Quick Teaching Ideas

Just two quick ideas that I've been implementing lately that you might find useful not only for your students, but also for maximising your time as a teacher! Tearable Essay Questions Avoid missing homework excuses, encourage independence, and stretch students' individual study by creating a revision board of essay writing questions and creative writing stimuli. …

Feminism in Schools- Conference

Yesterday my teacher friend Emily and I attended the Feminism in Schools conference at Deptford School, in the south of London. The day was geared at teachers and students, who want to see active change in the attitudes, policies and leadership around activism in education. In a word, it was AWESOME, and I could bang …

Essay writing: building students’ vocabulary and fluency

Fluency in critical writing is often the difference between a band 5 and 6 at the GCSE. Here are just some ideas that I’ve found useful in building students’ sophisticated and ambitious vocabulary, eloquence in expression, and paragraph building.   PEACE paragraph model A simple scaffold that builds not so simple paragraphs. Students begin with …

Mindfulness and pastoral care

I don’t know about you, but there was no such thing as “mindfulness” when I was a high-school student. No teachers talked to me about yoga, or meditation, or managing stress. One of the things I found difficult when I started teaching was offering pastoral care to students who needed help managing stress. I knew …

Oxonmoot- reflections on teaching fantasy and world-building.

Last week I attended Oxonmoot at Oxford University, which is the world’s largest celebration of all things Tolkien. With four days of lectures, panels, group discussions, and other activities (such as a hungry hobbit bake-off), it was an opportunity to completely indulge in one of my biggest fandoms. I got to make lots of LOTR …