“Consume less; share better.”Hervé Kempf As a new teacher of the Cambridge English IGCSE and A level last year, I was surprised to find so few resources online. In the last couple of years, the beauty of teaching AQA and WJEC was being able to delve into a twitter treasure trove filled with great resources…
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…
The Bard Abroad
Last week journalist Rebecca Reid caused a small edutwitter storm by claiming that Shakespeare should be scrapped from the curriculum "because it's boring and we have hundreds of other more relevant writers to study". Like most of the other 700 English teacher commenters, this seemingly flippant dismissal annoyed me. I love Shakespeare and I love…
Scrapping the ‘marking policy’?
"The simplest prescription for improving education must be dollops of feedback." John Hattie The longer I've been teaching, the more I've come to appreciate the value of marking. By 'marking' though, I mean looking at students' work and giving feedback which they are required to act upon immediately. What we learn about progress from students'…
Fail Better Teach 