Reading – is phonics the only way?
10 September 2024
I was listening today to a Rest is Politics report from the Democratic Convention in Chicago today. It was mentioned in the report that only 22% of students graduate from school proficient in reading. The ethnicity stats are startling too ...
New exam, new curriculum design?
08 August 2024
In England there is a new GCSE in French, Spanish and German, which will first be examined in 2026, meaning that current Year 10 students will recently have started on the new course for the first time. Part of the rationale behind the new GCSE was to make the exam accessible to more students, and hence increase uptake at GCSE ...
Can Group Talk make a come back?
01 October 2023
The single most effective technique which I used in my (so far) 29 years of MFL teaching has been Group Talk, which I first came across in 2009. I’ve mentioned it to many people recently, as I think it suits the requirements of the new 2026 GCSE really well, and also, more importantly ...
Phonics: there is no other way
02 December 2022
I recently came across Professor Kathy Rastle, who presented at ResearchED in Oxford last weekend, through an explosion of excitement on Twitter and photos of the slides she was showing and the one that struck me most said ‘Phonics: there is no other way’.