Don’t tell the boss – unless they love books, too

Ever wanted to pretend that you are working hard when you are actually revelling in the words of Emily Dickinson,. Brian Turner or George Orwell? Here’s your chance. The NZ Book Council has developed the amzingly slick and clever Read at Work site [www.readatwork.com] Just go there and click on Book Council, before choosing what […]

The meat in the bun

I always thought I knew what an essay was. Long, tightly structured, formalised discussions, unwrapping layers of textual criticism in tightly constructed phrases, a pinch of rhetoric, a spoonful of debate, a pipkin of pep. But what is an essay for? What is the ‘deep learning’ that we would like our students to grasp regarding […]

Reap and sow / compare and contrast

Oh dear. I’ve been so busy churning out essays for the MEd ( a tough master, pun intended), an online workshop for the NZATE conference (more about this soon) and just keeping body & mind together, this poor wee blog has been rather neglected. Still, like the wasteland that is the bottom of my garden, […]

Teachers on TV

Still mulling over the differentiation workshop (see Backwards Planning post previously), I have been exploring the videos available on teachers.tv. You wouldn’t think that we teachers would make compelling TV, but perhaps we do for other teachers. The UK has a whole channel dedicated to teaching and all things educational (lucky things). And although it’s […]

Backwards Planning

In preparation for a workshop this week on how to plan for and manage differentiated learning in the English classroom, I have thinking about the challenges of design by concept. Erickson (2007) explores in great depth ways in which deep, cognitive learning must be deliberately planned for from a conceptualised viewpoint. For example, if you […]

Monday morning. Period 3. The topic today is Effective Pedagogy

– Right. Books open…That’s right, get your books out…What do you mean, which books? The revised curriculum, of course, is there any other?..Right, turn to page 35. Effective pedagogy.Pardon? What did you say? You’re already doing this? Don’t be so foolish, of course you’re not. And even if you are, you need to do it […]

Teaching: it’s more than just a job

It’s……? Finish the sentence and win the prize of satisfaction … The slogan is actually from the Time Education Supplement, the main educational publication for the thousands of teachers working in the UK. I remember reading it as a new teacher, and it became a bit of a weekly highlight (which, I think, says much […]

Don’t push me

Our first round of Cluster meetings in the Wellington region have now finished. We have been party to wide-ranging discussions on issues concerning implementing the revised Curriculum, some of which I have raised in other posts (hollow laughter at the mention of one day release time, for example). A dominant topic – that of the […]

10 ideas changing the face of English teaching…?

Time magazine’s 10 ideas that are changing the world (last week’s edition) has seen me mulling over what an educationally themed list, with an English twist, might look like? Everyone loves a list. There’ll be something to condemn, something thing that strikes a chord and plenty of mulling about what has been omitted. Here’s my […]

The Unteachables III: becoming teachers themselves

It was stuff to warm the cockles of the coldest of hearts. Mine were positively glowing . Tough cookies, who previously had been swearing and cussing their teachers, transformed into teachers themselves following a two week ‘study camp’. An interesting irony. The final task, in which the rebels were sent into a primary school to […]