Session 1: Welcome & Quality Interactions
Welcome to Tales Toolkit! We're so glad to have you and we'll get you sharing stories with the children in no time. In this session, we'll talk a bit about the science behind the importance of quality interactions and sustained shared thinking. This context will give you the confidence to know you're making a positive impact and setting the children up for success.
Review this sessionDownload transcriptDownload transcriptDownload transcriptDownload transcriptDownload transcriptNursery Group Story
Kate leads a group story with this nursery setting. As well as modelling for the children, Kate is also incorporating a variety of creative approaches. Using songs, actions and phonic sounds.
Under 3s Group Story
This group story with the littlest of people shows how they quickly grasp the story structure. This practitioner takes her time embedding the use of the symbols while keeping the children really engaged with voices, songs and actions.
Watch without activities
This video has the same content as the core training video but we've removed the timed activity sections for speedier viewing. This is designed to help practitioners refresh their knowledge.
If you are doing the training for the first time, we recommend watching the full length video together with your team. Team learning means you'll get the most out of the training experience - and it's more fun!
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Welcome to Tels Toolkit.
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You've signed up to be part of a really exciting project.
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Expect to have lots of fun storytelling with your children.
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And over the next six sessions, we're going to use the power
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of story to develop lots of skills, communication,
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creativity, social skills, linking
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with many areas of the curriculum.
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Here's a brief overview of the sessions to come.
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Training one. This is an important session
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where we discuss providing children
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with quality interactions Training.
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Two, learn how to use our big kits
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for group stories training.
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Three, learn how to use the rest of the tales.
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Toolkit resources, encouraging your children
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to become independent storytellers.
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Training. Four, learn how to use the tails toolkit.
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Resources to develop muscles for writing.
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And all of the tails,
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toolkit writing resources are introduced in this session.
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And training. Five, take time to reflect on best practice.
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So it might seem a little bit odd
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that we're not actually going
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to be using Tale's Toolkit in this session.
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Instead we're going to explain the problem we're trying
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to solve as it's really important
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that everyone has an understanding before we begin.
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In the second part of the training, we'll discuss
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what you can do about it.
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My name's Kate and I worked in early year settings in London
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boroughs with some of the highest rates of child poverty.
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I had schools that were in very diverse areas
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and we had children coming in with huge attainment gaps.
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On one hand we had a child that could come in
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and he could tell you all of the storylines from Dr.
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Who and he would organize the children in their play
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to act scenarios out.
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And on the other side, I had a child that came in
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that didn't know how to play,
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couldn't communicate basic needs,
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and he spent the first week going around the, the setting,
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tipping up every container he could find,
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including the water tray, much
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to the joy of all of the staff.
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Does this sound familiar?
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We spent a lot of time really trying to work out
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what was happening for these children
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before they came to school.
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That led to this huge gap.
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And what was really key was the quality of interactions
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that they had with their families.
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We spent a lot of time really trying to work out
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what was happening for these children
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before they came to school.
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That led to this huge gap.
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And what was really key was the quality of interactions
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that they had with their families.
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At this point, I would love to give you a clever definition
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of what quality interactions means,
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but there's so many strands that come into play
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that this is really tricky and I did give it a good shot.
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So instead, I'm gonna discuss this in length over today's
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session, and I'm hoping at the end you'll have a better
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understanding of what quality interactions means.
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But to get you started,
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here are some other people talking about
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what they think quality interactions are. Quality
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Interactions are, um, about a child
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and an adult getting together
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and thinking about something together.
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So beyond sort of somebody directing somebody else
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or, um, I dunno, asking a question
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and getting a straightforward answer,
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a really quality interaction is going to involve a,
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a deeper layer of discussion and a bit of back and forth.
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So I think a quality interaction is really
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where an adult is on a child's level.
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So that means kind of physically, um, on the child,
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on the child's level, and also kind of face to face
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with the child so that the, um, child can see your face
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and you can see the child's face.
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Um, it's really important to go with the child's face.
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So we want to be going at kind of their pace, not at ours.
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So we, and to help us to do that,
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we follow their lead in play and their lead with language.
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So instead of us initiating, we would wait for them
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to initiate the interaction.
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We would wait for them to say something vocalized, show us
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what they want before we would then kind of follow them, um,
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and follow their lead and play.
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And the most important thing is that it's fun.
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So it has to be motivating.
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It has to be kind of something that the child wants to do.
