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West Ham looked tired yesterday
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@J-Rod in February 2022
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Disciplinary Literacy #1/6 **This is the first post in a series that will detail the journey our school, Mounts Bay Academy, is undertaking to implement some of the strategies detailed in the EEF Guidance Report on Secondary Literacy.** John Rodgers, Cornwall Associate Research School **The Context** At the end of the 2021 summer term, my principal tasked me with leading and implementing a whole school improvement strategy focused on literacy. As I am the Co-Director of…
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Disciplinary Literacy #2/6 This is the second post of my series describing our school’s implementation journey with disciplinary vocabulary. The EEF ****Guidance Report**** on Implementation details the process by which schools and organisations can successfully deliver impactful change. The iterative cycle begins with the Explore phase. As we began our journey into disciplinary vocabulary at Mounts Bay Academy (Penzance), it was imperative that we explored the issue of…
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We are what we walk between We are what we walk between In David Foster Wallace’s novel, Infinite Jest, the 70 year old Head Coach and Athletic Director of the Enfield Tennis Academy, Gerhardt Schtitt, is reminiscing about his boyhood tennis facilities and tells Mario that the motto was “We are what we walk between.” He explains that a myth of the Euclidian shortest path exists in the minds of the young tennis players. “This myth of competition and bestness... the story that…
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Disciplinary Literacy #3/6 In his book “Closing the Vocabulary Gap”, Alex Quigley describes a seminal moment in his understanding of the difficulties students face on a daily basis. Trailing a student from lesson to lesson throughout a school day, Alex saw first hand the demands placed on students as they encounter and deal with the complex academic code of that subject’s disciplinary vocabulary. A student might begin with Maths, learning about algebra or geometry,…
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What does noise think about Ukraine?
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Disciplinary Literacy #4/6 Strategies Over the first 3 blog posts in this series, I have tried to lay out the exigent case for disciplinary literacy and explain our contextual decision to focus of disciplinary vocabulary. Now, I would like to look at some of the strategies to teach vocabulary that we have explored. This is not an exhaustive list of strategies by any means, but should give the reader a flavour of approaches they may take if exploring explicit and direct…