Sam Gibbs provides handy tips on how to start the conversation about curriculum design in English at your school – plus, 3 reasons why NOW is the perfect moment to do so.
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Everyone talks about closing gaps – language gaps, educational gaps, knowledge gaps, cultural gaps. However, research has shown for 50 years that only readers can outrun their background. And the earlier children get on the reading ladder, the more likely they are to become readers. With the right programme and teaching, all children can learn to […]
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Discover how BTHCC focused on two areas that have been transformational in changing student attitudes and results in reading levels: the transformed school library space; and the embedding of reading across the curriculum.
Read moreStudents learning in the classroom In October 2022, Ofsted published a report on supporting struggling readers in secondary schools after visiting six schools where a higher-than-expected proportion of struggling readers got a grade 4 or above in GCSE English language. In its conclusion, Ofsted notes that: “School leaders understood the need to identify specific reading gaps and weaknesses, and […]
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Boy, Everywhere is a story of survival, of family, of bravery. It looks at the refugee crisis from a new perspective, and through Sami’s eyes shows that we are all one cruel twist of fate away from becoming refugees ourselves: it can happen to anyone. Historical context By 2015, the war in Syria had been […]
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I don’t know about you, but I look forward to introducing a new class reader with the various classes I teach. There’s something about the opportunity to share great literature with young people and also have the chance to share my own passion as a reader. It’s always enjoyable to challenge myself with a new […]
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‘Cultured…Engaged…Informed’. This vision strapline underpins everything we do in my English Department. Vocabulary teaching, naturally, plays an important role in fulfilling this vision. When we spoke to students about the disadvantages that poor vocabulary acquisition brings, the one that came up repeatedly was that of frustration – the inability to communicate that which is in […]
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For very good reason the last several years has witnessed an explosion in thinking about effective revision strategies, with an increasing focus on self-testing and retrieval. As we increasingly use and model these skills in our own classrooms so too do students increasingly use them in their own independent practice. Yet, whilst we may be […]
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Subject specialist Dean Roberts explores progression through Lower Secondary English, and how students’ engagement with the subject changes with age.
Read more Recently, I’ve been playing around with and using a lot of Oxford University Press Shakespeare materials and resources, which are proving to be excellent. In particular, I’ve been experimenting with their ‘Macbeth GCSE Revision Workbook’ by Graham Elsdon, which is part of the Oxford School Shakespeare series. I’ve been using this in the more traditional […]
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