Vocabulary Teaching: Giving Students a Voice

Students completing an activity from Boost Your Vocabulary workbook 1

‘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 […]

Read more

Votes for Women Timeline

This month marks Women’s History Month, as part of our celebrations we want to share this interactive timeline which shows some of the key dates and events which contributed to women gaining the right to vote in Britain. Taken from our Oxford AQA GCSE History: Britain: Power and the People c1170-Present Day Student Book (Second […]

Read more

Glamorous Grammar

Jill Carter dispels the popular myth that grammar is boring and explains why she thinks it should be revered by teachers and students alike.      In the years I have spent around teaching, one of the main subject-related complaints of English teachers is SPaG.  The main complaints seem to be: ‘I wasn’t taught grammar […]

Read more

Why quadratics?

One of the biggest ‘why oh why’ questions in secondary school mathematics is the purpose of studying quadratic equations because ‘I am never going to need them in everyday life’. This irritating question is based on a sound premise. The applications generally offered to students to persuade them of the usefulness of quadratics tend to […]

Read more