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Every year CLPE kindly produce a set of free learning resources around our shortlisted books. These teaching notes are a great way for teachers and children to dive into the stories, learn a little more about the characters and enhance their understanding and enjoyment of the books. This year, Anjali Patel, their Lead Advisory Teacher has agreed to tell us more about the fascinating processes that go on behind the scenes at CLPE.

About Anjali Patel
An experienced senior leader, Anjali has taught children throughout the primary age range. She has been an Assistant Headteacher, led the KS1 phase and the EYFS as Head of 0-5s, been the leading teacher for mathematics and developed the role of teaching assistants. Anjali has worked for a Local Authority as language and literacy consultant. Anjali writes regularly for Teachwire and BBC Bitesize, sharing good practice in early years literacy. Anjali leads CLLPE’s teaching team and, as well as teaching throughout our programme, is responsible for the development and delivery of our Early Years work.

Here’s Anjali’s Q&A

Anjali, you’re the Lead Advisory Teacher – please could you start by telling us a little bit about your role, and how you came to work for CLPE?

In my many years as a teacher, school leader and advisory teacher I drew on the research and resources produced by CLPE and worked really hard to hone the craft of teaching to provide my pupils with the best possible experiences and outcomes. I realised that I wanted to share this practice and provision more widely and really enjoyed working alongside teaching teams in this respect. Working now with my CLPE teaching team to support the delivery and development of evidence-based research, training and teaching materials for so many schools is a great honour.

 

As we mentioned above, CLPE creates wonderful resources for our shortlist each year. However, this is only a fraction of what you do: training, research, booklists - and of course an abundance of all different kinds of free resources. Please could you tell us some more about the breadth of CLPE’s work and projects?

Honestly, when we take a step back to look at the wealth of materials we offer schools and teachers, it’s quite wonderful. Schools and teachers can engage with us in all sorts of ways from tentative visits and downloads on our website to committing to whole staff training and consultancy to develop a quality and cohesive English curriculum.

• We have always created resources that we make freely available because we feel strongly that everyone should have access no matter the school budget. We feel that this forms part of our charitable purpose and vision; that all children should have access to quality literature, to quality first teaching and quality English provision and our teaching notes, booklists, support teachers to gain knowledge of how to choose and use quality texts in creative ways. The overwhelming success of our recent free Back to School unit, based on Oliver Jeffers’ book Here We Are Notes for Living on Planet Earth was testament to how much teachers really want to support children to engage in reading for pleasure and to rebuild their relationships with each other and with the world around them. We can’t wait to launch our next one for this coming Autumn with the campaign Growing our Future Together.

• Many teachers are signed up to our Core Book List in which they can view up-to-date lists of recommended books for all Key Stages. We also have themed booklists which are really useful and a big hit is the Staff Picks in which we look back over the year and share our favourite titles.

• CLPE’s Reading and Writing Scales are also free to download. They have been developed in collaboration with all major UK literacy organisations and they are invaluable in understanding the reading and writing journey and how to support progress from the earliest most dependent stage to the most mature independent stage at the end of Primary School.

• They say that necessity is the mother of all invention and never was this truer than in the past year or so. We have always enjoyed being able to deliver training face-to-face at our centre in London, across the UK and even in Europe but the Pandemic put a stop to that, for the time being at least. In response, we built a fantastic webinar programme which enables teachers to access our quality training programme in affordable and time-efficient ways from wherever they are in the world. This might be an introduction to our proven teaching approaches in building a text-based curriculum to supporting progression in phonics, reading and writing, as well as specialist training based on our research on supporting pupils with English as an Additional Language, using Poetry, Picturebooks, Non-fiction in the classroom and those texts that Reflect the Realities of the children we teach. We can now even deliver our INSET training to schools virtually meaning we can reach so many more teachers and make a difference to more children. We are gradually introducing our face-to-face training in and around the centre which is a joy but now there is much greater choice of long and short courses for schools to engage with CLPE which is fantastic.

• As well as accessing free teaching notes associated with books that are shortlisted for prizes or that are newly published, schools can become CLPE members which enables them to access our Power of Reading teaching plans, English Curriculum Maps and connect with other schools who are raising engagement and attainment by building communities of readers and writers through a text-based curriculum. It’s such good value for money and the training programme really deepens teachers understanding of the teaching approaches and the impact they have on children’s literacy outcomes. 