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So let's start by discussing the problem.
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What are your highest aims
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for the children that you work with?
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Is it getting them to sit quietly on the carpet
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or line up neatly so they can queue properly as adults?
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Hmm. Or is it about such results?
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If you're anything like me,
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it was more about setting the children up
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to become successful, happy adults.
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We know how hard it is working in a school.
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The pressures of record keeping, planning
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targets progress.
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Shall I go on? I went into teaching
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because I want to make a difference
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to children throughout their lives.
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And it's sometimes really easy to lose sight of
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that big picture with all
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of the day-to-Day pressures a global survey of 1700
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CEOs looked into the top skills most crucial
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for success in business.
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So what do you think the CEOs thought were the top
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three business skills?
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Collaboration, communication, and creativity.
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We asked some professionals
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what they thought the top skills for success were.
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Some of the ones that spring to mind are, um, the ability,
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the ability to communicate really effectively
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with a very diverse range of people.
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You find all sorts of people at work
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and all of them communicate in different ways.
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So being able to adapt your approach is really important.
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An imagination. So being able
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to think about things from a variety of different angles
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to try and work out the best solution to the problem
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that you are trying to solve at work, to be
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Able to communicate with other people.
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Um, people work very
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Differently and are very different as people.
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So it's important to be able to understand, um,
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how people come to a decision.
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A lot of my work involves collaboration.
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So that comes into being able to understand
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and communicate with people effectively.
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We know it's a huge jump for you
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to think about the three year olds you are working with now,
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being 30 year olds.
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But it's really important that you do it now
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because the vital time
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for making a difference is while children are young,
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especially in the early years with 85%
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of brain development happening before the age of five.
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The children you teach now are going
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to be the future workforce, fighting crime,
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building your homes, researching cures to disease,
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and working as nurses and carers looking after your parents
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and you one day.
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We've done a lot of research into this
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and found the first step is providing children
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with quality interactions.
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And this is vital.
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Let me tell you about two researchers, har and Rizzley.
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They saw there was a huge problem.
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Children were coming into school really struggling
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with language and this had consequences
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all the way through their lives.
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Har and Rizzley were really curious to find out
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what was going on for these children,
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what was happening at a home before they came to school.
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They created a long-term study.
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They went into the homes of 42 families
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and there they hit on the unexpected.
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The difference in the outcomes they saw were not about race,
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gender, or the neighborhood they lived in.
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The big difference was determined by the interactions
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that the child had with their family.
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It was all about the number and quality of the words heard.
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And as a correlation
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between children from low income families
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and the words they hear at home.
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For children from low income families,
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they hear on average 600 words an hour.
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Whereas the children from professional families hear on
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average 2000 words an hour,
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that 600 versus 2000, the majority
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of talk was made up of instructions or discouragements.
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And these children heard on average, one, encouragement
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for six discouragements, put in your coats,
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get off that wall.
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Be quiet. By contrast,
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the language rich families were constantly having
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positive chats with their babies and toddlers.
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Over three years, they heard 30 million more words.
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Children lacking quality interactions were
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already falling behind.
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At three years old when heart
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and Risley went back to the children five years later,
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they found the gap had widened
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and the children lacking quality interactions
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were even further behind.
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Children who'd experienced those quality interactions at
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home went on to do well in reading tests at eight years old
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and then went on to do well in the rest
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of their academic school life.
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Neurological development of the brain depends on words.
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The first time you hear a word, brain pathways are created.
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Every time you hear the word,
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they're strengthened and expanded.
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And with lack of exposure
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to torque those pathways shrink and die.
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And the ability to learn decreases.
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This is extremely worrying when we know that 85%
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of the brain is developed by the age of five.
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And actually the really key thing is
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that when you are kind of looking at new objects,
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that actually you're hearing the word that goes with it
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and you're getting lots of opportunities to hear
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that word again and again
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and again for you to be able to learn it.
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So if I was to give an example of, um,
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when a child's learning the word dog
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and they have a dog at home, every time the dog comes in,
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mom might say, oh, it's dog.
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When the child looks at him, I say, there's dog.
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And the child slowly learns
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or quickly learns that actually that's a dog.
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The child may then go outside and see a cat
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and say, dog, 'cause they've actually learned.
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An animal that has four legs is, is um, is called dog.
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And but then when they see it, the mom might say cat
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because they see a new animal.
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And so the child then makes those links between animals
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and builds up the vocabulary and the language.
