💯 this! For secondary English as well as primary. The example of developing creative writing through talk and role-play is such a good one!

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I really enjoyed reading this blog and the issues are relevant in many ways to how we teach writing in English. Which is preferable - authentic writing where young people use language to express something meaningful, or performative writing, constrained by assessment objectives and mark schemes?

If you are looking for inspo for the National Year of Reading, the National literacy Trust are holding two seminars with a fab line-up of guest speakers. In York & Plymouth. Reimagine teenage reading: teenage reading seminars. literacytrust.org.uk/secondary/se...

Great thread. Interesting to think of this through a secondary lens when disciplinary reading can provide new challenges for all students, including our more confident readers.

I love the caption on this display, 'But remember ALL words can be wow words so play with them all.'

Now, coordinating, here's the key. Students aren't just "encoding" and "storing" knowledge tokens. As a class, we're coordinating a way of *doing* biology that includes a way of seeing, talking about, and explaining biology. This coordination begins in the first lesson...

Excellent🧵with another refreshing interrogation of (over-simplified) cogsci thinking. How learning happens incrementally over time as students develop meaning through immersion in the discipline.

Btw we are a fully comprehensive school and the lessons visited today mostly involved students of mid/lower prior attainment with a very varied range of needs. Real classrooms with all the associated joys and challenges.

Yes, agreed. The more I think about it, the more unhelpful I think it is! Yes, Jessie's RAV study is powerful stuff and doesn't show vocab "shrinkage" @theguardian.com - is it possible to revise this article?

Big day for us today as we hosted an Open Morning for Voice 21 schools in the NE. I am so humbled & a little overwhelmed by the wonderful feedback. We're in yr3 of our oracy journey & it's a pleasure to be leading on this. We see classroom talk as absolutely central to learning in all subjects.

Powerful.

in this blog i outline the theory of change for linguistic justice in schools that i am working with and hoping to develop as part of my Leverhulme Trust @leverhulme.ac.uk project, beginning in the autumn 💜

A brilliant series of think pieces about English curriculum reform. Now is the time to reinvigorate English in the ways outlined here which reflect the spirit of the CAR.

We spend a lot of time talking about engagement. Much less time talking about investment. This short, free guide explores how schools can move from "what's the point" to kids getting properly stuck in - day in, day out - by design 📘 Implementing botheredness (12-min read) Link in comments below

Very much looking forward to reading this and discussing it with colleagues.

Fascinating report on the impact of the Science of Reading - findings in a US context reveal the need to move beyond surface level understanding of texts to focus on developing robust comprehension.

This is why we slowed down our phonics learning and built in a school wide reading for pleasure programme (thank you @teresacremin.bsky.social and team). CLPE has helped us to shift away from atomised grammar and we have 'every place is a reading place' nooks and crannies all over. Our kids ❤️ books.

Absolutely. Lots of very popular poets online. And lots of access to a very wide range of poetry online if books are too expensive e.g. why not let students browse The Poetry Archive, The Poetry Foundation, Poetry by Heart, The Poetry Station (EMC), with a theme in mind, or a kind of poetry?

Reading in Geography. This tantalising book display caught my eye in our library. Y7 Geographers are doing some research in the library & also browsing/borrowing these books. Super collab between our Geog HOD and librarian to encourage diff types of reading & make it enjoyable.

It’s absolutely disgraceful. For all the talk of levelling up, closing gaps, etc etc, all we have is the repeated cycle of the rich getting richer…. And the children are stuck in the middle.

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue

This just creates a further divide across the sector- more haves and more have-nots bsky.app/profile/char...

Macbeth off the page: Bringing performance techniques to your lessons (10 February 2026, 16:45 – 17:30) Transform the curriculum into action with actor-led techniques to boost student engagement and simplify Shakespeare’s complex themes. Follow link below /sign up! 😊⬇️⬇️

I had a go at a linguistic take on some of the reporting around recent events in the USA, and the wider problems of the media reporting on the police, in this piece published today: bylinetimes.com/2026/01/29/w...

A lack of diversity, primary specialists (esp KS1 and EYs), SEND and a lack of experience working in the north of England. This was the chance for fresh eyes. But, instead we have the same people who have worked on all of this before. A missed opportunity. bsky.app/profile/scho...

Every year, on National Holocaust Day, I remember my family who disappeared in the Shoah & share a few photographs. Here are my great-grandmother, Sarah, my great-aunt, Karola, and Judith, her daughter. I think too of those who have died & are dying in wars & genocides today.

