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…
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…
An account of my year in Rionegro, Antioquia
Lang/Lit research brought to you by AQA
@sian_mundy / English / Raising Standards / Education for all
What can a middle aged English teacher possibly find to write about?
Thoughts and ideas about words, stories and what works best in the classroom and beyond
towards a unified theory of negative capability
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." - As W. B. Yeats never said
Education, research and stuff.
A blog about education. Follow me on twitter @HeatherBellaF
A review of ideas and experiments from my classroom
My world, its ups and downs
(@Benneypenyrheol) Recording my ramblings on education and learning.
A Sense of Place
A blog about history teaching and other matters
Educators shootin' from the hip.
St Katherine's School Teaching & Learning Blog
thoughts about English teaching and education in general
I'm just a teacher, standing in front of a class, asking them to be quiet and listen.
