Julian Girdham

A review of Carol Atherton’s Reading Lessons: the books we read at school, the conversations they spark and why they matter, with extended comments on English teaching.

A summary of teaching notes on Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, including a free 26-page downloadable guide.

A reflection on reading eclectically, and on how books connect to each other in surprising and fruitful ways.

Laura Cumming’s marvellous Thunderclap: a memoir of art and life & sudden death mulls over our gaps in the knowledge of the artist Carel Fabritius, but it is about so much more, especially her father, the Scottish artist James Cumming.

The argument for the most ‘important’ subject in school being … poetry.

A post published originally in June 2009, following the incident when Paper 2 Leaving Certificate English had to be rescheduled, and there was a media firestorm.

King Lear and Caravaggio’s ‘The Taking of Christ’ were created at the same time, in two different countries, by two artists who never met each other: but they share a lot.

A post reflecting on where we are we right now with the proposed changes to Leaving Certificate English.

My annual selection of excellent reading.

The beautiful jacket of Claire Keegan’s novel Small Things Like These is fashioned from Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s ‘Hunters in the Snow’. A significant detail is excluded from the selection.

Reflections on researchED Dublin, Saturday 24th September 2022

Neil Sentance has written two marvellous short collections, imagining the lives of his family over many decades on the border of Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire.

Poetry is the most dense and intense literary form. It needs time and space. But too often the design of contemporary textbooks does precisely the opposite.

George Saunders has written a superb book presenting and then commenting on seven great stories by the Russian masters. It is marvellous.

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.

The constant undertow of R.C. Sherriff’s 1931 novel The Fortnight in September is time. The two significant words in the title are about time, and it colours everything that follows, but this is not a melancholic story.

This is the text of a talk I gave on Thursday 23rd March 2017 as part of an event to mark the life and works of William Trevor. In the second part of the event, the author Joseph O’Connor read Trevor’s great story ‘Another Christmas’ and answered questions from the audience about Trevor’s work.

The unexpected news this afternoon of Eavan Boland’s passing felt just like hearing of Seamus Heaney’s death : a sharp, dismayed ‘Ah no. No.’ Losing great writers leaves us bereft, even if we didn’t know them personally. The words of a great poet with a long career like Boland or Heaney seep into us over decades. They become part of what we are.

Reader, Come Home: the reading brain in a digital world (2018) is an elegant and insightful analysis of how deep reading is under threat, and of how this particular form of attention is being eroded by the digital universe in which we now live. For an English teacher, the book is essential reading. For me, it is one of the most important books of our recent years.

Second series of teaching notes on Small Things Like These, covering Section 3.

A free webinar via Tralee Education Support Service for teachers of Claire Keegan’s novel Small Things Like These.

Post 1 of Teaching Notes on Claire Keegan’s novel 'Small Things Like These.

The third English Meet is being planned for Wednesday 1st May.

The authors in Kate Jones’s selection of essays looking at the basics of cognitive science explain key concepts in a valuably accessible way.

Ros Atkins’s The Art of Explanation: how to communicate with clarity and confidence is a fascinating fine-grained account of how he has reached the status of one of broadcasting’s most impressive ‘explainers’.

Greg Ashman’s Cognitive Load Theory in the Little Guide for Teachers series is a lucid short book on this important idea.

Some thoughts on where we are with Leaving Certificate English, as Senior Cycle Reform gets closer, and as the AI revolution gathers pace.

A post published originally in June 2009, following the incident when Paper 2 Leaving Certificate English had to be rescheduled, and there was a media firestorm.

An analysis of the literature paper at Higher Level in the 2023 Leaving Certificate.

A response to Paper 1 (English Language), Higher Level, in the 2023 Leaving Certificate.

Two free webinars in the 2023-24 academic year: on Hamlet, and on cognitive science (an introduction).

A few ideas about effective ideas in preparing for the English Leaving Certificate: mostly things which don’t take much time.

A report on the second English Meet, with 6 English teachers presenting ideas from their teaching practice.

