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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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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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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