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  • Mindfulness and Creative Writing

    How mindfulness can be used by creative writers to develop their practice and pedagogy

  • The Teachers’ Standards and English Teaching

    Some interesting ideas about educating English teachers in relation to Teaching Standards set in 2012… However, these standards are less emphasized now than when I wrote this article.

  • Riding the Reciprocal Teaching Bus. A teacher’s reflections on nurturing collaborative learning in a school culture obsessed by results

    My interactions with the teaching strategy known as Reciprocal Teaching (or Reciprocal Reading), which involves students learning to read collaboratively in small groups.

  • Aesthetic literacy and autobiography

    How I became ‘aesthetically literate’, and used other artistic work to educate and heal myself. ‘Aesthetic literacy’ may even be more important than other forms of literacy because of its therapeutic dimensions.

  • Dreaming of a Better World

    A creative writing and reading project, carried out at Deptford Green school, which put the principles of Reciprocal Teaching into practice.

  • The Creative Writing Teacher’s Toolkit

    There are certain pedagogical strategies, such as encouraging freewriting, using prompts and fostering flow which can significantly help learners to write creatively.

  • But sir, I lied – The value of autobiographical discourse in the classroom

    The benefits of teachers using their own autobiographical writing in the classroom. The blurring of truth and fiction in autobiographical writing can provide students with the cloak of fiction when writing about their own lives

  • Aesthetic Learning, Creative Writing and English Teaching

    ‘Aesthetic learning’ can be helpful for English teachers, because we are all ‘aesthetic learners’: we learn to appreciate the qualities of the worlds we inhabit, whether actual or virtual.

  • My Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Audio Book is now published: free copies available, read more here!

    A discussion about the creation of my audio book for my best selling study guide on the novel ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’.

  • Making an audio book of my Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde study guide

    I’m very excited to announce that the marvellous actor and audiobook reader Richard Bunn will be reading my bestselling study guide ‘Analysis and Study Guide: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’. The book has proved to be one of my popular books over the years and has continued to sell well. I was impressed by all […]

  • Five Ways to Revolutionise Reading in Your School

    These suggestions are based on the points raised at the Reading Revolution Conference held at Goldsmiths, University of London on Saturday 23rd September 2017. ONE: Encourage Reading for Pleasure Read for the sake of reading. Read aloud, read in groups, read in pairs, read silently. Read poems, stories, articles, blogs, relevant social media and so […]

  • Shakespeare as cultural capital

    This article, in a slightly different form was initially published on the Teachit website. Shakespeare as Cultural Capital by Francis Gilbert on Scribd

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

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

    This blog post contains a video of me being interviewed on Channel 5 news about the introduction of new sex education guidance by the government.

  • What really matters

    Why do 95% of teachers not know about what really works in the classroom? Why are the media and politicians even more clueless? According to Mike Bell, who runs the Evidence-Based Teachers’ Network (EBTN), very few people are actually aware of the teaching techniques that are proven to work across all the age ranges and subjects. […]

  • My blogs, YouTube, Soundcloud and Twitter channels…

    Together with a number of other eminent journalists and educationalists, I co-founded and help run the popular educational blog, Local Schools Network. I also blog for Mumsnet on Tales Behind The Classroom Door. My YouTube channel is Wonderfrancis. My Soundcloud Channel is Electric Schubert. I am @wonderfrancis on Twitter. Other blogs: A Streetcar Named Desire for […]

  • How to choose a school: by teachers for parents

    Tis the season when schools are trying to woo potential parents at open days. How can you tell what a school is really like behind the facade? Here is our guide by those who know: the teachers. This article first appeared in The Guardian. I know from bitter experience that appearances can be deceptive. I […]

  • Good links for Wilfred Owen’s poetry

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/wilfred_owen_gallery.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/shropshire/content/articles/2005/03/16/wilfred_owen.shtml