In 1982, philosopher Susan Wolf’s article ‘Moral Saints’ was published in the Journal of Philosophy. The paper explores several ethical theories and questions the assumption that it is always “better to be morally better.” Consider the following example. Whether a particular moral philosophy asks you develop virtues, act in accordance with moral duty, or asks…
Last week I was stumped by an inquisitive year 11 student. We had read act three scene one of Romeo and Juliet and she wanted to know whether, given expectations of men at the time, Romeo could have feasibly walked away from Tybalt’s challenge. She had pierced my lack of subject knowledge with the thrust…
This post has been agreed by several teachers and is shared across several blog sites. In the last couple of years, we have openly expressed concern at the approaches taken by Tes Education Resources to plagiarism and copyright violation, theft of resources, and the selling of resources that violate copyright. This is not a blogpost…
Over the last few years of teaching, my understanding and application of ‘sentence starters’ has altered dramatically. Formerly, I saw them as a way to get students started on a piece of writing, to support someone through an extended response, or as a crutch to for students to fall back on. Whilst sentence starters can…
I think I’m on fairly safe, uncontested ground to claim that kids who can read better tend to do better in their GCSES. Whilst this seems obvious in English, I think the same is probably true across the whole curriculum. Indeed, there was an EEF report at the start of the year suggesting that improving reading…
There can’t be many ideas or initiatives that have saved more teachers more time than whole class feedback. Whether using a specific pro-forma, or taking notes on the closest available piece of scrap paper, focussing on actually reading a set of exercise books and identifying misconceptions rather than writing lots of formative comments relieves much of…
With only one exception, I’ve taught year 7 for every year in my career. This may not seem very remarkable in itself, but as a head of faculty, there is often pressure to teach only exam classes, or mostly KS4. But not for me. Every year I make sure, if possible, that I have some…
As a linguistics graduate, I’ve had to work hard trying to catch up with the wealth of literature subject knowledge most of my colleagues possess. Luckily for me, when I ask about an interpretation of a poem, or a movement in English Literature, they are happy to tell me what they think. Sometimes they share factual, historical…
I’ve been wanting to write a blog about learning objectives for some time. Whilst I think they can be a useful tool for teachers and students, they can easily be done badly. Certainly within English, they are prone to the type of genericism that undermines any shred of usefulness. There’s also no doubt that learning objectives have been complicit in…
What follows is a conversation between me and two year 11 students at school. It happened during a weekly lunchtime intervention session, where we feed the students tea, toast, and sandwiches. We also talk about their progress and help them plan their revision and study time. This conversation was about the ‘point’ of English. I’ve…
Imagine your school brings in a new element of a behaviour policy to tackle student lateness. Now, students who are late to lessons receive an immediate sanction of some sorts. You do your best to uphold the policy, but the teacher next door doesn’t – they feel it’s for the best that students don’t receive…
A few years ago at school, the use and abuse of mobile phones in lessons was absolutely rife. In my NQT year, I remember rarely being able to teach a whole lesson without being disrupted by the sight, or sound, of a student squeakily tapping out a message on their prized Blackberry. Even in year 7…
Several months ago, I was observing a colleague within the English Department. The class was studying poetry from world war one. Their books were immaculate and showed real engagement with some difficult poems. It was clear from observing their behaviour and looking at the quality of work that they had been taught very well. After around…
I had a marvellous moment in class last week. I discovered something new about a book that I thought I knew inside out, a book that I’d taught many times and read cover to cover on many, many occasions. We were revising Of Mice and Men, in preparation for the prose exam next week. Our focus…
I find teaching poetry to be one of the most difficult aspects of being an English teacher. To so many students I teach, poems are impenetrable puzzles, or written in language so unfamiliar that their first instinct is to balk before we’ve even began. It’s also an area I’ve struggled with. I’ve spent far too much…
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