Does Phonics Have a Place in High School? 

Summary This blog shows how secondary teachers can use simple tools from the phonics teachers’ toolkit to support older students … More

Born Listening? Why Listening Is Hard and How to Help Your Students Listen and Understand Better.

This blog is about the forgotten half of oracy: not talking but listening. Listening is often described as the Cinderella … More

The Simple View of Reading

Less Simple than it Looks The Simple View formula presented by Gough and Tunmer in 1986 is presented as a … More

Good Enough Comprehension

Or not quite good enough… I’m a decent reader, but I find recipes hard to follow. The trouble is that … More

Writing Full (and I Mean Really Full) Sentences in Subjects

When we quiz students for knowledge retrieval, we are helping them remember key knowledge but we aren’t helping them build … More

Some Jobs Sentences Do in Science

I’ve been thinking a lot about how important sentences are in science. The new DfE Writing Framework puts sentences at … More

Building Sentences in Physics – Talking Precisely about Energy at KS 3&4

It’s a mistake to think that we don’t have time to explicitly teach the sentences that students need to talk … More

Words Flowing Through Me: Nothing Going In

Sometimes when I read, the words just flow through me. The meaning doesn’t go in. Comprehension isn’t passive: it takes … More

Build better sentences in science writing

How can we ensure students understand complex scientific ideas, beyond just recalling facts? Developing their ability to write clear, precise … More

Tier Three Vocabulary: The Forgotten Words`

How important is science vocabulary in everyday reading? Are geographical terms helpful outside of a geography lesson? To what extent … More