About 10 years ago now, after some prompting from my other half, I decided to get myself a Twitter account. He’d been waxing lyrical about how interesting the conversations were and how it was supporting his reflection as a classroom teacher and leader and how it opened up his eyes to others’ practice and experiences…
Over the last few years I have been in a privileged position to be working with schools on their English curriculum. This has ranged from running network groups where we discuss it openly, CPD sessions on what this might look like and starting again from the very start. Building a curriculum is a powerful thing…
Those people who follow me on Twitter will probably realise I have recently started to learn to snakker dansk. Largely that will be because I am enjoying it so much, I have been waxing lyrical about it and occasionally suggesting other people join me in my new found passion. As well as learning wonderful insights…
A Review of Lucy Bailey’s Production of Much Ado About Nothing (summer 2022)
It was a perfect day for mm visit to the Globe this May. The sun was shining, but it was not yet too hot, and anyone who is a regular visitor to London at the time of year will know the air is filled with drifts of tree pollen, which gave a magical air to the love fuelled proceedings.
When I was small my brother had a room filled with books. He was very generous with these, but there was some of them I could not have access to. In some cases, it was because the content wouldn’t have been appropriate (I was obsessed with both the front cover of Agatha Christie’s Lord Edgware…
It is just over two years since I hung up my board pen and left the classroom behind. It was a space I had been in for over 20 years and, although the location of the room had changed over the years, it was absolutely my comfort zone. Regardless as to whether my responsibility was…
How the new teaching frameworks can support teachers to grow Learning we know is a complex thing. Developing the intricate web of knowledge that pupils need, with its various interlocking parts, woven together with their experiences and wider understanding of how the topic sits within the world, is difficult and teachers spend significant periods of…
Self-discovery and identity and how writers explore this, is something which I have been a bit obsessed with during my study of Literature. Different writers from Shakespeare to Emily Bronte and beyond ponder what it is that makes us who we are and what the self, who we are actually means. This is an exploration…
I can vividly remember marking my first set of Year 10 essays on Romeo and Juliet. In my other classes we had lots of short assessments in books and opportunities for them to write creatively, but these Romeo and Juliet ones were different. We were covering a topic which the students had all found challenging…
Simon hated Tuesdays. Tuesdays filled him with a low sense of dread, bringing a queasy feeling and a sense of restlessness. It was not enough to be able to blag a day off, but just enough to make him pick at his breakfast and drag his heels a little more on the way into school.…
Teaching it Real 