How are British children responding to the emerging themes and issues in their writing? When OUP was asked if we’d like to be the language expert for a ‘pop up’ 500 Words: Black Lives Matter children’s writing competition, we didn’t hesitate for a moment. OUP has been the language partner to 500 Words since 2012, […]
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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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Looking after the mental health of ourselves and our children is more important than ever. Mindfulness – our ability to be alert in the present moment – is a recognised and credible set of skills, and an approach to life that can support our mental health. A recent research study at the University of Oxford explores the links […]
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“…there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know…” (United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 2002) The Latin origin of the word revision suggests the student must “look again”. Sadly, we know that just ‘looking’ at work again is of little use. However, I’d go further – the whole concept […]
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Awaken your Christmas spirit with a collection of winter warmers and cosy classics that will boost wellbeing for the end of term and leave you and your class with a warm glow that will last throughout the holiday season.
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Nikki Gamble writes about the need to develop children’s empathy with the help of the written word.
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Last week we saw the final criteria for the MFL speaking endorsement published by Ofqual ( link here ). For our colleagues in English this is not a new thing, but for us in MFL it is a novelty and as such it has raised a certain amount of uncertainty and concern. How can we decide fairly […]
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The Translation Exchange at the Queen’s College, Oxford, launched a brand-new competition for schools in September 2020. The competition is inspired by the work of the translator Anthea Bell OBE (1936–2018), one of the finest and most influential literary translators of the 20th and 21st centuries. The competition takes place in March 2021, but we […]
Read moreGood schools have always known the fundamental importance of building positive relationships in order to create successful learning environments. But relationships are much easier to build when face-to-face than in the online world, so how can schools keep their communities connected if remote learning is still the only option? Relationships – the key to happiness […]
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This return to school has been like no other. As usual, we have had to face confirmation of Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve after a long summer break; but this time, with the addition of those months in lockdown. And, although happy to be back in school, we have found ourselves having to work extra hard not […]
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Anti-Bullying Week 2020 takes place from Monday 16th – Friday 20th November. We’ve gathered together a collection of anti-bullying books to encourage your class to work together to make a difference and help put a stop to bullying.
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A recent webinar with Mike Askew explored the connection between reasoning, problem solving and fluency. This blog post summaries the key takeaways from this webinar.
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