Inspiring creativity, positivity and an adventurous spirit. Teacher, writer and blogger.
When you’re in the throes of the school term it’s easy to think about the next holiday. To look forward with excitement to that dreamlike last ringing of the bell signalling the time to pack up and go home. Of course, that’s normal. Teaching is a hard job. It’s relentless and frustrating. It’s easy to …
As teachers, we always talk about the progress of our students. We watch them arrive (if you're a secondary school teacher like me) bright-eyed in year 7, and grow almost unrecognizably through to year 11 and sometimes even on to the sixth form. It's one of my favourite parts of the job, which I always …
Continue reading "Five things being a teacher has taught me"
I love teaching creative writing and young people can be so good at it. They have such great ideas which, when harnessed, creates some great pieces of work. I've already shared the Creative Writing Structure Strips which are incorporated into this short scheme of work. I've used this a number of times, often when …
One of the difficulties of reading is that it's a number of different skills all intertwined. If a student isn't practised in any one of these skills comprehension can break down and they'll not understand or give up completely.
I love storytelling, I suppose that's not surprising as a teacher and a writer. As such, I try to bring stories into my classroom at every opportunity.
A great lesson for the first week back in the new year. It's a reminder of common spelling, punctuation and grammar mistakes. DOWNLOAD THE POWERPOINT HERE: New Year's Resolutions for SPAG Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash
In a few days 2017 will be done and we'll move forward, bright eyed and optimistic (hopefully) into 2018. I'm sure you have ideas of things you'd like to do better next year; things you'd like to start or stop in order to make 2018 better, brighter and more successful. However, new year's resolutions are very …
It's Christmas eve 2017 as I write this and we've made it to the holiday! What a long term. But, walking back to my car through the school car park on Friday I noticed colleagues loading box upon box of work into their cars - as if they're not taking time off, just working from …
Teaching students to follow a structure when being creative is something I try to avoid - the last thing I want to do is put a limit on their creativity. However, there is a trend when students are marked on descriptive writing (like in section B of paper 1 of the AQA Language exam) for …
Continue reading "Use this descriptive structure to focus your students’ creative writing"
The third post in a series about how to improve the inference skills of your students, and why that's so important.
