03
2017
Revising unseen poetry
“Hope is being able to see there is light despite all of the darkness” Desmond Tutu. This gentleman beautifully encapsulates Year 11’s approach to unseen poetry at this stage of the term: utterly lacking in direction and blindly searching for something, anything to hold on to. I fully empathise with them: how often can we immediately grasp the nuances of poetry on a first reading, let...
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23
2017
Blind spots: a manifesto for teaching quiet students
“People are so complicated. Every new person is a completely new role of the dice.” ‘The Giveness of Things’ Marilynne Robinson. Please forgive a rather incongruous opening. Last week I took advantage of a room exit from my wife to hastily flick away from Gary Barlow and his chums (take that indeed) to catch an excellent scene from ‘Shaun of the Dead.’ In it our hero...
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10
2017
Alice in Readerland: Year 7 and Doug Lemov’s ‘Reading Reconsidered’
“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” ― Lewis Carroll, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ How far to extend and challenge year Year 7? What is the balance between engagement and rigour in the Key Stage Three classroom? What do we want to secure in terms of reading habits in Year 7? As I highlighted in this post evaluating the research on...
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03
2017
Experiments with pace: slow teaching and slow marking.
“Society is all but rude, To this delicious solitude.” Andrew Marvell ‘The Garden.’ What makes effective teaching? The ultimate question and “slowness” is certainly not high up on the list of quick fire responses. In fact I think most of us would recoil in disgust if we were dubbed a “slow” teacher. I know I would: energy, drive, enthusiasm, passion are the hall marks for me...
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27
2017
Preparing Year 9 for GCSE: Teaching Shakespeare
“Tis a villain, sir, I do not love to look upon”. Shakespeare ‘The Tempest’ Miranda’s scathing rebuttal of Caliban is a slightly more eloquent version of the reaction of my Year 9 classes to the discovery that they would be spending seven weeks in the company of Shakespeare at the start of this term. As this post on teaching narrative last term highlights, I teach two Year...
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20
2017
Tackling Transition: lessons from the research.
“I want to emphasise to you, Mr President-elect, that we now are going to do everything we can to help you succeed because if you succeed, then the country succeeds,” Barack Obama “Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks. Thought it was going to be a smooth transition – NOT!” Donald Trump This has been a week of...
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13
2017
Eduqas Component 2 Mock informed teaching: an action plan.
But all the clocks in the city Began to whirr and chime: ‘O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time. W.H Auden “As I walked out one evening’ One of the pleasures of starting the A-Z of classic Literature challenge this month has been spending some time in the company of W. H Auden (confession: much less enthusiastic about the time spent with Austen’s ‘Emma’!) The...
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06
2017
27
2016
The educational book to read in 2017: ‘Hopeful Schools’ by Mary Myatt
“Hope. Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope”. Barack Obama Hope has not been a popular word in 2016. Politically, Obama’s unifying rallying call from this speech in 2004 feels like an echo from a bygone age. The cynicism of Trump; the insularity of Brexit; the coarsening of public discourse, it has all filtered through our subconsciousness and...
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14
2016
Learning curves: a diary entry every day in 2016
“I think a lot, but I don’t say much.” Anne Frank I am now a man who writes a diary. An admission I never thought I would make. I am a chap who keeps it religiously, every single day, without fail. I have written an entry every day for 2016. Yes, as you edge slowly and fearfully towards the cross at the top of the page, I...
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