Why use dramatic play?
What are the building blocks of making meaning? They transform ‘sensory input’ into language through gestures & movement, visuals, sounds and texts to express our experiences, feelings, values and beliefs.
Are We the Dumb Group?
Here I outline my plan to use dramatic play to strengthen the ground work by which ‘weak readers’ feel a sense of achievement by concentrating on learning decoding skills.
Dr Seuss, Reader’s Theatre & Phonemes
What could an infusion of dramatic play add to the learning of foundational literacy skills in lower secondary (Years 7 & 8)? This is what I show through the features I name in the previous blog: Voice & Intention; Speech Sounds (Phonemes), Audiences & Relationships and Reading Fluency.
Is Role Play Our Superpower?
How does cognitive science add to our understanding of role play in teaching and learning? What does it tell us about to most effectively use it in classroom contexts?
Teaching Vocabulary
There would be little disagreement on the importance of broadening and deepening the vocabulary of young people. In the preface to Teaching effective vocabulary , the 2008 Chief Adviser on School Standards in the UK, Sue Hackman, compares having a good vocabulary to ‘an artist’s palette of colours’. Vocabulary is more than a list of words, and … Read more
Now let’s talk about the hard stuff.
I think about the last two periods on a Friday when I teach Core Literacy to my Year Sevens. The list of challenges looms ever higher: the absentees I need to follow up on, the many requests to have a drink or go to the toilet, and the overwhelming, relentless effort I need to enact to help students remain focused on the planned work.
How Literacy Boosts My Overall Teaching
I’ve been teaching on the Literacy team for two years. If one word comes to mind about my participation, it is the careful way the scope and sequence of the programme reveal themselves. There is nothing imposed on me that I can’t relate to my students in terms of how the strategies work towards making them great readers via comprehension skills, oral language skills, mental models, and so much more.
What I Learned From Six Year Olds & A Rainforest
The 1998 primary arts publication The 1998 primary arts publication I worked on, which brought together a number of cross-curricular arts project for primary schools, is pictured on the right. As the resource was commissioned by five arts education associations, it was my role as chair of the joint committee to oversee the collection of … Read more