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Along with being a primary school teacher and leader, blogging is where this all started for Aidan. If it wasn't for his passion for writing and sharing his learning and experiences, he wouldn't be working as an education consultant with schools across the country today. Shared best practice should be available to all and here on the Aidan Severs Consulting blog you can get ideas for making a difference in your own school. The blog is also a great place to learn exactly the kind of work that Aidan can partner with your school on.
KS2 Continuous Provision, Flexible Lesson Design and Learning Sequences
If you've not read anything I've written previously on these subjects, you can catch up here: KS2 Continuous Provision Flexible Lesson Design Learning Sequences And now you're up to speed, you might be wondering what these three have to do with each other. Well, let's start with a few questions that some teachers asked me recently when we were working on getting KS2 Continuous Provision right in their school: What is the role of the adult? What does timetabling look like? How
Aidan Severs
Dec 15, 20256 min read
Curriculum For All: What Schools Need To Know About What The Curriculum Review And The New Ofsted Framework Say About Inclusion
The key thing you need to be aware of with regards to the final report from the government-commissioned Curriculum and Assessment Review is right there in the title: Building a world-class curriculum for all . The writers of the review are at pains to communicate that the biggest change that needs to happen is with regard to inclusivity - a curriculum which works for all children. This, by the way, tallies with Ofsted's latest inspection framework that has specific headings
Aidan Severs
Nov 17, 20254 min read
Rethinking Differentiation: The Mixing Desk Model for Responsive, Inclusive Teaching
The Challenge of Meeting Every Child’s Needs You know that the children in your class(es) have needs which are many and varied. You want to meet those needs. But meeting all the different needs is difficult, time-consuming and draining. But it's got to be done. Why ‘What Works for Pupils with SEND Works for All’ Isn’t the Whole Story You've heard that "what works for pupils with SEND works for all pupils" but can't shake that nagging feeling that it's not that simple. Becaus
Aidan Severs
Nov 4, 20255 min read
The Challenge of Challenge: Defining What It Means in Your School
I recently started off a teacher training session with the following questions: What do we mean by challenge? Who should we be challenging? How often should we challenge them? I'd asked roughly the same questions of senior leaders earlier in the day and it led to some interesting discussions. We realised that there was a chance that when talking about challenge we could be talking at cross-purposes. When I asked the leaders the questions, I was trying to clarify the purpose o
Aidan Severs
Oct 20, 20253 min read
KS2 Continuous Provision: Gradual Release of Responsibility
No two weeks are quite the same when you're implementing continuous provision in key stage 2... Crucially there is a gradual release of responsbility which provides the necessary support for pupils to move towards independence.
Aidan Severs
Jul 16, 20253 min read
KS2 Continuous Provision: Ensuring Curriculum Coverage
One of the key challenges when designing and delivering continuous provision to any age group, but particularly in KS2, is ensuring that there is curriculum coverage. By delivering masterclasses, setting apprentice tasks, creating routines, providing scaffolds and carrying out check-ins and conferencing, continuous provision and curriculum coverage can be balanced well in KS2.
Aidan Severs
Jul 2, 20255 min read
Continuous Provision in KS2: FAQs
This blog explores how KS2 continuous provision - based on EYFS principles - can foster independence, creativity, and deep learning. It addresses common questions on adapting the approach to meet curriculum demands, setting up purposeful provision areas, ensuring progression and challenge, integrating effective assessment, and managing behaviour. Grounded in careful planning and adult guidance, it offers practical steps for implementation.
Aidan Severs
Jun 24, 20256 min read
Curriculum: The Sticky Problem of Sticky Knowledge
Icky name aside, the idea of identifiying sticky knowledge on behalf of pupils is a tricky one. The Origins of Sticky Knowledge I think...
Aidan Severs
May 26, 20256 min read
Personalising Challenge for Pupils Working at Greater Depth
If you are here for the blog post entitled ' Greater Depth: Pupil Pen Portraits and Personalised Challenge' then please use this link:...
