Claire Keegan’s novella Foster is one of the outstanding pieces of writing by an Irish author in recent years (and a fine option for class study). Some years ago she came to my school, read from the work, and was asked questions by the pupils.
Read MoreEmma Smith’s This is Shakespeare is one of the best books of recent times to examine the plays (20 of them). This post looks at her chapter on Othello.
Read MorePeps Mccrea's book Memorable Teaching in his High Impact Teaching series was excellent, and so is his latest, Motivated Teaching. These are books which are both modest and ambitious: the former because they are short, tight, controlled, and the latter because they also deal with big ideas about learning, absorbing, compressing and then expressing them very clearly.
Read MoreAct 5: Quizlet flashcards for recalling and thinking about quotations.
Read MorePatrick Page goes deep into Iago’s character in this fascinating talk for Red Bull Theatre’s Chicago 2020 project.
Read MoreVisualisers have been around a while. They’re making a comeback in the ‘pandemic classroom’. Here are some ideas for English teachers.
Read MoreAct 4: Quizlet flashcards for recalling and thinking about quotations.
Read MoreA Quizlet of quotation flashcards for Act 3: for prompting thinking, and retrieval practice.
Read MoreThe famously bleak ending of King Lear could so easily have been different. In fact, so different it could have been a comedy, a knife-edge that makes it all the more cheerless, dark and deadly.
Read MoreTom Bennett’s new book Running the Room: the teacher’s guide to behaviour is a rich source of advice on the most fundamental thing for all learning. If behaviour is poor in a classroom, all pupils’ learning suffers.
Read MoreThe central metaphor of King Lear is blindness and seeing: this essay explores that idea.
Read MoreKent and Albany are lesser characters in King Lear, but each plays an important part, giving us insights into key ideas of the play.
Read MoreAct 2: Quizlet flashcards for recalling and thinking about quotations.
Read MoreOein DeBhairduin’s collection Why the Moon Travels is a trove of fresh stories and reflections from a tradition hardly present in Irish literature so far.
Read MoreJames Shapiro’s outstanding 1606: Shakespeare and the year of Lear, is a great resource for teachers of the play, as well as of the other two plays Shakespeare wrote in that extraordinary period, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. Here are some notes that refer to Lear, especially from the chapter ‘Leir to Lear’, in which Shapiro examines how Shakespeare reshaped the main source text, King Leir.
Read MoreThis essay examines the utter bleakness of King Lear, a play in which there is no mitigation of darkness, no religious consolation.
Read MoreShakespeare doesn’t waste time at the starts of his great tragedies; in fact, all four open disconcertingly with a sense of confusion and un-ease. In King Lear again we are pitched straight into the middle of a rather flustered conversation, which hits on a central theme of this play – division and disorder.
Read MoreQuizlet of quotations from Act 1 of King Lear to use for revision and retrieval practice.
Read MoreZadie Smith’s new book is both slight and capacious. Intimations: six essays is just 81 pages long in small format paperback, but into these pages Smith packs an enormous amount.
Read MoreTeaching Walkthrus is a stimulating resource: practical ideas are laid down with great precision. It will help a lot of teachers to clarify their practice.
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