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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Jumping into the unknown We are all probably familiar with the fear of the blank page when writing: we know that many children experience it; we may even feel it ourselves sometimes. It’s possible that something similar happens when insecure, struggling, or simply young readers look at a previously-unseen text: a daunting fear of the […]
Read moreThinking 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 […]
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New research from the National Literacy Trust indicates comedy could play an important role in engaging children and young people in reading and writing for enjoyment. The National Literacy Trust survey shows that reading and writing comedy is particularly popular with boys, who are twice as likely as girls to write comedy outside class. With this […]
Read moreLindsay spoke on the purpose and the value of Guided Reading at Oxford University Press’ English Conference, Passing on the Passion, in London on 16th June. Here he addresses the most common concerns and teases out answers to these questions in follow up to his seminar. You’ll find a selection of resources and videos from the day on our website . I love guided reading. But we have […]
Read moreLast month, I was lucky enough to speak at OUP’s For the Love of Reading: Passing on the Passion conference. It was a wonderful occasion that brought teachers, authors and researchers together to talk about reading. I left with my brain fizzing with ideas, inspired to try the raft of new things I’d learnt from […]
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The new Literature exams often ask students to analyse an extract and then to refer to texts as a whole. OCR uses the term ‘moments’: for example, ‘Explore at least two moments from… to support your ideas.’ I like this idea of selecting moments. My interpretation of this is that it designed to develop interpretation […]
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‘Boldness be my friend’ Cymbeline Recently I was asked to undertake some work with students who were studying Shakespeare for a Literature essay. I asked for a copy of their key scenes and was handed a wad of photocopies. This took me straight back to my early teaching career in the 1990s. I’m all for […]
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Romeo and Juliet was written during the 1590s and was first performed in 1597 in London. We know that Romeo and Juliet has an enduring appeal for audiences – as the title page of the play’s 1597 edition tells us, the play was, even then, a popular success “…it hath been often (with great applause) […]
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