Start as you mean to go on: ideas for enthusing your new Year 7 language learners from the beginning

After the constant changes of the last two years, I know that many of us are excited about getting back to school and experiencing more ‘normal’ lessons. It is liberating to think that we (hopefully!) will be able to incorporate activities which were previously restricted, such as speaking. At the time of writing, it seems […]

Read more

The Rich Get Richer

Language is acquired through imitation. It’s kind-of obvious, but it bears thinking about: different children have different levels of vocabulary (and, indeed, different capabilities with putting that vocabulary together, AKA grammar) because of the language they have been immersed in over the length of their lives thus far. So what are we giving them to […]

Read more

Lexicographers and dictionaries for all ages…

Last year I blogged a couple of times on dictionaries in the classroom (see the links below if you missed them)   A picture is worth a thousand words: Dictionaries in the classroom (part 1) Word origins: Dictionaries in the classroom (part 2) Since then, I’ve been chatting to Vineeta Gupta, Head of Children’s Dictionaries at Oxford University Press. I wanted to know more about how dictionaries are put together. How do children’s dictionary publishers establish criteria […]

Read more