Genuine question - what's the next step for the curriculum rewrite? Is it left to two white men to redraft the entire English curric? Or is there an intermediate stage involving all the brilliant, diverse people who work in English education?

I dislike the term: "check *for* understanding". It's as if there is an understanding "out there", and students must "store" it. Teachers check if they have "stored" it correctly. "Check understanding" is better. Students are meaning makers. We must check the meanings they've made. #UKEd #EduSky

The lack of diversity is unacceptable. It's the first thing that jumped out at me when I saw the list of drafters. How out of touch are the DFE?

Good to see a thoughtful TL eduthread. Based on my experience, I'd agree that the longer you teach the same AL course, the more able you are to predict & therefore preempt common errors/misconceptions. And then more unique issues arise for each student which are better dealt with one-one.

This ⬇️⬇️📚📘📕📖📙📗

You are right. There is very little robust evidence that many of these online programmes work (except Abra) I have seen a couple that I strongly suspect will have a negative impact on students reading ability, their confidence as readers and their general sense of efficacy as learners.

I wonder if anyone else has had an issue with flags appearing outside their school? On Tues, Armistice Day, we arrived to find flags on all the lamp posts directly outside our school. A generous take is that they were put there for Armistice but the HT v quickly emailed the sch community to ...

Our cognitive drive is to act with ideas, interact with others, interact with the world. Adapting; being part of something, shaping it. Our cognitive drive is to co-regulate, not be regulated. To converse. The brain isn't a thinker, it's an actor.

I don't think booklets enable responsive teaching and learning. I never teach the same lesson twice in exactly the same way because all classes respond differently, which is one joy of (English) teaching. There are many other issues too, such as teacher agency.

Yes! And a school might even be tempted to include a bit of language study in their English curriculum before that (possibly) happens.

A nice, straightforward explainer from BBC Bitesize about new words and how word use is monitored and evaluated for inclusion in dictionaries. Five new words for 2026 - BBC Bitesize share.google/gLGi6BuVxsRK...

You heard them - do this!

Speechless really. My y13 class has been reading and discussing many of her brilliant blog posts just this week. We love her ideas and how they challenge us to think deeply about the link between language, gender and inequality. She's an inspiration to us all.

Our Head of Programmes, Catherine Pass, joined @moorhouseinstitute.com on their latest episode of The DLD Download 🎉 Want to learn more about oracy and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)? You can listen below👇 www.moorhouseinstitute.com/the-dld-down...

I wrote this a while back. Re-posting as a reminder of the limits of phonics.

Synthetic phonics 'ineffective' for teaching children with persistent reading difficulties. New blog, outlining an important research paper from experts in Primary Reading (also relevant to secondary imo). www.ljmu.ac.uk/about-us/new...

A White Fairytale, Holy Island, Northumberland, 2017, photo by Emma Rothera, Lindisfarne-based landscape and nature photographer.

Students (and Eng staff!) love this book so much we’ve had to order in more class sets to keep up with demand. Thank you @tiafisher.bsky.social @hotkeybooks.bsky.social #CrossingtheLine

Yesterday I saw a GCSE Eng Lit exam script. It was incoherent, repeating endlessly half-understood phrases (drawn from internet cribs?), ludicrous vocab shoe-horned in, no telling egs, unconvincing points on technique. It was given just off a 9. I'd have said a 4 at most. My colleagues agreed. 🧵

Excellent🧵 Next week, I'm jointly delivering a session on DLD and Oracy with our SENCO & MAT Speech & Language Therapy team. We're a secondary school. @voice21oracy.bsky.social also has good resources on supporting students with DLD, which reference some of the brill orgs mentioned here.

A few years ago, we changed our y7 baseline reading screener to one which could also identify slow-processing-speed in students with strong verbal reasoning. The new screener is more expensive but it's so important to identify needs as early as possible in the secondary school journey.

This is outrageous. What on earth are they thinking? Thank goodness the article quotes Lee Elliott Major, an expert in social mobility. TH should be more self reflexive & ask better questions abt why it may be harder for some sts to flourish. Would I advise a student to apply to TH atm? No.

New: DfE-funded CPD teacher training programme to support struggling readers in secondary. If you are SLT and/or Reading Lead looking to improve reading outcomes, you may want to book onto a Spring term roadshow to find out more & get access to the online CPD platform. fft.org.uk/literacy/unl...