Writing

The National Writing Project website: really accessible and creative ideas to get teachers and students writing

http://www.nwp.org.uk/in-your-classroom.html

Cybergrammar – Debra Myhill’s guide with mini tutorials that help teachers identify grammar structures and their functions

http://www.cybergrammar.co.uk

Once upon a picture – high quality illustrations to stimulate writing or to use in combination with each other/with texts to stimulate thinking about genre and theme

 

Keeping current with fiction

Books for Keeps – you can subscribe to their newsletter for free.

http://booksforkeeps.co.uk

Love reading 4 kids

http://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk

Picture books blogger – recent, reviewed and categorised

https://picturebooksblogger.wordpress.com/author/picturebooksblogger/

Suggested ‘core’ book lists linked to year groups

CLPE Core books online Teachers need to register, but this is a free resource with a distinction made between books for learning to read and books to develop higher order thinking about self, texts, the world…

Guiding readers The website linked to Tennent, Hobsbaum, Reedy and Gamble’s excellent ‘Guiding readers – layers of meaning.’  Junior phase recommendations only

Pie Corbett’s Reading Spine Recommendations for a spine of quality texts Year R to 6

Poetry

CLPE Poetry line guide to poetic forms and devices

https://www.clpe.org.uk/poetryline/poetic-forms-and-devices

EMCs Poetry Station: poetry in performance, film, animation. Many current GCSE anthology poems

http://poetrystation.org.uk

The Poetry Archive: national lottery funded, adult and children’s sites. Readings, commentary, teaching resources

http://www.poetryarchive.org

The American equivalent – you can sign up for a poem a day in your in-box (and/or ‘teach this poem’). If poetry hasn’t found you/you haven’t found it, you could try immersion therapy.

https://www.poets.org

Poetry by Heart – KS1-5 poems to read aloud or learn by heart, teacher resources, competitions

 

Subject Associations

The English and Media Centre – most resources are commercially available, but lots of sound and well researched advice in their blogs:

https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/blog/

 

The National Association for Teachers of English (NATE) – more yielding if you/your school is a member, but there are some free resources

https://www.nate.org.uk

 

UKLA: at times more primary focused but the resources and links to research are generous

https://ukla.org

 

Big thinkers, big hitters

Robin Alexander: Professor of Education at Cambridge, pioneer of dialogic teaching and Director of The Cambridge Primary Review

http://www.robinalexander.org.uk

 

Neil Mercer: Professor of Education at Cambridge University and Director of the study centre, Oracy@Cambridge. Developed the Thinking Together project and materials with Lyn Dawes, Karen Littleton and Rupert Wegerif

https://thinkingtogether.educ.cam.ac.uk

 

Debra Myhill: Professor of Education at Exeter University and part of the research team at the Centre for Research in Writing

http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/education/research/centres/centreforresearchinwriting

Debra’s Cybergrammar site offers mini tutorials for teachers on grammar subject knowledge, implications for teaching each grammar structure and helpful mini-tests

http://www.cybergrammar.co.uk

 

Robert Coe: Professor of Education and Director of the Durham University Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring, co-author of the What makes great teaching report for The Sutton Trust

http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/great-teaching

He and other researchers at the centre blog regularly at

http://cem.org/blog/

 

Researchers

http://www.learningscientists.org/blog?category=For+Teachers

http://www.deansforimpact.org/blog.html

http://cem.org/blog/what-is-worth-reading-for-teachers-interested-in-research

 

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