Summer is the perfect time to catch up on the reading you haven’t found time for during the beginning of the year. Sometimes it can be hard to decide from all the fantastic books that are out there and to give you some inspiration we have put together a list of what the English team […]
Read moreAuthor: Oxford English Team
New research from the National Literacy Trust indicates comedy could play an important role in engaging children and young people in reading and writing for enjoyment. The National Literacy Trust survey shows that reading and writing comedy is particularly popular with boys, who are twice as likely as girls to write comedy outside class. With this […]
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This July Oxford’s own amateur music and drama group – MaDSoc – will be co-producing Shakespeare’s timeless comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Oxford-based theatre company, Leaning House. The play will be performed by a mixture of professional and amateur actors and set in the picturesque front quad at OUP’s head office. Jenny Johns (a […]
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We asked some of our authors and experts to share their hints and tips for teaching Shakespeare. Here’s a round-up of the top five classroom activities and ideas: Start by admitting Shakespeare is ‘difficult’ and everyone is on unfamiliar ground with the language. Make it relevant – encourage discussions about Iagos in the playground and […]
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This special anniversary year offers unique opportunities for introducing your students to the world and work of William Shakespeare. Finding new and inspiring ways of bringing Shakespeare’s plays to life is essential to engaging children in the classroom. With this in mind, we’ve asked some of our authors and experts to share their first encounters […]
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Romeo and Juliet was written during the 1590s and was first performed in 1597 in London. We know that Romeo and Juliet has an enduring appeal for audiences – as the title page of the play’s 1597 edition tells us, the play was, even then, a popular success “…it hath been often (with great applause) […]
Read moreStudents in classrooms across Derbyshire watch attentively as their teachers, in role as ‘Lost Property official’ characters, remove items from first, a modern lizard skin bag and then a Victorian bundle and place them on a table. The contrast between items such as the furry pink purse, taken from the bag and a 19th Century […]
Read moreWelcome to the brave new world of Key Stage 4 English And the trouble is that it’s sitting alongside the brave new world of Key Stage 3, which itself rubs shoulders with a whole new primary curriculum, and then at the other end there are all those momentous changes to post-16 English. So welcome, in […]
Read moreA guest post from Kathryn Grant at: The story of Tower Poetry started in 2000 when Christopher Tower, an Old Member of Christ Church, University of Oxford, left a large legacy to enhance the study of his two passions, poetry in the English language and Greek mythology. The gift was split into four funds – […]
Read moreI’m a lucky man. I’ve travelled the full spectrum of Shakespeare appreciation. I’ve now played Hamlet, Macbeth, and Pericles, spoken his Sonnets, written books about him, and directed his plays, but I hated Shakespeare in school. The phrase that comes up over and over again when I begin telling this story, is “I was lucky, […]
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