Nathaniel Swain's Blog, page 3
August 30, 2022
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August 25, 2022
Supporting students with paragraph writing
Once students have mastered basic sentence-level strategies, it’s a great time to turn your attention firmly towards paragraph writing.
...August 13, 2022
Intermediate/Advanced Spelling through Morphology
There is a very common view about English spelling and you might even believe this yourself:
English spelling is crazy!?
There's 44 different sounds, but there's 500 plus ways to spell those sounds. So how can we teach spelling in a way that makes sense?
It is true that we don't always represent those 44 sounds in the same way. We don't have enough letters in English, so we have to combine some of those letters together to make these sounds. But we also, haven't been very consistent keeping the s...
May 10, 2022
Come-back with reason: Six ways to defend the Science of Reading
Welcome to the first post of Term 2 !
To launch this second term, I have put together a discussion piece detailing some of the biggest arguments used to attack the Science of Reading. A bit heavier than usual, but after participating in a lively debate as part of The Age Schools Conference, I was able to capture these ideas as well as some key ways you can defend the Science of Reading in the future. I hope it will be useful!
Where possible I’ve included further reading and research in the links t...
March 24, 2022
"I LOVE reading... Now" - Content that gets kids hooked on literacy
After participating in a lively debate as part of
The Age Schools Conference
, I am putting together a quick piece for next week which will detail some of the biggest arguments in the talk, and how best you might defend the Science of Reading in the future.
As a follow up to the post on the read 2 Learn (r2L) project a few weeks ago, I am excitedly reporting back on how our year 1s and 2s at Brandon Park Primary have enjoyed the Mesopotamia unit (discussed and made available via this post). After ...
March 10, 2022
Lesson out the window? Improvisation begets innovation
Kids are unpredictable. You may have the best norms and routines in place. You may be working, every minute of every lesson, to create a consistent and supportive learning environment. But you never really know what you will get when the students sit down to learn (or elect not to sit down!).
I’ve been reflecting recently on some sessions that have not gone to plan. My immediate reaction is a sense of failure, and of wishing I could have held it together. But a few occasions like this have also ...
