The National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies (NLS and NNS) represent a major government initiative to improve classroom practice and student learning in literacy and mathematics in elementary schools across England. National targets were intended to increase the percentage of 11-year-olds reaching the "expected level"--Level 4--in…

The National Literacy Strategy provides steady and consistent means of raising standards of literacy in England over a long period of time. The Strategy is made up of a Framework for Teaching, which gives detailed guidance to teachers, a supporting professional development program, and other community-based elements. This Review of Research…

This book has a two-fold purpose: to provide lively whole class activities for teaching the Key Stage 2 sentence level objectives in England's National Literacy Strategy"Framework for Teaching"; and to explain and illustrate the varied forms which shared writing can take as a powerful medium for teaching writing. It is designed to help…

This booklet contains lists of words and ideas to help in the teaching of the "Key Stage 2" spelling objectives set out in England's National Literacy Strategy Framework for Teaching. In the booklet, a page is devoted to each individual objective, although there are obvious links between objectives, particularly those covering prefixes,…

These Proceedings contain 14 chapters (or papers) from a colloquium on learning to live together in peaceful co-existence thanks to the teaching of history and geography. All the papers in the Proceedings are in French, but each paper has both an English summary and a Spanish summary. The 14 papers are, as follows: (1) "Introduction"…

Collects primary pupils' views of themselves as writers and their preferences, attitudes and awareness of the source of their ideas in the context of England's National Literacy Strategy. Underlines the importance of listening to pupils' views about literacy, in order to create a more open dialogue about language and learning, and to negotiate the…

Despite some fears that small schools would have difficulty implementing the British National Curriculum, findings from 50 schools (9 with fewer than 100 students) show that small schools may provide greater opportunities for innovative curriculum and class organization and strong curricular leadership from headmasters who teach. (SK)

The York-Finnish Project compares how national-policy changes affect implementation in two countries where curriculum reforms are moving in opposite directions. English primary schools were implementing National Curriculum changes while Finnish schools developed decentralized curricula. Teachers in both countries experienced negative…

Conducted research projects carried out from 1996 to 1998 to study the role of "Teacher Assessment" (assessments made by teachers) in measuring student achievement under the British National Curriculum. Survey responses from 678 teachers and interviews with 117 teachers and administrators indicated how teachers made their assessments of…

The deficit model of assessment dominating education in postwar Britain largely disappeared in the 1970s. Inherent weaknesses of the 11-plus exam, which still survives, may explain current obsession with formative assessment. Record keeping, grading, and other difficulties with changes wrought by the 1988 Education Reform Act and the National…

Focuses on how the construction of understanding can be supported through the visual arts in the context of the British National Curriculum for Art and Design. Giving students experience working with art materials is not, in itself, sufficient; the experience must be shaped in order for students to develop artistic understanding and appreciation.…

This Interchange report summarizes research carried out by the Scottish Council for Research in Education into the classroom experiences of teachers and pupils in 12 Scottish primary schools and also at the impact of "setting," the practice of grouping pupils in separate classes with separate teachers, according to pupils' attainment in…

These medium-term plans have been produced to support, but not prescribe, teachers' planning. They exemplify ways in which England's National Literacy Strategy (NLS) Framework objectives (and the Early Learning Goals) can be clustered. The Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 medium term plans cluster the NLS text, sentence and word level objectives into…

This group of three leaflets summarizes the grammatical content of England's National Literacy Strategy course "Grammar for Writing." The leaflets are entitled: (1) "From Word to Text"; (2) "From Sentence to Text"; and (3) "From Grammar to Writing." The first leaflet notes that today teaching grammar is…

A case study of the impact of the National Curriculum for science in a British primary school experiencing a change in headteacher was compared to 15 other primary schools. Managerial style and ideology of the headteacher had a direct influence on school culture and educational practice. (SK)