Category Archives: Uncategorized

Looking at the Remembrance Day poppies on lamp posts led me to reflect on the number of times children may come across the word sacrifice during their primary school years. It’s a concept that spans several subjects, creating diagonal links as explained by Clare Sealy here . So I thought I’d start a new seriesContinue reading “High yield vocabulary – Sacrifice”

One of the reasons I’m so passionate about building a high-quality history and geography curriculum is the positive impact that building a wide vocabulary has on children’s achievement, particularly in English. It’s important to deliberately plan the development of this, rather than leaving it to chance[1]. Coasts is an area I’ve thought about a lot,Continue reading “Building Understanding of Coasts In KS1 & KS2”

There’s a lot of focus on teaching reading through challenging novels, which is really important and valuable. But what about non-fiction? Do you have a balance between fiction and non-fiction in your reading lessons?* In this post, I will break down my ideas, specifically those involving reading and frequent short bursts of retrieval, from myContinue reading “Using Reading To Build Knowledge Across The Curriculum”

One of the most frequent requests for help across primary education social media is with choices of fiction text. I often find these difficult to answer, because there are so many factors to take into consideration when making these choices. Reading is an extremely powerful tool that can be used for a variety of differentContinue reading “Choosing fiction texts to use with your class”

the achievements of the earliest civilizations – an overview of where and when the first civilizations appeared and a depth study of one of the following: Ancient Sumer; The Indus Valley; Ancient Egypt; The Shang Dynasty of Ancient China An element of the KS2 History National Curriculum that is often forgotten is the overview ofContinue reading “Why should you teach an overview of ancient civilisations?”

A criticism of schools choosing to teach a knowledge-rich curriculum is that they are treating children like robots, who they bombard with dry facts, rather than developing children’s curiosity. It is often assumed that in these schools, children will have no say in what they are learning and will lack independence of thought, as teachersContinue reading “How can curiosity, pupil choice and independent thinking be developed as part of a knowledge-rich curriculum?”

Last year, in the first three parts of this series of posts, I described a variety of strategies that could be used by both class teachers and school leaders in order to increase the number of exposures to key concepts and vocabulary children experience. I’ve also explained how I would use cross-curricular links to strengthenContinue reading “History & geography curriculum decisions (Part 4)”

This is the next in my series of posts about sequencing topics and how they can build on children’s prior knowledge. As I’ve said previously, there are many ways for schools to deliver the National Curriculum, so please don’t worry if your school doesn’t teach this topic in the way I’m describing. I’m not sayingContinue reading “Why you should teach the Stone Age to Iron Age in Upper KS2”

I created this resource to use in my classroom this year, and thought I’d share in case anyone else found it useful. 20 fact files including location and mainly physical geography of countries, which will be displayed around a world map. There’s a blank template too so you can add other countries to suit yourContinue reading “Country fact files for display”

After my last post, I was asked what my thoughts about history and geography next year are, so I thought I’d write a new post on the topic. These are just some of my personal suggestions, and as usual I need to say that this isn’t the definitive way to approach this because every schoolContinue reading “How should we adapt the history and geography curriculum next year?”