Maintaining Engagement and Challenge in Online Reading My school are lucky to be full members of FOBISIA, who regularly host job alike workshops, JAWs, hosted by member schools. This year JAWs have moved online, but they still have that great element of participation and the chance to network with others in similar roles. This week's…
The English Teacher’s Privilege
“Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The last couple of weeks have hopefully made many of us more aware of our privilege.…
Poetry Off-Piste #2: Freedom in Lockdown?
When one road closes, maybe students can help us find other paths. Under normal circumstances, I'd spend the start of this term frantically marking student work, sharing exemplars and breaking down the best answers into manageable steps to help students pick up just a few more marks. In short, making sure that my classes are…
Curriculum of Compassion #3: Reclaiming Learning Walks
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”― Helen Keller This follows on from these posts about our new KS3 English Curriculum: #1:Text Mapping #2: Connection Building The phrase 'learning-walk' may sound innocuous, but if you've been a teacher at any time in the last decade, it's likely to fill you with…
Independent Close Reading: Why I love ‘anchor text’ homework
One of the greatest challenges of teaching literature is the constant struggle to cover whole texts in enough depth and complexity to prepare students to write about details confidently, without running out of time or killing the enjoyment of the narrative itself. I've lost count of the number of students who've cheekily drawn my attention…
The CIE English Experiments #2: The Past Paper Problem
"What do you mean there are no past papers Miss? How am I even supposed to revise then?" As mentioned in a previous post on decoding question types here, my resolution for this year is to share as much as I can with other teachers, especially those also teaching CIE's new English specifications. I'm certain…
A Curriculum of Compassion #2: Connection Building
Planning Curriculum for Connection Building “The curriculum is coherently planned and sequenced towards cumulatively sufficient knowledge and skills for future learning and employment” Ofsted inspection framework 2019 The recent OFSTED focus on curriculum intent, implementation and impact may have frustrated some, but now I’m outside of Ofsted’s reach, I’ve been able just to take advantage…
Creating A Curriculum of Compassion in English: Text Mapping
"The purpose of schooling should be to help each child find their element, and the only way to do that is to ensure that each child has a broad and balanced curriculum." How can we do this in English? Conscious text mapping might be the answer.
Reading and Rethinking: Boys Don’t Try?
"Reading is thinking with someone else's head, instead of one's own."Schopenhauer- Recently, I had the oddly perfect experience of reading Boys Don’t Try alongside Sally Rooney’s booker winning novel Normal People. Both books had that excellent brain-worming effect of being in my thoughts and conversations for weeks, as well as each seeping into my experience…
Poetry off-piste:
Great teachers "take joy in going off piste, using deep subject expertise to go beyond the syllabus".Tom Sherrington, The Learning Rainforest The Year 10 Great Poetry Debate Arriving in a new school this year, teaching a new exam board and a new GCSE syllabus to Year 10, I think I often failed to go 'off…
Fail Better Teach 