Schools can be hectic places and the work of a teachers is seldom ‘done’. When faced with the job of a challenging new curriculum, particularly for our more disadvantaged pupils, tackling such …
Spelling: Avoiding Ignorance and Negligence
A version of this article was originally published in the excellent ‘Teach Secondary‘ magazine – you can subscribe HERE. It is well worth a read! Controversies and complaints about spelling are centuries …
5 Vocabulary Teaching Myths
Words are all around us. They are legion, ubiquitous and omnipresent in our daily lives. They live in families, possess histories, slide and break into parts, and connect across worlds, separating and …
Why Closing the Word Gap Matters
As a teacher who writes about the importance of literacy and vocabulary – and one who works with countless teachers across the country – I find myself talking repeatedly about the issue …
Vocabulary Knowledge and the ‘Frayer Model’
The ‘Frayer model‘ is a long-standing graphic organiser that has been deployed in classrooms with success for decades (it was first conceived Dorothy Frayer and her colleagues at the University of Wisconsin). …
Literacy is dead…long live ‘disciplinary literacy’!
‘‘We know too much to say we know too little, and we know too little to say that we know enough. Indeed, language is difficult to put into words.’’ Baumann, J. F. …
6 Useful Vocabulary Websites
The web is full of websites on vocabulary: good, bad and ugly. Here are six of my favourite free vocabulary websites that I think are useful for teachers and students alike: …
Vocabulary Development Reading List
For a long time now I have been reading about vocabulary development. After teaching English Language and English Literature for over a decade and a half (including child language acquisition), I came …
Closing the Vocabulary Gap Resources
So I *might* have mentioned this already, but I have gone and written a book – published officially this Friday! ‘Closing the Vocabulary Gap’ has proven a labour of love for the …
7 Strategies to Explore Unfamiliar Vocabulary
A 10-year-old child who is a good reader will encounter something like 1 million words a year (around 12 novels), but crucially, approximately 20,000 of those words will prove unfamiliar (Oakhill et …