Despite my ongoing uncertainty about the age old conundrum of which came first the reading ‘chicken’ and oracy ‘egg’, one thing I am sure of is where writing fits– and it is justifiably at the bottom. It seems fitting to end with writing since that is ultimately where the ideas gathered from talking and reading […]
Read moreAuthor: Fiona Lloyd-Williams
If I write a text of any kind and someone said to me ‘Can you develop this?’ I would ask, ‘How?’ or ‘What do you mean?’ and I would hope that they could tell me. Yet, often, we don’t do this with students. Marking, now known more fashionably as feedback, is hard work, often undertaken […]
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Throughout December we showcased a different example of Kerboodle content each day. In case you missed it, here are the links to each item. The team hope you enjoy them! If you are new to Kerboodle and want to find out more then please take a look here and get in touch to arrange a free in-school demonstration. […]
Read moreIn my previous blogs I have suggested that if the three strands of Literacy education had a hierarchy then mine would place reading as the star at the top of the tree. However, as I have also noted, there are arguments which would place oracy at the top and I do believe that on any […]
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And the threes don’t stop there… There are three inextricable strands of . And whilst it is difficult to determine a hierarchy, I would suggest that reading is at the top of my list (although oracy comes a very close second!). Fundamentally, reading gives children the means to express their thoughts. As the wealth of statistics […]
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‘How to be a whole school Literacy Leader’ screams the familiar course title. In those eight reassuring words is the suggestion that there is an absolute answer, a conclusive checklist, a right or a wrong way. And yet, in my years as a Literacy Leader in a large secondary school, as a SSAT Lead Practitioner […]
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Thinking about the new closed book literature exams, we’re going to have to face up, very soon, to how we teach our students to learn quotations. Along with writing exams by hand when they only ever usually type or text, learning quotations by heart is probably (in my opinion) one of the single most pointless […]
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For several years I have been helping my sister-in-law navigate her way through her 3 children’s English GCSE routes. This has spilled over into offering advice to other parents and what has struck me so forcibly is how much they want to help and how little information they are given to work with. With a […]
Read moreJust before the summer I had a meeting during which someone important in a school told me that they’d like to start preparing students for the demands of the new GCSEs from Year 7. This could be radical practice in some schools; we seem to have lost the knack of joining the thinking between the […]
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The new GCSEs are now timetabled – looks like it will be very similar to the ‘olden days’ – Lit first at the end of May followed by Lang at the beginning of June. One of the things that has always struck me about impending exams is that they tend to appear out of nowhere […]
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