Issue 22:

NATE Spring 2020

This Issue:
English: The
Big Picture

“We need to
allow English
to be big,
expansive, broad
and inclusive
in all kinds of
different ways.”

‘Big Picture’
English
Barbara Bleiman
The Magazine of the National Association
NATE for the Teaching of English
 © The Full English (education) Ltd

Illustration by Ben Westley Clarke benwestleyclarke.com

Choose a poem – learn it by heart- perform it in school/college
For this free illustrated poem and other resources for teaching poetry: poetrybyheart.org.uk/teachingzone

Editor
Gary Snapper
Design
Ledgard Jepson Ltd
Printing
Buxton Press Ltd
ISSN 2051-7971
Teaching English is the professional journal
of NATE, the National Association for the
Teaching of English, published three times
a year in March, June and October. The
views expressed in the magazine are those
of the authors and do not necessarily reflect
the views of the association.
Contributions to the magazine are very
welcome. Notes for contributors may be
found at www.nate.org.uk. Contact the editor
by email at gary@gabrielsnapper.co.uk.
Cover info: Collage of images representing
Ripon Grammar School’s new KS4unit on ‘The
Literature and Language of Protest’: John Agard,
Greta Thunberg, Emma Watson and Martin
Luther King (see page 17–19).
Themes for future editions of
Teaching English:
June 2020 – English and diversity
October 2020 – English across the British Isles
February 2021 – Poetry
NATE
Aizlewood’s Mill
Nursery Street
Sheffield
S3 8GG
Tel: 0330 333 5050
Email: membership@nate.org.uk
Director: Jonathan Morgan
director@nate.org.uk
Teaching English
Spring 2020
Editorial
Big Picture English: Hand, Head, Heart and Voice
This issue of Teaching English takes its theme from Barbara Bleiman’s inspiring
Harold Rosen Lecture – ‘Big Picture English: Beyond the Brushstrokes’ – given
at last summer’s NATE Conference. In her superbly argued and illustrated talk,
Barbara pinpointed an overwhelming trend in English teaching in England
in recent years: a move away from what she characterises as ‘macro’ reading
– reading of texts with an emphasis on the spirit, style and meanings of the
whole text, rooted in students’ responses to the text, negotiated through class
discussion, and developed through creative and critical activity of various kinds
– towards a focus on ‘micro’ reading – reading small sections of text in formulaic
ways for the purpose of writing examination-style close reading responses in
the form of paragraphs and essays.
Every article in this edition of the magazine in some way points towards
the generous and engaging approach to English which this idea of ‘big picture’
English suggests – starting with NATE Chair Peter Thomas’s call for the
subject to restate its vision as a humane discipline. Helen Mars makes a strong
statement of this vision in her account of her department’s decision to re-think
its GCSE course in order to ensure that it appeals to and develops the ‘hand,
head, heart and voice’ of every student.
From KS2 to ITE, from Shakespeare to Standup
This edition also seeks to track the ‘big picture’ of English from primary
school to university. In addition to Helen Mars’ KS4 article mentioned above,
Raina Parker and Carol Robertson write about the combined challenge of the
pastoral and the academic in the transition from KS2 to KS3 English; NATE’s
Management Committee presents its ‘position paper’ suggesting ways forward
for KS3 English at a time when it is increasingly seen as extended preparation
for GCSE; Claire Feeney challenges us to develop the skills of independent
study and critical literacy that our KS5 students will need ‘to shape a better
future’ in our increasingly febrile society; Robert Eaglestone encourages us to
join in English: Shared Futures, a celebration of the discipline led by HE English
but seeking to bring teachers from schools and universities together; and Clare
Lawrence reflects on what recently qualified teachers make of their ITE.
This edition also reflects the ‘big picture’ of English in its coverage of the
breadth of the English curriculum – taking in media, drama, literature, language,
creative writing, academic writing, art – and even stand-up comedy! Andrew
Burn’s account of classroom work with KS4 students creating videogames
based on Macbeth shows how a ‘big picture’ approach to Shakespeare can take
in an integrated view of English as media, drama and literature whilst still
preparing students for GCSE. On the language front, Francis Gilbert suggests
humane approaches to SPaG which engage students in identifying meaning,
purpose and audience, whilst Mick Connell reflects on the LINC project thirty
years later. Trevor Millum and Chris Warren continue their journey of ‘39
Steps’ through enjoyable approaches to poetry, Jonathan Morgan recommends
Arvon Creative Writing courses, and, in our classroom research column, Vincent
Byrne explains his search for a solution to the problem of writing frameworks
such as PEE, PETAL, etc. Anna Foster and Andrew McCallum encourage us to
build students’ confidence in writing through response to art on the one hand,
and personal writing on the other – whilst Martin Billingham suggests that
what English teachers do is surprisingly closely related to stand-up comedy.
Finally, as usual, the news and what’s on pages
cover key topical issues and events, Tom Rank
provides us with his regular review of English in
the media, and the reviews section features a range
of new books for young readers and for English
teachers.
Gary Snapper
Editor
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 01
Contents

10 12 17

20 24 28 33

42 45 45 49

53 57 59 61

61 66 83 84
02 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
| News and Views 45-48
Mind the Gap!
04-09 by Raina Parker and Carol Robertson
News and What’s On Perspectives on the Transition from Primary to
Secondary English

10-11
A View from the Chair: Rebuilding 49-52
English 8 Ways to Teach Spelling, Punctuation
by Peter Thomas and Grammar
by Francis Gilbert

| Features: ‘Big Picture’ English 53-56

Putting the Art in English
12-13 by Anna Foster
English – Shared Futures Opportunities for creativity in the English curriculum
by Robert Eaglestone

57-58
14-16 Learning to Teach English
KS3 English in England: A NATE by Clare Lawrence
Position Paper RQT perspectives on the Secondary English PGCE
by NATE Management Committee

59-60
17-19 ‘Ah Ha!’ and ‘Ha Ha!’
Hand, Head, Heart and Voice by Martin Billingham
by Helen Mars Teaching and Stand-Up comedy
Reclaiming KS4 English from the GCSE syllabus

61-63
20-23 39 Steps to Engaging with Poetry
Generation Z: Independent Thinking by Trevor Millum and Chris Warren
by Claire Feeney
Independent study for A Level English Language
students 64-65
The EMC Column: ‘Big Picture’ Writing
by Andrew McCallum
24-27
Chains of Thought
by Mick Connell 66-70
Remembering the LINC project Findings: Developing Writers as
a Developing Teacher
by Vincent Byrne
28-32
Macbeth: From Book to Videogame
by Andrew Burn
| Reviews and Columns

33-41 71-79
Big Picture English: Beyond the Book Box
Brushstrokes
by Barbara Bleiman
80-82
The NATE Harold Rosen Lecture 2019
Texts for Teachers
42-44 83
Daring to be a Writer
by Jonathan Morgan
Media Studies
by Tom Rank
Arvon Creative Writing Retreats for Teachers

84
The Teacher Feature: Anthony Cockerill

NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 03

NATE News
English: Shared Futures
Teacher rate of £30 announced for day of CPD workshops for English teachers at
national conference
English teachers from around the UK are
being encouraged to attend a major cross-
discipline conference in Manchester in July
2020 – English: Shared Futures. Organised
by the English Association and University
English, and supported by NATE, NAWE
and the Institute of English Studies, the
conference aims to help English teachers in
two key ways – through a special teachers’
CPD day on the Saturday of the conference
(Saturday 27th June), and through the
broader exploration of the discipline which
will take place throughout the conference.
The teachers’ day – for which day tickets
are on sale at the special rate of £30 – will
include four CPD workshops for KS3-KS5
run by NATE, and key speaker poet Kate
Clanchy talking about her work as a poet
in schools, drawing from her recent book Some
IFTE 2020 – ‘If’: The Potentials of English
Inventing Futures, Ideas in Flight, and Implementing Frameworks in Sydney in July
04 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me. There
will also be a session on The State of Secondary
English and the Shape of Things to Come led by
IFTE Chair Andy Goodwyn and NATE Post-
16 Committee Chair Rachel Roberts.
NATE’s CPD workshops will be led
by NATE Chair Peter Thomas (Visual and
Verbal Literacy through Media Study), Vice-
Chair Raina Parker (Creative and Independent
Thinking through Poetry), Director Jonathan
Morgan (Scriptwriting to inspire Young Writers)
and Teaching English editor Gary Snapper
(Developing Literary Awareness in Sixth Form
Poetry).
The conference as a whole will celebrate
all manifestations of English as a subject
and discipline. Throughout the conference,
some sessions will include participants from
both HE and secondary English, seeking
NATE will be represented at this year’s
biennial IFTE Conference (the International
Federation for the Teaching of English), which
takes place in Sydney from 7th to 9th July.
Key speakers will include former NATE Chair
and current IFTE Chair Andy Goodwyn, and
Marcello Giovanelli, a member of NATE’s
Post-16 Committee and frequent contributor
to NATE’s work, as well as Australian and
Canadian academics Jennifer Rowsell, Theo
Van Leeuwen and Wayne Sawyer.
Taking the word ‘If’ from ‘IFTE’ as its
starting point, the conference will explore
English from an international perspective,
to bring together the two phases to discuss
the past, present and future of the subject.
More broadly, it is hoped that teachers –
especially post-16 teachers – who attend the
whole conference will be able to develop their
subject knowledge across all aspects of English
by dipping in to the wide range of seminars
which represent what is happening in English
– language, literature, and creative writing –
in universities today. There will be over 200
sessions, a range of speakers including David
Crystal and Ali Smith, and a number of special
topics including decolonising the curriculum;
literature, language, creativity and music; and
‘applied English’.
To book, and for further details, see the conference’s
website, www.englishsharedfutures.uk, and on
pages 12–13 of this edition of Teaching English.
investigating ‘the potentials of our discipline to
define how English is key to a sense of self, social
agency and cultural vitality.’ It will take in ‘big
ideas, theories and research as we Invent Futures’,
‘approaches, strategies and pedagogies as Ideas
in Flight’, and ‘Implementing Frameworks for
curriculum, assessment and practice’.
The full programme will be published soon.
Do let NATE know if you intend to go so that
you can form part of a UK group. Further
details at https://aateifte2020.org.au. Further
information about IFTE and its work may be
found at www.ifte.online.
 News and Views 

NATE Poetry Conference marks

National Teacher Learning Day
Simon Armitage tops the bill on day of CPD workshops for English teachers nationwide
As part of National Teacher Learning Day,
on Friday July 3rd, NATE is running a one-
day national conference on teaching poetry
in Manchester, with Simon Armitage as
keynote speaker. Tickets for the day are only
£39 (£35 for NATE members). The day is
aimed at English teachers and librarians at
all key stages.
Run by NATE with the support of Poetry
By Heart and Manchester Metropolitan
University, the day will take place in
Manchester Metropolitan University’s
Geoffrey Manton Building with its impressive
atrium. Next door is the wonderful new
Manchester Poetry Library, due to open in
June, which delegates will be able to visit
during the day.
The day will focus on enriching learning
and improving attainment in poetry at
all key stages from primary to sixth form.
Workshops, led by poets and teachers, will
include:
• KS4 poetry approaches
• post-16 poetry approaches, including HE.
• poetry enrichment: celebrating poetry
beyond the classroom
• critical reading of poetry: effective
classroom approaches
• primary, and KS2/3 transition
approaches
• poetry writing for teachers and librarians
• poetry as an academic discipline –
research workshop
A detailed programme will soon be available
at www.nate.org.uk. Booking is open at
http://bit.ly/MCRPoetry20. If you are
interested in sponsoring and exhibition
opportunities, please contact NATE’s
Director, Jonathan Morgan director@nate.
org.uk for further details.
Along with the teachers’ day at English:
Shared Futures (see previous page), this one-
day conference is part of NATE’s national
conference offering for 2020. It is envisaged
that NATE’s AGM and Council meeting
will take place the next day: details to be
confirmed soon. We are currently also
investigating possibilities for a conference
in London in November. Further details to
be announced soon.

NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 05

NATE News
Teaching English
Themes for forthcoming issues:
June 2020 – English and Diversity
October 2020 – English in the British Isles
February 2021 – Poetry
Please contact the editor Gary Snapper at gary@
gabrielsnapper.co.uk if you would like to contribute.
Topical articles which are not connected to the
magazine’s theme are also welcome.
English in Education
Themes for forthcoming issues of English in Education
include Expertise in English Teaching, Literacy in
a Post-Industrial City Region, Social Media and
English, and Grammar. The online journal, along with
instructions for authors, is at www.tandfonline.com/
REIE, and print copies will be sent to members.
The editor, John Hodgson, is always happy to discuss ideas for possible
contributions. He can be contacted at john.hodgson@uwe.ac.uk.
NATE/Routledge Book Series
Two new books have just been published in the NATE/Routledge series.
The Future of English Teaching Worldwide
Celebrating 50 Years From the Dartmouth Conference
Edited by Andrew Goodwyn, Cal Durrant,
Wayne Sawyer, Lisa Scherff, Don Zancanella
Teaching English Language 16–19
A Comprehensive Guide for Teachers of AS
and A Level English Language, 2nd Edition
By Martin Illingworth, Nick Hall
Both books are available from Routledge. NATE members are entitled to a 20% discount.
If you would like a title to be considered for the series, please contact Gary Snapper at
gary@gabrielsnapper.co.uk
NATE
Teachmeets
Well-attended NATE Teachmeets
have been held recently in Fife,
Aberdeen, Glasgow, London,
Hampshire, Sussex and Newcastle.
If you would like to set up a local
Teachmeet, please contact NATE’s
regional officer Christine Thomas.
Further details at www.nate.org.uk/
about/regional-reps.
06 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
Issue 22:
NATE Spring 2020
Righting
Writing
NATE’s annual ITE conference – entitled
Righting Writing: the pedagogy and practice
This Issue:
of teaching writing – took place at the English
and Media Centre on 21st November. The
English: The
Big Picture
conference, led by NATE’s ITE Committee, is
“We need to
allow English
to be big,
an annual opportunity for all involved in the
expansive, broad
and inclusive
in all kinds of
different ways.”
training of teachers to discuss issues and hear
‘Big Picture’
English
Barbara Bleiman
The Magazine of the National Association
NATE for the Teaching of English
about research. It was attended this year by
around 40 teacher trainers from all over the UK.
The main focus of the day was creative
writing. Doug Cowie, a teacher of Creative
Writing and Literature at Royal Holloway
University of London, tried out a number of
writing activities to help students and teachers
to get to grips with narrative voice and point
of view, opening up discussion about the ways
in which creative writing practice intersects
with literary analysis as alternative routes to
learning about writing.
The second session was led by David Briggs
of Bristol Grammar School and Lorna Smith
of Bristol University, a member of NATE’s ITE
Committee. David is the creator and examiner
of the new AFA qualification in Creative
Writing, which seeks to provide a replacement
for the sadly exterminated Creative Writing
A Level, and which is currently being taken
by 8 centres, a mix of state and independent
schools. Lorna, meanwhile, has conducted
an evaluation of the course. David and Lorna
spoke about the course and how it works,
and encouraged us to spread the word to
English teachers and departments who might
be interested. Further details may be found at
https://writersexaminationboard.com/
The day also included an ITE Committee
panel session discussion issues to do with
making room for creativity in English, how
to assess creative writing, and so on. Finally,
a poster exhibition enabled delegates to read
about research work being done currently by
ITE lecturers around the country.
NATE Position IllumiNATE
Papers and NATE News
In the light of recent concerns Don’t forget to watch your inbox
about the English curriculum, a new for regular mailings of IllumiNATE
series of NATE Position Papers is in – each one an English teaching
progress. The first, on KS3 English strategy to try in your own classroom,
in England, is published on page 14 or a teaching idea from a NATE
in this edition of Teaching English. magazine – and of NATE News.
A paper on Post-16 English will be Further details at www.nate.org.uk.
available soon.
Further details at www.nate.org.uk.
 News and Views 

