This is a guest blog written by Louisa Grimley. Louisa is currently Secondary English Lead at a 4-19 SEND provision in Leicester. A latecomer to teaching, she uses her previous experience in change management to help shape staff development and curriculum engagement/design. She is passionate about well-being and sits on her school’s well-being committee. She …
I wrote this article for HWRK Magazine in January 2023 to walk through my process for teaching creative writing using reflection and self-regulation. You can read the whole piece here.
This student is right, of course, but there is far more of interest here, and we do Agard’s genius an injustice if this is where our discussion ends. Stylistics is the field of study which applies grammatical concepts in the reading and analysis of literature. I am grateful to Marcello Giovanelli for working with me …
‘Creative’ Writing on the current GCSE specs isn’t really ‘creative’ in the real sense of the word. Students must respond to an unseen prompt in timed conditions and attempt to demonstrate a particular set of skills within that limited frame. It’s not creative writing. It’s a strategically crafted show-piece. Frustrating as this is, I actually …
Metaphor is one of the key pillars of knowledge in English. Whether we are creating them or encountering them, metaphors highlight the interconnectedness of ideas and experiences. Fundamentally, metaphors are devices which convey information about something by linking it to something else. The thing being described, the tenor, is described by being linked to another …
I have run a few courses this year for people in leadership positions, and shared my ‘master’ sheet as an example of how I try to keep all my plates spinning at once. Here is a quick overview of how it works, and an editable version which you can download and adapt if you think …
This post is based on my part of a conference talk with Marcello Giovanelli at ResearchEd Warrington in April 2022 based on the work we have been doing for our forthcoming book, Essential Grammar, which will be released by Routledge in 2023. In our book, we argue that grammar is the foundation of language. Grammar …
Grammar for (academic) writing: sentences working hard… Read More »
I think we’ve lost the way with dual coding. Something isn’t working. Lethal mutations have taken hold of our practice in many places and I think that we’ve lost sight of why and how it works because we are so set on the simple idea that: words + pictures = better learning, because SCIENCE. I’ve …
Re-thinking Dual Coding: Visuospatial Modelling in English Read More »
This probably won’t be interesting to most people, but on the off-chance that you are feeling like this, I hope this blog makes you realise that you aren’t the only one. A few months ago I was diagnosed with ADHD – combined type, mostly hyperactive. To understand why this diagnosis is important, let me describe …
I haven’t written a new original blog of my own in a while, and have been promising to write something on literacy for months. My role of late has become heavily focused on literacy, specifically reading, and I think my reluctance to blog about it has been rooted in the feeling that the work ahead …