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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.
Meeting The Needs Of All Pupils Using Continuous Provision in KS2
Can Early Years-inspired practice help us meet the needs of all pupils in later phases? TLDR: Yes. Implementing a version of Continuous Provision in Key Stages 1 and 2 (and who knows? perhaps beyond) can help us to teach inclusively, ensuring that the needs of all are met: those working at greater depth, students broadly in line with average, children with significant learning gaps, those with a SEN or D, pupils who are working at GD AND have a SEN - EVERYONE. Over on LinkedI
Aidan Severs
Mar 262 min read
Solving the Problem... of Progress and Independence in KS2 Continuous Provision
If you’re implementing continuous provision in KS2, you likely want two things: Pupils who are genuinely independent Work that clearly shows progress and quality But what happens when those two don’t seem to align? You’ve taught the skills. You’ve modelled expectations. You’ve set up thoughtful provision. And yet… pupils revert to simpler tasks. The quality drops. Independence doesn’t always mean improvement. It’s frustrating. You might even find yourself wondering: Is contin
Aidan Severs
Jan 296 min read
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
The Challenge of Challenge: What Does It Mean in Primary Schools?
What does challenge actually mean in primary teaching? It sounds like a straightforward question. Sometimes challenge means pitching learning appropriately so that pupils have to think hard and learn something new. Sometimes it means providing something additional for pupils who have already met the intended learning, particularly pupils working at greater depth. If a school doesn't distinguish between these meanings, conversations about challenge can quickly become confused.
Aidan Severs
Oct 20, 20257 min read
Why We Should Prioritise The Teaching Of Tier 2 Words
Tier 2 words are a really important part of academic language, even at primary level - assuming children will learn all the correct meanings of these words without them being explicitly taught them is leaving a lot to chance. Best get them planned in so that you can ensure they are deliberately taught.
Aidan Severs
Sep 30, 20253 min read
One Thing Your Curriculum Documentation Doesn't Need (Unless You Also Provide Lesson Plans)
Garbled title aside, this blog post is a very simple one. And the message is this: You don't need to mandate pedagogical choices. You don't need to spend your curriculum-writing time on telling teachers how to teach. Your curriculum documentation - your medium term plans, unit overviews, schemes of work, or whatever you call them - does not need to include information about how the content should be taught. Your energy is best spent elsewhere. Namely, when writing curriculum
Aidan Severs
Sep 16, 20252 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, 20256 min read
How to Personalise Challenge for Pupils Working at Greater Depth
How should teachers challenge pupils working at greater depth without simply giving them harder work? Personalising challenge means starting with the individual pupil rather than automatically giving them a more difficult task. Pupils working at greater depth may already have secure knowledge, strong independence or particular strengths, but they will also have areas where they can develop further. In this post, I explore how teachers can use what they know about individual p
Aidan Severs
Mar 17, 20258 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 another ad- word in there, but 'create' is the one. Adopt These days there are a plethora of great lesson resources available to teachers. Some of them are even free. Sometimes it's just a case of using one of them. However, the writers of those resources don't know your class, your school and your needs, so however hard they try, they might not
Aidan Severs
Jan 28, 20253 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 2026: 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 Quest
Aidan Severs
Nov 5, 20245 min read
Case Study: Continuous Provision and EYFS-Inspired Practice in KS2
Bringing an early years approach into KS1 isn’t unheard of – there are plenty of Year 1 classrooms where continuous provision has been effectively established. But, at my previous school the vision was grander: we wanted to know if EYFS-inspired teaching and learning could have an impact, not only in KS1, but also in KS2. The rationale for taking an EYFS approach into year 1 is perhaps to provide children moving from Reception with some familiarity, however many proponents o
Aidan Severs
Oct 8, 20246 min read
Featured Article: 8 Classroom Routines for Teachers to Nail Before Half-Term
I wrote this quite a while ago (back when I tweeted as @thatboycanteach and when I was beginning my deputy headship at an 'RI' school) but I still stand by these 8 classroom routines. If I went back into the classroom now I'd still do these exact things. These were developed during my years teaching in a school which Ofsted had deemed as 'inadequate' where routines were non-existent and as a result, much time was wasted to begin with. We got that school to 'good' within 3 yea
Aidan Severs
Sep 2, 20241 min read
The Best RE Lesson I Ever Taught (Spoiler: It Was A Reading Lesson)
It was the last day of half term: business as usual. I always started the day off with a reading 'session' (somehow can't bring myself to call it a lesson) and that Friday was no exception. Continuing with our reading of Sandi Toksvig's 'Hitler's Canary' and with a focus on linking non-fiction with fiction, I had prepared a text about Judaism. The strategy focus that lesson was scanning the text for answers. The children underlined what they thought would be key words in the
Aidan Severs
Jul 23, 20244 min read
Why Should Teachers Complete Tasks Before Pupils Do?
One of the things I advocate for when training teachers on planning is that teachers should have a go at the work they are going to be asking the pupils to complete. There are several reasons for this: So that they understand the potential difficulties that children might encounter The 'curse of knowledge' strikes when you know a lot about something but find it difficult to imagine how hard it might be for someone less knowledgable to understand it. Usually we don't eveb real
Aidan Severs
Jul 16, 20243 min read
How To Teach Spelling In Primary Schools
A couple of years ago I worked with a primary school to develop their teaching of spelling. The process of preparing and delivering a training course, with one CPD session each half term, resulted in this series of blog posts. I've gathered the whole series here for ease of reference. Together, the five posts explore how to teach spelling in primary schools, from understanding how children learn to spell and teaching spelling patterns explicitly, to assessment, feedback and p
Aidan Severs
Jun 13, 20242 min read
Primary D&T: Is It OK To Design Without Making And Vice Versa?
Does a D&T unit always need to feature both designing and making? Find out in this blog post...
Aidan Severs
Jun 10, 20243 min read
Primary D&T: Teaching The Iterative Design Process
I wrote this article a while back when I was a deputy head with responsibility for curriculum, teaching and learning, and was in the throws of re-developing a Design & Technology ~(D&T) curriculum I'd only developed a couple of years before. It was published in HWRK Magazine and can be read on their website here. The whole of the issue it appeared in can also be downloaded here. Did you know I offer a remote curriculum review service? Curriculum development benefits from an o
Aidan Severs
Jun 6, 20241 min read
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