All well and good but what criteria are you using to assess them? There is no agreed component knowledge bank that anyone could use so assessment is based on loosely defined skills. Most oracy frameworks are built on pedagogy not knowledge and I don't want oracy dictating my pedagogy.

ICYMI Here's this week's blog offering practical classroom strategies to get reading into your lessons across the curriculum. This week, pledge to ditch YouTube just once and #GetReadingIntoIt

My Twitter/X account has been hacked, and I can no longer access it. In other words, I'm no longer on Twitter/X and any new messages aren't from me. You can still follow me on BlueSky. Please spread the word here and also on Twitter/X.

Banning children from social media risks undermining the role of schools as ‘places where pornography, extremist views, and addictive shortform video content can be encountered reflectively and with support’. There. Fixed the post for you.

Not everything that feels supportive actually helps. Coloured paper and invented retention rates tell a bigger story about why bad ideas persist in schools. open.substack.com/pub/daviddid...

School leaders tend to have a "make it work" mentality. If they didn't, the system would collapse. But by propping up a broken and underfunded system it demonstrates that actually it does work. The funding is enough. So schools will never get the funding they need unless we let the wheels fall off.

🚨New Blog Alert🚨 Get Reading Into It We examine some of the barriers to reading for pleasure, and dig into some of the classroom practice that puts reading on the sideline. There's also 5 Top Tips to get reading into your lessons! literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/20...

And this is why our resources are pdf not some digital platform. The experience of reading words on paper, discussing content, and questioning language in a paper based text is one of the most powerful learning experiences a student can have. Literacyengine.co.uk

EdTech tools get an investment of £23m. Secondary schools get £5m for books. Now tell me where reading sits on the government's list of priorities. #YearOfReading #GoAllIn2026

Angela Rayner was hounded out by the media over one £40k underpayment. Farage breaches the MPs code of conduct 17 times and failures to declare £380k of outside interests. I wonder what treatment he'll get from the press... 🤔

But what happens in practice? Last week only 17% of secondary teachers left site, compared with 33% of primary. Lunch was the most common time for primary; non-teaching time for secondary. One tapper then asked: how enforceable are “no leaving site” rules? We’re checking 👀

A tapper got in touch after seeing a TikTok of a teacher using their lunch break to go clothes shopping 👀 They asked: can teachers leave site? Rules say many can ✅: 73% of primary and 57% of secondary can leave at lunch. Bans are more common in secondary (21%) than primary (3%).

When we talk about recruitment & retention and the impact of workload we don't often include the intensity of the school day. The sustained cognitive load and relentless nature of a teaching/leading load is often as difficult to manage as the long hours or volume of work. #SaveEducation

Received my advance copies of 'Leading Secondary English' from @bloomsburyed.bsky.social today. A great feeling to finally hold it in my hands! 😍 Out on 12 February. Pre-order now: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/leading-s...

Spent the morning planning, writing resources, and working on admin for @literacyengine.bsky.social. I am properly excited by some of the things we have in store for 2026 from new packs to new CPD. #GoAllIn2026 #NationalYearOfReading Literacyengine.co.uk

Could you be a speaker at the Litdrive National Conference?! We’d love to hear from teachers/colleagues across a wide range of contexts who have something practical, thoughtful, or genuinely useful to share. If that sounds like you - sign up here: forms.gle/qTA6wAYX1oeU...

Spent the morning planning, writing resources, and working on admin for @literacyengine.bsky.social. I am properly excited by some of the things we have in store for 2026 from new packs to new CPD. #GoAllIn2026 #NationalYearOfReading Literacyengine.co.uk

The English Strand at TTR Connect 2026! So far, we have announced eight speakers with many more to come! Check them out here: www.ttradio.org/english26 and get a free ticket here: www.ttradio.org/connect2026

Ah Jendrick. Another day spent fighting for a better life for the people of his constituency.

Had to leave the webinar half way through before the announcement of the classroom based support plans. Does anyone have any idea when the recording will be available? #GoAllIn2026 #YearOfReading

When you join the #GoAllIn2026 launch wrbinar later, keep a student in mind. Apply what you see to them specifically. Which strategies on offer will get them reading? Which strategies have you already tried? It is all too easy to make grand gestures but actual impact is a different thing entirely.

Hallucinations are part of the LLM model. They "imagine" quotes from texts we are studying that look plausible unless you know the text extremely well. Checking for errors is often as time consuming as producing something from scratch. AI has a place. It is a powerful tool. But it must work for us.

Taking a break from counting the number of people writing the new PE National Curriculum to make a cup of tea. Counting will resume shortly.

I'm fearful that this will become a lot of people that love books talking about why they love books. I'll be joining the launch webinar this week with notepad at the ready for practical strategies, initiatives, and resources to get my Year 9s off social media and into a good book. #GoAllIn2026

Hear me out. How about reducing workload rather than "optimising energy levels"? 🤪

My school will be advertising a maths teacher job vacancy this week. Please get in touch by DM or email if you're interested and want more information. Happy to show potential candidates around. Brilliant team, amazing maths results, happy students. Teaching KS3-5. South London. September start.

