Dive into the transformative world of literacy with this range of blogs. Explore how literacy transforms lives, empowers minds, fuels creativity, and fosters critical thinking. It explores disciplinary literacy as well as skills across all phases of education. These blogs cover key topics, such as reading, writing, vocabulary, and oracy. They tackle literacy challenges, including literacy barriers such as dyslexia, whilst offering lots of practical literacy strategies to improve learning.
This short series is targeted at literacy leaders – either Literacy Coordinators, Reading Leads, or Curriculum Deputies etc. – with a key role in leading literacy to ensure that pupils access the curriculum and succeed in meeting the academic demands of school. The old African proverb goes that it takes a village
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
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
“For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. Matthew, 25:29 Six months ago everything changed. Covid-19 crashed into our consciousness and schools were closed for all but a
The ‘Frayer model‘ is a long-standing graphic organiser that has been deployed in classrooms with success for decades (it was first conceived Dorothy Frayer and her colleagues at the University of Wisconsin). It is a simple but effective model to help students to organise their understanding of a new academic
‘‘We know too much to say we know too little, and we know too little to say that we know enough. Indeed, language is difficult to put into words.’’ Baumann, J. F. & Kameenui, E. J. (1991). ‘Research on vocabulary instruction: Ode to Voltaire’ We know a huge amount about
A lot of attention is rightly devoted by schools to address primary to secondary ‘transition’. We know that as children move schools it can prove a difficult move emotionally. Therefore, our focus, quite rightly, attends pastoral matters to offer vital support to our pupils. And yet, what if we a
“Stories are psychologically privileged in the human mind.” Daniel Willingham The mind thinks and remembers in stories. It is part of the architecture of human memory and our human experience. Given it is so rooted in how we think, storytelling proves vital to learning and is useful in all sorts
“Dad, what is a whisk’s favourite drink?” “I don’t know. What is a whisk’s favourite drink?” “Whisky!” And so starts my young boy’s burgeoning entertainment career. So far, it is full of bad puns and energetic attempts at word play. Most jokes narrowly miss the mark,
There are memories and moments that form who we are and what we become. I cannot recall exactly when reading for pleasure became a part of me, and what I would become – a teacher, dear reader – but it happened before I’d ever realised. Perhaps it was my father perched
There is no more important act in education than helping children to learn to read. I am sure we can agree that developing our students as confident readers, writers and speakers is the core business of every teacher, regardless of age, phase or subject specialism. Too often though we take
Thinking about better assessment is not always at the forefront of the mind of a busy English teacher. We are so hassled by marking, planning and well, teaching lots, that we keep our nose to the marking grindstone and, well…just keep on going. More recently, I have been trying