‘‘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. & Kameenui, E. J. (1991). ‘Research on vocabulary instruction: Ode to Voltaire’ We know a huge amount about literacy. For decades, teachers have […]
Literacy is dead…long live ‘disciplinary literacy’! Read More »
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: Describing Words This website has a simple premise: punch in a noun and you get countless descriptive words, with a helpful sort for
6 Useful Vocabulary Websites Read More »
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 to the stark realisation that I didn’t know enough about how children not only learnt to read, but went on to read to
Vocabulary Development Reading List Read More »
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 last eighteen months of my life and I’m proud to get a hold of it and send it out into the world. You
Closing the Vocabulary Gap Resources Read More »
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 al. 2015). It is important then to support our pupils to develop an array of independent word learning strategies to explore and to
7 Strategies to Explore Unfamiliar Vocabulary Read More »
A lot of attention is rightly devoted by schools to address primary to secondary ‘transition’. We know that as children move schools it can prove a difficult move emotionally. Therefore, our focus, quite rightly, attends pastoral matters to offer vital support to our pupils. And yet, what if we a missing a vital aspect of
The ‘Reading Gap’ between Primary and Secondary School Read More »
“Stories are psychologically privileged in the human mind.” Daniel Willingham The mind thinks and remembers in stories. It is part of the architecture of human memory and our human experience. Given it is so rooted in how we think, storytelling proves vital to learning and is useful in all sorts of ways in the classroom.
Telling Stories about Words Read More »
