We genuinely think there is no better gift than that of a book at Christmas. It can allow you to choose something so personal and thoughtful for a treasured friend to reflect your friendship or relationship, or can allow you…
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Last month we looked at the importance of vocabulary acquisition on the development of children’s comprehension skills. The main message here being that the more words children understand on the page, the more chance they have of understanding the text…
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Class teachers need to make the most out of their teaching assistants and undoubtedly a well-placed, well-prepared assistant can change the course of a lesson and ultimately the course of children’s lives. As TAs are usually on lunch/playground duty, they can also build relationships with children that…
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Adjusting to the new normal is something we all must do at certain junctures in our lives: seasons change and landscapes shift. And what could be more apt in this season of autumn to draw upon the eloquent musings in…
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A question we are asked time and again, especially by year 6 teachers, is 'how do we build children's stamina for reading?' It’s an important question, and one we know is grounded in preparing children for SATs rather than any…
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We have chosen some of our favourite non-fiction books that are beautifully illustrated too! Many of these are hardback and feel like the kind of reference book you’d want to keep out on your coffee table too!
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The overarching aim for English in the national curriculum is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written language, and to develop their love of literature through widespread…
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As the nights are drawing in there is always a sense of wonder at the inky blanket across the world, the stars in the night sky and the feeling of cosying up on the sofa perhaps with a log fire…
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In the month of celebrating the birthday of the late Cesária Evora, the Cape Verdean vocalist and recording artist nicknamed the ‘barefoot diva’, we are thinking about stars: stars in the fame and fortune sense as well as stars that…
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It’s this time of year again. As the curtains close on Summer, minds tentatively return to the logistics of setting up a classroom and as always there are many questions bouncing down school corridors: Which books will I be using?…
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We've taken the top of our TBR* piles and reviewed them for you in case you needed to create your own pile. And if if you didn't, well have a look and be nosey about what we've enjoyed of late.…
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It’s nearing the end of the school year and the promise of the summer holiday - those endless (hopefully) sun-lit days - is tantalisingly close. But first there are sports days, concerts and fetes to attend. There are also change-up…
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The planning process is an important one especially when tackling extended narratives. It acts as a bridge between children doing sentence/word level work, writing short extracts, and knitting all of these skills together into cohesive and finished stories. It allows…
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We have chosen some of our favourite scientific books – there’s something here for everyone to get geeky about! There is a mixture of narratives that contain scientific characters and contexts, narrative non-fiction texts that give us information about scientists…
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At this time of year we are thinking about transition from year 6 to year 7 and what better text to use for this than A Beautiful Lie by Irfan Master? Now, as this is a fairly meaty text with an intricate…
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This time of year always feels full of hope: the days are longer; the sun shines over our corner of the world (at least on some days) and there is a sense of life and light. And those are our themes for this month’s review - life…
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It is a usual Monday morning at school. I am charging around the corridors getting resources ready for the day ahead - the ever-too-short weekend already a distant memory. It is always on a Monday morning – at 08:30 GMT…
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There is much talk in the world of education at the moment around the ‘million word gap’ and we know that there is a direct correlation between how much children are read to and the size of their vocabularies. Unfortunately,…
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