Let's Move On From Here...

There is no doubt that distance teaching is hard work. I am fortunate that my Team Leader is a wonderful woman who has lead from the front, so that the burden of planning what to teach and even how to teach it has been largely removed from us. We have a whole school, in-house online platform to set work and have "bought into" Century Learning which means that our time is spent monitoring, helping and supporting students. There are some online lessons, a bit of Loom, and a lot of emails and phoning home. A lot of kids are really not happy being away from friends and are really missing school; some are doing the minimum to keep my emails and phone calls at the "kindly prompt and encourage" level; some are clearly struggling. That's the bad news - and it is bad. Knowing that any child is struggling is awful and I hate it. But some of my students seem to be doing really well under the circumstances. They might be missing their friends and wishing for more free...

  What Every Teacher Needs To  Know About Reading   How were you taught to read?   Can you remember anything about the process? What about learning to talk? Can you remember that? Most people will have little or no memory of the process of language acquisition beyond those cute stories we are told about the words we could not pronounce. I wanted a “big R” for my birthday. Turns out, I had seen a violin in a music shop window, and I was trying to say guitar”! The acquisition of a first language – sometimes called a “mother tongue” – seems to be a natural process which the human brain has evolved to undergo. All the evidence suggests that unless a child is deprived of linguistic input in the critical period up to the age of 5 or 6, they will generate grammar. Even silent children who do not speak will have a complete grammar by the time they are about 3 years old. The same is not true of reading and writing – those are not natural skills and we have to be taugh...

How The Reading Gap Became A Grand Canyon in Lockdown. Some reflections on how poor readers have faired with distance learning.   In his excellent book, ‘Closing The Reading Gap’, Alex Quigley explores the impact that weak reading skills have on learning – not just in English, but in every subject. It is very, very good and if you have not already done so, I strongly suggest that you take a look at it. For some students, the “gap” that I knew was there became a gaping chasm under lockdown. I was on one side; the kids were on the other and I was desperately trying to reach them with a piece of rope that I began to realise was a tad short.   Not that I hadn’t realised that distance learning would be difficult with my lower school classes: my timetable is made up of small groups (8-12 pupils) with a range of barriers to their learning. Some have speech and communication difficulties, some are diagnosed ASD; there are students with Tourettes syndrome, ADHD, dyslexia, vis...