Thoughts about teaching, literature, and teaching literature
It all too easy sometimes to get lost in the small stuff of textual analysis. The micro. The single words and images. This is, it goes without saying, key to any literary discussion, but so is the macro. The big stuff. The conceptual. How might we build into our classroom routines more opportunity for such... Continue Reading →
When we arrive at the end of An Inspector Calls and witness the Inspector looking out at the audience, in a kind of ideological crescendo, bellowing his warnings about ‘fire, blood and anguish’, it would be difficult to imagine Priestley’s aim is not an act of conversion. Priestley, one instinctively assumes, is seeking to uproot... Continue Reading →
When thinking about English and English teaching I like the word ‘resonance’. It seems to me to capture so much of what good English teaching and thinking is about. When we read ourselves, no doubt, we traverse the texts for little light bulb moments, moments of insight and connection. We’ve all experienced this: ‘Ah, that... Continue Reading →
Anticipating and micro-scripting expected classroom interactions can be a really powerful strategy, helping to ensure a consistent and finely-tuned message. Whilst I wouldn't do this for most lessons, enjoying instead free flowing and responsive dialogue, I do think this can be especially effective for the first lesson of a new academic year. This post outlines,... Continue Reading →
Ahead of the new academic year I was going to write a blog about some ideas/strategies/approaches that I think work well (at least for me) in teaching English. But, instead I thought I’d do this as a video presentation. And so linked below you’ll find a 40 minute presentation talking about some of the things... Continue Reading →
Why and how do students make annotations in the books they are studying? The act of students annotating a book during teaching and class discussion seems to me one of those orthodoxies within English teaching that never goes unchallenged. I don't, by the way, necessarily think it should be challenged, but nonetheless it is a... Continue Reading →
With the exception of A Level, the vast majority of my lessons begin in much the same way: 1. Students come into the classroom2. They find waiting for them a task that will take about 5 minutes to complete3. They complete the task4. We talk about it This is such an embedded routine in my... Continue Reading →
Earlier today I was reading, or rather listening, to Rob MacFarlane’s excellent book Underland when I came across a fasctaining concept that I wanted to share, and that I think will have a lot of mileage with various GCSE and A Level texts. The concept is that of ‘solastalgia’, which, as MacFarlane outlines, comes from... Continue Reading →
Before outlining this strategy to help students to encounter and explore a poem, first a question: when teaching poetry, what is the appropriate weight to give to our own interpretation of the poem? I think this is a really interesting question. Presumably, before we teach a poem we read and think about it first, perhaps... Continue Reading →
I've written a few posts under the general banner of strategies to help enhance student writing and analysis, whether related to generating initial thinking, scaffolding or modelling. So, here, in one place, is a collection of some of these ideas with a sense of how they might fit alongside each other. But, where do we... Continue Reading →
