Teaching creative writing
teaching english

All articles on this site

  • How can we help secondary school students read for pleasure and improve their reading skills? #GdnBLReading

    Yesterday I spoke at the Guardian Education Centre for a conference on Reading for Pleasure in the secondary classroom. The Guardian’s literary editor, Claire Armistead, kicked off the day by explaining that we need our young people to enjoy reading and to read whole texts which are not part of the curriculum; she pointed out…

  • Reciprocal Teaching and the Time Devil

    I’ve been working hard at helping Key Stage 3 students in Deptford Green school, a London comprehensive, to develop their reading skills. To that end, I have written a book, The Time Devil, which is set partly in Deptford Green and partly in the National Maritime Museum, whom we are also working with.  I have…

  • Summer Solstice Readings for National Writing Day at the Word Bookshop, New Cross

    I had a very enjoyable day at Goldsmiths on the summer solstice to celebrate National Writing Day. The summer solstice is: “the time at which the sun is at its northernmost point in the sky(southernmost point in the South hemisphere), appearing at noon at its highest altitude above the horizon.” It is midsummer; the heart of this glorious season, a time when Vikings used to resolve legal disputes, when the sun would align with the Wyoming’s Bighorn medicine wheel and magnificent Aztec architecture,…

  • Improving students’ reading using Reciprocal Teaching

      Respected research has shown for some time that certain teaching approaches are particularly effective at improving students’ reading skills; one such strategy is called Reciprocal Teaching (Oczkus, 2010:Palincsar and Brown, 1984) which gets learners reading in groups. I’ve written about the success of this strategy in two previous issues of NATE Magazine (June 2015/June…

  • 7 Things I Loved About Min Jin Lee’s great novel ‘Pachinko’

    The page-turning story which is rooted in historical facts. Pachinko is nearly 500 pages long but you can’t stop turning the pages once you start reading it. From the start, you’re immersed in the family saga of Sunja, the loved daughter of Hoonie, who was born with a “cleft palate and a twisted foot”, and…

  • Why it’s good news that sex education is being made compulsory in schools

    Yesterday’s announcement that sex education is being made compulsory in schools, including academy and faith schools, is good news for children who needed to be educated about these issues. I spoke about this on Channel 5 News yesterday.  

  • The Dark Alleyway

    To my mind, Creative Writing (CW) currently languishes like a frightened animal in one of the curriculum’s darker alleyways, shivering and rather worried about its prospects. Having been an English teacher for twenty-five years in various comprehensives and now a Lecturer in PGCE English at Goldsmiths, which involves visiting many schools, I have both taught…

  • We need to reform the academy system – and stop the power-hungry super-heads

    Our schools have become joyless, stressful places, run by principals who behave like football managers obsessed by tables. Why do we put up with it? This week’s Newsnight investigation into greedy “superheads” of academies coupled with headline claims about other heads involved inmoney-grabbing and cronyism has thrown a spotlight on to the role of headteachers.…

  • Lines of Work: Francis Gilbert on Rousseau’s Emile

    This is the transcript of the Radio 3 Essay I wrote and read in May 2016. You can find the podcast here. Rousseau’s Emile and my life I’m a young English teacher, it’s my second year in an inner city school in London, and I think I’m doing well with my tutor group, a class…

  • Has your child missed out on a primary school place? Our expert guide for worried parents: The New Day

    A slightly different version of this article was published in the New Day, a print only newspaper, 18th April 2016 Having been a school teacher for over two decades and written two books on this subject, I know of the distress that parents go through when their child is not given a place at their…

  • Are academies the way forward? Appearance on Channel 5 News

  • Illness as an educator #lessonswecanlearnfromteachers

    This article is an extract from a forthcoming book, The Long Game: The Lessons We Can Learn From Long-Serving Teachers. The aim was to interview long-serving teachers, listen to their stories and see if I could draw out any lessons from their experiences. Constructive comments are welcome; they will help me make it a better book.…

  • Mixing the methods #lessonswecanlearnfromteachers

    This article is an extract from a forthcoming book, The Long Game: The Lessons We Can Learn From Long-Serving Teachers. The aim was to interview long-serving teachers, listen to their stories and see if I could draw out any lessons from their experiences. Constructive comments are welcome; they will help me make it a better book.…

  • The perks and perils of competition #lessonswecanlearnfromteachers

    This article is an extract from a forthcoming book, The Long Game: The Lessons We Can Learn From Long-Serving Teachers. The aim was to interview long-serving teachers, listen to their stories and see if I could draw out any lessons from their experiences. Constructive comments are welcome; they will help me make it a better book.…

  • A headteacher confesses: Naughtiness is sometimes a sign of being clever #lessonswecanlearnfromteachers

    This article is an extract from a forthcoming book, The Long Game: The Lessons We Can Learn From Long-Serving Teachers. The aim was to interview long-serving teachers, listen to their stories and see if I could draw out any lessons from their experiences. Constructive comments are welcome; they will help me make it a better book.…

  • Spare the rod and save the child? #lessonswecanlearnfromteachers

    This article is an extract from a forthcoming book, The Long Game: The Lessons We Can Learn From Long-Serving Teachers, which will be published in the near future. The aim was to interview long-serving teachers, listen to their stories and see if I could draw out any lessons from their experiences. Constructive comments are welcome; they will…

  • What my footballing father taught me: get a good education #lessonswecanlearnfromteachers

    This article is an extract from a forthcoming book, The Long Game: The Lessons We Can Learn From Long-Serving Teachers. The aim was to interview long-serving teachers, listen to their stories and see if I could draw out any lessons from their experiences. Constructive comments are welcome; they will help me make it a better book.…

  • An important lesson from a war-time childhood: It’s your friends who make you #lessonswecanlearnfromteachers

    This article is an extract from a forthcoming book, The Long Game: The Lessons We Can Learn From Long-Serving Teachers. Constructive comments are welcome; they will help me make it a better book. Doris Peate was not doing badly for an 87-year-old when I interviewed her in June 2015: she was remarkably alert and energetic,…

  • The Turn of the Screw: The Study Guide Edition

    This edition of Henry James’s haunting narrative contains a comprehensive study guide as well as activities that stimulate and engage. Aimed specifically at pupils reading the book as an exam text, there are detailed instructions about how to understand the challenging language, to appreciate the novel’s contexts and to write effective essays.

  • Brontë’s Wuthering Heights: The Study Guide Edition

    Aimed specifically at pupils reading the book for exams. The complete text is punctuated by analysis and questions on every chapter with answers provided at the back. Essential reading for all students and teachers!

Everything I write about on this site