Blackpool schools have been called in with a scheme to help boost UK pupils vocabularies

The SHINE charitable trust has awarded The Fylde Coast Academy Trust (FCAT) a development grant and wants to work with them to see how their approaches can be shared beyond Blackpool.

SHINE works with teachers who have great ideas that will improve the lives of disadvantaged children in the North.

The trust was impressed with FCAT's approach to vocabulary teaching, which involves a series of bookmarks which support children to decode unfamiliar words.

The "WIKI way” uses bookmarks with the most common prefixes, suffixes and root words for a range of subject areas.

Rather than defaulting to a dictionary, children become confident with what is on the bookmarks and then use other words they are familiar with to work out those they have not seen before. Teaching children that they know lots of words and they can use them to work out unfamiliar ones is the principle of the "WIKI way"- What I know, I will use!

Estelle Bellamy, FCAT director of English said. "We are thrilled that SHINE has shown interest in this initiative. We are already being asked to share these resources beyond our FCAT schools and any help they can give us to impact more children across the area will be gratefully received."

SHINE hosted a recent event with founding trustee, Lord Jim O’Neill, to celebrate the amazing work teachers are doing to close the attainment gap in the North of England. Estelle will be working closely with Dr Alicia Shaw the senior programme manager who has a background in research and evaluation.