In this month's news we announce our new Share a Read campaign, look forward to our Maths Festival, explore Development Support for early years, look at the research around Key Primary Challenges and Priorities and introduce a new CPD course about Primary History and Geography.
Share your favourite books with our Share a Read campaign!
We’re kicking off our Share a Read campaign to encourage more people to pick up a book and feel the benefits of reading for pleasure. Whether you’re reading for yourself, or with students or family, we want you to discover new books and share the joy of reading them with everyone.
What is 'Share a Read'?
Together with The Reading Agency, we’ve come up with an initiative to get people talking about the brilliant books they’ve read. There are so many out there and what’s better than getting recommendations from your peers?
We’re asking you to share what you've been reading with us – and if you like, share a review too. Your recommendation will be added to our ‘Share a Read’ reading list for everyone else to discover. So, if you’ve read something educational, inspiring or just very entertaining, we want to know!
And there's more! We'll be giving exciting prizes to our favourite reviews... including book vouchers so you can read even more!
Find out more
Our first ever Pearson Maths Festival
Our first ever Maths Festival is from 5–16 July 2021, featuring collaborative discussions and speeches with passionate maths teachers, thought leaders, subject experts, students and most importantly, you. It’s not too late to register and listen to the recorded sessions
You’ll get the opportunity to watch, listen and take part in conversations with some of the leading experts in maths on key topics, including:
- Post-COVID learning: what's next?
- Digital maths education – what will the future look like?
- Maths anxiety
- Maths in the media with Bobby Seagull!
Register for free today
Supporting child development in their early years
The first five years of a child’s life are crucial for their overall development. They will hit many milestones such as, learning to crawl and walk, a first smile, their first social interaction, all of which will support their ability to learn and interact with the world around them. But when these milestones are not met within a certain timeframe, this may highlight a developmental issue that needs to be addressed as early as possible.
It remains to be seen, with the pandemic still ongoing, if there will be any disruptions to the early developmental stages of many children’s lives. Our NEW child development page can provide a range of tools that can help assess and support children in those all-important first years of life.
Visit our new Child Development Page
Insights from the primary community: priorities and challenges
Amid an ever-changing year, insights and feedback from the you and young people we work with drive everything that we do now more than ever.
Every school is unique but we believe it’s important to share our research with you to drive conversation and share and ideas across the education community.
What are primary schools’ key challenges and priorities this term and looking ahead?
To find out and explore how we can support you best, we commissioned a survey with Teacher Tapp and asked nearly 3,000 primary educators for their thoughts.
Read what they had to say
Bug Club Phonics has been revalidated as a DfE systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme
We're pleased to share that the DfE has revalidated Bug Club Phonics in the first validation window meaning it is eligible for funding via the English Hubs, and is deemed to meet all the criteria for an effective systematic synthetic phonics programme!
The DfE’s list of validated programmes can be found here.
Bug Club Phonics offers schools a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme.
An annual subscription:
- Features daily lessons from the start of Reception
Teaches the main grapheme-phoneme correspondences of English in a clearly defined, incremental sequence.
- Gets children reading and spelling from very early on.
- Includes blending for reading and segmenting for spelling activities.
- Provides opportunities for children to practise and apply known phoneme-grapheme correspondences for spelling through dictation of sounds, words and sentences
Features language sessions that teach ‘tricky’ common exception words.
- Provides resources that support the teaching of lower-case and capital letters correctly, with clear start and finish points.
- Includes direct teaching sessions, with extensive teacher-child interaction and involves a multi-sensory approach
Has reading texts that closely match what has been taught up to that point.
- Includes assessments and support for the lowest 20%.
- Provides full guidance for teachers to support the effective delivery of the programme.
- Provides remote learning capabilities via eBooks, allocatable teaching screens and phonics games.
We’re also adding new readers to Bug Club Phonics throughout this year giving schools the choice from 180 books!
The questions a Primary History/Geography Subject Leader should be asking
The role of being a subject lead in primary schools has recently taken on much more significance as the demands and expectations have been raised in foundation subjects like history and geography.
Jon Hutchinson, director of training and development at the Reach Foundation, explores what is needed for pupils to excel in these subjects, and the importance of delivering a curriculum which is ambitious, broad, well sequenced and rich in knowledge that builds year on year.
In this webinar, Jon Hutchinson will focus on the importance of curriculum thinking and will share seven key curriculum questions that every subject lead, at primary, should be able to answer. He’ll share the sharpest insights from curriculum theory, such as how to balance substantive and disciplinary knowledge.
All this theoretical knowledge will be illustrated through real examples of materials developed at Reach Academy Feltham such as knowledge-based work booklets and essay structure strips. Delegates will leave the webinar with a new lens through which to review and develop their own curriculum.
View the full learning outcomes and register now
