Should the title be ‘sophisticated vocabulary’, or could it be more simply ‘fancy words’? Small but significant language choices like these occur repeatedly in classrooms – and in pupils’ minds – daily. Teaching pupils to use sophisticated vocabulary can go wrong but it is a necessary bump in the road of pupils’ language development. We […]
The Problem with Teaching Sophisticated Vocabulary 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 »
How do you teach a tricky new word, or seek to boost the word hoard of the pupils you teach? One of the most common approaches to developing academic vocabulary is to study morphology – breaking words down into their component parts and roots. It can support the development of academic vocabulary in subjects like
Teaching Vocabulary and Mighty Morphemes Read More »
It is vital for our pupils to possess a wealth of academic vocabulary if they are to succeed in school. For most of my teaching career, this issue was tacit and flew beneath my radar. Vocabulary issues were often hidden in plain sight. In the last few years, however, developing academic vocabulary has become talked
Commonly Confused Academic Vocabulary Read More »
“Perhaps one of the mistakes in the past efforts to improve reading achievement has been the removal of struggle. As a profession, we may have made reading tasks too easy. We do not suggest that we should plan students’ failure but rather that students should be provided with opportunities to struggle and to learn about
5 strategies for reading complex texts 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 »
Never in the field of school leadership has so much been expected, with so little time, as the role of literacy coordinator.
Supporting Secondary School Literacy Read More »