Aidan Severs
Mar 17, 20256 min read
Reading Roles: Teaching Metacognitive Reading Comprehension Strategies
What is (or are) Reading Roles? Reading Roles is a resource designed to aid children’s metacognition when reading. Metacognition can be defined simply as ‘thinking about thinking’. Reading Roles takes familiar job titles and assigns them to reading strategies and skills thus giving children an easy-to-refer-to system for being more deliberate with their thinking during reading, with the ultimate goal of being able to comprehend texts. Most children will already understand wh
Aidan Severs
Jan 30, 20256 min read
Reading Roles Based on Research-Backed Reading Strategies
Explore effective Reading Strategies to enhance comprehension in students.
Aidan Severs
Jan 30, 20256 min read
Reading Roles Generic Reading Activity Exemplified
In my blog post Reading Roles: Teaching Metacognitive Reading Comprehension Strategies I mentioned a generic activity which can be used with any text. Here's that activity in full: The aim of this activity is to help children gain a better understanding of a text. It focuses on using 5 of the main widely-acknowledged reading strategies. Although the activity itself has a goal of enabling understanding of one text, the cumulative effect of doing several of these activities is
Aidan Severs
Jan 30, 202510 min read
Reading Roles: The Philosopher Role and Answering Philosophical Questions About Texts
In my blog post Reading Roles: Teaching Metacognitive Reading Comprehension Strategies I mentioned the Philosopher role. Here's some more information about that Reading Role: Philosopher – thinking Asking and answering philosophical questions about a text allows children to engage further with what they have read. Doing this has the potential to improve comprehension for the same reasons as we have discussed under other Reading Roles: the deliberate act of thinking about wha
Aidan Severs
Jan 30, 20252 min read
Task Setting: Adopt, Adapt or Create?
When it comes to planning and resourcing lessons you have three broad options: Adopt Adapt Create I'd have loved to have shoehorned...
Aidan Severs
Jan 28, 20253 min read
From SEND To Greater Depth: Taking Everyone On The Journey (And Getting Them All To The Destination)
Imagine your next unit of work as a journey into a city centre. In this post I'll use a journey into the centre of London because it was when working with a school there that I started to use this analogy. You want all your pupils to experience a visit to Buckingham Palace, so you plan a route on the tube. You plan the best route - its economical, its efficient, and, after checking the tube map for stops with wheelchair access, its accessible to all pupils. But you know there
Aidan Severs
Dec 10, 20245 min read
Reading Comprehension: Teaching a Metacognitive Approach to Inference-Making
Whilst searching for something else on my old blog I came across an old blog post by Clare Sealy , who is now the Head of Education Improvement, for the States of Guernsey. In it, she referred to a particular blog post I had shared and called it 'incredibly useful' and noted that it had ' set twitter mulling over ‘reading comprehension’ as a thing' . Well, those were the days! Now, teachers think a lot about reading comprehension, and that's a good thing. Now I can't guarant
Aidan Severs
Nov 26, 202410 min read
Teaching Reading: Boosting Background Knowledge To Aid Inference-Making
A few years ago, the author Tom Palmer sent me a copy of his latest book Wings: Typhoon. It's a great read aimed at 8 to 10 year olds and is a stereotype-breaking brew of the supernatural, football, fighter jets and the relationship between two sisters. But before I knew all of that I was intrigued to find that the covers of the book extend to contain a cut-out-and-make Typhoon aeroplane model. Is this a gimmick, or is there something more to it? One of the complaints about s
Aidan Severs
Nov 22, 20247 min read
Want Children To Read For Pleasure? Become a Reading Teacher (or Parent)
Uncover the secrets to sparking a love for reading in children. Become a reading teacher or parent.
Aidan Severs
Nov 19, 20248 min read
Case Study: Revolutionising Curriculum Delivery in KS2
Explore how a UK primary school transformed its KS2 curriculum delivery, emphasizing open-ended challenges, same-day interventions, and more
Aidan Severs
Nov 12, 20246 min read
SATs 2025: Answering 3-Mark Reading SATs Questions - An Update
Since I last wrote about helping children to answer 3-mark questions , the way those questions are asked has changed. Whilst much of the advice given in the previous blog post still stands (indeed I will be referring to it a lot in this one), it needs a little update. As part of this update, I have expanded the matching resource which can be downloaded here : Let's have a look at the 6 (2 per test) 3-mark questions from the 2022, 2023 and 2024 papers : 2024: 3-Mark Reading Qu
Aidan Severs
Nov 5, 20245 min read
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