Wonderful piece by Kai Roberts, An Appreciation of Weird Fiction of L.T.C. Rolt. “To anybody who lives amidst relics of the Industrial Revolution, the surroundings depicted in a number of Rolt’s tales should be very recognisable indeed and little evokes a sense of desolation and existential dread quite as effectively as decaying industrial architecture.” An Appreciation of the Weird Fiction of L.T.C. Rolt
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Discovered this in Oxfam this morning. Very pleased. It’s a themed anthology of texts about animals from the early 1970s. With a stylish cover by Ivan Atanasoft, there’s a real sense that a great deal of thought went into the curation of the book’s design. Some striking interior images, including one of a working horse collapsing in a street. I’m trying to get hold of as many of books like this from the (Golden Age?) of English teaching before the introduction of the National Curriculum. Moving Creatures is part of the English Project series edited by Geoffrey Summerfield.
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My professional reading for next week arrived today, Robin Alexander’s A Dialogic Teaching Companion.
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I’m glad I ignored their protests at the start and didn’t have a “fun last lesson” with my Year 11 class today. Instead, we staged a role-play debate on the issue of hunting with groups taking the roles of various lobby groups and a panel of judges. As the debate went on many became quite embroiled in the argument. It was great to see many remain in role presenting viewpoints they didn’t personally agree with. I’m hoping a number of the students go on to study A-level Lit.
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Great to see these volumes of The Art of Hergé arrive this evening. Ordered them from a Scottish shop called Paper Tiger. I can never get enough Tintin.
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I’m not going to get a chance to watch this 4 hour 4k epic until the weekend. The kids will have to battle me for the TV!
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Notes from English and Its Teachers by Simon Gibbons (2017) In Chapter 6, Simon Gibbons brings the book up to date (to 2017 which – after Covid 19 and the lockdowns – seems an age ago). He presets a largely bleak and somewhat dispiriting picture of current English teaching in schools which Gibbons feels has suffered under 20+ years of direct government intervention. He points out some small attempts at presenting alternative approaches to teaching English – Looking for the Heart of English, John Richmond’s proposals and a (new) National Writing Project – but the his summation of the state of…
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Been listening to Clark’s newest album, Playground in a Lake today. Enjoyed it a great deal. I’m sure I can hear the influences of Jóhann Jóhannsson, Max Richter, Satie, BoC and even Vangelis. It’s quite moody throughout and seems to go to some dark places and wouldn’t sound out of place as a soundtrack to a Denis Villeneuve SF film. The tracks I like best are More Islands and Shut You Down, which seem to be the most electronic on the album.
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Great article in this week’s TES about the teaching of writing. Liz Chamberlain (Open University) and Rob Drane (English subject lead at the University of Cambridge) argue that writing is being taught in primary schools causes “a disconnect between how we view writing in the real world, and how writing is taught in schools. And, in some classrooms, this is having a detrimental effect”. Chamberlain and Drake assert that the complexity of writing is too frequently reduced to separate components/threads – transcription, composition, vocabulary, grammar and punctuation – when it is actually a “complex and personal process”. They refer to…
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So that’s how they should be laid out!
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