Influential teacher Robert

Protherough dies
NATE has learnt that Robert Protherough,
a Founder Member of NATE and highly
influential writer on the teaching of English,
died in 2019. Protherough moved from
teaching in schools to being Lecturer in
Education at the University of Hull. He will
be universally remembered for his prolific
and highly influential writing on the teaching
of English at a time when ’the new English’
was being established in schools.
He contributed two titles to the most
significant series of books on English
teaching in the 1980s, the classic ‘yellow
series’ edited by Tony Adams and published
by Open University Press: Teaching Literature
for Examinations (1986) and The Making of
English Teachers (1991), and three other books:
Encouraging Writing (Methuen 1983), Students
of English (Routledge 1989), and The Effective
Teaching of English (Longman 1989).
Peter Thomas, who worked with him in
Hull, writes: ‘He continues to exist for many of
his readers and students as a beacon of humane
scholarship and devotion to education. He is …
one of those who stands for English as a humane
discipline necessary to resist the influence of the
specious, the tawdry, the politically dishonest and
the educationally bigoted.’
Andy Goodwyn, who also worked with
him, writes: ‘Robert researched and wrote about
everything that still matters to practice. He was
also prescient, in The Making of English Teachers,
in writing about how we came to be the teachers we
are, and, in Students of English, about the stages
that students and teachers/academics go through
in being what we all remain - students of English.
He was a marvellous and imaginative scholar, and
a visionary of what is at the heart of English.’
A full tribute will appear in the June
edition of Teaching English.

Poetry by Heart heads towards

National Finals
As the National Finals for this year’s Poetry by
Heart competition approaches, schools across
the country have been uploading their
winners’ videos to Poetry by Heart’s online
judging platform. The finals will be held at
Southbank, London on Thursday 19th March
(secondary) and Monday 23rd March (primary).
The Poetry Celebration competition –
designed for schools which want to celebrate
poetry recitation in different ways from the
main competition – is still open, with entries
accepted until Monday March 30th.
Meanwhile, the Poetry by Heart website
continues to offer a range of resources
which schools can tap into for poetry work:
anthology timelines for KS2, KS3 and KS4;
showcases of Shakespeare’s sonnets, of
Romantic poetry and of First World War
poetry; a new Teaching Zone with curated
collections of poetry teaching resources; and
a lively blog to keep teachers posted on what’s
what in poetry; and so on.
Engagement of schools in Poetry by Heart
this year has been strong nationwide, with the
new KS2 and KS3 competitions increasing
participation. Many schools are reporting
multi-round contests happening, with all
pupils in a year group or key stage engaged
in learning a poem by heart and reciting
it, and the best pupils in each class going
through to further heats and a finals event.
All state school types are represented,
including sponsor-led academies, schools in
multi-academy trusts, and special schools.
For further details, see the article on page 15 of
the last edition of Teaching English, and visit
www.poetrybyheart.org.uk.

NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 07

NATE News
National Theatre Collection
free online for schools
A major online video resource – the National
Theatre Collection – is now available free of
charge to state schools and FE colleges. In
association with Drama Online (Bloomsbury
Publishing), the collection provides high-quality
recordings of 30 world-class productions,
drawing from 10 years of NT Live broadcasts,
and never-before released productions from
the National Theatre’s Archive. Recordings are
accompanied by learning resources to explore
the craft behind productions, including
rehearsal insights and short videos exploring
backstage aspects.
Macbeth for schools at the Globe
Shakespeare’s Globe’s Playing Shakespeare
production this year is Macbeth, directed
by Cressida Brown. This full-scale, fast-
paced production is created especially for
young people, and will open on Wednesday
26 February, running until Wednesday 25
March. Tickets have sold out. Demand this
year was so high that over 18,000 free tickets
were allocated to state secondary schools in
London and Birmingham in just one day, with
thousands more students expected to watch
the production during its run.
To coincide with this year’s performances,
Shakespeare’s Globe is running workshops for
students in schools across the country and
continuing professional development (CPD)
for teachers, alongside free online resources
to support GCSE and A Level curricula.
Teachers who would like to receive information
about ticket release dates for future Playing
Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank performances
can sign up to the Shakespeare’s Globe mailing
list, checking the box ‘Learning & Teaching’, at
www.shakepearesglobe.com.
08 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
Titles are designed to support learning
across the primary and secondary curriculum
and feature a range of superb productions
including Shakespeare (Macbeth, Othello,
Twelfth Night and King Lear), literary
adaptations (Frankenstein, Treasure Island,
Peter Pan and Jane Eyre), classic drama
(Medea, Antigone, The Cherry Orchard, The
Deep Blue Sea, Yerma, and One Man, Two
Guvnors), as well as adaptations of Romeo
and Juliet and The Winter’s Tale for younger
audiences, suitable for primary schools.
You can register at www.nationaltheatre.org.
uk/learning/national-theatre-collection.
On Screen
and On Stage
News from Shakespeare’s Globe
www.shakespearesglobe.com
Globe on Stage, on Tour, and on Screen
The winter season at the Sam Wanamaker
Playhouse continues until April 18th with
The Taming of the Shrew, and Women
Beware Women. A production of Macbeth
for schools will take place in March as part
of the annual Playing Shakespeare season
(see separate news item). The summer season
at the Globe Theatre runs from 14th April to
8th October with Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth
Night, Much Ado About Nothing and Antony
and Cleopatra. During this time, there will
also be touring productions of A Midsummer
Night’s Dream and As You Like It. Many
Globe productions are available on DVD
from the Globe online shop, or on demand
through the online streaming service
Globe Player, also available as a mobile app.
News from the RSC
www.rsc.org.uk
RSC on Stage, on Tour and on Screen
Macbeth will be broadcast to schools on
5th March, and there will be a live cinema
broadcast of King John on 29th April. As
You Like It and Measure for Measure are on
tour across the UK until April, and Taming
of the Shrew until June. This summer’s
season of plays at Stratford includes The
Winter’s Tale, The Comedy of Errors and
Pericles – broadcast live to cinemas on
10th June, 15th July and 23rd September
respectively. The winter season from
October 2020 to January 2021 will include
The Wars of the Roses (Henry VI Parts 1, 2
and 3), which will be broadcast live in 2021.
Many RSC productions are available on
DVD from the RSC online shop.
News from the National Theatre
www.nationaltheatre.org.uk
NT Live/NT On Demand
NT Live screenings continue at local
cinemas. The NT On Demand streaming
service for schools offers free screenings of
NT Live broadcasts of Julius Caesar, Henry
IV, The Tempest, Jane Eyre, Antigone,
She Stoops to Conquer, Othello, Hamlet,
Frankenstein, Treasure Island, Peter Pan
and The Comedy of Errors. Note that this
service will be replaced by the National
Theatre Collection from July 2020 (see
separate news item.)
What’s on News and Views 

NATE Events UKLA Events English and Media

EA/ UE/NATE/NAWE Conference: OU/UKLA Conference 2020: Centre Courses
English: Shared Futures Reading for Pleasure
A major conference across the discipline Sat Mar 14, Faculty of Education, Cambridge www.englishandmedia.co.uk
Speakers: Kate Clanchy, Lyndsey Stonebridge, Speakers: Teresa Cremin, Frank Cottrell Boyce
Ali Smith www.ukla.org EMC Courses for teachers (all at English
Fri 26- Sun 28 Jun 2020, Manchester and Media Centre, Islington) include:
www.englishsharedfutures.uk UKLA National Conference 2020:
Writing for Pleasure Poems of the Decade for
NATE CPD Day Speakers: David Almond, Writing Rocks Edexcel A Level Literature
at English: Shared Futures Conference Sat 28 Mar, Canterbury Course tutors: Barbara Bleiman and Lucy Webster
Speakers: Peter Thomas, Raina Parker, Jonathan www.ukla.org Tuesday 28th April
Morgan, Gary Snapper
Sat 27 Jun 2020, Manchester UKLA International Conference 2020:
www.englishsharedfutures.uk We Need to Talk About Teaching Creative Writing
Literacy Successfully at KS3&KS4
National Teacher Learning Day 2020: Course tutors: Lucy Hinchliffe & Kate Oliver,
Speakers: Neil Mercer, Muna Abdi, MG Leonard
with Sita Brahmachari
NATE Poetry Conference Fri 13 to Sun 5 Jul, Oxford Thursday 30th April
Speaker: Simon Armitage www.ukla.org
Fri 3 Jul, Manchester
www.nate.org.uk Child Language Development
Other Events Course tutors: Dan Clayton & Dr Catherine Laing
IFTE Conference 2020: Tuesday 12th May
BFI English GCSE Study Day:
‘If…’: The Potentials of English
Speakers: Marcello Giovanelli, Jennifer Rowsell Animal Farm What the New Ofsted
Tue 10 Mar 2020, BFI South Bank
7–9 Jul, Sydney Grammar School, Australia Framework Means for English
www.englishteacher.com.au www.bfi.org.uk
Course tutors: Lucy Hinchliffe & Andrew McCallum
Thursday 14th May
LATE Conference:
Princes Teaching Off the Page: Teaching
Improving Writing for A Level
Institute Events Shakespeare through
Production and Performance
English Literature
Course tutors: Barbara Bleiman & Lucy Webster
CPD Subject Day: Sat 21 Mar 2020, UCl Institute of Education, Tuesday 19th May
The 19th Century Novel at KS5 London
Details to be announced https://londonenglishteachers.com
www.princes-ti.org.uk Investigating English
British Library/Guardian Primary Language: Tackling the NEA
CPD Subject Day: Conference: Course tutors: Dan Clayton & Christian Ilbury
Real Writing: the Art of (Short) Reading for Pleasure Tuesday 2nd June
Storytelling Speakers: Cressida Cowell, Sita Brahmachari
Details to be announced Fri 27 Mar 2020, British Library, London Mixed Attainment: Making
www.princes-ti.org.uk www.bl.uk Your Teaching Adaptive
Course tutors: Amy Druce & Kate Oliver
CPD Subject Day: UCL Teachers’ Courses: Thursday 4th June
Detective Fiction in the 19th English Grammar for Teachers
Century Novel 24 Jan, 20 Mar, 5 Jun, 3 Jul 2020, London From Primary to Secondary:
www.ucl.ac.uk
Details to be announced Helping Pupils Make Progress
www.princes-ti.org.uk
Reading University Teachers’ Courses: at KS3
Course tutors: Katie Myles & Kate Oliver
CPD Subject Day: INSET for A Level English Tuesday 9th June
Critical Perspectives Language
Details to be announced Mon 6, Tue 7, Wed 8, Thu 9 July, Reading
www.princes-ti.org.uk http://www.reading.ac.uk/english-language-
Starting to Teach A Level
and-applied-linguistics/Undergraduate English Language
Course tutor: Dan Clayton
English and Media Centre Conference: Tuesday 16th June
What Matters in English
Teaching Teaching Poetry Successfully
Key speakers: Barbara Bleiman, Michael Rosen, at KS3 & KS4
Kate Clanchy, Robert Eaglestone Course tutors: Kate Oliver, with Peter Khan &
Tue 31 Mar 2020, CLPE, London Christian Robinson
www. englishandmedia.co.uk Thursday 18th June

NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 09

A View from the Chair
Rebuilding English
Given current difficulties, English needs to rediscover
its identity, says Peter Thomas. Along with others in the
English teaching community, NATE seeks to help the
subject restate its vision and build a renewed consensus
for a humane discipline.
Building English
The comprehensive school programme in the 1960s and
70s created a national all-ability education service, with
a major impact on teaching, curriculum and assessment.
Teachers previously divided into those bestowing
scholarship upon a selective minority in grammar
schools and those preparing the rest for trades and
unskilled work in secondary moderns had to cater for
all students. Some found this a worthy challenge: others
found it a nightmare. Schools found ways to manage the
change: setting and streaming took some pressure off
teachers who found the whole ability range difficult.
Then, in the 80s, O Level and CSE were replaced by
GCSE, providing the same curriculum and examination
for all. This required more of teachers than subject
knowledge: motivating, managing and valuing a wide
range of talents, ambitions and cultures called for a wider
teaching repertoire for a more student-centred approach.
Through the 90s, GCSE evolved with teachers
consulted by Awarding Bodies about text choices and
assessment tasks. Coursework allowed teachers to
devise their own curriculum. I recall a term spent on the
films Jaws and High Noon and Ibsen’s Enemy of the People
“All of this to investigate social morality, then Great Expectations to
has led to investigate personal growth.
Eventually, coursework and terminal examinations
an English were yoked together to match the varied competencies
curriculum required by higher education and the workplace.
Preparing youngsters for the communicative needs
and exam of adult life and work led to Speaking and Listening
system as a major part of English. This alignment of English
to life and work in the 21st century continued with
offering little media studies, different cultures literature and Spoken
for the least Language Study – all providing challenge for the ablest
and engagement for the less able. This alignment
academic owed much to the rationale of the Bullock report and
the materials provided by Ron Carter and the LINC
third, and so project – both independent of Government policy and
unappealing influence.
English was consolidating its status as the school space
to the more where all could find stimulus and satisfaction, academically
able that there and personally: self-esteem grows when personal opinion
and experience are valued in language and literature
is an alarming study. It was a curriculum triumph to embed multi-textual
drop in the relevance in the English experience. It was an assessment
triumph to replace the term ‘essay’ with ‘response’, and
take-up to create mark-schemes with a skills hierarchy of
of English ‘identify, explain, sustain, develop, and explore’. It was a
triumph of collaboration between Awarding Bodies,
A Levels.” education academics and classroom professionals.
10 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
English as a humane discipline came to maturity, giving
equal weight to the ‘humane’ and the ‘discipline’. The
humanity was in valuing students’ own cultural capital,
and the discipline in the cultural capital transmitted.
Dismantling English
Of course, not all saw these as triumphs. Some saw a
retreat from education as they knew it into ‘progressive’
methods. A political agenda with different values and
priorities began to dismantle thirty years of academic
and professional consensus. The national education
service became fragmented by Academisation and
Free Schools. GCSE became two-tier, and then exam-
only. It had stripped out of it those parts that students
(and teachers) found most engaging and relevant:
media studies, different cultures texts, Speaking and
Listening and Spoken Language study. In their place
came nineteenth century fiction and a greater emphasis
on SPaG, justified by an official mantra of “raising
standards”.
As the scope and appeal of English diminished,
retention became a crisis as experienced teachers
took early retirement. The resulting recruitment drive
boosted numbers, but the drop-out rate after four years
made it no permanent solution. Symptomatic of that
short-termism is Teach First, nominally acknowledging
that bright graduates tempted by rapid promotion can
be expected to move on to something else, probably
more lucrative and less demanding. Meanwhile, local
apprenticeship models of training eroded the national
influence of universities in moulding academic and
professional understanding.
All of this has led to an English curriculum and
exam system offering little for the least academic
third, and so unappealing to the more able that there
is an alarming drop in the take-up of English A Levels.
Teacher satisfaction is undermined by a regime of
league-table accountability, reduced per capita funding
and factory-style Academy chain lesson content and
delivery. English, formerly the subject where all were
welcome and all could feel valued, risks becoming three
(four?) years of instruction in GCSE exam protocols.
It’s understandable. Teachers are conscientious. The
GCSE exam has become increasingly formulaic in
rubric, mark tariff and questioning lexicon, promoting
formulaic drilling in preparation. It’s ironic that the
years of change in the name of ‘raising standards’
in a ‘challenging’ curriculum with a more ‘rigorous’
assessment framework have resulted in the same share
of ‘good’ pass and top grades as before.

