Designing and implementing a five year curriculum is no easy task: there are so many different things that need to be considered and combined. When we started out on our journey a few years ago, we…

Here are some explicit instruction approaches for teaching creative writing. All of these are explained in depth in my new book, Explicit English Teaching. Start with a model text The ideal model t…

CFU is really important in the I stage and the We stage of  a lesson. Students should be able to do independent practice (You stage) with minimal support and for this to happen, you need to use CFU…

In many subjects, lots of lessons are focussed on information transmission, building background knowledge and developing students’ ability to independently perform a specific skill. Here is o…

This is the first post in a series that will focus on the different stages of a typical explicit instructional sequence. You can find a generic lesson plan for an explicit instruction lesson here. …

We all know that reading is a good thing and schools that prioritise reading across subjects are probably on the right track. While the EEF ‘Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools’ rep…

Teaching students to write consistently well-structured essays is a vital part of our job as English teachers. Successful analytical writing will be made up of high quality components-precise vocab…

This post will explain how I teach students to write well-crafted pieces of persuasive writing. This is one of the strategies explained in my new book which is out now. This strategy leans on the a…

Here is a link to my presentation from the ResearchEd National Conference 2023. explicit-instruction-presentationDownload If you are interested in finding out more about these ideas, you may enjoy …

One of the key features of deliberate practice, a highly effective approach to teaching writing, is to approach instruction at the level of components, splitting up the complex task of extended com…

Let’s start by defining ‘explicit instruction’ as highly structured, interactive teaching where students are explicitly taught everything that they need before being asked to apply it in gradually …

In my last post, I outlined a number of efficient approaches for practising vocabulary. Below is a link where you can download a 2 page summary of these ideas. The summary has some additional ideas…

You can find the first four posts about retrieval practice here: one, two, three, four. In the last post, I explored a number of principles that underpin effective retrieval practice as well as the…

Extracts from novels can be really useful, helping students to practice language analysis and all sorts of other important skills. However, using complete short stories is often far more interestin…

Here is my presentation from the 2022 Festival of Education. teaching-writing-from-theory-to-practiceDownload

Here are some useful approaches for teaching the structure question: Start with literature texts that they know well Beginning with texts from their literature GCSE reduces the difficulty: students…

I have just started teaching Lord of The Flies to a year 8 class and here is an example lesson that follows an I-We-You/Explicit Instruction approach: I want students to understand and enjoy the te…

We have all taught classes where students struggle to write at length or develop their ideas in sufficient detail. But why is this? Why do students produce work that is closer to the bare minimum t…

You can find the first three posts about retrieval practice here: one, two, three. Everyone seems to be doing retrieval practice now and there is an abundance of research  in support of the effecti…

Out of both AQA English Language papers, question 4 on paper 1 is the biggest and most valuable, containing more marks than any other reading question. This blog outline some approaches that I have…

Vocabulary Practice This is the fourth blog post focussed on vocabulary, you can find the first three here: Explicit Vocabulary Instruction 1 Explicit Vocabulary Instruction 2 Explicit Vocabulary I…

Although there are many things involved in teaching English effectively, the process of helping students to access, think about and respond to challenging texts is one of the most important. Annota…

Whether you are new to the profession or an experienced teacher, there is always room for improvement. Instead of looking at general areas of improvement, it is often helpful to focus on specific c…

In the early stages of my teaching career I was sometimes told by observers that I should work on my pace. The feedback was almost always about increasing the pace of my lesson but this was rarely …

  Cognitive Load theory-and specifically the ‘worked example effect’-is dependent upon treating students as being somewhere upon a continuum between ‘novice’ and ‘expert’. The difference betwe…

Teaching writing through restrictive practice activities can be an efficient way of developing student expertise but how can you bridge the gap between drills and wider application? One of the conc…

You can find the first four posts about retrieval practice here: one, two, three, four. In the last post, I explored a number of principles that underpin effective retrieval practice as well as the…

‘The Handbook of Writing Research’ is a good overview of some of the current areas of research: So what approaches to teaching writing are effective? I have written previously about the importance …

This post will explore how to create multi-lesson instructional sequences that can help students to become fluent and develop a generalised, flexible understanding of whatever it is you choose to t…

One of the main goals of teaching English is to help pupils become better at writing. Expert writers seem to be able to write with minimal effort. They write quickly, accurately and effectively, th…

The 6 Skills: Three part Explanation Analytical Progression Model Tentative Language 3 Part Explanation Zoom In/Technique Multiple Interpretations Evidence in Explanation Link Across Text Why Teach…

I have written before about ‘The Instructional Hierarchy’, a framework that splits learning into five stages: AcquisitionFluencyRetentionGeneralisationAdaptation This blog will demonstr…

If you were to choose the best writers from a group of students, I would bet heavily that they are also avid readers. Pupils who read widely and regularly are often better at writing than pupils wh…

Making meaning is the core principle in learning, on which all other principles build. Consequently, a lot has been said in education about how meaning making looks like in the classroom, what is...

