Broadly speaking, there are two ways we might challenge our students. First, we might offer challenge in a vertical manner, where we provide opportunity for rigor and depth around whatever topic is currently under discussion. This could happen in a whole host of ways. It might be we provide students with and discuss a critical... Continue Reading →

For the last few lessons with my GCSE class, we’ve been working on creative writing. Up until now, we’ve done a lot of work on refining and rehearsing certain sentence stems, most of which have been taken from Chris Curtis’ superb book, How to Teach English. This has included doing tasks such as the below... Continue Reading →

This post offers a very brief outline of a specific sequence of modelling analytical writing that I’ve recently used with a Y10 class. In it you’ll also see how I’ve used What How Why as a thinking tool first and a writing tool second as well as how we move incrementally from live modelled writing... Continue Reading →

Recently I have very much enjoyed playing around with Adobe Spark and making various literature-based posters. This has been done mostly for my own enjoyment, but I thought I would share what I’ve created should they be of use and interest to others.

This is the first in what I hope will become a series of blogs offering a step by step guide for how I teach certain key aspects of English. It's by no means intended to be definitive or 'the' way to teach whatever it might be, but will hopefully offer a couple of useful strategies.... Continue Reading →

Here is a very quick and partial list of some key images and quotations for Macbeth. Given the nature of the activity this list was intended for the aim was not to produce a full list of all the best or most useful quotations and so please see it in that context. It is, by... Continue Reading →

Question: Write a description suggested by this image Cocooned within the sanctuary of my train cab, the noise is somewhat dampened, but, looking out of my window, I can see them. Hundreds of them. The passengers. I imagine, as I do every morning during rush hour, the way in which they resemble the hyena and... Continue Reading →

As far as maxims in the English classroom go, 'show don't tell' is right up there with 'don't use the word nice' and 'no, the writer doesn't do that to make you want to read on'. The reason these become maxims, though, is because it's really quite difficult to explain why , for example, we... Continue Reading →

After seeing a couple of threads on Twitter over the last week about the difficulties of developing subject knowledge, I wanted to jot down some of the sources and resources I use to develop my own subject knowledge in English Literature. A couple of caveats first though: 1. This will necessarily be a very subjective... Continue Reading →

A couple of days ago, I posted the below on Twitter as a kind of passing remark on what I happened to be doing at that moment: https://twitter.com/__codexterous/status/1379714660161699840?s=20 However, it generated some interesting questions and so I thought I would pull together my personal process for managing, collating and keeping track of the many, many... Continue Reading →