HWRK Magazine: Creative Writing and Self-Regulation
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.
creative writing
GCSE Narrative Writing: Form Fragments
‘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 …
‘Finding my Lane’ – an imposter syndrome tale
Alison Lister Ali Lister is an Associate Assistant Principal at an inner city Leeds secondary academy serving an area of high deprivation. She leads English as well as Literacy Across the Curriculum. Ali is passionate about making education accessible for all through the empowering facets of literacy, especially reading and oracy. When not in the …
Teaching Writing: Reflections from a Head of Faculty
Leila is an English Literature graduate with no real experience in teaching writing, or, indeed, writing creatively herself. She started her teaching career with little knowledge or understanding of how to help pupils write well. In my experience, most English teachers are those who have studied English (be it linguistics or literature), rather than those …
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The Power of Simplicity: Supporting Reluctant Writers at Key Stage 4
It is the first week in December, and as I stand at the front of my classroom I can feel the rainwater in my shoes: it is a bleak day to do duty, and I realise I am still absent-mindedly carrying the bottles that I have confiscated on the yard. My Year 10 class observe …
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‘Becoming a Writer’.
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lotand write a lot.” Stephen King The thought of reading and writing “a lot” to be a writer might dismay some students, and if you asked a student, ‘Why do you write?’ their response might be, “Because I …
Improving Non-Fiction Writing
“In my writing life, I seem to have navigated an odd course between fiction and its negation, always half-wishing when I’m immersed in one that I were embarked on the other. I want the free flight of story when I’m hunkered down in facts and wish for a character who could offer a statement contradicted …
The Writing Revolution Resources – An Early Career Perspective
I retrained as an English teacher at the age after spending the previous 15 years in the classroom teaching horticulture. I had then had a 10 year spell doing various types of teacher training and various teaching and learning manager posts, and I decided to retrain as I had begun to feel very far away …
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Teaching Writing: a Work in Progress
Teaching creative writing used to bring me out in a cold sweat. I’m not a confident writer sotrying to explicitly teach the writing process often left me flummoxed. And really, that wasthe stumbling block for me – I wasn’t explicitly teaching the writing approaches at all. I neverslowed the process down enough for my students, …
Using Word Classes to Empower Struggling Writers
I walked down the corridor and then I wondered what was through the door so I looked in but there was nothing so I went downstairs and I thought I heard a noise in the living room and I felt terrified. I’m sure many of us have experienced a sinking feeling after reading descriptive writing …
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