Geoff Barton outlines the discussion that took place during a recent ASCL webinar on the educational challenges facing students when they return to school.
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For almost 6 months students have lived a range of experiences, positive and negative, during the lockdown period. English is not a linear subject and is taught by building upon what is already understood, by securing and reinforcing key skills and concepts in a range of contexts and through a variety of texts, says Katie […]
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Part 1: science fiction, fantasy and dystopia Whether you’re looking to widen the genres you try or just want to dig deeper to find more of the kind of books you love, I hope these reading suggestions might help you to explore the science fiction, fantasy and dystopia genres. Please note, some of the books […]
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In this blog, experience primary school teacher and English adviser Shareen Wilkinson (Mayers) explores approaches to teaching vocabulary, focusing on one strategy for explicitly teaching vocabulary in context.
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The term ‘word gap’ is used to describe how children with a smaller vocabulary than others are disadvantaged in a range of ways. There are two main ways you can support your child and help them to build their vocabulary – by encouraging reading for pleasure, Here we share a range of ideas to help […]
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‘A Sea of Talk’ Helen Prince considers some of the educational challenges facing schools and offers her advice for encouraging developing vocabulary across the curriculum. Responding to a pandemic was not part of my teacher training. Dashing around Christ Church, Canterbury all those years ago, I remember no module on understanding the challenge of students […]
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In the English classroom How we did it – planning We began by looking at the curriculum. What KS4 content did students struggle most with? What vocabulary could we teach them to help them communicate their ideas more clearly? We looked at our literature texts, the demands of GCE English Language and then at our […]
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It started with a book… Closing the Vocabulary Gap by Alex Quigley is the book that started the Stretford High School English Department’s endeavor to improve our students’ vocabulary. Quigley opened the dialogue for a problem we knew existed but weren’t sure how to solve. His book clarified the classification of words we needed students […]
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One of the worst things about being unwell is setting cover. Everyone has those ghastly days of knowing they are too ill to function in the unforgiving environment of a school. This increases at the thought of trying to set meaningful cover work for 5 or 6 classes. There are very few jobs in which […]
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We recently held a small event in our Oxford offices to talk to primary and secondary school teachers about vocabulary and the Word Gap in their school. Lots of interesting, practical ideas were shared and discussed and we have summarised some of them here: Give key vocabulary at the start of each lesson. Encourage students […]
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