Since the fall of the Soviet Union, English has become the international language of physics. For most physicists, English is … More
Tag: reading
Strong Writing is Different In Every Subject But Weak Writing Is All The Same
Each subject writes differently. Strong history writing balances evidence to reach conclusions about significance, cause and consequence or similarity and … More
Why Don’t Physicists Just Write Clearly?
Physicists have a terrible reputation for being bad communicators. Physics English is known for being dense and impenetrable. Everyone loves … More
What Counts as a High Quality Text in a Primary Science Classroom?
We should be reading more high quality books to children, but which books should we choose? Literacy books, blogs and … More
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
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
Reading for Learning 