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, …
How can we use KS3 to better prepare students for writing analytical essays? I am currently teaching Blood Brothers to Year 8 and they love it. Some are passionate in their condemnation of Mrs Johnstone, others argue that she has been cruelly manipulated by Mrs Lyons. As we read the text together, they are bubbling …
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 …
Using Word Classes to Empower Struggling Writers Read More »
Every time I’ve got to the dark revision days of late April, I’ve toyed with completing an exam paper alongside my Year 11s- mainly as a way of encouraging them when they’re flagging, but also because I know it would be the best AfL tool ever. After two years of the GCSE English course, any …
This is a short extract from my new book, Teach Like A Writer. Here, Jacob Ross talks us through his classification system for types of short story. I’ve turned this system into a simple visual which I’ve used with my classes to help them to identify story features – you can download this at the …
Unseen poetry is stressful. We feel that it is never given enough time (because there are fifteen anthology poems to teach) and students struggle with confidence because the texts will be unfamilar to them. Coupled with this, the independent reading of poetry requires students to posess a certain degree of cultural capital; literature is filled …
The key to all good writing is shape; when to be broad and when to be narrow, when to charge ahead and when to circle back. In a previous post I described how a good essay introduction is like an upside triangle, or arrowhead pointing the reader to a strong argument. A successful essay must …
Introductions and conclusions always seem like quite abstract things, threatening to book end an essay with vague statements and ‘summing up’. However, done right, an introduction serves as the perfect vanguard of a well crafted argument. There are tons of different ways to teach introduction writing, but the most successful in my experience is ‘Discuss, …
A Level Literature Ideas – #1: Writing Introductions Read More »
Getting kids to write poetry is often difficult. Some teachers, me included, think of that oasis of poetry writing as one of the only times when we can let students be totally free and expressive. However, the key to creating the best lessons on poetry is structure – if students get activities broken into bite …