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But it's not just about words.
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We want to share with you the communication tree.
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Before you get to that stage,
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we are talking about the sounds of words.
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And you get to that stage where you're using
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language kind of fluently.
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There's lots of things that happen.
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And this is what we call kind
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of like our base communication skills
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or the communication skills that are at the root of
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that communication tree.
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Um, so the first thing
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that's really important is attention and listening.
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Um, and this is, this is important simply
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because we learn language, we learn how to communicate
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by attending to something and by listening.
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So, and the other area that is really important to develop,
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um, kind of early on in your
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communication is your play skills.
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Because without good play skills,
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you're not getting yourself involved in lots
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of different toys and different, um, types
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of play becomes different language
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and like language learning opportunities.
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Um, the other area is, um, social skills.
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Um, and this is really, really, really core
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to all communication.
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So do you have children coming into school unable to play,
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struggling to pay attention?
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Does this sound familiar?
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Maybe it's because they're missing the
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roots of the communication.
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Tree play is right down in the roots
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and is critical in developing creativity.
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The next on the list of our CEO wants.
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It's important that we think of creativity as more than art.
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Creativity is really fundamental
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to children's learning in the early years,
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but actually going on through the school system.
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Um, and by creativity we're not really thinking just of
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painting and making things and so on.
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Important though those are,
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but we are really thinking about children
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as creative thinkers.
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Can they imagine if they're faced with a problem,
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can they find different ways of taking
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that problem on and solving it?
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Um, can they come up with their own ideas?
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If they're stuck, can they get someone else
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involved to help them? You
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Might heard of the Torrance test of creativity,
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which is a better indicator of lifetime success in iq.
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This test has been used since 1958
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and there's something really worrying that's emerging.
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Children's creativity is decreasing.
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Research has found that the common strand in the children
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with creativity levels that were really high was the quality
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of the interactions they had with their families.
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So if these interactions are
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so important, why aren't they happening? Parents
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Sometimes don't get as much opportunity to interact
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with their children as they might like
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because they're really time limited.
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Lots of us, me included, work long hours
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and then when we get out of work, you know, time
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with a child is ordinarily spent about, you know,
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having dinner, getting a bath, getting to bed.
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It's quite difficult sometimes to make sure
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that in your day you're doing something that's fun
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or not about, you know, an end goal, like eating your dinner
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and you know, getting in your pajamas.
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Research shows children aren't playing out as much
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as they used to, and instead spend lots more time inside
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exposed to screen time.
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And it is with this background
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that many children enter school
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and in school there's an increasing pressure
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to show progress and prove impact.
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And it's really easy to lose sight of the big picture.
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So we've talked about what the problem is.
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What can you do about it?
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Tales toolkit is going to give you lots of opportunities
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to provide children with quality interactions.
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Rapport is the first
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and most important thing
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for quality interactions at its heart.
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It's about you enjoying being with the children
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and the children loving being with you.
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Sit face to face with
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Them, ensure that you can see um, them
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and they can see you
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Liaise really closely with parents all of the time.
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Get their learning journey back and sit with them
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'cause there's nothing that they like better than to sit
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with someone and talk about their families.
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Talk about the things they did and
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celebrate their achievements,
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Their ideas, their feelings, whatever it is
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that they're talking about are being validated by an adult.
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If you've built this rapport, that child will know
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that you care for them
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and will build a relationship of trust with you.
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For the rest of the session, we're going
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to discuss quality interactions.
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I could talk about this all day,
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but instead we thought we'd give you four
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tips to think about.
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Let the child lead tune in.
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Careful use of language, careful use of questioning.
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It's extraordinary
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how much learning comes naturally when we
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start to follow the children.
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This will up levels of engagement.
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Give the children confidence that you value
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what they're saying and help to build that rapport
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that we were talking about earlier.
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And it's amazing what you can find out.
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You've got children who may be absolutely experts on a
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comic character or a superhero
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that actually you can learn from them
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and other children can learn from them
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and they actually teach each other.
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So to create those interesting moments,
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follow the child's lead.
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The Hannan Center, which develops language skills,
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has developed a three A's method.
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Allow, adapt, add, allow the child
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to take the lead slow down, count to 10
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before you jump in and take over with your own agenda.
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It feels like a really long time, doesn't it?
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Adapt the situation. How can you join in?
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Do you need to get an extra car
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or make space so you can join in the moment without
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interrupting and use mirroring
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to help you get into the child's play.
