Oracy is at the centre of the news. The education secretary, Lucy Powell, wants oracy to have “equal status” to reading and writing. With the importance of oracy set to be enshrined into new national curriculum and assessment, we need to ask an important question: how do you make oral
Let's begin with a familiar scenario of a pupil struggling with reading. Amelia is in year 7 but she is finding the leap to secondary school tricky. She has a good group of friends, but she is finding the curriculum harder to access than she did in year
Adaptive teaching can prove tricky to pin down. Most teachers welcome it. The phrase is now familiar in staff rooms and inspection reports alike, but I’m repeatedly experiencing a different understanding from school to school, and in some cases, from teacher to teacher. A shared and sound understanding of
Every teacher has taught a version of Craig. Craig was unfailingly polite, cheerful and never any trouble. He'd say good morning, rummage in his chaotic bag, settle into his chair, and waits for you to do the work. Faced with a hard question, he'd produce the
Around one in four 15-year-olds spend 6 hours or more in their bedroom on a typical weekend day. Consider that for a moment. These teens, hidden away in their bedrooms, often tethered to the blue-light of dopamine spiking devices, have been labelled a ‘bedroom generation’. New research
More than 1.8 million children in England are now identified as having special educational needs. That is more than one in five, and it has risen every year since 2016. Among the large majority of them, the children on SEN support, rather than those holding an education, health and
The culture of reading is always changing. Currently, there are lots of articles about the death of reading and the 'dawn of a post literate society' to worry the average parent and the busy teacher. But what about the fate of deeper reading in classrooms across the country?
The start of a new school year has a familiar magic to it. New classes, new exercise books, and shiny new resolutions. It is the natural moment to try small, deliberate improvements to teaching that can stick for the year ahead. Vocabulary instruction can offer a meaningful and manageable starting
"Each Culture has its own new possibilities of self-expression which arise, ripen, decay and never return… each limited in duration and self-contained, just as each species of plant has its peculiar blossom or fruit, its special type of growth and decline." Oswald Spengler, The Decline of
