do is practise reading comprehension skills based on a book that they love and care about then they may not have the resilience to be able to access unfamiliar texts such as the ones they will encounter in the tests. Whether or not be click bait title works remains to be seen!

For those unswayed by arguments involving testing its worth pointing out that in real life we access a wide variety of text types and, if someone isn't a 'reader' (for want of a better phrase) then the thing they're least likely to need to read is a novel. In fact, what they need to be able to read to survive in life is non-fiction. Whilst using a class novel to teach literacy skills can be really engaging and worthwhile, using them as the only text type might not prepare children for life.

I urge you, I implore you, to read your class a book, a little each day, preferably at a prioritised time. But I also warn against the potential dangers of becoming too reliant on the class novel

as a basis for other learning.

Book Review: '100 Ideas for Primary Teachers: Mindfulness in the Classroom' by Tammie Prince

Previously, when I thought of mindfulness, I didn't really know what it was. I thought it was hippy mumbo jumbo mixed in with some kind of eastern mysticism. But then I began to notice that a good few folk in my online network were sold on the idea of mindfulness - some of them even assured me that I probably practised some sort of mindfulness unknowingly. I deduced that I must subconsciously be quite mindful, but I still didn't know what it was.

Tammie Prince defines mindfulness simply as 'the mental state achieved by focusing on the present moment while also accepting our feelings, thoughts and bodily sensations.' The book's premise is that 'the development of mindfulness in the classroom arms our children with lifelong skills that support their support their current and future mental health and well-being'  and it mentions that studies show there are positive benefits to children learning and using mindfulness techniques. As I understand it there isn't a lot of research into the impact of using mindfulness techniques in the classroom but many of the ideas in the book just seem like common sense - many of them I recognise as things that have helped me to feel less worried and stressed in my own life. However, one recent study on mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) showed that 16 juvenile delinquents who underwent an 8-week programme of MBSR showed increased grey matter in the left hippocampi, a part of the brain involved in learning and memory processes as well as emotion regulation and perspective-taking.

The book is spilt into ten parts, and sceptics, before you read the list, take note of this: 'not all strategies will work for all people'. The ten sections are Breathing; Guided Meditation; Active Meditations; Gratitude; Yoga; Emotional Intelligence; Mindful Colouring and Doodling; Calm Down and Relax; Mindful Walking; Teacher's Mindfulness.

As the title promises, the book contains 100 different mindfulness techniques or ideas to try in the primary classroom. Reading through there were definitely things that I couldn't imagine myself doing with a class but then there were plenty of ideas that seemed only to be tweaks of things I already do. The book contains methods suitable for a range of ages, although some techniques appear to be more suited to particular ages or levels of maturity.

The ideas that impressed me most were the ones that I could see having multiple benefits - there are plenty of techniques with links to the curriculum - reading, writing, drama, PE, music and art, for example. The fact that many of the ideas can be adapted to fit into curriculum time means that the book is more likely to achieve one of its aims: '...that the children will start to use what they have been taught independently...' - in my own experience whenever something is part of the daily routine, children are more likely to internalise it than if it were taught in isolation.

This is a book which is full of practical activities; there is something for everyone here – even the sceptic. With clear links to different curriculum areas, mindful practice can easily be embedded using the ideas in this book. A great starters’ guide to mindfulness.

The book, released 19th October 2017, is available to pre-order/buy here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/100-ideas-for-primary-teachers-mindfulness-in-the-classroom-9781472944955/

The More-ness Of Reading

A blog version of my Reading Rocks 2017 workshop:

The purpose of reading

What is the purpose of reading? Most people would say that we read for enjoyment and to learn. There will be those who think some books are for enjoying, and some are for learning from. Other folk will agree that the act of reading in order to learn something is enjoyable. Some readers will only do it for one reason or the other.

Children’s novels are ostensibly written so that children gain pleasure from them, and from the act of reading. But if we actually considered some of the books that children read, and if we scratch beneath the surface, we will find that children’s books are for so much more than pleasure and enjoyment. In fact, they are for learning.

Reading is for more than enjoyment and learning

Learning about what? What can made up characters in made up places doing made up things be possibly teaching children? Well, when it comes to making my point, quotations abound – from researchers, authors and children who read:

https://wherereadingrocks.wordpress.com/2017/10/14/the-more-ness-of-reading-by-thatboycanteach/

From The @TES: Throw A Spanner In The Workload

Unless you completed your teacher training in a parallel universe, where everything is perfect, you will have picked up on the fact that “workload” and “wellbeing” within schools are kind of a big deal right now. You’ll have heard about education’s recruitment and retention crisis, and you’ll know that many teachers complain that their wellbeing is affected by the amount of hours they do. According to a 2016 NASUWT survey, 74 per cent of teachers have considered leaving the profession, with 90 per cent citing workload as a problem.

But as an NQT, full of enthusiasm and not yet infected by the cynicism that is rife...

https://www.tes.com/news/tes-magazine/tes-magazine/throw-a-spanner-workload

From The @TES Blog: Shine Bright But Don't Burn Out

Are you forever striving to teach flashbulb lessons? The ones that wow the students and leave any observers dazzled?

They're usually the ones you spend longer than average preparing for and that often aren't representative of your everyday way of teaching. They're brilliant and the kids love them, but if they miss the mark, it was a lot of effort for very little return.

And they can leave you – and your students – with the sense that all of your other lessons aren't good enough. You can get into a spiral of trying to replicate the whizzes and bangs more often than you can possibly manage.

https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/we-do-have-shine-brightly-students-shine-too-brightly-and-we-might

From the @TES Blog: Why teaching classic literature too early is a 'recipe for ruining great books' for children

Recipe for ruining great books:

Step one: Take a bona fide classic, fresh or preserved.

Step two: Hack out palatable chunks (never use the whole book).

Step three: Add a liberal sprinkle of received interpretation.

Step four: Supplement the text with a movie version.

You are now ready to force-feed this to children who are not old enough to digest such a diet – this is incredibly important to the ruining of great books. You will need to ensure that children endure sitting after sitting of the above. Of course, they should add tasting notes to their texts, but be careful to make sure they never have original thoughts about what they are consuming.

If you follow these very simple steps, you can be sure that the majority of children will be put off reading good literature for a significant portion of their lives.

Continue reading here: https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/why-teaching-classic-literature-too-early-a-recipe-ruining-great