• Our latest publication The Power of a Rich Reading Classroom (SAGE 2020) brings our research together in one handy book, full of really practical ideas to develop English across your school.

• If you want to know more about what we do and to keep up to date with how you can join the wonderful CLPE community, the best thing to do is sign up to our Newsletter.

 

Perhaps a shorthand way to best describe the work that CLPE do is to share your vision: ‘putting quality children’s literature at the heart of all learning’. In what ways does CLPE set out to achieve this?

Quality children’s literature is central to every single resource, training session and piece of research that we produce; whether that be keeping you up to date with the best and the most recent books out there; creating expertly written teaching plans associated with those books, giving books away on courses so that teachers can implement ideas back in the classroom immediately; or demonstrating the impact of choosing and using quality children’s literature to support a text-based English curriculum on our children. When we are in the centre, our library of children’s literature is literally at the heart of the building. It’s a wonderful thing to see teachers and children browse the collections – there’s a book out there for everyone!

 

As well as the theoretical commitment to children’s literacy you have a physical one – your Literacy Library is a physical home to a whopping 23,000 books and resources. It sounds like our kind of place! Please could you tell us a little more about it?

Oh, it’s an utterly beautiful space. I can’t believe that I get to be surrounded by so many fabulous books; all hand-picked by our librarian and teaching team. We really try to make sure that the books chosen reflect the lives of our children as well as offering insights in to worlds beyond their reach. The language in these books sing out from the shelves and the illustrations demand to be pored over. My favourite part though is the corridor which houses our archive collections of poetry and traditional and fairy tales. It feeds my soul. We can’t wait to open up our doors again so the books can take on new life in the hands of our teachers!

 

As we *might* have mentioned, you create teaching notes for us – and also for some other amazing prizes – among them Klaus Flugge, Carnegie Greenaway and the Branford Boase. What makes a great teaching resource?

When we write a teaching plan, we always imagine the children that will benefit from it being delivered in the classroom. A great plan allows responses to be drawn out and deepened in open, collaborative and creative ways, in a way that gets to the heart of the book and its human theme. 

 

What are the ways that prizes can really help with literacy?

Prizes are a great way to highlight some of the fantastic new books out there, keeping busy teachers up to date and supporting their knowledge of children’s literature so that they can make informed choices for their own children and contexts.

 

What sort of feedback do you get from schools and teachers about the free resources such as OBP’s?

Teachers find the free resources really helpful in enhancing daily book sharing experiences, in using texts effectively to support the wider curriculum and many use them as a way to familiarise themselves with our approaches. They have been particularly useful in maintaining engagement during periods of remote education.

 

Like us, CLPE believes that a love for books and reading could and should be nurtured from a young age, and as such picture books are invaluable. What tips would you offer to parents of under 5s as preparation for literacy in primary school? And for those children already in school, what’s the best way to support their literacy learning?

Funnily enough, I wrote a useful article about this for BBC Bitesize: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z6bt7nb

However, in a nutshell, the best thing a parent can do is to talk and to listen – about anything and everything. And share books of all kinds, particularly as part of the bedtime reading routine. Reading exposes children to language models that they wouldn’t encounter in real world conversations as well as giving them access to worlds beyond their own. Most importantly though, have fun with books and with language. We know from our recent research that teachers have gone out of their way to put books in the hands of children and families during Lockdown, so join a library and, if that isn’t available, make sure you take advantage of nursery and school lending systems.

What do you think are the best things a picture book can have, in order to draw children in and make brilliant stories even more accessible and engaging?

Picturebooks are an important genre of children’s literature and not just a step on the route to chapter books. They support the development of sophisticated reading skills, enabling children to develop deep comprehension skills and to learn about narrative structure and character development in an accessible way. A well-crafted picturebook will demand to be pored over and revisited time and again, inviting children to explore the meaning being created by the illustration and layout as well as in the text.

 

And lastly, on a personal note, what’s the best thing about working for CLPE?

A wonderful headteacher I worked for once told me that we must be sure to know the names not only of our pupils but of their parents and I stand by the importance of building strong connections with children and their families even now. Instead of thinking of the impact I can make to pupils in just my own school, I hope that in providing quality teacher training and resources, I can influence classroom experiences and outcomes more widely for children across many schools and settings. That, and the fact that we at CLPE never stop learning and thinking and creating, which is all you can ask for really. I get to work for an organisation that stands for everything I believe in and feel passionate about; the entitlement to be literate.