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Sit down opposite them and copy what the child does add.
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What can you add to extend learning,
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whether it's adding language at the right level
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to extend the child's vocab,
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or is it resources you add to stimulate curiosity?
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The next tip is tune in.
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Take time to stand back and observe what children are doing.
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It's really easy to jump into children's play
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and interfere with your own agenda
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and your own ideas about what they should be doing.
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In one school, we had a group of children
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that came in every day
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and they went straight to the digging patch
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and would spend ages digging great big holes.
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And the staff at the end of the day would plan all sorts
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of exciting things about, uh, resources that they could add
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to their play, and ways
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that they could extend what they were thinking.
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And every day the children would come in,
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move the resources out the way,
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and carry on dig in their hole.
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And it was only when the staff took time to listen
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and really observe the children
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that they realized they were role playing pirates.
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And when they started adding treasure and treasure maps
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and all sorts of dressing up clothes,
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that's when the children's play really took off.
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And ideas were extended.
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Taking time to stand back and listen
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and watch what the charter's doing
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before you get involved is okay.
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You might be worried that your heads will think you're doing
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nothing, but we say in early years,
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if you see somebody standing
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around doing nothing, don't worry.
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Unless maybe they've got their
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eyes closed or they're lying down.
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And for head teachers and for early years, coordinators
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and management take time to go
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and talk to staff about what they're observing
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and what they can see in the children's play.
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If we use Owl, um, we can actually sit back
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and notice, notice things about the child
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that we may not ordinarily notice.
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So, you know, by observing, so it stands
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for observe, wait, listen.
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So by observing the child,
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you're noticing actually what it is.
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They've, you've put out some toys,
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but maybe they haven't necessarily taken interest in the
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thing that you thought they might,
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they might have taken interest in something else.
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And then if you're, if you continue to observe,
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you might notice they're doing something different
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with the toys that's actually really interesting
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and fun and good.
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Um, and if you then listen,
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you can listen to what they're telling you.
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So it might be, again, um, non-verbally,
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they might be telling you, I love this block.
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It's great. It makes loads of noise.
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Um, and by observing them play with it
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and observing their face
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and their reactions, you can really understand that's
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what they're communicating to you.
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Um, and by listening to that as well, you can then,
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then you can respond in a really sensitive way.
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Tip three, careful use of language.
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Think about your audience. Think, am I understood?
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It's really hard for children to tune into
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what you're saying, especially with the background noise
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that's in your classroom and for those children
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that have English as additional language.
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So here's just a few top tips to help you keep it simple.
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Speak at the child's level.
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00:19:17.825 --> 00:19:19.885
If the child is speaking with two
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or three words, then slightly extend this.
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So one ball can become you want the ball,
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slow down your talk, speak clearly.
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And our final tip, give them time to respond.
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Remember those 10 seconds
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If you're asking questions that are either too high level
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for the child, so that's too, too, um, too complicated
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for a child that can put a lot of pressure on a child, um,
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and, and kind of, you know, um,
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make them feel under pressure and stressed
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or, you know, if they don't have the answers,
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it can be quite, it can be quite a negative experience,
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difficult for them to answer.
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Um, or if you ask too many questions, you're gonna,
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you possibly are going too fast for the child
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and they, you know, you haven't waited them to process
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what you've asked before.
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You've asked the next one.
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Similarly, if you ask a, a child a question like,
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um, what's this?
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Because you, you know, you want them
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to say the name of an object.
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So if you're asking, oh, what's this? What's this?
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Um, if they know the answer
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and you know the answer, you know, they know that already,
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you're not really getting too much outta that interaction.
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And if they don't know the answer, you're, you're kind
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of putting them under pressure again.
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And you're also not really telling them very much.
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So they might learn
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that actually this object is a what's this?
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'cause you're telling them it's, you know,
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you're saying, what's this?
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And they're matching. What's this to the object
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that you're holding out?
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The more extended conversation that children have
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with genuinely interested adults,
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the more practice they have as conversation partners.
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And this helps develop them as good communicators.
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Asking fewer questions is really hard.
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Here's just a few prompts that can help you use your senses.
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Describe what you see, hear, feel, taste, share emotions.
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Use feeling words, excited, happy, sad,
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angry, role play, create a storyline
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and relate to your own experience.
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Let's model this with a child. Playing with a baby.
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Your baby smells clean, like baby shampoo.