New ideas?
So where can we look for hope that English can regain a
confident identity? New ideas? Some of the notions in
current vogue seem in sympathy with those that have
eroded English. Direct Instruction revives a classroom
model reminiscent of 1950s grammar schools.
‘Knowledge-rich’ programmes privilege content over
process, reversing Vygotsky’s notion of starting from
the child in favour of starting from what the child must
learn. A faux-left appropriation of Bourdieu’s concept of
cultural capital, remedying the child’s cultural void
justifies versions of E.D. Hirsch’s 5000 items that make
a ‘cultured’ American. Similarly, ‘word gap’ solutions
assuming that big words make children cleverer are
justified by the thin and problematic US research of
Hart and Risley. Then there are the Zero Tolerance
penalties for talking in the corridor. A lot of the new
looks rather old – certainly not very 21st century.
Some of these ideas gain currency through agencies
such as ResearchEd, and some are built into Teach First
training, both displaying signs of closeness to Government.
ResearchEd was originally proposed by Sam Freeman,
an adviser to Michael Gove and an executive Director at
Teach First. He also proposed as lead Tom Bennett,
later appointed to lead the Government’s Behaviour
strategy. ResearchEd’s 2016 conference was warmly
praised by Schools Minister Nick Gibb. Links to Gove
are evident in other organisational voices: Parents and
Teachers for Excellence (Director, Conservative Party
donor Jon Moynihan) and the Free Schools Network,
(Rachel Wolf, another Gove adviser, and DfE funded).
And it’s not difficult to see another Gove adviser, D.
Cummings, involved in the birth of such bodies.
Perhaps there is hope in Amanda Spielman’s revision
of Ofsted, opposing ‘teaching to the test’, with curriculum
and students’ personal growth more important than data
and exam scores. This is a welcome sign of independence
from Government policy and favoured pedagogies.
NATE was founded over 50 years ago by teachers who wanted to collaborate,
help each other and share best practice. We remain true to those principles.
Our consultants, all of whom are NATE members, are some of the leading
practitioners in English education today.
Whatever your need in terms of support or Inset for English teaching, in any
key stage, NATE can supply a quality-assured consultant to help you.
Contact: director@nate.org.uk
News and Views 
It would be even more welcome if Ofsted downplayed
some DfE orthodoxies, such as defining learning as ‘an
“Our subject
alteration in long-term memory’, or ‘knowing more words needs
makes you smarter’, or accepting phonic decoding as a
synonym for reading. Then Ofsted could counter the
independence,
political distortions of headlines like ‘Almost half of creativity
children leave primary school unable to read and write
properly, performance tables reveal’.
and trust
in subject
Restating vision and consensus
In judging what’s part of the problem and what’s part of specialism.
the solution, it may be individuals not institutions that If these can
matter. And potent individuals combining independence,
intellect and experience there are: Barbara Bleiman, make English
Robert Eaglestone, Kate Clanchy, Michael Rosen, James better for all
Durran, Emma Smith, to name a few. They represent
humane values and practices rooted in the Renaissance those you
rather than the 1950s. So do the subject associations,
including NATE. On many issues raised above, there is
teach, NATE
independent vision and consensus in the Common English is a supportive
Forum (https://commonenglishforum.wordpress.com:
the Forum unites the English Association, the English and
community,
Media Centre, NATE, National Association of Advisers with
in English, the United Kingdom Literacy Association,
and nine other organisations).
publications,
English teachers, too, should make themselves part events,
of the solution. Ofsted’s advice to embed ‘intent’ in
what students are to learn should prompt a redefining
resources
of why we teach English, as well as how – and making and people
the why about personal growth and meeting the multi-
literacy needs of the 21st century. Our subject needs to help.”
independence, creativity and trust in subject specialism.
If these can make English better for all those you teach,
NATE is a supportive community, with publications,
events, resources and people to help.
Peter Thomas
is Chair of NATE
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 11
 English: Shared Futures
‘Like Glastonbury, but for English. With less mud…’
Robert Eaglestone encourages English teachers
to come along to this year’s English: Shared Futures
conference, which aims to bring teachers from
across the discipline together.
Stormzy loves English:
I might actually go to uni. Something to do with literature.
English… Something to do with books. Something that can
have me lost in words. Poetry. Creative writing… In the
past couple of years, I’ve started reading poetry again.
When I’m writing music I see it as poetry… but that pen-
to-pencil poetry, the meanings in it, the sentiment… I just
think: ‘Wow, this is the s*** that I love!’ (15 December
2019, The Observer)
Given these challenging days, ever-changing policies
and overwhelming demands on our time, it’s easy to
“Shared forget that our subject is basically full of wonderful,
er, ‘stuff’ that we love. This is the point of the English:
Futures is Shared Futures conferences: celebrating and exploring
about working the intellectual strength, diversity and creativity of
English language, literature, and creative writing in the
together, and UK’s nations and across the world.
finding better It was in the light of the challenges the subject
faces that the various bodies that represent English got
ways to share together to begin to do something: NATE, of course, you
our love for know; the English Association (EA), set up in 1906, which
represents English at primary, secondary and higher
the subject education levels; University English (UE), for university
and support departments of English; the National Association of Writers
in Education (NAWE) who work to ‘further knowledge,
its teaching.” understanding and enjoyment of Creative Writing’, and
12 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
the Institute of English Studies (IES), part of the University
of London’s School of Advanced Studies, with a national
remit to support the discipline) – along with the English
and Media Centre (EMC), an educational charity
providing CPD and teaching, and the Common English
Forum, our government lobbying and advocacy group.
These organisations decided to work together even
more closely behind the scenes. But they also decided to
run a huge, combined national event. Like Glastonbury,
but for English. With less mud.
The first Shared Futures
The first of these was English: Shared Futures in Newcastle
in 2017, supported by all five of the North-East’s
universities (Newcastle, Northumbria, Durham, Teesside,
and Sunderland). We had over 160 panels, CPD sessions,
‘salons’, and readings, around 600 delegates from all
over the UK, plenaries from across the disciplines of
English language, literature and creative writing, and a
fantastic and full cultural fringe programme, including
the ‘Night of Three Laureates’ (of the UK, Scotland and
Jamaica), as well as a hall full of publishers and their
books. People enjoyed it: ‘overall I sense it contributed to a
real lift in morale…; ‘one of the most enjoyable and heartening
conferences I’ve attended in a long time. And I attend a lot of
conferences!’; ‘a field defining event of huge significance at
this political moment’. So we did some things well.

Bringing schools and universities together
But, of course, we did some things less well, too. One of
these was that we didn’t do enough to bring the 16-19
sector and the University sectors together (‘cross-phase’,
as the jargon has it). Centrally, English: Shared Futures is
about a shared vision of the subject: it is about working
together, and finding better ways to share our love for
the subject and support its teaching. We don’t have to
agree (we love disagreement! In fact, disagreement in
our shared field is a form of collaboration and makes for
great lessons and seminars!). But we can do much more
together than we can apart.
Shared Futures 2020
And this is why we are writing here. English: Shared
Futures is running a second time – in Manchester from
June 26th-28th 2020, and this time we’ve worked hard
to make that crossover between 16-19 teachers and
Higher Education happen.
The same organisations are running English: Shared
Futures 2020 in Manchester and Salford, supported by
Manchester Metropolitan University, the University of
Manchester and Salford University. We’ve well over 200
sessions covering the whole of English literature, from
Beowulf to Wolf Hall, and key speakers include novelist
Ali Smith, critic Lyndsey Stonebridge, and language
specialists Devyani Sharma, Jennifer Smith and David
Adger – as well as David Crystal, Bart Van Es, Sarah
Churchwell, Priyamvada Gopal and Sandeep Parmar.
In addition to learning, teaching and pedagogy, and
discussions of pressing issues in the state of the subject,
special topics include ‘decolonising the discipline’,
creative practice and literature and music and the
Public Humanities in the 21st Century, as well as our
cultural fringe.
Saturday 27th June – a ‘crossover’ day.
We’ve planned a specially focused ‘crossover’ day on
Saturday 27th. The plenary speaker is teacher and
poet Kate Clanchy, author of the wonderful Some Kids I
Taught and What They Taught Me. We’ve got over 70 more
sessions on almost everything on that day to attend -
and we’ve designed a whole day of CPD engagement
with literature, language and creative writing. And for
teachers attending on just this day, we’ve arranged a
special, low one-day ticket price of £30 – although
you are of course welcome to attend the whole (very
reasonably-priced!) three-day conference from Friday
to Sunday. (All the details are available on the website:
www.englishsharedfutures.uk)
This crossover day will include CPD workshops for
secondary English teachers run by NATE (see below for
details), and Rachel Roberts and Andy Goodwyn will
Features: English – The Big Picture 
“Shared
Futures aims
also be running a session on The State of Secondary to develop
English and the Shape of Things to Come, including
details of NATE’s first national survey, and discussions
your subject
on students’ choices and perspectives at 16 and the knowledge
future of the subject.
and support
And finally … approaches
English: Shared Futures 2020 aims to develop your
subject knowledge, support approaches to classroom
to classroom
practice, and bring together the vibrant English practice.”
community across all phases of teaching. We very much
hope that you will join us for the day, or indeed for
the whole conference, as the future of our wonderful
and intriguing subject depends more than ever on our
sharing our enthusiasms and passions, and learning
more about what each of us has to offer to it.
The full programme and booking details will be live in
early February. Questions? You can get in touch with the
conference team on engsharedfutures@englishassociation.
ac.uk, or you can tweet us @engsharedfuture.
Robert Eaglestone
is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought
in the Department of English at Royal Holloway,
University of London
NATE CPD Workshops for Teachers
on Saturday June 27th:
Raina Parker, Vice Chair of NATE: Encouraging creative and independent
thinkers through poetry (KS3–KS5). This will look at ways of using poetry
to encourage independence in students, allowing teachers to find time in
the packed curriculum space to foster confidence, deliver well-paced lessons,
and enable students to be successful in analysing unseen poetry.
Peter Thomas, Chair of NATE: Developing visual and verbal literacy through
media study (KS3). The focus of this session will be on developing students’
creativity and criticality through multi-media study, focusing on the ways in
which TV advertising influences and reflects social trends. The session will
include materials on ‘Creative Persuasion’ produced in collaboration with
the Ideas Foundation and some leading advertising agencies.
Jonathan Morgan Director of NATE: Using scriptwriting to inspire young
writers (KS3). This will focus on teaching scriptwriting at KS3, which can
be an inspiring way to get students using their understanding of narrative,
character and genre to develop creative writing skills and digital literacy,
providing a structure with which learners of all abilities can engage.
Gary Snapper, Editor of Teaching English, NATE’s magazine: Teaching poetry
in the sixth form: developing literary awareness (KS5). This workshop explores
ways in which teachers might break down barriers to the reading of poetry
in the sixth form classroom by looking at poetry through the lens of art,
and considering what poetry is actually for.
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 13
KS3 English in England
A NATE Position Paper
Following the introduction of the new National Curriculum and new GCSEs in
England, two key issues being considered by the English teaching community
at present are developments in curriculum and assessment at KS3, and uptake
of English at A Level and in Higher Education, both causes for concern.
Here we present the first of two NATE position papers on these issues.
This paper, on KS3, was written by NATE’s Management Committee as
part of a consultation with other associations in the Common English Forum.
Principles
1. NATE believes that KS3 English (60% of most students’
secondary experience) should be a distinct stage of
young people’s cognitive, emotional, social and
linguistic development. This requires a creative
teaching and learning strategy which adapts
motivation, method, stimulus, pace and attainment to
a wide variety of learners and kinds of learning. This
in turn requires teachers to be creative and flexible
in their use of resources and pedagogical approaches
to engage and support young people of all abilities.
2. The KS3 English curriculum should inspire young
people to read critically, widely and for pleasure, whilst
developing an understanding of language, literature
and media. Students should also be encouraged to
write for pleasure and purpose and develop oracy
and collaborative skills in a range of contexts.
3. The KS3 English curriculum should provide a secure
skills and knowledge foundation for the assessment
objectives of GCSE in KS4 without imposing on the
KS3 experience the protocols of GCSE assessment. It
should ensure a purposeful and satisfying experience
of reading, writing and speaking for those who may
not eventually gain 4+ accreditation in their GCSE,
as well as for those taking the subject further. Given
that English has a value and utility beyond GCSE,
KS3 English should equip students with the skills,
knowledge and motivation to read, speak and write
in life, leisure and work beyond school
4. The aim of such a KS3 curriculum should be to
enrich students academically and culturally, but also
humanely: the development of self-understanding,
empathy, collaboration, creativity, independence,
imagination and resilience is essential for self-
esteem and citizenship. Literature within the KS3
English curriculum is the key to developing these
attributes. For similar reasons, the KS3 English
curriculum should develop in students a critical
appreciation of the communicative craft and
purposes of print and non-print media.
14 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
Context
The demands of the new English GCSEs, first
examined in 2017, and the continued pressure of school
performance measures related to GCSE results, have in
recent years exerted considerable influence on the KS3
curriculum, with many schools increasingly using KS3
as a preparation ground for GCSE English content and
assessment – an issue recently highlighted by Ofsted.
Given the increased narrowness of the new GCSE, this
narrowing at KS3 is doubly of concern. NATE hears
many tales of schools populating their KS3 English
experience with GCSE content – for instance, beginning
to teach GCSE set texts in Year 7 – and assessment –
for instance, drilling them in the GCSE assessment
objectives from Year 7, and using GCSE-style exams
produced for KS3 by Awarding Bodies. The removal of
KS3 levels of assessment and the reduction in national
curriculum requirements for KS3 has undoubtedly
aided this process, allowing the colonisation of KS3 by
KS4 to take hold.
In the face of the new GCSEs, with their emphasis
on formal written assessments, and their demotion
of aspects such as extended writing, creativity, drama
and spoken English, language study, media study,
contemporary literature, digital textuality, and so on,
it is ironic that there should be a tendency to narrow
KS3, when in fact it has never been more crucial for
KS3 to provide a humane, contemporary experience
of the subject, in order to motivate, engage and enrich
secondary students. Crucially, at a time when teacher
retention is a problem, a more open KS3 also gives
teachers the opportunity to develop their own creativity,
and a greater sense of ownership over what they do.
Such a position was clearly set out in 2017 by John
Richmond’s crucial book Curriculum and Assessment in
English 11 to 19: A Better Plan, the result of a collaboration
between CLPE, NAAE, NATE and UKLA who together
wanted to make a strong common statement about the
curriculum and assessment in English across the whole
school age-range, in the light of the publication of the
new National Curriculum for English. (Much of this