A recent paper by Craig Skerritt of the Manchester Institute of Education examines the document Looking at Our School (2022) with a sharp eye.

Notes on the 2023 ASTI Education Conference on Reform

The plan to move English (and Irish) Paper 1 in the Leaving Certificate has been ‘deferred’. A response.

If you’re interested in presenting at the second English Meet, on Wednesday 3rd May 2023, 7pm to 9pm, get in touch!

A post reflecting on where we are we right now with the proposed changes to Leaving Certificate English.

Article on researchED Dublin 2022 from ASTIR magazine, January 2023.

Tools for Teachers by Oliver Lovell, based on his podcast the Education Research Reading Room, is packed with interesting and well-balanced advice about classroom practice.

Comments on the first report of the UL longitudinal study: Exploring the introduction of the Framework for Junior Cycle

Notes from a webinar given by Professor Dylan Wiliam on the Role of Leaders in Promoting More Effective Assessment.

Reflections on researchED Dublin, Saturday 24th September 2022

The slide presentations from researchED Dublin 2022, where available.

Here is the programme for researchED Dublin (The Return) on Saturday 24th September. Lots of hard choices to make. Attendees will receive the paper version on registration.

A preview of the presentations at researchED Dublin on Saturday 24th September at St Columba’s College. After the keynotes, they are in alphabetical order; the timetable will be released closer to the time.

Observations on English Paper 2 of the 2022 Leaving Certificate

A review of the first English paper in the 2022 Leaving Certificate.

A fuller version of some ‘tips’ from today’s Irish Times.

A summary of teaching notes on Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, including a free 26-page downloadable guide.

A summary of notes on the four comparative modes in the Leaving Certificate as they might apply to Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These.

A look at Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These through the lens of George Saunders’s A Swim in the Pond in the Rain.

Teaching notes on the final section of Small Things Like These.

Teaching notes on Section 6 of Claire Keegan’s novel Small Things Like These.

Teaching notes on Sections 4 and 5 of Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These.

Second series of teaching notes on Small Things Like These, covering Section 3.

A free webinar via Tralee Education Support Service for teachers of Claire Keegan’s novel Small Things Like These.

Post 1 of Teaching Notes on Claire Keegan’s novel 'Small Things Like These.

A summary of useful resources and links on Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These. Notes follow in other posts.

A report on the 2023 conference of INOTE, the Irish National Organisation for Teachers of English.

Deborah Levy’s new novel August Blue will give pleasure to all who enjoyed her superb three-book ‘living autobiography.’

An analysis of William Trevor’s short story, ‘The Piano Tuner’s Wives’, a masterpiece of fiction.

Claire Keegan’s 2022 short story ‘So Late in the Day’ is further evidence of her excellence, and George Saunders talks about it brilliantly.

A poem based on the opening of Henry James’s masterpiece The Portrait of a Lady.

Jonathan Bate’s Bright Star, Green Light, a parallel-biography of John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald, is essential reading for English teachers.

The UCD Special Collections exhibition ‘Heaney & the Classics’ has been launched, with Roy Foster (pictured) giving the key address.

A talk on Yeats’s poem ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’.

15 video/audio annotations of key moments in The Great Gatsby.

Marion Turner’s The Wife of Bath a biography is a thrilling follow-up to her major biography of Geoffrey Chaucer, placing the fictional character in her literary and cultural context, and then looking at her many and persistent ‘afterlives’ through history.

An audio interview with the late Professor Terry Dolan about the Middle English poet Geoffrey Chaucer.

A discussion about Henry James’s masterpiece The Portrait of a Lady.

Patrick Freyne’s collection of personal essays, OK, Let’s Do Your Stupid Idea is a skilful, funny and often moving collection of stories.

The beautiful jacket of Claire Keegan’s novel Small Things Like These is fashioned from Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s ‘Hunters in the Snow’. A significant detail is excluded from the selection.

Katherine Rundell’s Super-Infinite: the transformations of John Donne is a thrilling revisiting of poems that may be 400 years old, but are still fizzingly alive.

