literacy

Meet Nadine Cowan, author of the new Black history series from Big Cat

I’m Nadine Cowan and I write and illustrate picture books with Black main protagonists to combat the low figures of Black children in children’s literature from diverse and underrepresented voices/creators.  Read More

Helping children with non-fiction writing

Collins Big Cat author Emily Dodd shares ideas on how to get children excited about writing non-fiction. Although the ideas are aimed at teachers, they can easily be adapted for parents to support their children’s writing at home. Imagination and Memory When I’m starting children off on a… Read More

Helping KS2 Children With Reading At Home

Literacy expert Gill Matthews, shares some simple, enjoyable ideas for how parents can support their child’s reading comprehension and development at home. You may find this helpful to share with your pupils’ parents or you can adapt the ideas for your home learning plan. Once your child is able to… Read More

Helping KS1 Children With Reading At Home

Literacy expert Gill Matthews, shares some simple, enjoyable ideas for how parents can support their child’s reading comprehension and development at home. You may find this helpful to share with your pupils’ parents or you can adapt the ideas for your home learning plan. Over 300 Collins Big Cat… Read More

How Parents Can Support Their Child’s Writing At Home

Writing is one of the most challenging things we ask our children to do and it is hard for parents to know what’s expected in each year group and how to help their child. Literacy expert, Rachel Clarke has looked at some of the writing skills taught in each year… Read More

Closing the Word Gap

On the 27th of April Collins hosted the first Closing the Word Gap early reading conference. The conference was led by early reading experts Charlotte Raby and Emily Guille-Marrett who discussed comprehension, fluency, phonics and reading for pleasure. We’ve rounded up some of the key findings from the day below. The… Read More

Literacy at Post-16

Advice on teaching literacy at post-16 from guest blogger and teacher Alexandra O'Conner. Read More

Collins Primary host Twitter chat on Primary Rocks

On Monday evening Collins Primary co-hosted a Twitter ed chat with Primary Rocks! We had a fantastic time discussing all things primary literacy and hearing directly from teachers – we hope you enjoyed the chat as much as we did! Read More

How to… celebrate World Book Day

World Book Day is almost here! This much-loved day in the school year is one to have lots of fun on, from dressing up as book characters to revisiting our favourite books. It’s a day to focus on books and reading and hopefully build up enough of a head of… Read More

English – The Battle of Waterloo

© BBC Two hundred years ago in a field ten miles south of Brussels in Belgium, the decisive battle of the Waterloo Campaign took place between the French under Napoleon and the British led coalition under the Duke of Wellington and Blucher. It is arguably the best known battle… Read More