material is also online at https://ukla.org/resources/
details/curriculum-and-assessment-in-english-3-to-
19-a-better-plan). Whilst the new curriculum removed
many aspects of the subject NATE would like to see
formally reinstated, its benefit is that it is minimal
and allows schools the freedom to include as much
additional material as they would like.
Richmond’s work also suggested ways of compensating
for some recent developments in KS2 English, weighed
down as it is by the inappropriate demands of KS2
testing and a misguided grammar curriculum. Again,
NATE hears many tales of narrowing primary English
experiences, with reduced scope for creativity, rich
literary exploration, extended personal writing, and so on.
Bob Cox’s recent work on ‘Opening Doors’ to great reading
and writing (e.g., Cox 2019) has been an inspirational
challenge to such a tendency. Again, it is clear that KS3
English could offer a valuable opportunity for humane
renewal and inspiration after the stresses of the KS2
tests and the prescriptiveness of the KS2 curriculum.
The English and Media Centre has also made this
project of humane renewal at KS3 a central part of
its work in the last two years, with a strong focus on
re-stating principles for ‘big picture’ English (see
Barbara Bleiman’s Harold Rosen Lecture in this
edition of Teaching English), and its publication of a fine
series of ‘KS3 Curriculum Plus’ resources (see www.
englishandmedia.co.uk/ blog/the-rationale-behind-
emc-ks3-curriculum-plus).
More broadly, the narrowing of KS3 and KS4 English
in England poses a threat to the health of the subject at
a time when there are significant concerns about the
continuing decline in uptake of English at A Level and
in Higher Education (to be discussed in the next edition
of Teaching English), as well as the fate of the ‘forgotten
third’ at GCSE, highlighted last year by Geoff Barton
as leader of the ASCL (www.ascl.org.uk/ASCL/media/
ASCL/Our view/Campaigns/The-Forgotten-Third_
full-report.pdf).
Together, these concerns highlight a growing divide
between the increasingly conservative ethos of school
English in England and the need for the development
of knowledge and skills for the contemporary world
of communication, including digital literacy and
oracy, and ‘soft’ skills such as initiative, collaboration,
creativity, adaptability, empathy, and so on. We see an
alternative view of the secondary English curriculum at
work in Wales (see https://hwb.gov.wales/curriculum-
for-wales/languages-literacy-and-communication)
as part of a new Curriculum for Wales which resists
recent trends in England with a vision of a joined-up
curriculum which includes a strong commitment to
aspects such as creativity, oracy, social justice and
digital literacy.
Resistance to the narrowing of KS3 English clearly
has some strong proponents, and responses to NATE’s
recent survey of English teachers (see below) show
that many teachers feel strongly that such resistance
is needed – with almost every comment echoing
the concerns of this paper. And yet there are many
obstacles, at a time when schools are struggling with
recruitment, retention and workload issues, with special
needs provision, and with adequate access to CPD.
Following the dismantling of local authority control,
national, regional and local networks for sharing good
practice and subject-specialist guidance have declined.
Features: English – The Big Picture 
“Recent
articles in
Teaching
English have
highlighted
the work of
departments
which are
actively
designing
their
programmes
of work in
order to go
beyond the
restraints
of GCSE at
both KS3
In-school CPD tends not to be subject-specific, and and KS4, and
standardised schemes of work within Multi-Academy
Trusts often create an unhelpful uniformity of approach
to embrace
uninformed by long-developed sources of specialist aspects such
subject knowledge.
Teachers and departments who wish to take part in
as citizenship,
this renewal and resistance at KS3 have many models and social justice
resources to draw on. In addition to those key resources
mentioned above, we note that there is a wealth of and oracy.”
high quality curriculum and enrichment resources,
particularly digital ones, available from organisations
such as the British Library (including ‘Discovering
Literature’ and a range of Language resources), Poetry
By Heart, Into Film, the RSC, Shakespeare’s Globe and
the National Theatre, as well as NATE’s own website,
publications and membership mailings.
Two recent articles in Teaching English have highlighted
the work of departments which are actively designing
their programmes of work in order to go beyond the
restraints of GCSE at both KS3 and KS4, and to embrace
aspects such as citizenship, social justice and oracy –
Anthony Cockerill’s ‘A Thematic Approach for KS3
English’ (Oct 2019) and Helen Mars’s ‘Hand, Heart, Head
and Voice’ (in this edition) – whilst Peter Thomas’s recent
work for NATE in collaboration with the ideas Foundation
and schools in Cumbria (see ‘Live the story: Creativity,
Criticality and Active Learning’ in Teaching English, Oct
2019) shows what can be achieved when schools and
educational institutions engage with local communities,
creative agencies and industry to create powerful resources
that link literary and linguistic study with the world
outside school. More generally, James Durran’s occasional
series in Teaching English, for the column ‘Teaching and
Learning’, continues to argue for enlightened approaches
to pedagogy even within the restraints of current KS2-
KS4 curriculum and assessment provisions, and many
other writers in recent editions of the magazine have
explored similar ideas and classroom strategies.
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 15
KS3 English in England – A NATE Position Paper

“Teachers and Proposals

NATE plans to set up a KS3 committee to draw up a three-
departments year model with clear principles, and a range of strategies,
who wish to sample resources and links to KS2 and KS4/5/beyond,
building upon the examples cited above. NATE is currently
take part in exploring ways of funding this project to support the
this renewal research, curriculum planning and resource creation that
would provide guidance for KS3 teachers and learners.
and resistance Meanwhile, NATE continues to work in a variety of
ways to promote good practice and subject knowledge,
at KS3 have and the sharing of creative resources. Teaching English
many models has maintained a strong focus on progressive strategies
for KS3 and KS4, and we continue to share resources
and resources and ideas through IllumiNATE mailings, through
to draw on.” Teachmeets across the country, and through national
and regional conferences.
If you would like to set up a Teachmeet to address these
concerns (and/or others), please contact NATE’s regional
officer. Visit https://www.nate.org.uk/about/regional-reps/
for more information.
Further reading:
Curriculum and Assessment in English 11 to 19:
A Better Plan (John Richmond et al, Routledge 2017,
and at https://ukla.org).
View from the Chair: selected columns in Teaching English
magazine by NATE Chair Peter Thomas
Rebuilding English (Feb 2020)
Knowledge Anyone? (Jun 2019)
Getting the Balance Right – English as a humane discipline
(Oct 2018)
English and Media Centre blog and publications at
www.englishandmedia.co.uk.
Selected recent articles in Teaching English:
Big Picture English – beyond the brushstrokes (Barbara
Bleiman, Feb 2020)
Hand, Head, Heart and Voice (Helen Mars, Feb 2020)
A Thematic Approach for KS3 (Anthony Cockerill,
Oct 2019)
Navigating the Flood – what English teachers can learn
from The Book of Dust (Beth Cooper, Oct 2019)
Rethinking KS3 – a novel approach (Barbara Bleiman,
Jun 2019)
Creative English (Andrew McCallum, Oct 2018)
Reinvigorating the KS3 Curriculum (Andrew McCallum,
Feb 2018)
A Manifesto for English (Peter Thomas,Feb 2018)

NATE Survey 2019  Responses to the question: If you could change one element of KS3, what would it be?
• Less pressure to prepare for KS4 • Greater focus on oracy
• Less focus on GCSE; more on creativity and enjoyment • The opportunity to study a wider variety of texts
• STOP teaching GCSE at such an early stage. I am seeing more and more of this. • To promote more creativity in reading and writing
• We have made a change this year: removed all explicit GCSE content from Year 9. • Greater focus on world literature
Now a much more solid, non-GCSE foundation year. • Review of setting across years 7–9
• Do not turn it into KS4/Avoid starting GCSE early/Less GCSE focus • More drama crossover
• Keep a 3 yr KS3 in all schools - don’t introduce GCSEs too early • More challenging texts
• Stop beginning GCSEs in Y9 • Greater focus on creativity and breadth of literature
• Bringing GCSE into Y9 or using marking criteria from Y7 • More creativity, less testing
• More whole texts. Less teaching towards GCSE • Wider range of texts: global, reading of media
• Less reliance on KS4 assessment outcomes • More challenging texts
• Make it free from KS4 prep • More time; more variety; more fun
• Make it less of a KS4 ‘light’ and teach students English skills for life not exams • Make English more enjoyable, less formulaic
e.g. how to spot fake news
• I would prefer it if we assessed KS3 differently.
• Remove any shred of KS4 assessments
• More opportunities to work across curriculum areas.
• Not teach GCSE texts from Year 7, and read more widely 10/23/2019 8:49 AM
• Build in more speaking and creative writing.
• 3 year, not 2 year; not teach any GCSE exam questions; more oracy
• Progression and engagement.
• Less focus on GCSE AOs in SOWs/assessments
• More opportunity for writing for pleasure.
• Limitations of curriculum
• More media study
• Encourage love of English rather than a focus on exam skills
• Less exam focus and more focus on building
• Government to reintroduce some kind of formal assessment boundaries for this. confidence and enjoyment
• Clear national expectations for ability at end of KS • Teaching reading and writing side-by-side
• More detailed curriculum with set texts • Make it more creative and fun
• Less teaching discrete grammar lessons, less focus on dead white male authors • More use of speaking and listening and more ‘fun’ -
• More scope to explore texts from around the globe/other cultures outside the box thinking and doing
• Teaching grammar through literary texts, more reading • More integrated curriculum, value to S and L

16 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22


Hand, Head, Heart and Voice
Reclaiming KS4 English from the GCSE syllabus
Helen Mars explains how her department set about
revitalising GCSE English through thematic approaches
and writing and speaking for real audiences.
The arrival of the new GCSE specifications caused
a flurry of activity in English departments around
the country – getting to grips with new texts, waving
goodbye to the stalwarts of the last decade (Wells’
‘The Red Room’, or ‘poems from different cultures’,
anyone?). In the hustle and bustle of these changes, it
seemed obvious to use the new four-exam format as a
simple structure for a two-year linear course, teaching
one text or exam paper at a time.
But, now that we feel more confident with these texts
and exams, the time has come to be a little more playful
and integrated with the GCSE course. Our department’s
response has been to model our Key Stage 4 on our Key
Stage 3: resisting talk of GCSE exams, being thematic
and creative, and using a variety of different sources
and approaches. We hoped this would help to keep
stress at a minimal level and maximise enthusiasm and
engagement for staff and students alike.
Reclaiming KS4 from GCSE
Reclaiming Key Stage 4 from the GCSE syllabus whilst
simultaneously and subtly preparing pupils for those
exams has proved to be an interesting challenge. It has
meant taking time to reflect as a department on our
subject and our own values, thinking about what we want
our pupils to read, hear, experience, learn and produce.
Features: English – The Big Picture 
Those discussions resulted in a manifesto for the
subject in our school, displayed on every door and
shared with pupils, parents and visitors. We drew on
School 21’s explicit foregrounding of their intentions
for all learners and learning (www.school21.org.uk/our-
story,) considering our curriculum intent not only in
terms of content but also in terms of qualities.
These we organised into four key areas: hand, head,
heart and voice:
Hand, Head, Heart, and Voice
Hand: developing competent, creative writers who are versatile, thorough and
precise; encouraging planning and editing.
Head: developing understanding of literary fiction and non-fiction texts and
methods; encouraging thoughtful and reflective learning about our world, the
past, language and memory.
Heart: providing experience of powerful, challenging and thought-provoking
texts; developing empathy, sympathy, and moral integrity in inquisitive learners.
Voice: developing powerful speakers and writers who convey ideas with
confidence, clarity and eloquence in speech and writing; encouraging a
confident and flexible style for a range of audiences and purposes.
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 17
Hand, Head, Heart and Voice – Reclaiming KS4 English from the GCSE syllabus
Speak the speech
Resisting the onslaught of the exam-only syllabus has
meant explicitly and defiantly making talk and other
modes of writing central in formative assessments and
as part of our teaching. We wanted pupils to continue
to experience a wide and balanced range of activities
in Key Stage 4, as at Key Stage 3, including speaking
and listening and drama. That has meant reframing ideas
about assessed work and progress, considering how we
can use talk and debate in a meaningful way to teach.
“We wanted Using resources such as the English Speaking Union’s
Mace (which provides a format for formal debating -
pupils to see https://www.esu.org/competitions/schools-mace)
continue to has been a way to get more pupils involved in extra-
curricular activities and also to formalise classroom
experience activities.
a wide and To that end, the first major piece of assessed work
in Year 10 is a speech, rather than a standard baseline
balanced creative writing or analytical essay task. This allows
range of time to hone speaking skills ahead of the recorded
spoken language course assessment, but also provides a
activities pleasing end point to our first theme, the language and
in KS4, as at literature of protest.
KS3, including
speaking and
listening and
drama. We
also wanted to
shape learning
around
engaging
and powerful
themes.”
The Language and Literature of Protest
Key learning questions:
What is protest and how has it been used across times
and places?
How can literature and art be used in protest?
How and why can we protest?
Texts to experience and explore:
Significant speeches including Martin Luther King,
Greta Thunberg, March for Our Lives.
Leaflets, posters, opinion pieces, manifestos such
as Extinction Rebellion
Exam texts including poems Blake’s ‘London’,
Agard’s ‘Checking out my history’, Owen’s
‘Exposure’
Art including ‘Guernica’
Skills (including exam skills):
Analysing language, structure, form in written and
oral texts
Writing and redrafting persuasive writing
18 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
Language and literature of protest
We also wanted to shape learning around engaging
and powerful themes. For the first thematic unit of the
course, we focused on the language and literature of
protest (see panel below).
The impact of this unit on pupils was startling for
three reasons.
First, this theme offered the chance to explore
different voices and forms across time, to hear more
women, minorities and contemporary texts alongside
canonical texts fired their enthusiasm. There was a real
buzz in lessons, and a greater understanding of how
English can be alive and relevant right now.
Second, effective group work and an explicit
discussion of group work and research skills also
demonstrated to pupils the central importance of
English to their other subjects and to their future
education and career. Making the lessons varied and
purposeful, with sources presented to pupils as being
a way of preparing for their own real project, elicited a
higher level of engagement and gave the content more
urgency and interest, especially the exam texts.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the theme
included an emphasis on writing for a real audience.
As a warm-up activity, we used Agard’s poem ‘Checking
out me history’ as a basis for discussion about what our
own school’s History department taught, discussing
values and bias. Each pupil selected a person or topic
that was currently omitted, and wrote to the head of
History arguing for its inclusion. He was kind enough
to come back to the pupils and explain each choice, and
what changes he could make to the syllabus based on
their input. This fired their enthusiasm for the powers
of their own research and persuasive writing, also
allowing them the chance to do some peer assessment
and improving work on their rhetorical devices.
Warming to the theme and rising to the challenge,
pupils chose any topic they wished for the main part
of the scheme, and created very well researched and
Spoken language
Group work skills including discussion, delegation,
prioritising, negotiation
Research and digital literacy
Presentation and design skills
Understanding of democratic processes
Texts to produce:
Group project on a topic of students’ own choice
(examples included battery chickens, awareness of
and care for teenage Crohn’s sufferers, mental health
support for veterans). To include:
• a letter to an MP or relevant government agency,
with pupils researching the most appropriate
recipients and their addresses;
• a leaflet to be photocopied and handed out in school;
• a poster to be displayed outside the canteen;
• a video of the presentation to be shown to other
classes or audiences.

