If you enjoy this blog post, then you'll love my new book Experiencing English Literature. With dedicated chapters on teaching novels, plays and poetry as well as teaching generative writing, sentence-stems and essay structure, it is filled with actionable strategies ready for the classroom. You can order it right now HERE ! Live modelling is... Continue Reading →
Resonant Reading: A Poetry Reading Strategy
If you enjoy this blog post, then you'll love my new book Experiencing English Literature. With dedicated chapters on teaching novels, plays and poetry as well as teaching generative writing, sentence-stems and essay structure, it is filled with actionable strategies ready for the classroom. You can order it right now HERE ! Before outlining this... Continue Reading →
For the Love of Tables: Building Success in English Language
If you enjoy this blog post, then you'll love my new book Experiencing English Literature. With dedicated chapters on teaching novels, plays and poetry as well as teaching generative writing, sentence-stems and essay structure, it is filled with actionable strategies ready for the classroom. You can order it right now HERE ! GCSE English Language... Continue Reading →
Making Connections Across the Poetry Anthology
If you teach English Literature at GCSE or A Level at some point you will need to teach either a single volume of poetry or a poetry anthology. The typical way to approach this, and the way I do it, is to take a poem or maybe two poems at a time and devote one... Continue Reading →
Two Strategies for Effective Live Modelling
If you enjoy this blog post, then you'll love my new book Experiencing English Literature. With dedicated chapters on teaching novels, plays and poetry as well as teaching generative writing, sentence-stems and essay structure, it is filled with actionable strategies ready for the classroom. You can order it right now HERE ! Live modelling is... Continue Reading →
Discussing the Conceptual in English: A Concrete Classroom Strategy
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 →
Thematic Threading: A Strategy for Annotating a Text
If you enjoy this blog post, then you'll love my new book Experiencing English Literature. With dedicated chapters on teaching novels, plays and poetry as well as teaching generative writing, sentence-stems and essay structure, it is filled with actionable strategies ready for the classroom. You can order it right now HERE ! Why and how... Continue Reading →
Literary Puzzles: Using the Do Now in English
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 →
My Productivity Goals for Next Academic Year: The Routines and Value of ‘Deep Work’
I recently read and very much enjoyed Cal Newport’s excellent book Deep Work, in which he argues for the value and importance of work he labels, as per the title, deep work. This kind of work, Newport describes, tends to be cognitively demanding and requires sustained focus and attention unlike its opposite, shallow work, which... Continue Reading →
Defining Excellence: How I Use Whole Class Feedback
I first encountered whole class feedback several years ago and was instantly captivated. And what's not to love? It promises a significant reduction in workload, no longer spending countless hours huddled over a slow burning lamp with pen in hand (forgive the Dickensian rhetorical flourish) whilst simultaneously, even miraculously, improving student outcome. I remember the... Continue Reading →