A practical guide and recommended resources for teacher assistants and learning support staff on everyday reading and writing strategies that help struggling readers build up their skills and reading confidence.
Dr Helen Walls reflects on her latest release with Dr Christine Braid and unpacks her top six research-backed reading strategies from How to Teach Reading – the latest title in their How to Teach collection.
Helen Walls explores her four-book writing intervention, offering practical, research-based tools to help teachers rebuild writing foundations and boost student confidence.
Discover how interest-based writing can re-engage reluctant writers in your English classroom. Inspire creativity, confidence and joy, and see your students fall in love with writing again.
Help your struggling readers build confidence and comprehension with Story Seekers Activity Books. These structured, dyslexia-friendly literacy resources combine phonics, oral language and comprehension activities to make reading enjoyable and effective for every learner.
Give young writers a strong start. Dr. Christine Braid breaks down sentence structures and construction, and the power of simple, complex and compound sentences taught well.
Explore why the revised Story Seekers Series 1 is an essential, effective reading resource for struggling readers in primary schools across Australia, and how it offers targeted support for students with diverse needs.
In her latest blog, teaching expert, Dr Helen Walls emphasizes the importance of foundational writing skills. Foundational writing skills are essential for student progress. Discover why spelling, handwriting, and sentence writing are critical and how to support struggling writers in your classroom.
Introducing How to Build Writing Success Sentence by Sentence by Dr Christine Braid. Explore structured techniques and mentor texts and get help improving student sentence writing.
When teaching reading, selecting the right texts is crucial for supporting learners’ progress. Decodable texts are essential for early readers as they reinforce specific phonics patterns and strengthen neural pathways for decoding words. However, over-reliance on decodable texts can limit exposure to high-frequency words, impacting reading fluency. Dr. Christine Braid explores strategies for teaching reading and learn how to balance different text types based on individual learners needs.
Discover how teaching morphology can enhance literacy development. Claire Knight explores the importance of morphemes, word structure, and gives practical examples to boost vocabulary.
Research has demonstrated that a child’s oral language skill level is an important predictor of their reading comprehension and writing skills.
These persuasive writing activities are flexible enough to slide in with existing lesson plans and encourage students to think critically and creatively about their process.
Dawn McMillan is an internationally recognised writer of picture books and educational texts. Her background is primary school teaching, with a special interest in writing and reading processes. She offers an insider’s guide to narrative writing.
Dr Helen Walls, The Writing Teacher, explains why we should move away from constructivism and towards explicit teaching.
Professor James Chapman reviews How to Teach Writing, Spelling and Grammar by Helen Walls with Christine Braid
“As cognitively demanding as chess”. Essay writing in secondary school English is a challenge. Particularly so for students struggling with literacy skills. This blog outlines five ways to support struggling students with essay writing.
Author Helen Walls discusses the benefits of learning to write, reevaluates current teaching approaches and uses research to identify methods that better serve students.
Leaning on his time as a teacher, Paul Mason, highly published children’s writer, reflects on how he puts the child at the heart of what he writes – wanting children to see themselves in his stories.
Dale Sutherland clarifies some key terms that help extend and deepen a discussion of fake news. She offers insights into teaching this challenging topic and its importance.
Students with dyslexia struggle to learn to read and spell. Compared with their peers (of the same intelligence, age or year level), dyslexic students progress at a slower rate and participating in reading, spelling and writing activities involves much more effort for them.
Most classes include at least a couple of struggling readers, but how can teachers offer support to improve their literacy skills?
Announcing Essential Resources is now a proud distributor of works by Marie Clay – a world leader in research on literacy learning, child development and learning disorders.
Author, Jill Eggleton, on how reading aloud to children helps to naturally create meaning and a better understanding of how language works – including making sense from print.
An interview with Tania Withers, Head of ESOL at St Joseph’s Catholic School in Wellington, about Essential Resources’ popular literacy resources, Story Seekers.
Author, Angie Simmons, writes about awesome ideas for learning at home. She offers tips and tricks in the blogs series to make being at home situation the best it can be.
Author, Angie Simmons, explains how creating digital stories leads towards problem solving and technology integration which seamlessly weaves together the pedagogy.
Author and poet, Vaughan Rapatahana, answers questions around the importance of poetry and how to understand and develop an appreciation for it.
Author and educator, Yvette Krohn, has written Making Connections: The American dream, exploring intertextual connections through philosophies, thinking skills, films and themes.
We are now producing teaching resources for USA’s largest education publishing company, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, in conjunction with Global Education Systems Ltd.
Writing Success for Boys author, Frances Adlam, discusses how creating rhythm can provide a clear pathway for building success in writing for all children.
Poet and author, Vaughan Rapatahana, writes about how teachers can get students more engaged in poetry. Poetry should be made more prevalent and therefore more relevant.
Sonya Van Schaijik explains how she uses SOLO Taxonomy to create balance in learning a second language and how important that is for success in the classroom.
Marie Langley’s top tips for captivating students with practical literacy activities that build cross-curricular skills and strengthen their ability to think for themselves.
Dive into the different strategies and activities Peggy Bruce uses in her classroom to keep young students active, engaged, and motivated, while learning (Part 2)
Dive into the different activities Peggy Bruce uses in her classroom to keep young students active, engaged, and motivated, while learning (Part 1) in her latest blog.