Photo: Marie Kanger Born/Shutterstock.com
presented campaigns, inspired by the young protestors
they had studied like Emma Watson and Emma
Gonzalez. Some of the benefits of this task included:
• Writing leaflets that we photocopied on their behalf,
and that they could hand out in school, prompted
urgent discussions about layout, design and language.
• Working alongside the school librarians, we gave
them lessons on information literacy, copyright,
citing sources and ‘fake news’.
• Delivering speeches to their peers, recording on
video so they felt there was a permanent record of
their performance, gave rise to a more formal and a
focused tone.
• Creating a display of their work outside the English
classrooms – in fact, in a prominent space outside
the school dining hall – reiterated the message that
this was a campaign rather than a creative writing
exercise.
• The unit was interspersed with key ideas and phrases
from British values and SMSC, as well as biographies
of civil rights figures and campaigners for social
justice from different places and times, aiming to
inspire other pupils to read more about these ideas
and to cross-pollinate English with History, RE,
PSCHE and other subjects.
Perhaps the most exciting impact came from the replies
that began to arrive in the weeks that followed, from
government departments, charities and other groups to
Features: English – The Big Picture 
whom the pupils had sent their letters. The excitement
this generated in the class was astonishing: pupils began
“This theme
to accost me in the corridors, brandishing headed paper, offered the
eyes lit up. Student comments included:
chance to
• ‘I love that someone with power and influence read my
letter- it made me feel powerful too’ explore
• ‘It might really make a difference’ different
• ‘It definitely motivates me to get involved in other voices and
campaigns’
forms across
And it wasn’t just the tangible evidence that someone time. Hearing
had received their letters that had an impact: the
contents were pored over, and phrases taken to heart. more women,
minorities and
And finally …
As a department, we wanted to ensure that elements contemporary
that excite us about our subject were not lost in the
new and restricted GCSE syllabus: opportunities to
texts alongside
redraft, revisit, develop ideas; to speak and listen well, canonical texts
hearing different voices and views; to explore real-
life contemporary issues and resonances; and to write
fired their
for pleasure and for real readers. We have found that enthusiasm.”
thematic approaches and writing for real purposes are
key weapons in our arsenal: perhaps these can offer a
way of moving forward from the current GCSE English
impasse.
Helen Mars
is Associate Senior Leader for Teaching and Learning
at Ripon Grammar School
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 19
 Generation Z:
Independent
Thinking
Independent Study for
A Level English Language Students

Clare Feeney explains how she teaches crucial skills of

critical literacy to enable her A Level English Language
students to carry out independent study tasks effectively.
The stakes have never been higher. Today’s pupils will research and language discourses in the media – and
come of age in a world of bankrupt political systems, that’s just part of the field of study. Once students realise
environmental suicide, and ever-increasing digital that language texts surround them and mediate their
dementia. How are we equipping Generation Z with the everyday experience of the world, there are infinite
“To be critical skills required to shape a better future?
There can be no doubt that we feel the responsibility
possibilities for further study which can delight and fire
up anyone – whether a language geek (like me) or not!
successful of educating our students to surmount these challenges. Tasks include:
Certainly, there has never been a time when curiosity,
for all, criticality and intellectual rigour are more important.
• reading or listening to sources with English
Language-specific content – book chapter, journal
independent In this article, I want to offer some thoughts on how
article or news feature, website or blog, radio or tv
independent study plays a key role in cultivating these
study needs to dispositions.
programme, youtube video or podcast

be structured, • researching a specific topic using a variety of

Independent study – what and how?
monitored So, what is independent study? Ask any teacher this
and carefully question and it will elicit a wry smile. Why? Because
it’s never fully ‘independent’, is it? Independent study
set up – at is work chosen by the student that is relevant to their
least at first. course and undertaken outside the classroom. However,
to be successful for all, independent study needs to be
sources, such as dialects around the UK, gender and
representation, language change, child language
acquisition
• collecting and analysing data through a chosen
method – e.g. audio recording, interview or
questionnaire.

It involves a structured, monitored and carefully set up – at least at
range of study first. It involves a range of study skills and, therefore,
careful input from the teacher.
skills and, At my school, we’ve embedded independent study
therefore, in our delivery of A Level English Language. This
means that at regular intervals through the course, our
careful input students are expected to complete a task of their choice
from the and share their learning with the class. The discipline
of language study lends itself brilliantly to this. Students
teacher.” need to be engaging with contemporary linguistic
We find that giving students a choice of independent
study is an excellent motivator. It sparks curiosity and
allows them to think through what it is they would like
to explore. We created a ‘menu’ of tasks from which
they could choose. This concept works well for us
as we can adapt it as new resources appear, or to suit
different stages of the A Level course. Students keep a
copy in their file and tick off once they have completed
a task. To encourage tenacity, we ask them to choose a
different one each time.

20 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22


Pre-teaching essential study skills
1: Criticality and evaluation
I have learnt the hard way over the years. It isn’t a good
idea to send students away on an open-ended research
mission – ‘read something interesting and tell us about it next
lesson’ – as they will share, at worst, partially understood
snippets from sources of dubious provenance, and the
learning opportunity will be lost. It’s best to assume that
they need to be trained in specific research skills. And
this should be integrated from the start of Year 12.
One vital study skill is knowing how to evaluate
journalistic sources. Students are often pulled towards
language discourses in the media: these texts are
accessible and (can be) hyperbolic in function. But
while it’s a relatively easy job to search for a news
article about language, it’s more demanding to critically
evaluate the strength of its argument, especially if it
twists linguistic research and spits out dubious claims to
serve its own bias. According to Wood (2019), education
in information literacy is the best way to empower users.
It ‘is the most scalable approach to combatting fake news,
disinformation and harmful activity on-line.’ I endorse this
view whole-heartedly.
To start with, I take students through a helpful
article by Murphy (2018), ‘How to read the language
news: sceptically’. This explains six key steps that they
can follow to assess the validity of news stories about
language. These include fact-checking the research and
analysing language choices. We then use these steps to
analyse a Daily Mail piece – ‘Sorry to interrupt, dear, but
women really do talk more than men (13,000 words a day
more to be precise)’ – by science correspondent Fiona
Macrae. This is a ‘superb’ example of how journalists
can distort and misrepresent research in order to serve
up stereotyped twaddle about gender. The clickbait
headline immediately perpetuates the myth that
women talk more than men, and its patronising tone
sets up a sexist joke which plays out in the first line:
‘Ladies, the next time the man in your life complains you talk
too much, silence him with science.’ Discourses which seek
to naturalise and legitimise sexist viewpoints abound in
the media; they need taking to task – by our students.
We unpick how the research is presented to the
reader, focusing at first on the science from which the
article draws its argument. A shared linguistic analysis
of a short passage is revealing. Take this section near
the beginning:
It has been claimed that women speak about 20,000
words a day – 13,000 more than the average man – and
scientists say a higher amount of the Foxp2 protein is the
reason women are more chatty.
But now scientists have found the key to explaining why
women are the more talkative sex.
A study just published suggests that higher levels of
the protein are found in the female brain.
It is easy to identify the evasive use of the passive
voice: ‘It has been claimed that women speak about 20 000
words a day – 13 000 more than the average man.’ Agentless
sentences leave the reader no way of checking out
where the claim came from and, indeed, whether it has
any evidence base at all. There is also an interesting
discussion to be had around the homogenising category
labels ‘women’ and ‘the average man’ and why conclusions
about supposed behaviours lead to problematic over-
generalisations.
Features: English – The Big Picture 
It’s also revealing to discuss how the article uses
the copular verb ‘are’ to present its content as fact
“It isn’t a good
and recycle stereotypes: ‘scientists say a higher amount idea to send
of Foxp2 protein is the reason women are more chatty’,
and, later, ‘women are the more talkative sex.’ But the
students away
slipperiness of the argument is apparent in the use of on an open-
other verbs too. The present perfect tense expresses a
certainty (‘Scientists have found…’) that suddenly shifts
ended research
in the next line to a more cautious point: ‘A study just mission, as
published suggests…’. In fact, the article lacks coherence
as it jumps between folk linguistics and scientific they will share,
studies on rats, finally revealing that the Foxp2 protein at worst,
research was conducted on only ‘ten boys and girls
aged between three and five.’ Overall, on closer scrutiny, partially
students can see that the article’s argument is untenable. understood
The conclusion is rendered implausible – this protein
doesn’t make women more talkative. It is a good lesson snippets
on why it pays to read critically and evaluate carefully. from sources
2: Digital literacy of dubious
Generally, teaching students to be digitally literate is not
seen as our area. We assume that they are competent
provenance.
users of technology who have a transferable skill set. It’s best to
However, when it comes to academic study, never make
this assumption!
assume that
This was brought to the fore for me as I walked they need to
into the classroom one day to find a heated debate
over a Twitter thread. Specifically, why were Corbyn’s
be trained in
tweets chock full of taboo language and offensive specific
swears? It turned out to be a ‘fake’ account, without
the legitimating ‘blue tick’. There was some ailing
research
‘twitteracy’ among these Twitter users which was easy skills.”
to address.
With this in mind, I recommend having a lesson
or two teaching basic digital skills. I usually start with
effective search strategies such as site operators, [site:],
which are a handy tool for narrowing down searches to
particular domains. For example, we compare results for:
• [sexist language site:ac.uk] educational sites in
the UK,
• [sexist language site:edu], educational sites in
the US, and
• [sexist language site:gov], government sites in
the UK.
It’s always insightful to discuss the differences
between government publications on the topic and
more academic ones. Alongside this, it’s helpful to
demonstrate how to select keywords to put into a search
engine. Students who want to search for [gender neutral
language] should also think of synonyms that might
yield related results – [inclusive language] or [politically
correct language].
Finally, I like to give students a resource sheet
developed by the CILIP Information Literacy Group
which explains how to use the CRAAP test to assess the
relevance of a web-based source. This is a scaffold that
walks them through key questions to ask about a text –
Currency, Relevancy, Authority, Accuracy and Purpose. I
ask them to do a search using the keywords [gender and
tag questions], and then apply the CRAAP test in order
to choose three resources from their search results that
are useful. This hones their skills of selection: they must
think carefully about what’s relevant and reliable for
their purpose.
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 21
Generation Z: Independent Thinking – Independent Study for A Level English Language Students

Evaluating
the information
that you find Once you have found your information it
using the is important to evaluate it so that you can
ensure that you use the information that
CRAAP test. works best for your project or research.
One way of doing this is by performing
the CRAAP test on your sources.

Currency, Relevancy, Authority, Accuracy and Purpose

Asking the questions below about each website, document or piece of information that
you find will help you decide which ones are relevant for your project.

Currency 3. Referencing and citation talk, focusing on content, listening and note-taking
When was it published? Is the information too old? Does
Introducing students to the skill of referencing is it Inhave
skills. essence, it’s a great opportunity to talk about
efficacious at this point. There are numerous on-line how oral language varies across different contexts.
a date on it? When was it last up-dated? How important is it that
university sites that take novice researchers through
you have up-to-date information?
this. Newcastle University provide a clear demonstration 5. Presentation
on their site, http://sixthformstudyskills.ncl.ac.uk/. I The first time that students do an independent study
Relevancy find that teaching referencing and citation forms good task, I ask them to record their learning in a set format
study habits and pays dividends when students start using specific headings. This ensures that they apply
Does it fit yourtheir
project? Will your
NEA (non-exam project be stronger their study skills and produce a good quality piece of
assessment).
if you include this information? research. I also establish an audience and purpose for
“The CRAAP test helps them to assess the their work: their aim is to present findings clearly so
Authority
relevance of a web-based source. It is a scaffold
that their learning can be shared with peers. We use a
VLE so their study can be uploaded for this purpose.
Who has published or written the information? Do you trust them?
whichIs itwalks them
easy to through
find out key
anything questions
about to ask
them? Who was it• written for?
The five headings are:
What is your source?
about a text: Currency, Relevancy, Authority, • How reliable is your source? Why?
Accuracy
Accuracy and Purpose.” • Summarise your key findings. What is significant/
Is the information correct? Check with another source, if interesting?
you are

? ???
not sure to see if they say the same thing. Are the details
4. Active listening correct?
• Would you recommend this source to another
Audio-visual sources are popular with young people.
English Language student? Why/why not?
Purpose There’s a wealth of stimulating TED talks and podcasts
to be discovered. However, according to the National • How does your source link to classroom learning?
Why does the Literacy
information exist? sustained
Trust (2009), Is it trying to sellis you
listening an Have you got any questions about what you have read?
something, persuade you or give you an opinion? Once What has it made you think about?
infrequent experience for students and many adults; we
tend to watch more and listen less nowadays. Of course,
you figure thiswe out, you can then decide how to use the
can rewind these sources but focused listening Students’ responses
information that youinhave
practice found.
class lays the foundation of this skill. 1. What is my source?
I usually play an episode from a podcast such as Students unearth a range of fascinating sources, fuelled
Rosen’s R4 show, ‘Word of Mouth’ or McWhorter’s by their own curiosity. Many of these are new to me
There is lots of‘Lexicon
information available
Valley’, and on the
practise active CRAAP
listening tooproduced
withtest and I enjoy sharing their research. This creates an
by universities
students. I devise different question sets for students interesting dynamic because the student becomes the
and other libraries thatas can
to answer show
they are you The
listening. thequestions
test in focus
action. Youof can
owner find knowledge
new subject it by doing and I become a learner
a simple search on on the internet.
recalling and inferring content, or on the genre alongside them. I don’t ‘mark’ completed studies, but
features of the show – that is, how oral language is used I do check through them and glance at the source
by the presenter and participants. Each student gets material; after all, I am monitoring their literacies –
if you are not sure how to apply any part of the test, ask your librarian
REMEMBER one question set. After listening, students share their digital, reading, listening, and writing. If they need it, I
or teacher
information for help
with others. and also
We might support.
watch Always
a TED evaluate
will providethe information
advice you find.
on how to improve these skills.

