"Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home."Sigmund Freud My primary school headteacher repeated his favourite assembly every year. It told the story of Percy Verance, a Job-like figure who, of course, endured all sorts of setbacks and problems on the journey to achieve his dreams. By the…
"For brave Macbeth, well he deserves that name" This week I had a familiar experience: that satisfying moment during a unit on Shakespeare when every student suddenly decides it's not so bad after all. The Scottish play isn't my favourite by a long stretch, but it is my favourite to teach. I've taught it to…
"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…
“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…
Classroom is well known as a tool to aid student and teacher organisation, but can it help to reduce cognitive load on students too? Despite being somewhat sceptical of any hype around shiny edutech, I'm excited to be joining the Google Education Summit here in Kathmandu this weekend and talking about Google Classroom. I love…
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…
"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.
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 