Here at Primary English HQ we’ve been busy assembling some of the spookiest children’s books we know to help you and your class enjoy some ghoulishly good learning this Halloween. We have ghostly Guided Reading Packs, spooky sets of Starting Points and a wicked Whole Class Reading Sequence.

Our director, Rachel, takes you on a walk through guided reading.

Explicit, planned, and strategic strategies for teaching vocabulary are at the core of the Primary English approach to teaching vocabulary. However, we also love to have fun and in this article we exemplify some of our vocabulary resources and how they can help you and your class play with words.

Phonics, what's all the fuss about? Well to start with there's the ongoing debate between those who love it and those who don't - 'The Reading Wars'. All that hot air about over-reliance on one strategy; all those high frequency words that aren't phonically regular; oh and all those opinions about nonsense words. A quick Google search about phonics can open up a regular kan of wurms on this topic. The incredible thing is, when we wend our way round our schools this isn't the part of phonics that gets educators steamy under the collar.

In this article we recommend approaches to promote reading aloud in your school. Compiled by the members of our Teachers’ Reading Group, each and every recommendation has been tried and tested in real schools. If you’re looking to put reading at the heart of your school, we think our post will give you some great starting points.

Love it or loathe it, guided reading is probably the most well-used strategy for teaching reading in the UK. This popular post collects together a range of ideas to help you plan for meaningful guided reading sessions.

A hugely popular article considering story structure and how understanding it, can help children with their own writing.

Advice and guidance on getting the most from hearing children read. Suitable for teachers and teaching assistants, this article offers quick and easy advice to spruce up your reading practice.

A hugely popular article signposting the suite of Primary English resources to support teaching and learning in reading. Planners, questions and prompts to support all aspects of the Content Domain for reading in KS1 and KS2.

A selection of teaching ideas for The Polar Express to get you and your class feeling Christmassy.

This article combines learning about poetry with a Christmas craft activity and can even be extended to include a quick and attractive classroom display.

On the off-chance that you’re stumped for a writing activity to squeeze into the window between the school carol service and the staff buffet, we’ve collated a few quick and easy Christmas themed writing opportunities.

A round up of books to read aloud to your class this Christmas.

After spending a few weeks under the dustsheets, I’m delighted to say that here at Primary English HQ, we’ve put away the colour charts, packed up the wallpaper paste and washed out our painting brushes. Our website renovation is over, and I think you’ll agree we’re looking rather striking.

In this article I share some of the children’s books I take to schools when training teachers and TAs about vocabulary. To know a word well requires: “Rich, decontextualised knowledge of a word’s meaning, its relationship to other words, and its extension to metaphorical uses.” Beck, McKeown, & Omanson (1987). The quotation above finds its way into all the vocabulary training that I do. To me it sums up what word learning is all about.

In this article, I take a brief look at supporting children to identify themes in texts.

The National Curriculum asks that children in Year 5 and Year 6 identify and discuss themes and conventions in writing. But what are themes?Themes are not the plot and they are not the genre. Instead, themes are the underlying messages that exist beneath the words written on the page. They are the big ideas that the author is trying to convey to the reader. 

I’m currently big on graphic organisers. It’s the way that graphic organisers make it easier for children to articulate their understanding that I particularly like. But also, it’s the way that a really good graphic organiser lends itself to a multitude of educational requirements. The Freyer model (sometimes called the Freyer diagram) is one such graphic organiser.

Writing for purpose and audience in order to fill the gaps in children’s writing.

How our fantastic FREE Progression Document can help you plan for narrative writing across KS1 and KS2.

The first in a series of posts about putting the playfulness into vocabulary learning.