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  • How a good headteacher can save a school

    Without leadership and discipline, chaos rules. But this is exactly what the Government is allowing to happen, argues Francis Gilbert A few years back, I taught at a school that terrified me. Just walking down the corridor was hazardous. Frequently, children would rush up behind me and hit me on the back of the head, […]

  • Links to English teaching sites at the Guardian

    A useful page of links to English language teaching resources can be found on the Guardian‘s website here.

  • Worrying about schools

    The worrying has started! My child is in Year 4 but already I’m worrying about where he might go to secondary school. Living as I do in Tower Hamlets, the choices are rather stark. There’s an Academy which all the parents want their child to go to; there’s a pretty good Local Authority comp but […]

  • The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: key points and imagery

    Task: Read through the Ancient Mariner, and using Powerpoint devise a Powerpoint summary of the poem, using suitable images from the internet and KEY LINES AND QUOTES from the poem. To do this: Read through the poem in pairs, lifting key lines from the poem, and summarising it. Then find images to match your quotes. […]

  • Travel brochure based on the Ancient Mariner’s experience

    Using Microsoft Word or Publisher, devise a travel brochure based on the Ancient Mariner’s experiences. Look up some travel brochures on Google and learn about how these brochures use language, then using this type of language, write your own brochure. You MUST use statistics in your brochure. Detail exactly how much time will be spent […]

  • Rewarding the bad, punishing the good

    I knew he’d be difficult to teach: a child who had learnt that violence is generally rewarded with bribes, and good behaviour is ignored or punished.

  • The re-marking lottery

    Any experienced Head of Department knows that results’ day can be a nightmare. The worst problem to deal with is the sobbing student, often accompanied with the angry parent, brandishing a tear-stained results’ slips, exclaiming in loud and outraged tones that there’s no way he or she could have got their sub-standard score, and that the […]