Are pupils new to secondary school this year prepared for the challenges of academic writing? After a couple of terms of secondary school, it becomes clearer whether pupils are getting to grips with the academic demands. As they write narratives in English, essays in history, notes in science, or annotate in art, pupils are expected […]
Is there a hidden writing problem in secondary schools? Read More »
Take a read of this passage, entitled ‘An Encounter at Sea’, from the 2017 reading comprehension SATs paper. Can you predict what happens next? What did you predict? Did you assume the ‘encounter’ was a dolphin (noting their mention in paragraph 2), perhaps a shark attack (for the ‘Jaws’ aficionados), or even a whale (‘Moby
Developing Skilled Readers (Knowledge + Strategy) Read More »
A new school year begins, full of old routines and new challenges. It is only natural to seek out novel ideas to start the year afresh, but we should be wary they are not at the expense of long-held priorities and practices. The teaching of academic vocabulary is one of those priorities that still matters.
Why teaching academic vocabulary matters Read More »
If you can write well, you can succeed in school. But the impact of being unable to write with confidence can be crippling, in the classroom, as well as far beyond the school gates. The recent White Paper on ‘levelling up’ education by the government, predictably attempts to address writing and the age-old ‘3Rs’. By
Is teaching writing the ‘Neglected R’? Read More »
Let’s start with a little reading… Is it familiar? The ‘Way of the Dodo’ text lives in infamy as a SATS 2016 reading paper extract that was so difficult that it made some pupils cry. It is a reading extract that also exposes a key problem in classrooms everywhere: the difficulty for pupils – primary or secondary age –
The Problem with Reading Informational Texts Read More »
