Tough to Teach English

Re-posting this - would love to hear what other English teachers have to say about teaching the 'hero's journey' as an approach to Question 3 on AQA's English Language Paper 1: @Team_English1 @Xris32 #edublogshare toughtoteach.co.uk/2024/02/17/wha…

Please share with all A Level and IB students & encourage them to enter!

NEW Coverage is not progress. Students struggle for 3 curricular reasons: lack of specificity, lack of systematicity, and lack of subject sensitivity. open.substack.com/pub/daviddidau…

@misstmalcolm @LauraLolder The @EngMediaCentre study edition has lots of relevant contextual information woven into the material. 'Relevant' & 'woven in' are key. Students struggle to make it pay its way in interpreting the text if context comes first & is overdone. englishandmedia.co.uk/publications-m…

A great idea for your A Level English Lit or IB students for Easter! Suggest that they do an entry for the annual emagazine Close Reading Competition, which is now open. UK or International students welcome to enter. Full details here: englishandmedia.co.uk/competitions/e…

It's not just phonics: Schools have failed to teach reading because they ignore 50+ years of findings in cognitive psychology that reading depends on general knowledge. ED Hirsch has been banging this drum for a long time but Ed Schools shut their ears because the whole idea was unromantic & had a vaguely right-wing aroma. Now he joins with Dan Willingham to make a strong case that kids can't read if they don't have the background knowledge that makes sense of the rarer vocabulary, allusions, and understandings that allow us to read between the lines - which all reading requires. educationnext.org/rediscovering-…

Amazing to wake up to this! I've been writing furiously over the last 18 months and have 7 books out before the end of this year! Could never have imagined being the author of 10 books five years ago.

An ECT told me recently that their mentor had said, “writing is just really hard to teach.” It *is* really hard to teach if you don’t know what you’re teaching! But, once you know, it’s significantly easier. Anything you can’t specify is hard to teach.

Very glad to see that Smartgrade are offering year 10 mock papers FOR FREE in a range of subjects this year. This means you get a Quality assured paper that your students haven't seen Detailed data analysis Standardised grade boundaries All very clever! smartgrade.co.uk/solutions/seco…

Re-sharing this about how and why we’re deconstructing assessment in KS3 open.substack.com/pub/becky70451…

This thread is spot on. And when people say science or geography 'vocabulary' has to be taught, it bothers me. Surely teaching 'photosynthesis' or 'erosion' is more than the word? It's the whole idea. The subject content. The subject. Calling it 'vocab' is back to front!

We’re pretty committed to going international teaching in September 2027. Who do I follow for tips, what do I need to do, what advice can current international teachers give me? I want to be fully prepared and aware!

Finished teaching #Macbeth to my top set Y10 last week - Tomorrow we do a knowledge check, then we plan for an essay! Hoping to get them pushing conceptually by considering the tragic structure of the play. #gcselit

Teaching with just a pen is a hugely under-estimated art that can have a profound impact on pupil learning…. It relies on the teaching being the expert.

🚨 NEW POST 🚨 'What should we do about 'reading for pleasure'?' "Reading really matters. In the final miles of secondary school, after years of failure, promoting reading for pleasure is not likely to be the place to start with Rebecca." alexquigley.co.uk/what-should-we…

This is not a one-off by any stretch of the imagination! GCSE English marking is scandalously unreliable. It should be on the ⁦@BBCNews⁩ not just the local Nottinghamshire news. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

At the core of any good school is excellent teaching, which requires good behaviour, which needs strong SLT and sytems, but which also requires engagement, which needs a relevant curriculum, which requires subject knowledge, which needs support, but also empathy. It's not simple.

"If you're not modelling, you're not teaching." Making expert thinking visible is an essential part of teaching. Modelling does this but ever more frequently I see modelling being pedagogy's poor relation.

@amy_smith117 Yes - having listened to Emma Smith speak on podcasts, I read it in her voice which makes it even better.

@toughtoteach It is such a compelling read. Insightful and witty.

Been meaning to read this for a while now and it's even better than expected:

Writing forces your brain to coordinate memory, reasoning, and meaning-making simultaneously. Every time you write, you rewire toward clearer thinking. Every time you let an LLM do it, you rewire toward consumption.