More Than Baby Talk: How Nursery Rhymes Can Benefit Older Students

AI generated image showing a collection of scenes from well know nursery rhymes.

The 10th – 14th November 2025 is world Nursery Rhyme Week and millions of children around the globe will be singing, doing the actions and exploring a range of nursery rhymes. Much research has shown that nursery rhymes are incredibly beneficial for children as they can boost vocabulary and language development; develop literacy and numeracy…

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Melody, Memory and Prosody: Tuning in to Nursery Rhymes

AI generated image showing a range of characters from nursery rhymes dancing in front of a page of musical notes.

Next week is World Nursery Rhyme Week – an annual event founded since 2013. The initiative highlights the importance of nursery rhymes in early childhood development, focusing on benefits like language, literacy, and motor skills. This year’s event takes place over five days from the 10th to the 14th November. This second in our series…

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Talk for maths – How can oracy support teaching for mastery?

How can teachers design lessons that spark curiosity and deep thinking? Do staff have a set of talk and reasoning tools that help pupils explain ideas, ask strong questions, and build confidence? This training session explores how to weave purposeful talk into everyday teaching using the OUP Talk for Maths Benchmarks. Teachers will learn clear…

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Why all the talk about oracy?

It seems almost impossible at the moment to avoid the conversation about importance of oracy in education – and rightly so. As James Britton once said, ‘Reading floats on a sea of talk’ (Britton, 1970, p. 164), but good oracy skills go further than that.  Strong oracy skills are essential for our young learners to…

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