Literacy Blog
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How to break down complex writing tasks
Literacy strategies for boys: empathy and reading
5 formative assessment strategies for English teachers
As we’re all aware, marking is a time-consuming task, but it can also be gratifying, as long as we’re sure it’s improving learners’ skills and achievements. Some skills, however, are harder to assess than others. Literacy skills, for instance, are a tricky one to target. If a learner struggles to find the right words, how can we point them in the right direction? I've collated a list of 5 formative assessment strategies I think work well for assessing learners' progress in literacy - try them out, and hopefully you'll find them just as useful!
Disciplinary literacy: why words matter in maths
How I used a vocabulary curriculum to teach Macbeth
Building a vocabulary curriculum: what NOT to do
Building a vocabulary curriculum isn’t as basic as it sounds. It’s easy to forget how mind-boggling new words can be. For the most part, the words that form our individual lexicons are so strongly embedded in us that we can use and understand them without really having to think.
EAL students: strategies to encourage literacy improvement
In 2017, the Education Policy Institute released a report on attainment gaps, with a particular focus on how the attainment of EAL learners compared to their peers. In this report, while EAL pupils were seen to have “lower attainment than their non-EAL peers during primary school”, this gap had “disappeared altogether” by the end of secondary school, with EAL pupils actually being “marginally ahead of their non-EAL peers.”
Building a vocabulary curriculum: the mastery approach
The Mastery Mystery. Mastery. It’s a word whispered in primary schools up and down the country, hinted at like the holy grail of academia. “This looks like it could be mastery level work,” a proud teacher might say.
Preparing for SATs with a vocabulary curriculum
Spoken language and reading difficulties: what's the link?
The Language and Reading Acquisition (LARA) team from Royal Holloway University are currently undertaking research that aims to clarify the relationship between oral vocabulary and reading attainment in secondary schools.
Skill development: is literacy the gateway?
