Karl Duke (Headteacher at Blyton cum Lawton Church of England School): A reading inspired curriculum

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 Books
Karl 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 Love
Due 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 Detectives
Karl 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.

· CPD
Twitter 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.

· Recommendations
Karl 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 there are times where you have to make decisions that are difficult. They might be difficult for the staff but we’re creating a culture of trust and freedom so that teachers have freedom to do their job successfully without the need to monitor, monitor, monitor to death.”

“There are children that will always struggle with reading and perhaps not enjoy it but there are things that I don’t like doing and I never will like doing so it’s not about forcing it. It’s from head of leadership down, ensuring that we show reading as a pleasurable experience and if we do that there is more chance of children also picking up on that.”

“I have a library in my office where the children can come and select books. We have a few children who do that now. I’d love them all to come and look and choose a book, but it’s going to take time to build that culture. It’s not something that just happens overnight.”

“There are many teachers out there who really influence me. I’m a Headteacher and there shouldn’t be any differentiation within that. We’re here for the same reason.”

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Karl Duke Twitter: https://twitter.com/KarlDuke8
Karl Duke Blog: https://mrdht.wordpress.com/author/mrdht/
The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ 
Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ 
Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ 
LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/ 

ABOUT THE HOST
Claire Riley

Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide.

Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff.

Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend.

The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education.

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