Over a year ago, in a previous post for this blog , I wrote about my focus of encouraging students of ALL ages to ‘Speak Like A Geographer’. This was in light of having previously restricted this focus on terminology to GCSE and A Level cohorts – and wondering why they didn’t manage to adjust to the required key words and […]
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I was not surprised when I finished reading ‘Why Closing the Word Gap Matters: Oxford Language Report’ , but it still made for sombre reading. The report put in black and white what teachers already know: Most of the students we teach don’t have the vocabulary they need to fulfil their full potential at school. The word gap affects students’ wider life chances. After […]
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By Jean Gross CBE, formerly the government’s Communication Champion for children and young people. Oxford University Press recently published the Oxford Language Report – a study into the effects of the word gap on children’s learning and what we can do to combat this. Here, Jean Gross CBE, offers some practical suggestions about how we […]
Read more By Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) Let’s start with what we know: language matters. There. That’s it. Vocabulary is a huge predictor of how far children from any background will succeed at school and beyond. The words they know will help them to read, understand, gain new […]
Read more The first Oxford Language Report finds evidence of a significant word gap in UK schools, a problem which is holding back children’s learning and which teachers believe is getting worse. Here Jane Harley, Strategy Director ED-UK at Oxford University Press, gives some background to the report and explains why closing the word gap matters. Why […]
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Written by lexicographer Roz Combley There’s nothing like the real thing I was recently lucky enough to analyse the Oxford Corpus, a 55-million-word collection of children’s writing from the BBC Radio 2’s 500 Words story competition. Any lexicographer will tell you that once you’ve worked with a corpus—a wonderfully powerful resource of real language evidence—you […]
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Schaffer and Emerson’s research into attachment enabled them to construct an explanation of how attachment develops. Starter: In explaining the behaviour seen at each stage of attachment a number of key terms are used which students need to be aware of. Before beginning the main activity students need to familiarise themselves with the following vocabulary and […]
Read moreIt was so good to be present at Language World when Dr Geoff Brammall was honoured as an ALL fellow. He has worked tirelessly for the language community and I respect him so much. Carol Hughes nominated him and asked us why what we thought about this. Carol has written this post on questions and […]
Read moreIn May, Year 6 children will be assessed for the first time on the new curriculum in England. To save you time, we have taken a look at the new sample tests and frameworks and given some key pointers below. What’s in the test? The new Key Stage 2 English reading test comprises a reading booklet and a […]
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