For further information please contact Dr R Jones - jonesr@malvernstjames.co.uk © CILIP ILG. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
22 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 4.0 International license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Attribution-ShareAlike

2. How reliable is my source? Why?
It is encouraging to see students asking critical questions
about their chosen source. Once they get in the habit of
thinking about reliability and relevance, they start to
establish the mindset of a researcher. Comments such
as these appear:
• ‘My source is very reliable. It is quite current (speech
took place November 2018)’
• ‘TED talks are specifically by experts making it an
educational site’
• ‘This webpage is relevant because it links to the topic
of accent and dialect and includes case studies that can
help develop AO2.’
3. Summarise your key findings. What is
significant/interesting?
An open question lets the student respond in a
personal way to their source. What interests them may
be something that resonates with prior knowledge,
challenges their thinking or creates new understanding –
but whatever they identify, it will be meaningful to them.
I don’t prescribe how the findings need to be presented.
Bullets, summaries, direct quotation, tabulation of data
– students need to think through how best to capture
their learning and re-present it for their audience.
4. Would you recommend this source to another
English Language student? Why / why not?
If the source is chosen judiciously then the answer to
this would most likely be ‘yes’. Here, one of my students
thinks about how socio-linguists present their research:
‘The information is also shown in the form of a study, which
is also useful to show how findings can be presented.’
5. How does your source link to classroom
learning? Have you got any questions about
what you have read? What has it made you
think about?
This final section is arguably the most significant
because it sparks both affective and (meta)cognitive
responses. Here are a couple of comments from my
Year 12 class, the first time that they completed a study:
‘This source has left me with many questions… I had
previously thought that the ‘Leave’ campaign had
potentially made promises that were not realistic. I
thought that this was just because of competition whereas
now I think that it was perhaps due to the manipulation of
language by politicians.’
‘It has made me think about how diverse English is and how
the language of different ethnicities can be used to express
individuality and pride in identifying with that group.’
What next? – more creative responses
Once students adopt the dispositions of a researcher, it’s
a good idea to offer them more creative ways to present
their findings. For instance, they could choose to
feedback in an oral genre, collaborating in small groups
to create a podcast in which they interview each other.
Others may wish to deliver a talk to the class or produce
a video for an on-line platform. A round of speed-dating
is also an effective way to share learning in a lesson. For
those who prefer a written genre, possibilities include:
posters for wall-display, short articles, blogs, illustrated
notes, annotated text snippets.
Features: English – The Big Picture 
For the same reasons as before – audience, purpose,
sharing learning – I would make these available to the
whole-class. Sometimes, I set a formal follow-up task
where students have to Peer Review another study. That
is, they select one which piques their interest, read the
original source, reflect on the comments made by in the
original study, then add their own critique: there’s a lot
of thinking about thinking going on with this!
What next? – flip the learning
Before introducing a new module in class, set up a
related enquiry question such as ‘How does occupation
affect language?’ Challenge students to employ their
best research skills to seek out relevant sources, then
ask them to introduce the topic by feeding back. This
is an excellent way of teasing out the main concepts
while discussing some fascinating source material –
the language of the Canadian military was a highlight
last year.
“Nurturing students’ curiosity, criticality and
intellectual rigour develops dispositions that
are important whether or not they go on to
Higher Education. I want Generation Z to
shape a better future. To do this, they need
all the critical tools at their disposal.”
And finally…
Independent study gives students a rich, ambitious
curriculum experience. Nurturing their curiosity,
criticality and intellectual rigour develops dispositions
that are important whether or not they go on to Higher
Education – and some will become the linguists of
the future. Ultimately, I want young people to delight
in the subject and develop independent minds. I want
Generation Z to shape a better future. To do this, they
need all the critical tools at their disposal.
Thank you to my brilliant colleague, Claire McHugh, who
inspired us all to take a fresh look at independent study.
Clare Feeney
teaches at the St Thomas More Academy in North Shields
References
Information Literacy Group. Available from: https://
infolit.org.uk/information-literacy-group/school-
resource-sheets/
Guist, L., ‘How to Read the News: Sceptically!’ emagazine,
December 2018.
Macrae, F., 2013. ‘Sorry to Interrupt, dear, but women
really do talk more than men’ Daily Mail, 20 Feb
2013. Available from: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/
sciencetech/article-2281891/Women-really-talk-
men-13-000-words-day-precise.html
National Literacy Trust, 2009, ‘Oracy within the
curriculum’, one day workshop, March 2019.
Newcastle University Library. Available from: http://
sixthformstudyskills.ncl.ac.uk/
Wood, G., CILIP and CILIP Information Literacy
Group response to DCMS Online Harms White
Paper, 4 June 2019. Available from: www.cilip.org.uk
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 23
 Chains of Thought
Remembering the LINC Project
30 years ago, a ground-breaking set of CPD materials
was published, emerging from a national project to
transform teaching about language in schools. Mick
Connell reflects on what we might learn from them.
Educational acronyms are intriguing. They are born,
flourish furiously and ubiquitously for a moment, and
are gone: reduced in double quick order from current,
on-trend, popular and ‘required’ usage to archaic status.
Once ‘archived’ their use characterises an outdated
professional discourse. Very few acronyms attain or
maintain ‘standard’ or established status. Try these
acronyms from the last two decades for size: APP, AST,
CAF and NEET. How many do you recognise let alone
use? And what about LINC?
LINC: Language in the National Curriculum
The LINC project (Carter et al, 1990) ran nationally
between 1989–1992. Funded by the Department for
Education and Science (DfES) and by local authorities,
“The LINC it followed closely at the heels of the publication of the
‘English for ages 5 to 16’ (The Cox Report, 1989) and
materials were The Kingman Report (DES, 1988).
It was underpinned by a belief that both teachers and
designed with students would benefit from greater and more explicit
the explicit knowledge about language. The materials were designed
with the explicit intention of extending teachers’
intention of knowledge about and understanding of language. As the
extending Introduction argues, ‘A better understanding of language
can sharpen teachers’ appreciation of children’s achievements
teachers’ with language and help them understand the nature of
knowledge difficulties or partial successes’ (Carter, LINC, 1990, p.1).
about and From ‘Language in Use’ to A Level Language
understanding LINC was, for me, hugely influential for two reasons.
The question of what and how English teachers should
of language.” teach about language had been unresolved and unclear
24 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
since I had started teaching English in the mid-1970s.
The ‘Language in Use’ (1971) materials had been
available for some time but their influence had been
eclipsed by the impact of the Bullock Report in 1975.
Despite the emphasis that the Bullock Report had
placed on language and language development there
was little mainstream concern with teaching about
language detectable at the time as I remember from a
classroom perspective. As far as Bullock was concerned
we were primarily occupied with the notion of language
across the curriculum.
Personally, I was excited and relieved about the
LINC project because in 1987 our English department
had introduced the new JMB A Level English Language
syllabus. Like most of my department colleagues I had
a literature degree and was, to be honest, working hard
to keep a couple of lessons ahead of my students. The
prospect of a major professional development initiative
that would address the huge gaps in my own subject
knowledge of language and linguistics was timely and
welcome.
My professional needs apart, the project had been
initiated by government to address criticisms that the
Cox (1989) and the Kingman Commission (1988) reports
had made about the state of English teaching and, in
particular, about the paucity of classroom attention
to language and grammar teaching. The additional
subject knowledge and confidence with language that
the LINC project might generate would support the
successful introduction of the new National Curriculum
programmes of study for English and address the
perceived shortfalls in the teaching of grammar.

Applied Linguistics for English teachers
The LINC Project materials were developed over three
years by a team of regional co-ordinators and advisory
teachers. The Regional Co-ordinators were mainly, but not
exclusively, drawn from university academics with a
linguistic or educational specialism. Dr Ron Carter of the
University of Nottingham provided National Co-ordination
under a DfES appointed National Steering Committee.
Describing the project on the website of the
Committee for Linguistics in Education (CLIE) in 2007
Carter writes: ‘The comprehensive study units that make
up the LINC programme are applied linguistic in character;
that is, language is described not in isolation but mainly in
relation to particular contexts of learning in primary and
secondary schools …’ (https://clie.org.uk/linc, 2007).
A different kind of CPD
The resources and activities within the LINC materials
comprised ten professional development units and a
‘Grammar and Glossary’. There were two units on each
of reading, writing and talk. Each language mode was
divided into separate units on ‘process’ and ‘repertoire’.
There was considerably more however. Units on Early
Language, Speech/Writing Differences, Accent/Dialect/
Standard English and Multilingualism all provided a
valuable resource bank for English teachers eager to
extend curriculum breadth and subject knowledge.
On re-visiting the material now the most striking thing
for me is that not only are the materials unashamedly
scholarly but that they are also characterised by a sense
of intellectual disinterest, humour and fun. There is
evident enthusiasm for and interest in language: what
it is; how it works; how and why it varies across time,
place and context and why classroom engagement with
language and linguistics would prove both beneficial for
students’ own language development and enjoyable in
its own right.
The LINC materials and the project’s approaches
bear scant comparison to the kind of in-service
materials that characterise some of the more didactic
and top-down models of professional development that
have followed it – often smuggled into the curriculum
on the back of directed changes to assessment and
testing. Essentially the LINC materials, their register
and their tone, are those of illustrated and applied
academic texts. The reader is consistently addressed as
a subject expert, a reflective classroom practitioner and
an equal. This might feel both unsettling and unfamiliar
to the contemporary reader. There are no ‘sure-fire’
strategies, no quick-fixes, no top tips for the classroom.
How odd it all seems.
I have chosen a few examples of the materials to
illustrate their nature and approach.
Example A: Textual organisation
This activity is taken from the ‘Process of Reading’
unit but might have equal relevance when supporting
students’ non-narrative writing. It focuses on textual links
and on text organisation. The following newspaper report
contains six paragraphs (A–F) that have been jumbled
up. The activity for students is to decide on and to justify
a convincing and coherent order. Using highlighters
or linking lines the students should indicate the main
links that exist between words and phrases across
the sentences and paragraphs. Teachers are asked to
consider how the activity helps students focus not only
on what a text says but on how it is said:
Features: English – The Big Picture 
A. Dr. Price later described the letter as ‘a bit of fun’. He was not Welsh-speaking himself
and his two Indian colleagues in the casualty department certainly did not understand
Welsh. ‘It’s a bit of fun really, our way of asking Dr. Clowes to write to us in English.
We do not always have time to get his letters translated, especially as many nurses do
not speak Welsh’.
B. Mr Freeman added that Dr Clowes could continue to write his letters in Welsh, and in
future he would receive a reply in Welsh.
C. Dr. Clowes is unrepentant. ‘This is an insult not only to myself and my patient, but to
the Welsh language. All my patients are Welsh-speaking, and it is their first language. It
is a matter of principle in an area where the vast majority of people are Welsh-speaking.’
He has complained to the health authorities and to his MP.
D. A North Wales family doctor was not amused when his letter in Welsh to a local
hospital was answered in Hindi.
E. Mr. Robert Freeman, administrator of the Gwynedd area health authority said
yesterday that Welsh and English were equally valid. ‘But a lot of medical staff are
English or foreign, although we do try to ensure that there is always a competent
Welsh speaker on hand in the casualty department.’
F. Dr. Carl Clowes, of Llanalhern, Gwynedd, sent a middle-aged woman patient with
a knee injury for x-ray, along with a referral note describing the symptoms, to
Caernarvon and Anglesey hospital in Bangor. The reply, signed by a Dr L.J. Price and
written in Hindi, arrived by post.
Examples B and C: Language and society
This example from the ‘Reading Repertoire’ unit,
“The reader
(taken from John Lewis, 1969) is a printed notice from is consistently
1812 and would have been displayed in the premises
of local tradespeople who would act as agents for the
addressed as
recruiting family. The LINC commentary provides a subject
some fascinating details about the context, the design
(e.g., count the number of fonts used), the tenor and the
expert, a
social values reflected in the language of the text. reflective
classroom
practitioner
and an equal.
This might
feel unsettling
and unfamiliar
to the
contemporary
reader.”
The following example, from the same unit, is taken
from A Nursery History of England (O’Neill, 1950) , one of a
series of ‘Books for Young People’ published by Thomas
Nelson & Sons. From this distance the language of the
text, its assumptions and its version of historical truth
are breath-taking. The LINC commentary provides
engaging reflections on aspects of the text such as:
audience, narrative, personalisation, representation,
ideology and ‘absence’.
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 25
Chains of Thought – Remembering the LINC Project
The LINC commentary and approach to these texts
“The emphasise the importance of valuing ‘research’ over
materials and ‘response’. A common framework for analysing these
curiosities is proposed. The framework recommends
the project’s that teachers and students ask themselves the following
approaches questions:
bear scant • Who speaks this text?
comparison • Who is being spoken to?
• Where does this text come from?
to the kind • What kind of text is this?
of in-service • What does the text want?
materials that • What does the text mean to me/us?
characterise In exploring these questions teachers are urged to
some of the consider the detailed choices that writers make: the
top-down presentational, organisational, grammatical and lexical
choices that have helped shape and characterise the
models of texts.
professional Example D: Text types and features
development In some ways the ‘Process of Writing’ unit is perhaps the
least ‘recognisable’ section. The assumptions about and
that have the context of the classroom writing process do feel as if
followed it.” they belong to an earlier and now unfamiliar pedagogy.
The central references to drafting, revising and to
collaborative writing fit uncomfortably with the model
of the writing process and its assessment that is evident
in our current GCSE English Language specifications.
Of course every writing act and example is assumed to
be hand-written. The project narrowly pre-dates the
widespread use of word processing in the classroom.
26 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
There is however much that anticipates the work that
was to be done a decade later by the National Literacy
Strategy (NLS) in terms of text types, features and
characteristics.
The ‘Writing Repertoire’ unit contains many
ideas and strategies that have become familiar to
English classroom since the NLS. The focuses on the
characteristics of various text-types and on aspects
of audience, purpose and form are pretty familiar
and the activities that explore and illustrate cohesion
within chronological and non-chronological texts
retain relevance. One activity that looks at sentence
sequencing in different text-types offers the English
teacher an engaging and fruitful extension on the game
of ‘Consequences’. The links between this ‘writing’
activity and the reading activity quoted in Example
A above demonstrate the way in which the materials
reflect a coherent, whole language approach.
For this activity your students should work in groups
of five or six. Each student is given a sheet of paper
with a ‘starter’ sentence written at the top of the page.
The starter sentences are are divided into categories:
Category A
• Once upon a time there was a small green frog
called Freda.
• First wash and fillet the fish.
• John lived in a cottage by the sea with his parents.
• Once there was a rich merchant who had two
daughters.

