Do you know your fronted adverbials from your prepositional phrases? As another week of home schooling commences, many parents, and teachers, are faced with tricky questions about grammar. It inspires feisty debate on social media and in school staffrooms. From world-renowned authors, PHD possessing parent-writers, to national leaders, everyone has an opinion on ‘fronted adverbials’. …
When I started teaching nearly two decades ago, I was a teacher of reading, writing, vocabulary, academic talk, and more. The problem was that I could do reading and writing, but I had little idea how to systematically teach the development of these vital skills. Yes – I could model some writing and offer some …
What connections can you make between these words? Are there any patterns of meaning or word families you notice? Could you even detect the author who penned these words? These disembodied words are drawn from the Charles Dickens classic, ‘A Christmas Carol’. I have used the word cloud as a teaching tool to help students …
People have gone relatively quiet about the ‘c’ word… curriculum. Whilst schools grapple with the challenges of having all pupils safely attend school, then everything has to be considered anew. The careful sequencing of curriculum still matters a great deal, but as schools are recommended to consider lopping great bits off, then new plans and …
When I was growing up I sought out books that mirrored my world. I can name the narratives that walked me through my tortured teens, or those books that helped me attempt proper adulting. From each reading, familiar character became both a reflection and a fragment of myself. When I became a teacher, few books …
‘It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it ‘t ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it ‘t ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it And that’s what gets results’ Ella Fitzgerald The COVID-19 pandemic lockdown has ushered in an independent learning experiment bigger than any in …
The reality of the Covid pandemic has seen millions of pupils thrust into a position remote home learning. A stark truth is that pupils learn most when they are in the classroom. Remote learning, homework and similar, is simply hard work – for both pupils and teachers. Very quickly, and resourcefully, schools have responded to …
