Seamus Heaney's 'Mossbawn: (1) Sunlight
This podcast examines Seamus Heaney's poem 'Sunlight', one of the dedicatory poems called 'Mossbawn', which open his 1975 collection North.
Read MoreBooks of the Year, 2020
An annual personal choice of books of the year.
Read MoreRadical Attention
Julia Bell’s pocket-sized essay, Radical Attention examines the ways our attention has become a commodity and how an industry has developed out of our distractions.
Read MoreBooks of the Year lists, 2020
A compilation of the best Books of the Year lists in the media.
Read MoreDiversity in Schools
Bennie Kara’s new book Diversity in Schools: a little guide for teachers is small in format, big in ambition. It is just what schools and individual teachers need right now to navigate these issues.
Read MoreINOTE, November 28th 2020
Here are the slides from my two presentations at the (virtual) conference of the Irish National Teachers of English on November 28th.
Read MoreHow to Think Like Shakespeare
The tagline for this site is Thinking, Writing, Reading, Teaching, and you may have spotted that Shakespeare features regularly. So it’s exciting to come across a book which combines all five elements.
Read MoreINOTE 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.
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