I guess that’s the thought going through a lot of parents’ minds right now, whether they’re teachers or not. My parents were both teachers and I can tell you right now that it wasn’t always an easy combination. I always really wanted to be their child, rather than their student. Perhaps that’s the most important […]
Tag: #reading
Back To School Already??
So, it’s the last week of the holidays. I always start getting jittery with so few days to go. I worry that I’ll have forgotten how to teach, I worry about whether this year will be too busy, I worry about whether I’ll be able to work with all of the classes I’ve got. I […]
Home Contact: What Difference Could It Make?
We all have some students whose behaviour or attitudes or despondency seems beyond our ability to impact. Those hard nuts to crack. Sometimes it’s that they continue to shout across the room and nothing we do seems to stop them. Sometimes it’s that they persistently do no work at all. Sometimes it’s that they just […]
Round Six: ‘Educated’ (Non-Fiction)
With an entire paper on non-fiction at GCSE, it seems strange that we’re not taking more time to really explore non-fiction texts fully. I don’t mean extracts or brief chapters, I mean whole books. This might be one of the ways in which we can engage those who do not see themselves as readers because […]
If It’s Not Literature, Why Bother?
Whilst most English teachers have a passion for Literature, it is a smaller number of the fleet for whom non-fiction floats their boat. When faced with the wonder that is ‘Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine’ or the challenges of ‘The Color Purple’, non-fiction can feel like a slog or feel a little dry. So why […]
Round Five: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (Adult not YA)
This book is phenomenal. It’s easy to step into the oh-so-real world of Eleanor Oliphant, the office politics, the mundanity of the everyday, the desire for more… The characters are consciously well observed and created – I feel like I’ve met them all in so many places before. Their roles are laid out in so many […]
Round Three: Magisterium
For the entirety of this year, one of my year seven students has been telling me to read the Magisterium series. It started with her own excitement and a brief, “You should read this book I’m reading!” and became, as the year went on, much more insistent and much more disappointed as I failed in […]
Welcome to Book Review Season! Round One: Mortal Engines
With school a long forgotten memory behind us (having started week two of the holidays), it seems only natural that the Summer of an English teacher is dedicated to reading and what could be better than the dedicate the blog to the god of reading? As I’ve said in previous blogs, my love of reading […]
Loving Literature for Life…
I’ve always loved reading. Before I could even read you can spot me in childhood photos with a book on my lap. It might be one of my own picture books or I might have snatched a book from the adult holding me but it will be there. As soon as I could read, it was […]
Smashing Teaching Shakespeare!
For some of us this is the bread and butter of English teaching, for others it’s the albatross around our necks. Either way, it’s one of the most challenging tasks we, as English teachers, undertake. Ensuring that our students understand the characters, plot and themes can be tricky enough without having to teach them another […]