Kate's Blog

These are the things I know about imagination, trust, and the worlds people build when you stop correcting them, at eight or at eighty.

Thoughts and Evidence

Boys' Literacy Crisis: 7 Mistakes Schools Make

Boys' Literacy Crisis: 7 Mistakes Schools Makeby: Kate

Boys are behind girls in reading by age 15. Two thirds of the bottom 10% are boys. The seven systemic mistakes schools make when trying to close the gap.

boys literacy crisisreluctant writersschools mistakesgender gap writingoracyStoryQuest
Boys' Literacy Crisis: 7 Mistakes Schools Make

What Happens When We Stop Trying to Fix Boys

What Happens When We Stop Trying to Fix Boysby: Kate

465 children across nine schools. The question is not why won't boys write. The question is why we demand compliance instead of inviting creation.

boys literacyreluctant writers465 childrencreative freedomcompliance vs creationStoryQuest
What Happens When We Stop Trying to Fix Boys

What Happened When Year 5 Became Authors for a Day at Beckfoot Allerton Primary

What Happened When Year 5 Became Authors for a Day at Beckfoot Allerton Primaryby: Kate

Year 5 children at Beckfoot Allerton Primary Bradford become authors for a day. What they produced and what they said about it.

Bradford schoolsStoryQuestchildren as authors100% engagementBeckfoot Allerton Primaryreluctant writers
What Happened When Year 5 Became Authors for a Day at Beckfoot Allerton Primary

What Jane Austen's Terrible Spelling Taught Me About Teaching Children to Write

What Jane Austen's Terrible Spelling Taught Me About Teaching Children to Writeby: Kate

ane Austen couldn't spell. What that tells us about what we are doing to children when we correct before they have finished creating.

children's writingcorrectioncreative freedomJane AustenStoryQuest methodologyreluctant writers
What Jane Austen's Terrible Spelling Taught Me About Teaching Children to Write

BOOK KATE TO SPEAK

Build a world together, and trust follows.

Your people are being asked to trust each other across distance, across generations and through constant change. Most have never been shown how.

Kate Markland has. For a time she had one hour a week with her son Gabriel, on a FaceTime call. They spent it building a world. She asked one question, wrote down everything he said and corrected nothing. That world became three books and a method tested in nine UK schools.

In her keynote, Create the World You Want, Kate shows your audience how trust is really built, and gives them a method they can use the same evening.

For leadership, education and family audiences.

Even the kids who don’t like writing didn’t want to leave.
Tom Hirst Head of English, Dixons Manningham Primary
Even the kids who don’t like writing didn’t want to leave.
Tom Hirst Head of English, Dixons Manningham Primary

STORYQUEST

StoryQuest gives children the freedom to imagine, speak and be heard without being corrected, guided or rushed. It begins with a story. But what families create together is something much bigger: connection.

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