The start of a new school year has a familiar magic to it. New classes, new exercise books, and shiny new resolutions. It is the natural moment to try small, deliberate improvements to teaching that can stick for the year ahead. Vocabulary instruction can offer a meaningful and manageable starting
"Each Culture has its own new possibilities of self-expression which arise, ripen, decay and never return… each limited in duration and self-contained, just as each species of plant has its peculiar blossom or fruit, its special type of growth and decline." Oswald Spengler, The Decline of
In a world where AI is cannibalising writing and technology can trump reading books, promoting literacy may be more important than ever. Literacy leadership in schools and colleges in this context proves a perennial improvement priority, but as every literacy leader knows, we have to been trying to tackle this
Making positive changes to yourself is hard but to try and do it at a school, college, or even across a group of schools locally, and sustain that change, is doubly difficult. We know from lots of research evidence, and lived experience, that best laid plans can make a jump
I have finally discovered how to successfully read a complete classic novel in 30 minutes. An Oxford University English professor showed me the workflow. Here is exactly what he does. He does not open Moby Dick and start reading from page one. That, he explains, is the most inefficient way
Literacy assessment is dominated by data on reading ages, but are they helping teachers to make a difference for students who need support? Let me be clear, high-quality standardised reading assessments can be both useful and important. But too often, schools are awash with reading data, along with spreadsheets
Reading in class should be one of the richest experiences a teacher can offer. In practice, it can also prove one of the most uncertain and difficult. Whether it is reading a story in year 2 or unpicking historical sources in a year 8 history lesson, teachers can frequently find
Key stage 3 (KS3) in secondary schools has always been the squeezed middle when it comes to school improvement. Jammed between high stakes assessments in KS2 and GCSEs at KS4, it has often been shrunken and or jammed-full with GCSE practice, and rendered an afterthought for curriculum design, staffing,
High-quality talk routines in the classroom matter. They can build understanding, foster engagement, aid behaviour, promote critical thinking, and much more. It is no surprise then that oracy has risen to prominence once more given the potential benefits of purposeful classroom talk. But year after year, we see evidence