Category B
• Pet cats belong to the same family of animals as
the great cats.
• The issue of capital punishment now seems to
be again the centre of much debate.
• One common way of describing any use of
language is to say that it is for communication.
• Pond life is like a city in miniature.
Each small group of students should have starter
sentences from both categories. Each member of the
group should write a sentence that ‘connects’ with the
starter sentence they have been given. Each paper is
then folded so that only the second sentence is visible
and is then passed on to the next student in the group.
That student reads the second sentence they have
been passed and writes a third sentence that connects
with the previous one. Each paper is folded again so
that only the latest sentence is visible and is passed
on. This continues until five or six sentences have
been completed. The groups should then look at and
discuss their ‘completed’ texts. They will doubtless
be struck by the fact that one category has worked
much more coherently than the other. But why?
Approaches to grammar
But where exactly in all this is the ‘grammar’ knowledge
and understanding that the DfE had sought in response
to the Kingman Commission Report? The answer I guess
is that the LINC materials exemplified ‘grammar in
action’. The LINC approach to grammar begins with
students’ engagement with whole texts and their meanings.
It relates these whole text meanings to the grammar of
sentence, clause, phrase and word: ‘The LINC approach
is contrasted with more traditional analyses which work from
smaller units upwards and tend not to engage with overall
meanings’ (Carter, LINC, 1990, p.315–6). Although there
is a short section on classroom implications, the ‘Grammar
in Action’ section omits the CPD activities that characterise
much of the other materials. The emphasis is analytical
and is focused principally on grammar for reading.
Standard English and the end of LINC
The materials conclude with an extensive linguistic
glossary that claims the educational applications of
linguistics as its focus: ‘The glossary begins to define
terms from an educational perspective’ (Carter, LINC,
1990, p.331). Whilst the glossary does indeed address
and define ‘phonology’ and ‘Standard English’ from ‘an
educational perspective’, I could find no mention of
‘phonics’ or ‘Standard Spoken English’.
It seems to me, then, that the government’s decision
to withhold publication may have had more to do
with sins of omission than of commission. Ron Carter
reflected on the ultimately wasteful and short-sighted
demise of the LINC project and its materials:
‘When this in-service programme was reviewed at the
end of 1991, it was decided by the government of the day
that it was insufficiently formal and de-contextualised in
character and failed to pay sufficient attention to the rules
of standard English. As a result and against a background
of considerable public dispute, the government decided
against publication…’ (https://clie.org.uk/linc, 2007).
Features: English – The Big Picture 
With the benefit of considerable hindsight it seems
that the LINC materials were the product of a time
“The LINC
of forgotten collegiality and mutual trust between materials
education administrators, advisers (at national and local
level), academics, and English classroom practitioners
exemplified
in primary and secondary schools. The government’s ‘grammar in
refusal to publish the LINC materials represented the
thin edge a wedge between this three-way consensus
action’. Their
that was to be driven remorselessly deeper in the three approach
decades that followed. to grammar
And finally … begins with
I was lucky to be present a few years ago when
the tirelessly independent and prophetic Dorothy
students’
Heathcote addressed the National Drama conference engagement
in Durham not long before her death. Heathcote
declared with her characteristic chutzpah that there
with whole
is and will always be only one question that should texts and their
rightfully and consistently engage and preoccupy
the teacher. That question is, ‘How am I going to teach
meanings,
this?’. relating these
If the relevance or authenticity of this question
is taken from the teacher, then we rob teaching of
meanings to
its professional life force, its very purpose. We will the grammar
have replaced teachers with automata. In whatever
form these automata emerge they will be cheap,
of sentence,
quickly produced, and have absolutely no use for – clause, phrase
perhaps unlikely to even recognise – the voice and
the wisdom that underpinned the LINC project and
and word.”
its materials.
The LINC Materials are available to buy for £35 from the
University of Nottingham at https://store.nottingham.
ac.uk/product-catalogue/schools-and-departments/
english/linc-project
Mick Connell
is NATE Secretary, and PGDE English Tutor at the
University of Sheffield
References
Bullock. A (1975) ‘A Language for Life: report of the
Committee of Inquiry appointed by the Secretary
of State for Education and Science under the
chairmanship of Sir Alan Bullock’, DES, London
(HMSO)
Carter. R. (1990) ‘The LINC Project: Materials for
Professional Development’, University of Nottingham,
https://store.nottingham.ac.uk/product-catalogue/
schools-and-departments/english/linc-project
(Available from above link since July 2015)
Carter. R. (2007) Introduction to LINC at https://clie.
org.uk/linc
DES (1989) Report of the English Working Party 5–16 (the
Cox Report) (HMSO).
DES (1988) Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the
Teaching of English Language (The Kingman Report)
(HMSO)
Doughty.P. (1971) ‘Language in Use’, London@ Edward
Arnold for Schools Council Programme in Linguistics
and English Teaching.
John Lewis (1969) (first published 1962) ‘Printed
Ephemera’, Faber
O’Neill, E. (1950) Morrow, G (Illustrator) ‘A Nursery
History of England’, Thomas Nelson.
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 27
 Macbeth:
From Book
to Videogame
Andrew Burn explores how Missionmaker can be
used to enable students to create videogames based
on Macbeth, arguing that videogames offer a powerful
route to ‘active Shakespeare’.
Missionmaker and Macbeth language, visual design, dramatic action, among others.
The classroom work explored is this article involves In this sense they also have the potential to build
Year 10 students in two UK comprehensive schools bridges between not only English, Media and Drama,
making videogames based on Macbeth, which they but with other sister Arts subjects.
are studying for GCSE. The games are made using Finally, the coding element of game design provides
the Missionmaker game authoring tool, which allows a link with the computing curriculum, prompting some
users to rapidly create complex 3D worlds using pre- interesting questions both for teachers of computing
designed assets, and populate them with characters, and for teachers of English. What might it mean to ‘code’
objects, pickups and media objects such as text popups Shakespeare, for example? In multimodal theories of
“Games as a or audio, including dialogue. The events in the game are
created using a simple coding interface to make rules
game semiotics, coding has been seen as an additional
mode: for us, an orchestrating mode which organises
storytelling determining conditions under which such events will other modes (actional, visual, musical, linguistic, etc.)
be triggered. The software is designed by the MAGiCAL
medium are Projects team at UCL, and has been used for a variety
in the game.

a cognate of literature-related projects, some described in earlier
issues of this magazine.
cultural
form with English, media and drama united
There are a number of points to be made in general
literature and terms about the use of games in relation to the English,
film, which Media and Drama curriculum cluster. Firstly, that
games as a storytelling medium are a cognate cultural
allow aspects form with literature and film. Secondly, that they allow
of literary aspects of literary narrative to be understood in new
ways, productively unsettling conventional approaches
narrative to to narrative in education (though in many ways also
be understood supporting and extending them). Third, that they are
a multimodal form, requiring practitioners’ models
in new ways.” of literacy to be extended into the realms of spoken
Expanding the narrative in time and space
I’ll begin with a detailed look at an example from one
game, followed by briefer points from a range of other
games across the two schools. The detailed example
shows how the two students have expanded the
narrative, to explore the significance of the prophecies
in the opening scenes of the play:
Student 1: The idea was that they would start on a heath
where Macbeth met the witches and the witches would go
off into the different passages here and in each passage
there would be – um – an object which told you of the
prophecy and of his fate. And so basically the witches are
all supposed to go down into the different ways and you
choose a bit where you go – so there’s a crown that says

28 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22


basically you’ll become king, and then the skull that was
signify- symbolising the King’s skull and the sword was
symbolising the fight and who kills the king, and each
passage you went down fulfilled the fate of Macbeth .. oh
yeah, this is the one where he would become king, this is
the one where he would kill Duncan, and this would be the
one where –
Student 2: This says ‘follow witch on the left to find
Macbeth, follow witch in the middle to solve a riddle,
follow witch on the right you may get into a fight’….
So the function of the prophecies in the scene – as brief
but intensely significant items of dialogue, prefiguring
events that unfold throughout the play – are expanded
into narrative sequences in space and time. Exploiting
the affordance of digital games to construct narrative
choices, the prophecies are transformed into three
options for the player. These are realised in the game in
four main ways: as mission popups, as corridors leading
to the outcome; as symbolic objects representing
that outcome; and as a further trajectory to enact the
outcome. Each element suggests a particular kind of
expansion of the play.
The popups (Figure 1) are instructions to the player
in a simple poetic form with a rhyme in each case:
‘follow witch on the left to find Macbeth, follow witch in the
middle to solve a riddle, follow witch on the right you may get
into a fight’. These are not direct imitations of the poetic
form of the prophecies, which is principally the iambic
pentameter; but the witches’ incantations are abundant
with rhyme, and various kinds of word-patterning
are used by Shakespeare to produce the ‘supernatural
soliciting’ of the play, and to echo it in Macbeth’s speech.
Figure 1: The pop-up text in the prophecies game, offering the
player narrative options.
Language, image, drama, game
The next stage is to enter the corridor where the objects
can be found. The player reaches a crossroads with
three exits, and the objects are found in these pathways.
As Student 2 says:
– so there’s a crown that says basically you’ll become king,
and then the skull that was signify- symbolising the King’s
skull and the sword was symbolising the fight and who
kills the king …
These representations may seem straightforward
enough, but three comments may be made. To begin
with, the move from a linguistic mode into a visual
one is still noteworthy in the context of an English
curriculum which has always been dominated by
narrow conceptions of print literacy, even where the
literary text in question cannot be fully realised without
Features: English – The Big Picture 
visual and other modes. This includes examples such
as the poems of William Blake, the Child Ballads,
“These
the illustrations of countless children’s books (and plays began
some adult literature, such as Dickens’ novels). But it
becomes particularly significant in relation to dramatic
their lives
literature. For these plays began their lives as working as working
scripts for dramatic entities which could only be fully
realised on stage. The absurdity of reducing them to
scripts for
language-based literary study in the classroom has dramatic
been forcefully observed many times, and is repudiated
in the longstanding tradition of active approaches to entities which
Shakespeare perhaps best represented by the legacy of could only be
Rex Gibson.
In the case of these games, then, a shift into a visual fully realised
modality in which central ideas of the play – kingship,
murder, combat – can be visually represented – is not to
on stage. The
be underestimated. realisation of
Furthermore, the shift is not only into a visual
modality, but into a dramatic one. Drama consists, of
the play as a
course, as a series of multimodal ensembles, framing game restores
spoken language, text, dramatic action and gesture,
proxemics and other modes within spatial and temporal
its dramatic
patterns. Here, in many ways, the realisation of the play wholeness,
as a game restores its dramatic wholeness, expanding
the working script of the play-text into a complex
expanding
dramatic scenario. the working
Adapting the play – or realising it? script of the
Although the notion of adaptation seems the obvious play-text into
way to consider these kinds of transformative work by
students, in some ways this is not really an adaptation a complex
but a realisation. Nobody would refer to a staged version
of a Shakespeare play as an adaptation: rather it would
dramatic
be seen as the natural realisation of the linguistic text scenario.”
– in effect, a dramatic expansion. By the same token, it
makes no sense to refer to a film or a game version of the
play as an adaptation. The interpretation of the literary
text through voice, imagery, dramatic action, and the
construction of a fictional world, is accomplishing in
many ways what the stage play seeks to achieve.
However, there are differences, depending on
the different affordances of film and game. The film
unfixes the position of the spectator from her seat in
the stalls and produces a mobile point of view, with all
the possibilities for view, focalisation and identification
this affords. Meanwhile, this game takes the point-of-
view a stage further, offering control to the player. The
multiple strands of the narrative made possible here
are powerfully represented by the crossroads structure
they have created: a persistent trope in folk culture, a
transparent signifier of choice, and a repeated motif
in digital games since the days of text-based MUDs,
where players might typically encounter a crossroads
at midnight, with the subsequent option to go north,
south, east or west.
Dramatising choice
The eventual outcomes of the three pathways are not
complete in the draft of the game the students were able
to complete in the few hours available on this occasion.
However the plan is fairly clear: in each case, the
pathway leads to the murder of Duncan, but differently
freighted with affect. As the student explains, the
left-hand path, represented by the crown, represents
ambition, causing him to kill the king; the middle path,
represented by the skull, represents fear, in which he
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 29
Macbeth: From Book to Videogame
“For some reluctantly kills the king, goaded by his wife; while the
right-hand path, represented by the sword, represents
students, bloodlust, a different motive again.
making game The student’s explanation indicates their intention to
use these player options, instantiated as spatial structures
adaptations and game objects, to organise different psychological
states between which Macbeth fluctuates in the play,
was a way but here structured as different outcomes:
to rehearse Student 1: Like Macbeth’s thought process – cos if he
events from thinks about the positives of him becoming king from
what the witches tell him then he’ll end up with massive
the play. For ambition, and if he thinks about killing, the death of his
others, a way good king, he might become fearful and therefore like end
up withdrawn and having to stab the king because his
to manipulate wife tells him to, or if he goes to the right he might have
the plot. For a bloodlust and end up killing the king just because why
not? All of those three ways always bring him to the part
others, a way which the witches want, which is where the cauldron is. So
kind of symbolising his thought process.
to explore the
perspective The outcomes are physically separated and presented
as ludic challenges. In each case, the way is blocked
of different by a gate, which can only be unlocked by the symbolic
characters. object, once the player has picked it up. Once through
the door, the rudiments of the game design indicate
For others, an the planned sequence: a pool of spouting blood in
opportunity to one, the figure of Duncan in another, the third still
empty. Each outcome, of course, brings Macbeth
dramatically to the same place, the killing of the king; and after
that, leads him to the cave where the witches have
re-imagine gathered to mix the potion. The events are all designed,
the play.” then, as foreshadowings of the possibilities in Macbeth’s
mind.
Constructing narrative
It might be objected that this attribution of psychology
to a dramatic character makes the naïve error of
perceiving a fictional character for a ‘real’ person.
However, our aim here was not to prescribe what
Figure 2
30 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
understandings might be sought, but rather to promote
complex understandings, adequate to the complexity,
nuance and ambiguity of these texts. Such complexity
seems to demand that students do indeed see the
constructedness of literary, dramatic and mediated
narratives – to see, in Shakespeare’s terms, that ‘All the
world’s a stage’; that Macbeth is ‘a poor player that struts
and frets his hour upon the stage’. But at the same time
it encourages students to appreciate the emotions
expressed in the text: to suspend disbelief, as Coleridge
required; to behave as if these fictional constructs are
real while knowing them to be puppets of the author,
designer, director.
To extend this further, why should part of the
construct not be the psychological motivations of the
character, especially in a play whose dialogue so
explicitly refers to these states? Macbeth’s agonised
line, ‘O full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife’, is one of
many expressions of mental torment in the play.
In the case of this game design, certain specific
features are evident. Firstly, the characters are actually
constructed – in various ways. The witches have been
selected from a library of characters: they could have
been male or female, monstrous or human, beautiful
or ugly, peasant or noble, old or young, black or white,
different or identical. In this game, the witches have
been made as eerie, ghostlike figures, enhanced by
the students’ selection of a “spectral” setting from the
character properties menu (Figure 2).
Secondly, they have chosen a first-person perspective
for the player character, as Macbeth. They could have
chosen a third person perspective and represented the
player as a visible avatar (again with a range of design
options); but have selected first person. We only ever
see the player’s hands in combat. These structures
of person, or point-of-view, in games provide rich
opportunities for students’ understanding of narrative
point-of-view, especially if conducted across different
media.
 Features: English – The Big Picture 

