Using mini whiteboards in English
According to TeacherTapp, 72% primary and 45% secondary teachers use mini whiteboards (MWBs.) There are big variations between different subjects in secondaries with 69% of MFL and 57% science teachers claiming to use them but just 28% of English teachers. Why might this be? Are MFL and science lessons just better suited to using MWBs? Are English lesson much more concerned with the kind of extended writing that best [...]
Implementing English: five useful teaching strategies
Working across 43 schools means I get to see a lot of English lessons and talk to a fair number of English teachers. In oder to support our teachers we've been working on identifying what we think are high impact, low effort approaches to teaching English that any teacher could adopt or adapt. I've learned from every single one of our schools and, working with my colleagues in the English [...]
Flat packed curriculum
“It is so easy to be wrong – and to persist in being wrong – when the costs of being wrong are paid by others.” Thomas Sowell Why do we buy so much flat pack furniture? First, it's many times more affordable than bespoke hand-made furniture, and second, it also saves us the not inconsiderable cost of having to make it ourselves from scratch. It also allows to replace outdated, [...]
Embedding reading fluency in the KS3 English curriculum
Last year I wrote about 'echo reading': ...last week I ... watched English teacher Rhys Williams do something I’d never seen before. He was teaching The Tempest to a low prior attaining Year 8 class and was focussing on the moment in Act 3 scene 1 where Ferdinand and Miranda first begin flirting. What he did was to allocate lines to different members of the class that they would read aloud [...]
The case against Power Point as means of implementing curriculum
First things first: I have nothing against PowerPoint. As means for displaying visual information it definitely has its merits. I have no issues with teachers using slides to share pictures, diagrams or moving images with student (although I do have a few reservations about using it to share text.) My argument here is focussed on the widespread practice of using PowerPoint (or any other similar product) as a means of [...]
Assessing English at KS3
Throughout my career, the de facto approach to assessing English at KS3 has been to use extended writing. After all, this is what students will be faced with in their GCSEs so it kinda made sense that this was what we should get them used to as early as possible. In order to take this approach, we need a markscheme. Most markschemes attempt to identify the different skills areas students [...]
Come work with me…
Since January 2021 I've been working for Ormiston Academies Trust as Senior Lead Practitioner for English. I had no idea when I started how much I'd love working for OAT or how much I'd relish the role of supporting English and literacy across a national network of 43 schools stretching from Grimsby to Cowes, from Runcorn to Chichester, and from Walsall to Ipswich.As you can imagine this is way too [...]
Using tenor, vehicle and ground to analyse metaphors
It's vanishingly rare to encounter a student in secondary school who doesn't know what a metaphor is. That said, it's equally rare to find students who are able to define what a metaphor actually is. When pressed, they tend to say things like, "It when to say something is something else," or "It's saying something is something it isn't," or, even more commonly, "I know what it is but [...]
The problem with marking and how to solve it
Every teacher - particularly English teachers - has huge existential guilt about marking. When I worked full time as a teacher marking was the first thing to go when the stress inevitably piled up. And if we excoriate ourselves sufficiently to make sure mock exams and termly assessments receive sufficient attention, who's got time to keep up with all those Key Stage 3 books?, There are only so many [...]
The shape of assessment
As we should all now be aware, there are no external audiences interested in schools' internal data. If we're going to go to the trouble of getting students to sit formal assessments on which we will collect data, we should be very clear about the purpose both of the assessments and the data they produce. On the whole, the purpose of assessment data appears to be discriminating between students. The [...]
How should we teach students to interpret texts?
The default approach to so much English teaching is to present students with a text and then say some version of, "What do you think of this?" If you're fortunate enough to teach in a selective setting with advantaged students, then this must be a very rewarding way to go about things. The students make their thoughtful suggestions, respectfully challenge each other, and hone their interpretation though the lively cut [...]
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