Roy Foster’s overview of the life and career of Seamus Heaney is careful, balanced, and skilful, covering a lot of ground in a relatively short book.

Claire Keegan and Fintan O’Toole have written two superb books, which approach the same idea from utterly different angles.

Thoughts on reading, and on reading more, occasioned by Ian Leslie’s Ruffian Substack: Nine Ways to Read: ideas for reading more and better books.

Colm Bairéad’s superb version of Claire Keegan’s ‘Foster’ is beautifully done.

Vivian Gornick’s Unfinished Business includes a chapter on J.L. Carr’s beautiful short novel A Month in the Country, as she reconsiders it after reading Pat Barker’s Regeneration.

A free webinar on ideas of ‘light and dark’ in ‘King Lear’, via Wexford Education Centre, at 7.00pm on Tuesday 7th May 2024.

English teachers will appreciate 100 for 100 Macbeth, by Stuart Pryke and Amy Staniforth, which is directed at student revision, but also has lots of opportunities for class work.

Notes on the ‘King Lear’ chapter of Emma Smith’s book This is Shakespeare.

Notes and links for a webinar via Tralee Education Support Centre, for teachers of Hamlet at Leaving Certificate.

Notes on the Hamlet chapter in Emma Smith’s This is Shakespeare.

A simple way to help pupils understand which parts of a play are important for revising an individual character. Here, Hamlet, but any play by Shakespeare works.

Gabriel Josipovici’s commentary in Hamlet: Fold on Fold is consistently stimulating and thought-provoking, and blessedly free of academic jargon.

Jason Allen-Paisant’s Self-Portrait as Othello is a thought-provoking collection of poems.

Sophie Duncan’s Searching for Juliet: The Lives and Deaths of Shakespeare’s First Tragic Heroine is a wide-ranging account of the many afterlives of one of literature’s most famous protagonists.

King Lear and Caravaggio’s ‘The Taking of Christ’ were created at the same time, in two different countries, by two artists who never met each other: but they share a lot.

Two free webinars in the 2023-24 academic year: on Hamlet, and on cognitive science (an introduction).

5-minute talks on relatively ‘lesser’ characters in Hamlet.

15 video annotations of key moments in Hamlet.

20 video/audio annotations of key moments in Macbeth.

The ‘shownotes’ for my webinar for teachers on revising Macbeth leading up to the Leaving Certificate. Via Tralee Education Support Centre, evening of Monday 9th January 2023.

‘Shownotes’ from a presentation on teaching the end of King Lear, as part of Litdrive’s online CPD programme, January 2023.

A three-step approach to embedding knowledge of the sequence of events in Hamlet.

Details of a revision webinar on Macbeth on January 9th 2023.

Some notes on the Macbeth chapter in Emma Smith’s book This is Shakespeare.

54 exercises to discuss key quotations when revising Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear and Othello, with the rationale behind them, and an example from a key scene in Macbeth.

Here are some exercises on quotations in Macbeth. They are designed for 15-minute sessions of pair-work in class, but work perfectly well for individuals. You need to know the play well, so these are for revision at a late stage. The purpose is to make your mind work hard.

A set of 98 useful quotations from Macbeth, combining the five separate Quizlets in a revision series.

The fifth in a revision/retrieval series using quotations from Macbeth, by Act.

The fourth in a revision/retrieval series using quotations from Macbeth, by Act.

The third in a revision/retrieval series using quotations from Macbeth, by Act.

The second in a revision/retrieval series using quotations from Macbeth, by Act.

The first in a revision series using quotations from Macbeth, by Act.

Toni Morrison’s play Desdemona gives voice to the silenced women from Shakespeare’s story.

10 revision exercises on quotations in Othello. They are designed for pair-work 15-minute sessions in class, but work perfectly well for individuals. The purpose is to generate ideas and debate about the play, and they should only be done once you know the play well, particularly as retrieval practice.

Kiernan Ryan’s new overview of Shakespeare’s tragic oeuvre is magisterial and consistently interesting. Here are some notes on his chapter on Othello.