A neat little find helps students start writing without all the fussI have blogged before about some of the problems with the teaching of writing and recent conversations on Twitter have brought this to the fore. Put simply, most kids hate writing, and the problem is only getting worse. For some time, I have been…
Rediscovering the reading of poetry aloudThere are few things more dispiriting for an English teacher to hear than ‘I don’t like poetry’, but it can be an all too familiar refrain; perhaps more understandable – though not a view I share – is the complaint of loathing the analysis of poetry. Just what is that…
So the challenge: get back into this blogging malarkey. Blog for twenty minutes daily. It’s been an awful long time since I blogged. Too long. I’ve been writing, painfully slowly, a thesis on dialogic approaches to the teaching of English in the Sixth Form. It’s fun, honestly. So, starting today, there’s a new challenge. Write for twenty minutes a…
Half-way through my MEd, what have I learned?Two assessed essays down. One essay returned. Marks and feedback taken on board. A year’s worth of teaching and my own research – both ‘in the field’ and doubtless in a library – and 20,000 words to go. Then, hopefully, three letters to put after my name: MEd. It’s…
I was finally challenged on Facebook earlier today to list ten books which have influenced me. Normally, I am not enamoured by such tasks, but this one got me thinking…about what I actually remember, what stuck with me and what in some way shaped me. As I started to type, I became more and more…
Does current practice engage students with real writing?How did you learn to write? I don’t mean the mechanics of holding a pencil, joining dots on a page or copying examples of handwriting. I mean learning to express in writing your own experiences, thoughts, feelings, fears, longings. It’s a question which has haunted me increasingly in…