If your defence of Grok image manipulation is to say you can do the same with Photoshop or scissors and glue you miss the part where the image gets shared with a billion users. Unless of course you are in the habit of emailing your photoshop work to vast contact lists of course.

With Curriculum Cogs, we took the entire KS3 national curriculum for Geography, History, & Science and created extended reading packs for every single topic. There really is no excuse for driving reading from our classrooms. #GetReadingIntoIt! literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/cu...

Just finished the finale of House. Brilliant show, completely fudged ending. Why can't writers write endings to TV shows? Name a show where the finale did the quality of the TV show justice. (And you can't say Blackadder)

Tangential, I know, but I find wanting to foster a love of reading somewhat frustrating. I am fully literate but read no more than a couple of non-fiction books a year. I never read fiction. I feel no shame in this though the way some talk suggests I should. >>

I feel my life is fulfilled, though maybe I don’t know what I’m missing. However, I can’t see why this is any different to my lack of interest in fine art, or jazz, or various other art forms. >>

I do take pleasure from reading articles on a range of topics. Perhaps that’s a love of reading, but if so, I’ve never heard this interpretation used in schools. Maybe this is off-putting to and counterproductive for some students too - suggesting reading about their interests is somehow inferior.

ICYMI here's yesterday's blog. "Why Reading for Pleasure Takes More Than a Love of Books" We expend a vast amount of time, energy, & resources in the pursuit of the mythical "love of reading". Is it time well spent? What can we do instead? literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/20...

ICYMI here's yesterday's blog. "Why Reading for Pleasure Takes More Than a Love of Books" We expend a vast amount of time, energy, & resources in the pursuit of the mythical "love of reading". Is it time well spent? What can we do instead? literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/20...

A short blog from me to ease into the #NationalYearOfReading. "Why Reading for Pleasure Takes More Than a Love of Books" literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/20...

A short blog from me to ease into the #NationalYearOfReading. "Why Reading for Pleasure Takes More Than a Love of Books" literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/20...

Signed up for the #NationalYearOfReading launch weiner today. I'm excited to hear what practical solutions they have in store to get secondary students back into Reading for Pleasure.

Apparently my hacked Twitter profile has now blocked @literacyengine.bsky.social on Twitter. It feels oddly violating that someone else is inside that account actively "doing stuff". The worst thing is I can't shut the account down. So I now need another account just so that I can "own" me on there.

A 'billionaire' is worth more than one thousand million. It desensitises that sum as it sounds like a million. To devalue it even further hides that obscene wealth.

What a great start it would be to the #NationalYearOfReading if the government were to ban social media for under 18s. Giving children access to social media should be as stigmatised as giving them alcohol, tobacco, and gambling.

EdTech: Get kids off boring worksheets and onto 1 to 1 devices to improve engagement and collaboration. Also EdTech: Get kids off harmful screens by using this AI to generate worksheets. 🤪

Please note. My Twitter account (@SimBadd64) has been compromised. Please do not respond to any Direct Messages you receive from that account while we try to recover access.

As we enter January our students will read about age restricted content, where money gets its value, and the right to protest. Young people need arming with knowledge of the world around them & how it works so they can thrive safely as adults. literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/ge...

Before asking students to get reading into their leisure time, we need to get reading back into lesson time. Make 2026 the year you ditch YouTube and bring reading back to the top of the class. Check out our Curriculum Cogs to get you started. literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/cu...

🚨New Resources Alert 🚨 February is now online including: ⚙️How to spot manipulative online behaviour ⚙️What are deep fakes? ⚙️What is misinformation? The eagle eyed amongst you will spot the first update in our "Get Reading Into It" campaign too! 🙊🤫 literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/ge...

Our extended reading model and the study of non-fiction texts provide a powerful & evidence-based method for teaching PSHE, SMSC, British Values, and Citizenship topics. Drop us a message to start the discussion about how we can help you today! #Literacy literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/de...

Next week we enter December with a look the 1st female MP and a profile on Ozzy Osbourne. We also dig into Waves as part of our KS3 Science curriculum reading. How do your students start their day? literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/ge...

⚙️🚨NEW RESOURCES ALERT🚨⚙️ We are starting 2026 with some challenging topics including: 💶 The launch of the Euro and what actually is money? 🪧 What is the right to protest 💻 What is pornography? Extended reading & structured discussion embedded daily literacyengine.co.uk/index.php/ge...

When we built our Interactive Read Aloud model, we started with the evidence around what works well. We built a cross curricular model that supports colleagues outside their specialism to deliver high impact, knowledge rich reading sessions. Literacyengine.co.uk

We took every topic across KS3 Geography, History, and Science and turned them into 10-15 minute academic reads. That's 140+ texts covering every aspect of those KS3 curricula. It is time to ditch the video and put reading back to the top of the class. Literacyengine.co.uk