Talking Early Years with June O'Sullivan

Join June O’Sullivan in discussion with the Book Trust’s CEO, Diana Gerald who helps transform lives by getting children and families reading.With a deep understanding of the role that education plays in creating opportunity, which is at the heart of BookTrust's work, Diana talks about how she got the best job in the world and how challenging it can be to get children to read, despite the golden age and the rich diversity of books available. They discuss the importance of why parents should be encouraged to read with their children daily (despite the reality of many varied lives and work patterns) and how Early Years settings can be utilised to get books back into the home. The discussion also focuses on how the number of people who come to work in the Early Years have never been taught how to read a story and asks should there be more guidance? Whilst the assumption may be that everyone is an instinctive storyteller - that’s not always the case… especially when storytelling to a group or storytelling to an individual. However, according to Diana there is no right way – it’s about what you do that really matters… Let us know what you think. 

To be honest, cultural capital is not the usual conversation piece. But it is both a conscious and unconscious part of our everyday lives. Now that Ofsted has introduced the concept into the new inspection framework, cultural capital will become more conscious for many people based on the essential knowledge that children need to be educated citizens.  Here, Helen discusses why cultural capital should be inclusive and driven by language and literacy whereby everyone, regardless of their background, has something valid to contribute and that the interaction between children and their families is where they will learn the best.Of course, cultural capital cannot be separated from the home learning environment. Every home has cultural capital, it’s just that society values some culture more highly than others.

June O’Sullivan meets Dr Lala Manners who has enjoyed a long and varied career in the field of Early Years movement studies and physical development: as a teacher, trainer, educator, consultant, researcher, author and broadcaster. Here, they debate the importance of practitioners engaging in physical development and overcoming the fear by getting ‘stuck in’ whilst allowing children to just be. To sit still. To stand still. To observe the here and now – all vital components of improving a child’s mental and physical health development.Poor physical development in young children has been shown to impact readiness for school, behaviour, social development and academic achievement which is why daily movement, tailored to particular ages and groups of children, must be placed at the heart of the curriculum in order to support all aspects of learning. 

June O’Sullivan meets leading, award-winning expert in Early Years education, Laura Henry.Join them for a cuppa where they discuss the power of literacy for children’s long term learning and development, multi-generational relationships and the inspiration behind Laura's book; JoJo and Gran Gran which has become the first British-made animated TV show for CBeebies centred around the lives of a black family.The programme has since won legions of fans, with parents taking to Twitter to applaud the step towards greater diversity. The character of Gran Gran is loosely based upon Laura's own grandmother, Marie Helenac, who came to the UK from St Lucia in the 1950s.

Who Says Giraffes Can’t Dance? Well, Giles Andreae did! He also reminded us that there is a Rumble in the Jungle and a Commotion in the Ocean and if you look hard enough you will find Captain Flinn with the Pirate Dinosaurs in Smuggler’s Bay.Giraffe Can’t Dance reached the top five most best-selling books in lockdown, not surprising because poor Gerald the Giraffe thinks he can’t dance and so cannot join his friends for the Jungle dance and feels  “so sad and so alone”.  This probably reflected how a lot of people felt at the beginning of the pandemic but remembering Gerald and re-reading his story they were buoyed by the cricket’s lovely advice“But sometimes when you’re different, you just need a different song”I wanted to meet the author who charmed so many children and adults and, lucky for me, Giles agreed and together we made the very first Talking Early Years podcast. I have been wanting to do a podcast forever but there was always a reason to avoid stepping into a public conversation. But getting the chance to chat to Giles was the catalyst I needed.I hope you enjoy our chat about how Giles started writing children’s books, what makes a great storybook, can teachers read stories and what made him write stories about being brave enough to be different. 

In this episode, June O'Sullivan, the CEO of London Early Years Foundation talks about how she reformed from being a charity many years ago into a social business to deliver specific impact. We discuss the seven elements of the LEYF pedagogy that really addresses the rights of children and how June measures it with the LEYF Pedagogical Development Scales (LPDS) she uses to evaluate success.