International Schools Blog

These books with diverse characters and settings will inspire your high school students and provide plenty of material for classroom discussion.

This academic year started a whole new chapter for schools but how can we better promote a healthy reading culture? Storyteller and educational trainer, Alec Williams shares his top tips for building your school reading culture to inspire every child to become a reader.

Novels, short stories, poems and plays offer readers an unique opportunity. Literature provides a new perspective on the world, an understanding of experiences very different from your own, and an insight into different environments and cultures through the writings of authors past and present.

After global school shutdowns, learning loss has become a significant problem for students everywhere. According to the majority of teachers in a McKinsey survey on lost learning, school closures have led to students being up to six months behind where they would usually be in terms of learning.

In this article, Hannah Hirst-Dunton, author of our grammar and punctuation programme Building Blocks, shares the questions about grammar she’s most commonly asked!

Giving children a high quality Reception experience can have a positive impact on their future development and achievement. Extensive research shows that high quality early education plays a significant role in promoting children’s development, both cognitively and socially. Although this isn’t a useful measure for individuals, there is a correlation between achievement and learning outcomes at age 5 and later GCSE results – and by extension, later achievement as well. ​

Alongside the many other events of 2020, we also released our new core English, Maths and Science courses for learners aged 11-14. Inspire English International, Maths Progress International and Exploring Science International are designed to support an age group we all too often overlook – and a school stage that some educationalists have called ‘the lost years’.

We hoped you enjoyed running your in-school Twist on a Tale competitions this year and if you didn’t get a chance, you can still organise your own writing challenge for the new year using the resources in this post.

Since its launch 10 years ago, Bug Club, our blended whole-school reading programme, has been capturing the imagination of almost 2 million children across the globe, helping them to develop a love of reading and with it, nurturing lifelong readers.

Wherever you are, and whatever type of international school you’re in, it’s a fact that all students have had their learning affected by the school closures brought about by the global pandemic this year. It’s also true that all teaching professionals want to identify gaps in learners’ skills and knowledge, yet identifying those gaps and deciding if they are important or not isn’t always straightforward.