Many 5- and 6-year-old students in low socioeconomic schools have difficulty expressing ideas fluently and coherently in English, which impacts on their ability to participate fully in the classroom and to make the transition to literacy. The classroom has the greatest potential, outside of home and family, to provide the ...

After three years of schooling, some primary students are behind expected levels for spelling achievement. This study investigated students’ own explanations of their developing understandings about spelling in the context of classroom writing. Participants were two groups of Year 4 students, one achieving below and one achieving at the expected ...

Test scores reduce complex phenomena, such as achievement in mathematics or ability to comprehend a written text, to numbers. If a test has done a good job of testing what it was designed to assess, then test results can be useful, especially when we want to do things like track ...

What does it take to develop and sustain innovative approaches to supporting students’ learning? This is a theme linking several of the articles in this issue of set: Research Information for Teachers, each illustrating some of the challenges and opportunities of stepping beyond conventional teaching and learning practices and ...

Peer assessment is now considered a necessary and vital strategy to be embedded within an assessment for learning framework. Grounded in teachers’ practice, this article pays particular attention to the learning environments created by two teachers as they incorporated peer assessment into their primary school classroom programmes. It illustrates the ...

What are the features of a positive work environment for early career teachers? This article examines this question through interviews with secondary school early career science teachers. Findings suggest a science department that is collegial and collaborative is essential in encouraging teachers in the early stages of their career to ...

This study investigated the practices involved in the transition to school for children with a range of special education needs. Certain factors emerged as most important for a successful transition, including good ongoing communication and collaboration between families and schools. Teachers’ use of differentiation practices was also beneficial. The article ...

This article critiques a recent professional development course for history teachers that explored how students could use memorials and heritage sites to engage with the concept of significance and how this could contribute to them developing expertise in historical thinking. The course challenged teachers to consider historical significance in terms ...

That students find working on multimodal texts engaging isn’t surprising—but what would be surprising is if that spilled over into increased engagement and achievement with traditional print texts. This is exactly what the author of this article found in an exploratory e-learning research project. Here she discusses this finding and ...

This article describes one primary school’s approach to countering the “summer drop” in reading achievement. By the deliberate sharing of strategies to support reading at home during the holidays through a “summer reading contract”, Clayton Park School has successfully reduced the drop in reading achievement over the summer, including for ...