Coronavirus is the 2020 Oxford Children’s Word of the Year! 2020 marks the 10th anniversary of BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show and Chris Evans’ 500 Words short story competition, and saw more than 134,000 children submit entries, hitting the millionth story milestone! As part of ongoing language and lexical research, the Oxford Children’s Dictionaries & […]
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This is the first time in my twenty-year career as an English teacher that I can’t picture the start of the academic year. My memories of September’s new uniforms, shiny pencil cases and pristine planners feel contradictory and outdated, and the future feels unpredictable. With a few simple strategies I can start to plan for […]
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Sarah Eggleton suggests some strategies and tips to help you plan how to assess your students, identifying gaps and start the process of catching-up. Lockdown has resulted in the majority of students having received only 6 months of face to face education this year. We know it has hit those children who are disadvantaged the […]
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In April 2020, Barry Carpenter , the UK’s first Professor in Mental Health in Education, at Oxford Brookes University, called for a recovery curriculum post Covid -19. This gained momentum as schools started to open up more widely in the summer term and reported their key focus to be re- establishing relationships, routines and wellbeing before turning […]
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Rebecca Geoghegan discusses how lessons and learning might evolve through an increased virtual experience with her four stages of reimagining the classroom. When the closures were announced on the 18th March, most schools would say that they had an inkling it was coming. International news had led to much speculation and ‘loose’ plans being created […]
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It is coming up to the end of the school year and my thoughts are now starting to turn to the transition arrangements for the new Year 12s. Many questions are occupying my thoughts. How will they respond to being back in the classroom after so long? Will the extended break have had an impact […]
Read morePsychology is a brand new subject for most students. There is a large amount of new vocabulary to get used to, as well as new ways of thinking. I’ve put together some resources which will help students to start to become familiar with psychological concepts as well as keeping their valuable GCSE skills going, so […]
Read moreAprender a dudar es aprender a pensar (‘Learning to doubt is learning to think’). -Octavio Paz In March this year, school life as we know it shuddered to a halt, and as we write, when and under what guise it will fully return remains unclear. Over the past few months, teachers and students will have […]
Read moreCraig Barton looks at how both teachers and students will need time and patience in order to make the transition back into the classroom. Speaking of “unprecedented times” has become something of a cliché. And yet I know of no other phrase to better describe the period from when schools first closed because of the […]
Read moreGraham Elsdon looks at ways to help the new year 11 classes cope with post-lockdown English exam preparation The tentacles of the horrible virus are long and inevitably they have wrapped themselves around the world of education. Lives have been lost, the yearly rhythm has been lost and time has been lost. Leaving aside the […]
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How do we support key year groups, now and on our return to school? and what do we do for those who can’t return at the same time? These are the questions we all wish we knew the answers to, aren’t they? The truth is I don’t think that anyone has the magic fix, that […]
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