Following much literature recently, I am breaking myself of individual comment and moving towards whole class feedback. I am an old dog and this is a newish trick, so I have made a template: Whole Class feedback and begun to complete …
Category: teacher training
The Apprentice… hired?
A quick plug for a year 8 group and @mariatrafford who showed me some of their Apprentice material today. I love this module, developed several years ago with Lisa Healy and Traycie Wrycraft in the good old days... This year: …
HoDs need to talk. The value of support groups.
When was the last time you sat with a group of 15 HODs and had a day devoted to you? Today? At this point I will come clean. As a HOD in a private school I am a member of …
Year 9 discuss The Knife of Never Letting Go
My year 9 boys are working on Ness's Knife of Never Letting Go. Here they discuss the text at the mid-point of study. Please feel free to use the sound files for critique of Speaking and Listening skills... NOTE these …
On Trump: TOK and his ban…
A short activity for ToK students. We do not offer full ToK at school - we are not an IB school- but I teach an additional studies session of ToK on a Monday. I like to mix my more hypothetical …
We are not teaching them to pass exams…
A recent post in the Guardian Secret Teacher column focused on a school in which plagiarism was given tacet permission to take place as part of the essay writing process. I am not surprised by this. I have taught many …
A level unseen: Dystopia (OCR)
This unseen is based on a passage from Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road. The passage is beneath the unseen. This was 55 minutes writing... My response might read thus: using the SCASI structure as a basis for the writing. McCarthy's …
Stop Press: Season of Goodwill cancelled!
I have not known a time like this - on Twitter. Students - this is one of my rare posts about education and the industry in which I am proud to work. It has no relevance your exams or your …
Remembrance Poetry competition: hints…
As part of my Yr 9 curriculum, I introduced a year 9 competition a couple of years ago. The students are working on a war literature module and are required to submit a poem for a Remembrance Competition. This …
Jerusalem class blog comments
Studying Butterworth's Jerusalem in yr 12, I am trying to engage my class in the idea of sharing independent work... we have no formal class blog as yet and i am using the blog feature on our Firefly VLE. Here …
English Teaching Resources 