Jill Carter shares her advice for making the most out of quotations during this revision period. Students, teachers and parents worry about quotations or as they are now acceptably known quotes (in my day that was a verb…). ‘Eek – Macbeth – how can I learn a quote for every possible essay scenario?’ I hear. […]
Read moreAuthor: Fiona Lloyd-Williams
Graham Elsdon looks at ways literature students can usefully write about drama By the play’s final scene, Macbeth sees life as ‘a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage’. There is a meta theatrical quality to many of Shakespeare’s works, yet some students find it hard to write about plays as […]
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Jill Carter encourages teachers and students to spend time exploring and broadening vocabulary. Vocabulary is power. And, like a lot of power, it is hard won and easily lost. Students’ vocabulary is becoming increasingly limited in a world where it simply isn’t fashionable to exploit vocabulary for effect – in a world of posts, texts […]
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Author Pete Ellison explores the motivation and approach taken by the Catapult team during the development of the new Catapult resources. At a time when the demands of external assessment at KS2 and GCSE have never been higher, we know that many young people are not regularly reading for pleasure (recent research by the […]
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Rebecca Geoghegan shares her advice for supporting ‘low ability readers’ and discusses low levels of decoding skills. You can also read her blog about approaches for supporting lower ability writers . …I am a work in progress When I hear the label ‘low ability reader’, I instantly think of the Allan Ahlberg poem ‘I am a Slow Reader.’ The poem depicts […]
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Jill Carter shares her tips and thoughts about how to energise poetry lessons. Ask students if they like poetry and often the answer is a resounding ‘no’. Boys can be especially clear about this. I hear comments such as “I just don’t get it” and “It’s so boring”. It can be viewed as the domain […]
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Rebecca Geoghegan shares her approaches to supporting low-ability writers. Being asked to ‘write’ can be daunting for even the most confident and accurate of writers: at times we all struggle to think of something interesting and memorable to write. However, if your struggle is coupled with low literacy levels, then you are very likely to […]
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Welcome back! To get 2018 off to the best start and help you discover our comprehensive support for English Language and English Literature across all key stages, we’ve created this interactive guide. Click on the information icon to find out more about the specific resources.
Read morePunctuation does what it says on the tin – it punctuates. It ensures that our reader is clear about our intended meaning. Whilst it is important to use it correctly, I am a strong advocate of punctuation being employed carefully and thoughtfully in order to craft the writer’s intended meaning. After all, there is often […]
Read moreGraham Elsdon looks at what context means for students of literature The Lion King has become a seminal childhood text. A Black Beauty (as it were) for the Disney generation. A proto-Hamlet for the babyccino brigade. I watched it with my children, smugly noting the Shakespearean echoes. The fratricidal Scar-Claudius, the three hyena-witches, and the […]
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