‘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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The Oxford Children’s Language Team reflect on the Government’s white paper for schools, highlighting the importance of vocabulary.
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Anxiety is the 2021 Oxford Children’s Word of the Year It is perhaps no surprise that there has been a significant growth in the vocabulary of mental health and wellbeing, with teachers finding young people more able to express their feelings in the classroom in the wake of the pandemic, school closures, and isolation. “Children […]
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I arrived to the school as a new member of staff in September under the banner of Assistant Head teacher for English and (that somewhat abstract concept) literacy. So much drew me to the school but one big driving force was that the school had established itself as a ‘reading school.’ Hours before my interview […]
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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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Super authors, super accessible, simply super-readable fiction for KS3/11-14 Written by award-winning authors and developed in partnership with Barrington Stoke, the experts in producing accessible fiction, Super-Readable Rollercoasters aim to encourage less-confident readers and support them to become life-long readers. With findings from the latest Word Gap report by Oxford University Press showing that pupils may have read less widely for pleasure during lockdown, these new titles […]
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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 […]
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