This is the fifth post looking at how ideas from Engelmann’s DI can be applied to the everyday classroom. The first four can be found here: one, two, three, four. While the last four posts have pri…

Explicit Vocabulary Teaching 3: Because, But, So In my last post, I looked at how we present our approach to explicit vocabulary teaching. When we first began codifying the vocabulary that we wante…

This is the seventh post in this series; you can find the other ones here: one, two, three, four, five, six. Here are some more short stories that I have enjoyed reading and teaching: The Last Ques…

A successful theory of learning does not imply a particular pedagogical approach.

Thoughts about teaching

Thoughts about teaching

Perhaps the most useful aspect of using whole class feedback is how it can inform future teaching. In an ideal world, feedback on extended writing should not require extensive remedial work or leng…

In my last post I tried to give an overview of the importance of teaching formal, academic vocabulary as well as how we approach it by mostly focussing on Tier 2 words (those that occur across a ra…

In my last post, I explained how teaching high utility things through a strand curriculum can be really effective and how it may be an improvement over the far more commonplace spiral approach to s…

This is the third post looking at the application of Cognitive Load Theory to teaching English. The first two can be found here and here. In Cognitive Load Theory, Sweller et al posit that ‘One ear…

This is the fourth post looking at the application of Cognitive Load Theory to teaching English. The first three posts can be found here: one, two, three. Teaching students how to write is an essen…

This is the seventh post in this series; you can find the other ones here: one, two, three, four, five, six. Here are some more short stories that I have enjoyed reading and teaching: The Last Ques…

Although there are lots of models for describing writing, many split it into three main cognitive processes: planning, writing (often called ‘translating’ in research) and reviewing. These processe…

The worked example effect would point to the importance of providing novice students with models in the early stages of an instructional sequence. Here are some tips and questions about modelling: …

Extracts from novels can be really useful, helping students to practice language analysis and all sorts of other important skills. However, using complete short stories is often far more interestin…

This is the sixth post in this series; you can find the others here: one, two, three, four, five Here are some more short stories that I have enjoyed reading and teaching: 1. Sonny’s Blues by James…

You can find the first two posts in this series here: one, two. In the last post, I explored the three different stages of cognitive processing that constitute ‘generative Learning’ and how each on…

The first part of this blog can be found here Procedural Knowledge and Scaffolding Students often struggle with extended writing because they lose sight of the plan or fail to consider that an essa…

Here are the slides from my presentation at The ResearchEd National Conference 2022. searched-national-conference-2022Download

This is the sixth post looking at how ideas from Engelmann’s DI can be applied to the everyday classroom. The first five can be found here: one, two, three, four, five Like the last post, this one …

Analytical Progression Model Tentative Language Three Part Explanation Zoom in/Technique Multiple Interpretations Evidence in Explanation Link Across Text Why teach it? If taught badly, focusing on…

Teaching students to write consistently well-structured essays is a vital part of our job as English teachers. Successful analytical writing will be made up of high quality components-precise vocab…

In my last post, I outlined an approach to low stakes quizzing, focussing on vocabulary retrieval. Although vocabulary is important, there are a number of other things that I want my students to re…

This is the seventh post in this series; you can find the other ones here: one, two, three, four, five, six. Here are some more short stories that I have enjoyed reading and teaching: The Last Ques…

In my last post, I gave an overview of retrieval practice and how it can be informed by whole class feedback. In this post, I will go over some different retrieval strategies, including how to appr…

This is the seventh post looking at how ideas from Engelmann’s DI can be applied to the everyday classroom. The first six can be found here: one, two, three, four, five, six Like the last post, thi…

This is the third post looking at the relevance and application of the five key philosophical principles that underpin Engelmann’s Direct Instruction. You can find the first one here and the second…

This post will explain how I teach students to write well-crafted pieces of persuasive writing. This is one of the strategies explained in my new book which is out now. This strategy leans on the a…