Brief – but valid – Guardian editorial calling for changes to English teaching. “Too much of what is valuable about studying English was lost in the educational reforms of the past 14 years,” the paper says and that “ill-thought-through changes, which imposed a model more suited to science and maths…
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Just read the excellent Reading and Writing for Pleasure: A Framework for Practice and Approaches to Reading and Writing for Pleasure by the Open University’s Reading for Pleasure programme. Plus the TES interview with Professor Teresa Cremin about how to encourage more children to read for pleasure. The takeaways seem…
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Amusing – and chilling – piece by the wonderful Michael Rosen about part of the recent OFSTED subject report into English. Rosen examines the controversial paragraph 90 of the report which attempts to insist that only texts of “literary merit” should be studied in schools and attempts a sleight of…
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Notes from A Dialogic Teaching Companion by Robin Alexander (2020). Chapter 2 – Talk for Learning In this chapter, Alexander explores the relationship between talk and the development of a child. He examines the shift in the 1970s between the child as “lone scientist” to “apprentice”. The persistence of recitation…
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Notes from A Dialogic Teaching Companion by Robin Alexander (2020) Chapter 1 – Prologue In the Prologue, Robin Alexander gives a case for teaching talk as an essential tool in teaching and learning. He describes the positive value of dialogic teaching and asserts that there is a strong evidence base…
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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…
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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…
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Notes from English and Its Teachers by Simon Gibbons (2017) In Chapter 5, Gibbons focuses on New Labour’s impact on English. The Labour government sought to tackle the underachievement of poorer children. This was when I started teaching and remember all too well the exhausting period of the National Strategies….
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Notes from Making Meaning in English by David Didau (2021) Chapter 2: Problems in English This chapter defines English as a “folk discipline” where its teachers have limited understanding of effective approaches. Didau dismisses “skills-based” teaching and, instead, proposes a “knowledge-based” approach. He also shows concern that students practise the…
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Notes from Making Meaning in English by David Didau (2021) Chapter 1: What is English for? This chapter presents the current state of English, drawing on its history as a school subject to explain how and why English seems “lost” as a school subject with teachers ignorant of its past…
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