International Schools Blog

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.

Literacy skills are incredibly important for children and young people. The ability to read, write and communicate effectively is crucial in every subject and at every educational level, from primary classrooms to university lecture halls and beyond. What’s more, according to research from the National Literacy Trust, children who enjoy reading and writing are happier. So, how can we support students to develop these essential skills, and make literacy a priority in our international school classrooms?

After the challenges we’ve seen in education over the past year or so, we’ve been speaking to teachers and leading maths experts on how they see the changes to teaching and learning impacting on the future of primary maths.

On 1 April 2021, the Department for Education in England released updated essential core criteria that DfE-validated systematic synthetic phonics (SPP) programmes must adhere to and announced that they were launching a validation process closing in March 2022.

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. ​

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.

Our popular story writing competition is back and this year, we are giving you everything you need to run your very own ‘just-for-fun’ competition within your school.

Already an ActiveLearn customer or currently trialling it with your learners? Then this article is for you!

As learners around the world continue to learn from home, we held four free webinars to help you continue to teach maths and English online. You can watch the recordings on demand here.