Effective Reading Strategies in the classroom This year in every English classroom across the land, classes will be ploughing their way through a class reader. The potential learning is immense. Tackled in the right way, students will be employing the full range of their mental or cognitive processes, developing their attention span, their recall and […]
Read moreRebecca Geoghegan shares her advice for supporting ‘low ability readers’ and discusses low levels of decoding skills. You can also read her blog about approaches for supporting lower ability writers . …I am a work in progress When I hear the label ‘low ability reader’, I instantly think of the Allan Ahlberg poem ‘I am a Slow Reader.’ The poem depicts […]
Read moreRebecca Geoghegan shares her approaches to supporting low-ability writers. Being asked to ‘write’ can be daunting for even the most confident and accurate of writers: at times we all struggle to think of something interesting and memorable to write. However, if your struggle is coupled with low literacy levels, then you are very likely to […]
Read moreGiven the number of recent politically related international and national events, I would be safe in saying that as a British public we are more aware than ever of ‘political policy’ and its impact. Brexit; Presidential elections; general elections – to name but a few – have given rise to a wealth of conversations about […]
Read moreWhile most know it as ‘DEAR time’, I would be inclined to refer to this Literacy initiative as Role Modelling Reading. The focus is on getting the students to read. However, my belief is that it is what the adults around them are doing that will really have an effect. It was during my role […]
Read moreI do not doubt that there are a variety of highly effective purchasable Literacy intervention packages that will support students in making ‘reading’ and ‘writing’ gains beyond any ‘natural’ progress they might make without them. I have bought into many of these packages and, over the recent years, I have gone on to recommend […]
Read moreSince ‘closing the gender gap’ came to the forefront of education during the 1990s, there has been the creation and implementation of countless ‘Boys and Literacy’ groups. Whilst these groups may have different focuses – writing, reading, speaking – they are all there to support the acquisition, development and reinforcement of a Literacy skill. What […]
Read moreDespite 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 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 […]
Read moreAnd 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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