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I feel happy when I hold a baby. Your baby is sleeping.
484
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Maybe he's been busy playing all day.
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My sister has a baby. He cries very loudly.
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It can be really tricky
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and it's something you have to think hard about.
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I can see the car going really fast.
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I hear the tires screeching.
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I get angry when I'm stuck in traffic jams.
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Your car is really speedy. Maybe he's in a police chase.
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I drive slowly on windy lanes.
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So if I was to take an example of the bus, so
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before I ask a question about a bus, I might say, oh,
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bus bus is driving.
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It's the big bus. Uh, it's the red bus.
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Oh, where's the bus?
498
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So I would say kind of four comments to
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one question is a nice balance.
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Just to clarify, we are not saying that questions are bad,
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just to reflect on how and when you use them.
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Let's start by talking about open-ended questions.
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A project across 11 local authorities found
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that the most worrying finding was the lack
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of sustained shared purposeful talk with only 5%
506
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of adults in schools using
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open-ended questions with children.
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If you do have to ask questions, make them open-ended.
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A closed question is one that has only one answer.
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What color is it? How many eyes do you have?
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How old are you? Questions
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with only one answer are rarely going to lead
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to exciting discussions.
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An open-ended question is one that has lots
515
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and lots of possible answers.
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What makes fairies happy? Why do elephants have big ears?
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Where do you think electricity comes from?
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What would you put in a magic potion?
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Generate curiosity by asking interesting questions.
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The best questions are those
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that really stimulate children's thinking
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and don't have an obvious answer.
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00:23:38.955 --> 00:23:41.855
Use questions that show you are genuinely interested.
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00:23:42.415 --> 00:23:44.455
Children know when we are genuinely interested
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or whether we're asking a question just to get an answer
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that we're looking for.
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00:23:49.305 --> 00:23:52.125
So a child's made a potion asking
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what will happen if we drink?
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00:23:53.625 --> 00:23:55.485
It is a lot more likely
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to start a conversation than what color is it?
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Ask questions that you don't know the answers to.
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During a pirate project, I found out that pirates used
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to eat their own shoes.
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00:24:07.565 --> 00:24:10.125
I genuinely found this really interesting
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00:24:10.425 --> 00:24:13.485
and I told all of my friends and now I'm telling you.
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And lastly, use questions that model thinking.
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00:24:19.205 --> 00:24:23.205
I wonder what would happen if, I'm trying to remember
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00:24:23.205 --> 00:24:24.405
where I've seen this before.
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00:24:25.445 --> 00:24:29.925
I really want to know more about, at the beginning we said
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00:24:29.925 --> 00:24:32.925
that quality interactions was too big a thing
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00:24:32.945 --> 00:24:34.485
to put into one sentence.
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00:24:35.105 --> 00:24:37.405
And today we've only really scratched the surface.
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00:24:38.145 --> 00:24:40.325
But I hope you've got a better understanding.
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00:24:41.025 --> 00:24:44.045
And at the end of today's session, you've got some top tips
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00:24:44.315 --> 00:24:45.765
that you can now take away
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and use with your children
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to help them become those flourishing 30 year olds without
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quality interactions.
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00:24:53.245 --> 00:24:55.085
Children struggle all the way through life.
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00:24:55.615 --> 00:24:59.845
Early years is the time when children really develop, uh,
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their themselves as learners.
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00:25:02.905 --> 00:25:03.925
And a lot of the things
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that are really important in early years are
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how children go about their learning just as much as
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what they actually know.
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00:25:10.265 --> 00:25:12.285
So we know that children who become resilient
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00:25:12.285 --> 00:25:15.685
and resourceful learners age 2, 3, 4, 5,
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00:25:16.235 --> 00:25:18.365
they'll carry those characteristics on
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through their later schooling.
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00:25:20.825 --> 00:25:22.685
If we can't make a difference for them.
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Now, there's a higher chance of unemployment,
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00:25:26.465 --> 00:25:29.085
mental health problems, and even prison.
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00:25:29.825 --> 00:25:32.525
We have no idea what the future holds for them
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00:25:32.905 --> 00:25:34.885
or even what jobs will exist.
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00:25:35.545 --> 00:25:38.965
But what we do know is that children with good mental health
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00:25:40.005 --> 00:25:42.205
communication skills, creativity
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and curiosity fare far better in an ever-changing world.
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Now's the time to make a difference
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and provide those quality interactions.
