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Word Gap

Bridging the Word Gap at transition: The Oxford Language Report 2020

October 29, 2020October 30, 2020Oxford Education

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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Closing the word gap – developing a consistent whole school approach

October 7, 2020October 7, 2020Oxford English Team

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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Closing the word gap – introducing a whole school approach

October 7, 2020October 7, 2020Oxford English Team

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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The educational challenges for students when they return to school

September 3, 2020September 3, 2020Oxford English Team
Getting back to the classroom

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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Catapult: re-engaging, inspiring and motivating your students

September 2, 2020September 2, 2020Oxford English Team
Catapult: support for students below age-related expectations

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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Reading suggestions from Christopher Edge

July 16, 2020July 16, 2020Oxford English Team 1 Comment
suitcase of books to be read

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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Closing the vocabulary gap in primary schools

July 7, 2020July 7, 2020Oxford Primary
Word Sparks banner

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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A summer of talk and reading

July 3, 2020July 2, 2020Oxford English Team

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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The educational challenges for students when they return to school

June 22, 2020June 30, 2020Oxford English Team

‘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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Teaching vocabulary consistently: Part 2

May 28, 2020May 20, 2020Oxford English Team 1 Comment
Teaching Vocabulary Consistently - spiral staircase

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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