Let’s start with a little reading… * Is it familiar? The ‘Way of the Dodo’ text lives in infamy as a SATS 2016 reading paper extract that was so difficult that it made some pupils cry. It is a reading extract that also exposes a key problem in classrooms everywhere:
As curriculum is complex, we routinely seek out a plethora of handy metaphors and analogies to make sense of it. And so, in recent years curriculum has recently been described with a multitude of metaphors, such as a boxset (more Game of Thrones than the Simpsons), a voyage of exploration,
Everyone has an opinion on the teaching of English, its curriculum, along with our national qualifications. Not just teachers: parents, policy makers, and pupils, all have an argument at the ready. Of course, most of us have stumbled through an analysis of Shakespeare, or grumbled over the peculiarities of grammar
Everyone has their own exam revision story of stress or failure. Whether it was an exhausting all-nighter, or the time you prepared for one exam question, but were asked another. Perhaps these experiences are why we are uniquely keen to understand better how to prepare students for exams (both teachers
Never in the field of school leadership has so much been expected, with so little time, as the role of literacy coordinator. I have written before about the literacy coordinator as a Sisyphus figure. Invariably, with an hour or two freed up from teaching on their timetable, the coordinator is
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that vocabulary knowledge is crucial for pupils’ school success. Pupils are language sponges, learning thousands of words each year. Like increases in a child’s height, it is a slow but inexorable development. On a daily basis it is near-imperceptible, but when you begin
The importance of tending to pupils at the transition between primary and secondary school is well-established. The obvious focus, understandably, attends to the pastoral needs of pupils: making them feel safe and secure in their new ‘big school’ surroundings. Crucially, there is also an increasing recognition that making curriculum connections
Every teacher recognises that every subject is mediated by reading skill, but it matters in some more than others, right? Does it really matter that much in maths? When I speak to teachers, or those school leaders responsible for aspects of literacy whole school, the refrain they often relate is
The school classroom is an amazing place. It is simultaneously filled with dazzling complexity and profound simplicity. It is at once driven by reassuring routines and constant surprises. As all pupils return to classrooms from the vagaries of the third lockdown this coming week, it will time for teachers to
My nine-year old boy, Noah, has been working hard on his handwriting this week. He fizzes with ideas when he writes, but most often his handwriting and his spelling simply cannot keep up. You can see the sheer physicality of his writing as shifts and squirms on his chair: each
Do you know your fronted adverbials from your prepositional phrases? As another week of home schooling commences, many parents, and teachers, are faced with tricky questions about grammar. It inspires feisty debate on social media and in school staffrooms. From world-renowned authors, PHD possessing parent-writers, to national leaders, everyone has
When I started teaching nearly two decades ago, I was a teacher of reading, writing, vocabulary, academic talk, and more. The problem was that I could do reading and writing, but I had little idea how to systematically teach the development of these vital skills. Yes – I could model some