INOTE 2020
Details of the first virtual conference for teachers of English in Ireland, on November 28th.
Read MoreA Ghost in the Throat
Doireann Ní Ghríofa's remarkable first prose work, as befits a poet, is itself a weaving, as it braids to and fro in its consideration of female bodies, erasures and absences, texts and textures, rooms, ghosts.
Read MoreClaire Keegan on 'Foster'
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 on 'Othello'
Emma 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 MoreMotivated Teaching
Peps 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 More'King Lear' Quizlet 5
Act 5: Quizlet flashcards for recalling and thinking about quotations.
Read MorePatrick Page on Iago
Patrick Page goes deep into Iago’s character in this fascinating talk for Red Bull Theatre’s Chicago 2020 project.
Read MoreUsing a Visualiser in the English Classroom
Visualisers have been around a while. They’re making a comeback in the ‘pandemic classroom’. Here are some ideas for English teachers.
Read More'King Lear' Quizlet 4
Act 4: Quizlet flashcards for recalling and thinking about quotations.
Read More'King Lear' Quizlet 3
A Quizlet of quotation flashcards for Act 3: for prompting thinking, and retrieval practice.
Read More'King Lear': the end
The 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 MoreRunning the Room
Tom 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 More'King Lear': blindness and seeing
The central metaphor of King Lear is blindness and seeing: this essay explores that idea.
Read More'King Lear': Albany and Kent
Kent and Albany are lesser characters in King Lear, but each plays an important part, giving us insights into key ideas of the play.
Read More'King Lear' Quizlet 2
Act 2: Quizlet flashcards for recalling and thinking about quotations.
Read MoreWhy the Moon Travels
Oein 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 on 'King Lear'
James 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 More'King Lear': cheerless, dark and deadly
This essay examines the utter bleakness of King Lear, a play in which there is no mitigation of darkness, no religious consolation.
Read More'King Lear': the opening scene
Shakespeare 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 More'King Lear' Quizlet Act 1
Quizlet of quotations from Act 1 of King Lear to use for revision and retrieval practice.
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