"Building a rich vocabulary, across the curriculum, is one of the main aims for most teachers. Not only does a rich vocabulary help to create strong writing skills, but also can help with improving access to all areas of the curriculum. In his book, Andrew Jennings explains why vocabulary should be a focus in your classroom, providing resources and inspiration to help optimise vocabulary learning. Resources include a focus on SPaG facts, key vocab words that support various popular primary topics, an etymology section to inspire pupils, and looking at various grammatical features that can help build a repertoire of rich vocabulary. Throughout, the book provides other resources that can be copied for classroom use, or be used to take home to help build vocabulary skills away from the school setting."

"Towards the end of the academic year, it is time for many students to hand in their long-awaited assignments, signalling the end of another semester of inspiring teaching and learning. For their teachers, being faced with a collection of essays can seem overwhelming and being able to check the originality and authenticity of each one could take a considerable amount of time."

"Make the news an essential foundation for learning  Created every week by our experienced education team, our award-winning tools for KS2 and KS3 enable you to develop pupils' essential reading skills through growing their understanding of the world outside the classroom."

"There are just so many distractions in the life of a teacher. Planning, marking, assessments, eating, family-life, and so on. Yet, being aware of the tendencies that creep into life that distract away from the priorities takes courage in being able to step back and look at what possible makes you, or your students, underperform within your role."

"A great chemistry app for PC, Mac and iPad which lets you explore the molecular composition of everyday objects."

"A useful online teleprompt tool for presenting scripts for your pupils' drama productions and presentations, which listens using your device's microphone to move automatically."

"A stunning collection of immersive VR stories which can be viewed via a mobile phone or VR headset. Turn the device to view the scene as the stories unfold."

"Functioning with the quadruped MekaMon robot, Reach EDU will utlise MekaMon's sophisticated locomotion and personality to entertain, inspire and educate students from across the academic spectrum by bringing creative learning and advanced robotics together. Operating alongside the existing MekaMon gaming app, Reach EDU will launch with six guided missions to support the KS2 Computer Science curriculum with plans to formally expand into KS3 and 4 in the next academic year."

"Create polls and quizzes for your pupils to answer using their devices. Invite pupils to contribute to quiz questions and collect detailed data for assessment and feedback."

"With an increased awareness of the need to develop a more flexible approach in delivering 'value' to learning experiences and providing teaching staff with opportunities for greater creativity in the teaching process, then Edward De Bono's Six Thinking Hats (1994) may be a tool to help increase academic achievement and behaviours."

"Organising information to find clarity is key for making good decisions. This collaborative mind-mapping tool allows multiple users to work together to put together their ideas and resources."

"New research from King's College London finds that teacher assessments are equally as reliable as standardised exams at predicting educational success. The researchers say their findings, published today in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, question whether the benefits of standardised exams outweigh the costs."

"Every learning organisation has a culture. This forms an underlying set of values and ways of doing things which determines how practice is maintained, and changes resisted or embraced. This culture changes slowly over time and resides in the experience and experiences of staff and other significant stakeholders in the organisation. A wise leader, before embarking on significant changes, would do well to ensure they understand the cultural drivers of the particular school for these may accelerate, or hinder the pace and direction of change."

"Girls are more often bullied than boys and are more likely to consider, plan, or attempt suicide, according to research led by a Rutgers University-Camden nursing scholar. "Bullying is significantly associated with depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation, suicide planning, and suicide attempts," says Nancy Pontes, an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Nursing-Camden. "We wanted to look at this link between bullying victimization, depressive symptoms, and suicidality by gender." In an examination of data from the Centers for Disease Control's nationally representative Youth Risk Behavior Survey from 2011-2015, Pontes and her fellow researchers conducted analyses of the data and found that more females are negatively affected by bullying."

"Teachers want to see more support for parents to help them resist the practice of 'off-rolling'. New research for Ofsted finds that a quarter of teachers have seen off-rolling - when a child is removed from the school roll for the school's benefit, rather than in the child's best interests - happen in their schools. Two-thirds of these teachers believe the practice is on the rise. The study, based on survey responses from over 1000 teachers, paints a concerning picture of the extent of off-rolling in England's schools. Teachers believe that parents with less understanding of the education system and their rights are most likely to be pressured into taking their child out of school."

"Research undertaken by University College in London has found that school break times in England have shortened, with infants receiving 45 minutes less per week, with their secondary peers losing 65 minutes over the same period. Researchers analysed questionnaires completed at 993 primaries and 199 secondaries in 2017 along with separate pupil surveys at 37 schools. These were compared with surveys in similar schools in 2006 and 1995. The report claims their results gave the impression that breaks were being kept as "tightly managed and as short as possible" and this meant pupils could be missing out on social development and highlighted how "school is increasingly the main, and in some cases the only, context where young people get to socialise"."

"Researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), part of the University of Oxford, used an eight-year survey of UK households (Understanding Society, part of the UK Household Longitudinal Study) to study how long teenagers spent using social media on a normal school day and their corresponding life satisfaction ratings. This is the first large-scale and in-depth study testing not only whether adolescents who report more social media use have lower life satisfaction but also whether the reverse is true. Before this study scientists had little means of disentangling whether adolescents with lower life satisfaction use more social media or whether social media use leads to lower life satisfaction."

"A new study from North Carolina State University finds that educating children about climate change increases their parents' concerns about climate change. "There's a robust body of work showing that kids can influence their parents' behavior and positions on environmental and social issues, but this is the first experimental study demonstrating that climate education for children promotes parental concern about climate change," says Danielle Lawson, lead author of a paper on the work and a Ph.D. student at NC State."

"From the outset, I want to be clear - Leonardo da Vinci, not Leonardo DiCaprio. But don't despair, there is a still a lot Mr da Vinci has to offer in our modern world, with many of seven key concepts that drove his inventive thinking still helping to influence our creative thinking. Ray Speakman and Ian Warwick, in their book, look closely at the seven key concepts that influenced da Vinci's life, and how they can make our own learning more original and thoughtful. The seven key concepts are no big secret, but the authors frame them into a modern narrative that makes understanding ourselves, nature and reality possible. Throughout, much is made of Leonardo's notebooks - the sanctuary where he noted his observations, thoughts and discoveries - where he was constantly pushing his understanding to the edges of what was possible during the period he lived. A lot can be learned from such an approach, as jotting down our thoughts, discoveries and inspirations can help us organise our minds - and could be beneficial for many young learners."

"Teachers in England are being invited to join a professional development opportunity through EarthEcho International sponsored by the Northrop Grumman Foundation. The 'EarthEcho Expeditions: What's the Catch?' programme leverages the rich Cousteau legacy of exploration and discovery to bring Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education alive for today's 21st-century learners and their educators. The free, expenses-paid opportunity is planned to allow secondary school teachers to participate as Expedition Fellows to learn first-hand from scientists and engineers the consequences of fisheries mismanagement and how this can be changed for the better with new technological approaches and discoveries."