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I’m an avid Pinterest fan and I frequently see fabulous examples of blackout poetry on my feed. They are pretty inspirational and as April is National Poetry Month I thought I’d give it a go with my classes. Here are

I’m well and truly snowed in today and I’ve been taking the time to drink copious amounts of hot chocolate and to reflect. There can be no argument against the fact that teaching is a ridiculously difficult job. The to-do

In an ideal world I would like to spend a majority of my time creating beautiful resources for my students. I’m going to guess that most English teachers out there would prefer to spend their time doing this than, say,

What is a hinge question?   A hinge question is one which checks for understanding at a “hinge point” of the lesson. A hinge question establishes that the students understand the previous content before moving on to the next idea

Here are three more writing prompts for writing prompt Wednesday. This week I gave my students the choice of the three for a 200 word low stake writing task. There were some wonderfully creative responses. I really can see an

I’m a big fan of using real world, “in the moment” resources in the classroom so I couldn’t ignore Oprah’s recent Golden Globes speech to help students to develop their rhetorical analysis. Here are a few ideas you could try

Happy New Year! I hope if you are back in school it isn’t too traumatic and if you are still off are enjoying your remaining PJ days! I’m going to use my first post of the year to kick-start “Writing

Here are 50 ideas which could be used to support the teaching of any novel:   1. Sketch a setting map. 2. Write a piece of dialogue between two characters. 3. Write down three questions to ask the author. 4.

If you are an English teacher and you aren’t on Twitter, my advice would be to sign up immediately. Teaching can be a bizarrely lonely experience. You may tell your partner / mum / cat just how tough the gig

In our world which is heavily driven by exams and assessment it sometimes feels difficult to find the time for anything else. But I’ve had a new experience this week and it’s really made me focus on how important it