‘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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Primary teacher Alysha Allen shares the impact using British Sign Language has had on pupil confidence, vocabulary, and attitudes to difference in her school.
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We share Shareen Wilkinson’s top tips to expand children’s vocabulary and help close the Word Gap from the Word Up podcast series.
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Each workbook in the Get It Right: Boost Your Vocabulary series offers targeted support for exanding students’ vocabulary and addressing the word gap by exploring ambitious words in context and unpicking layers of meaning, resulting in more confident readers and articulate writers. Here are five reasons why your school should try the Get It Right: […]
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OUP’s Bridging the Word Gap at Transition report gives it to us straight. As Jane Harley states in the Foreword: ‘Transition from primary to secondary is a pivotal time; the word gap remains a major issue, and more needs to be done to address this. There is a lack of coherence in the expectations for language coverage and how it is taught across […]
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Here are some handy comprehension resources and simple ideas to share with parents to help them support their children’s reading comprehension during school closures.
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If you’re new to the role of literacy lead, or just have an interest in approaching Literacy across the school I’d strongly advise beginning your journey with vocabulary – I have written two blogs on this (links below). It makes sense that before students can access texts, we teach them how to access words, and […]
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Lionel Bolton, Head of English, Languages and Humanities, Oxford University Press Read the report What have we discovered? Our new report, Bridging the Word Gap at Transition, builds on our previous report from 3 years ago, Why Closing the Word Gap Matters. In that first report we highlighted that nearly half of the children in Year 1 and […]
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Sarah Eggleton: Continuing from the previous blog – ‘Closing the word gap – introducing a whole school approach’ this blog will explain how we moved from staff delivering key words in lessons to enabling teachers and students to engage with and interrogate vocabulary to get a genuine deep understanding of it. What we wanted to […]
Read more Sarah Eggleton: Following on from my previous two posts regarding developing a consistent approach to closing the word gap in the English classroom, I’m pleased to share how we moved from English to a whole school approach to explicit vocabulary teaching. Experience has taught me that when moving to implement a Literacy strategy the overwhelming […]
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