Thoughts about teaching, literature, and teaching literature
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 ! Question: Write a... 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 →
Recently, I've been thinking a lot about cold reads: how they work, how they maybe don't work, whether they're a good thing, bad thing, or whether they deserve their increasing popularity. I'm not sure how much this post will offer as I suspect, or certainly at the outset, my answer to all of the above... Continue Reading →
Compare how poets present attitudes towards a broken relationship in Neutral Tones and one other poem When considering how Hardy presents a broken relationship in Neutral Tones one also immediately think of Sheers' Winter Swans. Both poems depict the deep pain that a broken relationship can cause, reflecting on the difficulties and emotional trauma this... Continue Reading →
The Question In ‘At Sea’ how does the poet present ideas about loss? [24 marks] In both ‘At Sea and ‘The Sands of Dee’ the speakers describe ideas about the power of the sea. What are the similarities and/or differences between the ways the poets present these ideas? [8 marks] The Response Thematically speaking,... Continue Reading →
Several years before becoming a secondary school teacher, I taught at university whilst completing a PhD and did a lot of private tutoring on the side. I didn’t have many resources but I did have one that I would use with all of my university classes and tutees: a single side of A4 with three... 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 →
How does the poet present the speaker’s feelings about home? (24) Island Man Morning And the Island man wakes up To the sound of blue surf In his head The steady breaking and wombing Wild seabirds And fisherman pulling out to sea The sun surfacing defiantly From the east Of his small emerald island He... Continue Reading →
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 ! Starting with the... Continue Reading →
Ok: first of all an admission. The title of this post, with its impossibly bold claim to distil teaching poetry into a series of neatly packaged steps, is somewhat overzealous. In a manner somewhat, and unfavourably, all too familiar to the last year, I fear it will overpromise and underdeliver. However, what it will do,... Continue Reading →
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