All articles on this site
-
Four reasons why children are being excluded from school
An article which explores the reasons why children are excluded from school.
-
Review of Creativity in the English Curriculum: Historical Perspectives and Future Directions by Lorna Smith
Lorna Smith’s book could not be timelier. It is published at a point when creativity – in all its manifold forms and iterations – is under serious attack in educational jurisdictions across the world.
-
Angela Kreeger: Subject of the miracle of modern medicine and psychoanalysis
It is a cold January Sunday afternoon in 2022, but Angela Kreeger’s living room feels gorgeous, and I’m eating far too many slices of a delicious almond cake.
-
Review of Out of Time: Poetry From the Climate Emergency
A review of ‘Out of Time: Poetry From the Climate Emergency’
-
Why and how should we encourage young people to research their local parks and green spaces?
Our parks have a problem with young people. Older children, particularly those from poorer backgrounds, feel unwelcome and unfairly blamed for things like anti-social behaviour.
-
Review of “Real-World Writers: A Handbook for Teaching Writing with 7-11 Year Olds”, by Ross Young and Felicity Ferguson
“Teachers themselves should be writers” and the ways in which writing for pleasure can be nurtured by English teachers.
-
The Time Devil runs amok: How I improved my creative practice by adopting a multimodal approach for a specific audience.
How teacher-writers can improve their craft and pedagogy by writing for a specific audience, namely school children. And why they might do so.
-
Diagrarting: theorising and practising new ways of writing and drawing
To “diagrart” (my neologism combining the words diagrams, dialogue and art), one must write and draw, and believe you are creating art, no matter how crude you think your work to be.
-
The Reciprocal Rebellion: Promoting Discussion in Authoritarian Schools
Reciprocal Teaching re-orders education by fostering meaningful relationships, challenging the hegemony of neoliberal schools: it is a rebellion against their authoritarianism.
-
Letting it all spill out: the benefits of venting for creative writing teachers and students.
Specific therapeutic pedagogies that help people ‘vent’ their traumas and issues, with lots of practical suggestions and a rationale for ‘letting it all spill out’ in educational settings.
-
Affective digital presence: how to free online writing and drawing?
How freewriting and drawing can have a therapeutic effect when working online. It draws upon the experience of my students and my colleague, Dr Miranda Matthews. It also suggests a methodology for this approach.
-
What’s Next? Ecoliteracies and creative writing
Creative writing can be used to nurture ecoliteracie, helping people developing an organic, ecological view of language.
-
Teaching Creative Writing Online: Research-Informed Strategies
A summary of a presentation at NAWE Conference 2021, suggesting some ways of teaching creative writing online, using puppets, stories, drawings and metacognition.
-
Different ways of descending into the crypt: methodologies and methods for researching creative writing
For all creative writers who wish to explore writing processes further, using established research.
-
Why teach creative writing? Examining the challenges of its pedagogies
One of the purposes of teaching creative writing is ‘to heal’, in other words, creative writing is taught as a form of therapy, maybe more than is openly stated. Many teachers set therapeutic tasks so the author can learn and grow from the experience of writing about it.
-
Lockdown lessons: Teaching and working during the Covid-19 crisis
Some of the lessons I learnt during the Covid lockdown, about staying sane, being mindful and engaging with technology
-
Finding a new path: Building affective online learning spaces for creative writing and arts practice
On Covid-19 related research, for the British Educational Research Association.
-
8 Ways To Teach spelling, punctuation and grammar
For many, teaching Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG) is daunting. The stakes are high, and the weighting on SPaG in exams has raised anxieties. Here are some tried and tested approaches.
-
Teaching 1984 in the surveillance culture of schools
Teaching Orwell’s “1984” as a set text in an examination-obsessed and heavily surveilled school system.
-
Mindfulness and Creative Writing
How mindfulness can be used by creative writers to develop their practice and pedagogy
topics I’ve written about on this site
- Archived (446)
- FGI Publishing (31)
- Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde: A dramatic adaptation of Stevenson's classic novel (2)
- Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde: The Study Guide Edition (4)
- Far From The Madding Crowd: A Study Guide (2)
- Frankenstein: A Study Guide (2)
- How to Get a Great English Degree (2)
- Jane Eyre: A Study Guide (2)
- Learning Matters (2)
- Pride and Prejudice: A Study Guide (2)
- Songs of Innocence and Experience: A Study Guide (2)
- St. Cupid's (1)
- Star-crossed: Romeo and Juliet for Teenagers (2)
- The Hound of the Baskervilles: A Study Guide (2)
- The Long Game (6)
- The Mindful English Teacher (1)
- The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: A Study Guide (2)
- The Turn of the Screw: A Study Guide (2)
- Wuthering Heights: A Study Guide (2)
- For (138)
- for academics (34)
- for parents (24)
- for students (88)
- for teachers (55)
- Key concept (195)
- Academies (13)
- Admissions (4)
- Aesthetic autobiography (5)
- Analysing autobiography (4)
- Analysing quotation (5)
- Autobiographical classroom materials (4)
- Bullying (4)
- Child Language Acquisition (17)
- Choosing A Secondary School (3)
- Collective Identity (3)
- Communication (9)
- Comparison (5)
- Creative writing and therapy (4)
- Creative Writing Teaching (17)
- Curriculum change (7)
- Digital learning (6)
- Discipline (27)
- Education reform (53)
- English Baccalaureate (4)
- Free Schools (6)
- International comparisons of schools (2)
- Language Development (5)
- Media Studies (6)
- Mindfulness (3)
- Model answers (3)
- Ofsted (3)
- Punishments (4)
- Reading Reform (11)
- Resources (3)
- Reviews (11)
- School entrance (5)
- Semantic change (2)
- Specialist teachers (4)
- Student Voice (2)
- Teacher training (12)
- Teaching Unions (4)
- Yob culture (12)
- Media appearances (35)
- BBC 2 Newsnight (2)
- BBC Breakfast (5)
- BBC News (2)
- BBC Radio3 (6)
- BBC Radio4 (5)
- BBC Radio5 Live (10)
- Channel 4 News (1)
- Channel 5 News (3)
- GMTV (2)
- ITV News (1)
- Sky News (1)
- My books (33)
- Anthologies (4)
- Fiction (4)
- Non-fiction (6)
- Study guides (16)
- Opinion (170)
- Published in (239)
- Academic articles (31)
- Blue Door Press (6)
- English Online (2)
- Local Schools Network (35)
- Long Game Articles (6)
- Mumsnet: talesbehindtheclasroomdoor (3)
- NAWE Magazine (2)
- Newsweek (1)
- Politico.eu (1)
- Reviews (1)
- Teachit.co.uk (1)
- The Big Issue (2)
- The Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday (8)
- The Daily Telegraph (24)
- The Evening Standard (3)
- The Guardian (43)
- Comment Is Free (29)
- The Local Schools Network (9)
- The New Day (1)
- The New Statesman (7)
- The Observer (4)
- The Tablet (1)
- The Times and The Sunday Times (33)
- The Times Educational Supplement (10)
- The Western Daily Press (6)
- The Yorkshire Post (4)
- Titles (31)
- UK education system (90)