Thirdly, as we have seen, emotions are attributed to

the player-character in complex ways, and constructed
through messages and through ludic experiences,
charged with their own dramatic intensity. The
students have effectively answered a longstanding
debate about emotions in videogames, sometimes
popularly imagined to be difficult to achieve, or simply “Several
missing in character-constructs often assumed simply
to be combat machines. In this case, the students have
students
made emotion and motivation a central feature of their considered
design, and their game reminds the player-character of
their emotional state. the plot as
a complex
Working with the text – and beyond
Making game adaptations with Year 10 groups showed a structure,
variety of benefits. In general, across the groups, there Figure 3 using the
were a range of engagements. For some students, it was
a way to rehearse events from the play. For others, it was multiple
a way to manipulate the plot. For others, a way to explore
the perspective of different characters. For others, an
routes
opportunity to dramatically re-imagine the play. characteristic
Using the text
of games to
In many cases, students began their designs with close think about
attention to the play, developing scenarios from the text
(Figures 3 and 4).
how the
In many cases, events in the games were closely story could
based on events in the plot, such as these sequences
of the death of Duncan, with the player in first person have been
mode as Macbeth (Figure 5), and the meeting of different.”
Macbeth with the witches (Figure 6).
Figure 4

Developing multiple narratives

Several students considered the plot as a complex
structure, using the multiple routes characteristic of
games to think about how the story could have been
different, what the consequences might be, and how the
play might be imaginatively reworked without losing
essential elements.
One student considered this in relation to the options
Macbeth himself ponders: [making our game] gives us a
question like ‘is there another way he could become a king
without having to be killed?’ (Girl, Y10).
Another student related multiple narrative routes
to player choice: a different audience experience of the
play: there’s often pathways and different choices that you
make, which then can lead to different endings depending on
what choices you make. (Boy, Y10)
Another related this to point-of-view – the possibility Figure 5
in game design and play to see the events from multiple
perspectives: it can give you different point of views, like
multiple pathways, options. You have more potential here
whereas a play has to stick to the script. This can show what
could have happened. (Boy, Y10).
Yet another explained how, in her game, she allowed
the player the option of letting Lady MacDuff escape
the murderers, and how this need not affect the later
development of the plot:
If you let [Lady Macduff] escape it doesn’t really add up
because she’s not meant to be alive … but she doesn’t really
pop up again so you could let her escape.
R: Does she need to be dead to give Macduff the motivation
to kill Macbeth?
P: Well his son’s already been killed so that’s enough
motivation. Figure 6

NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 31

Macbeth: From Book to Videogame
“Games made Meanwhile, this student had designed the murder of
Banquo so that one of the murderers displays sympathy
by students are for Fleance, letting him escape:
cognate with Murderer number 1 and murderer number 2 are arguing
with each other over which one they should trust and
longstanding whether murderer number 1 should trust murderer
traditions number 2. So we were thinking whether or not we should
make murderer number 2, um, murderer number 2 seems
of active like he’s trying to resolve the situation and seems to
approaches to calm, try to calm both of them down. He seems the most
sympathetic of both of them. So how about we make sure
Shakespeare that murderer number 2 is the traitor of the group and
which he wants, he eventually lets Fleance escape, then comes
back to the other two murderers and tells them that, and
approach lies to them and tells them that they let him go, while we
the plays as the player, we find out that he’s lying and we take the
initiative to kill him.
as dramatic
Beyond the literal
entities to be In some cases, students moved well beyond literal
enacted, rather recreations of the play. In one instance, students decided
to explore what lay behind the witches’ cauldron, and
than as literary where the ingredients came from, creating a series
texts to be of missions in which the player as one of the witches
had to overcome supernatural guardians to obtain the
analysed.” ingredients.
In another, one girl used a dragon character within
the software to represent the “murdering ministers”
invoked by Lady Macbeth to take her milk for gall,
reducing their size to tiny monsters, and programming
them to become aggressive when Lady Macbeth
becomes aggressive.
Text as script
Students also used the affordances of the software to
manage the text as script, creating media files in which
they use their own voices to bring the text to life, or
making ‘pop-ups’ which recreated extracts of the text
within the game, sometimes representing dialogue,
sometimes playing the role of in-game mission
instructions (Figure 7).
‘Active Shakespeare’ through videogames
We can say, then, that games made by students based
on Shakespeare plays need to be seen in a certain light.
They are not mere attempts to motivate students by
incorporating popular media forms into the curriculum
(though they may well have this beneficial side-effect).
They are not really adaptations, any more than films are.
Figure 7
32 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
Rather, they are cognate with longstanding traditions of
active approaches to Shakespeare which approach the
plays as dramatic entities to be enacted, rather than as
literary texts tor be analysed. The game designer works
with virtual actors, with virtual stage sets, with dramatic
language and action, and with narrative devices. In
these respects, she is very similar to the theatre director
or film-maker.
What games add is the ability to extend the play
with narrative-point-of-view, and with the dramatic
engagement of the spectator-player. In doing this, they
have the potential to reveal that Shakespeare’s plays are
not so far from the much-maligned medium of digital
games as may be supposed. When Prospero turns to
the audience at the end of The Tempest, offering them
the choice of confining him on the island or filling his
sails to wind to return to Naples, we see Shakespeare
operating something very like the defining structures
of a game: the second person mode of address to the
player-audience; the offer of narrative choice; and the
double meaning of the event – the dramatised lives of
the characters on the one hand, and an entertainment
fiction on the other: ‘my project … was to please’.
These examples suggest that many other ludic
aspects of the plays could be explored through game
design: Puck and Oberon’s magic; the play-within-
a-play of Hamlet; the combat sequences of Othello,
Hamlet, Macbeth, the history plays (games are perfectly
adapted to model combat); the fictionalised worlds of
Renaissance Europe which encase many of the plays.
More generally, the case extends to the potential in
classrooms for game design projects which re-imagine
literary texts of all kinds, uncovering and extending
the playful poetics of mediaeval romance (Gawain), of
the Elizabethan masque, of Arthurian battle, magic,
loyalty and treachery, and of Victorian narrative poetry.
In the age of the videogame itself, such explorations
of literature can encompass sci-fi, fantasy and magical
realism in obvious ways. Less obviously, they might
even offer ways to explore the sober side of human
experience as represented in literature: the poetry,
drama and narrative of warfare, for example. One of
the oldest games of all, chess, is a war game, essentially;
and the digital mechanics of videogames have been
entangled over many years with those of military
training.
Games and play, as young children know and
teenagers still remember, can be both fun and serious
business – a paradox which English, Drama and Media
teachers would do well to embrace.
Andrew Burn
is Professor of English, Drama and Media at the Institute
of Education, University College London
Those interested in trying Missionmaker Macbeth or
Missionmaker Beowulf should contact Andrew Burn:
a.burn@ucl.ac.uk
Acknowledgments
I’m grateful to the MAGiCAL, Bruno de Paula and Abel
Drew team for the research and development work
on the software; to James Durran, English Adviser for
North Yorkshire, who organised and led one of the
school workshops; to Alison Croasdale, Year 10 teacher,
who organised and led the other; to Nozomi Sakata who
supported the fieldwork.

The NATE Harold
Rosen Lecture 2019
Big Picture
English:
Beyond the
Brushstrokes
Barbara Bleiman looks at trends in English teaching
in recent years, and suggests that we need to foster
a broader, more expansive view of the subject – ‘big
picture’ English – in keeping with the principles and
practices of the late twentieth century, rooted in the
work of educationalists like Harold Rosen himself.
The 2019 NATE Harold Rosen Lecture was given by Barbara
Bleiman at the annual NATE Conference. A full transcript may
be found at www.englishandmedia.co.uk and a video of the
lecture is at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-2LN0IcTGU.
This version has been slightly shortened, omitting some
material that was included in a previous edition of Teaching
English (Issue 20, Summer 2019).
Part One: Big Picture English
Harold Rosen was Professor of Education when I
trained as an English teacher in 1976–7. His insights
and understandings have remained with me ever
since. That doesn’t mean to say I haven’t adapted and
developed, and enthusiastically taken on board lots
of new things. But I also haven’t abandoned some
core principles and values that came from him, from
thinkers like him, and ones before him.
Expertise: theory, practice, research
I was trained in a period when there were ‘experts’
like Harold. Expertise was valued. For me, expertise
is a mix of two things – experience and knowledge.
Older teachers or teacher-educators worked closely
Features: English – The Big Picture 
with younger ones like me. I remember – in the late
70s and early 80s – LATE workshops with people like
John Dixon, or NATE ‘strands’ on poetry with the
amazing Geoff Fox: I never felt patronised or
undervalued, but nevertheless these extraordinary
English educators were there, sharing the knowledge
they had accumulated over time, with a vast range
of reading inside their heads, both in the subject and
in education more generally, as well as substantial,
significant, classroom experience, often as Heads of
English. The two things together – practitioners and
theorists, theorist/practitioners. And they were often
conducting their own research too: practitioner-
theorist-researchers.
You’ll notice I distinguish between research and
theory. Theory seems to me to bring an additional
dimension. It’s not the here today, gone tomorrow
research of ‘what works’ (or rather what might work in
some contexts but not necessarily your own classroom).
It’s something more fundamental about political,
societal, human values and ways of being. It’s theories
of language and thought, of knowledge, of human
behaviour, of aesthetics and culture.
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 33
The NATE Harold Rosen Lecture 2019 – Big Picture English: Beyond the Brushstrokes
Something has changed. This kind of three-pronged
expertise seems not to be valued so much any more,
despite the fact that the knowledge of the past that
I’ve described, combined with the energy, vitality and
new vision of younger teachers, is a potent mix. It has
huge potential. But divorce one from the other and you
risk English teaching becoming deracinated – losing
its roots. Lovely-looking shoots, but nothing to anchor
“This is a them firmly into the soil.
We see endless new initiatives and ideas coming
moment for around and feel as if we are on a merry-go-round. Those
beliefs and of us who’ve been on it too long have begun to feel
queasy. We saw it in previous iterations. We doubted
visions as it then. We’re sceptical now. We recommend care and
well as facts. caution. But no-one is looking back. No-one remembers
what came before.
Ideas and
values are English: ‘a different model of education’
So I want to start my talk with a reference back. In
what our my view it’s an extremely important reference for
subject is English teachers, and it’s to Harold Rosen himself
and the insights this exceptional theorist-researcher-
all about.” practitioner had to offer – and still does:
34 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
English is nothing less than a different model of
education: knowledge to be made, not given; knowledge
comprising more than can be discursively stated;
learning as a diverse range of processes to be embarked
on with outcomes unpredictable; students’ perceptions,
experiences, imaginings and unsystematically acquired
knowledge admitted as legitimate curricular content.
(Harold Rosen: ‘Neither Bleak House not Liberty
Hall: English in the Curriculum’, 1981)
This is powerful stuff. Important stuff. It was then and
it is now. It has big aims for students and for the subject,
big ambition, big ideas. Opening up, not narrowing or
closing down, drawing students into the process not
shutting them out, admitting rather than rejecting,
allowing them to think big and think for themselves,
and think beyond the limits of what the education
system is currently imposing on them.
The rest of this talk is going to be all about that.
The need to resist the subject shrinking only to what is
assessable, to resist it becoming smaller and narrower
and more limited but instead to allow it to be big,
expansive, broad and inclusive in all kinds of different
ways. If it sounds like I’m proselytising or preaching: I
am. This is a moment for beliefs and visions as well as
facts. Ideas and values are what our subject is all about
and I am unapologetic in stating that this is what I
believe to be important. It comes from the experience,
wisdom and knowledge of those, like Harold Rosen,
who came before me.
Text and talk: what we do with a poem
So let’s start with a text and some talk. Two vital
things in anything to do with English teaching. We’ll
use a poem by Helen Tookey (‘Quend-Plage-les-Pins’,
from her collection, City of Departures – shortlisted
for the Forward Prize 2019, so bang up to date.) You
can read the poem here: www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/
scribe?item_id=8970.
I’m going to read it out loud first of all. I want you to
look at it and ask yourself four simple questions, and
then turn to the person sitting next to you and share
your ideas:
1. What are my first thoughts?
2. Am I puzzled or intrigued by anything about it?
3. What do I like about it?
4. Does it remind me of anything?
This is not the way texts are currently being explored
in many of our classrooms. ‘What’s your response and
why?’ has been supplanted by a focus on other things
– often small things, at word, phrase or sentence level –
small language techniques and devices.
The problem with vocabulary and context
Vocabulary is one of the new obsessions. The mantra
of ‘the more words you know the smarter you are’,
and the idea that students can’t access texts without
knowing every single word in advance (drawing on E.D
Hirsch), has led to lots of pre-teaching of vocabulary.
And lots of pre-teaching of context too, as if you can’t
ever approach a text without knowing everything about
it first. As if it’s risky and dangerous ever to just read
and see what you make of it for yourself. As if texts don’t
 Features: English – The Big Picture 

ever explain themselves. As if they don’t provide new

knowledge. As if they’re simply excuses for teaching
vocabulary.
With the text I’ve shown you, you might start with
something like this:
• Quend-Plage-les-Pins is a seaside resort in Picardie,
in France.
• Here’s a photograph of it.
• A pine is an evergreen tree.
• Dunes are mounds of sand on beaches.
• Tenacious means clinging firmly, determined,
persistent.
• Pennants are flags.
• Crêpes are pancakes.
• A promenade is a walkway along a beach.

You might pre-teach literary and linguistic terms like

syndetic and asyndetic listing, caesura, alliteration,
assonance and demonstrative pronouns, and ask
students whether they can find examples in the poem.
In all instances, you can!
I’m exaggerating a bit of course, but not much. If you
google ‘vocabulary’ and ‘Jekyll and Hyde’, for instance,
you will find lists for each chapter that are pages and
pages long, with comments to students telling them:
‘these are the words you need to know before even reading
this chapter,’ or ‘these are the words you need to know before
your exam’. Given that the unfamiliar words in the first
paragraph of Jekyll & Hyde alone include ‘eminently’,
‘beacon’, ‘austere’, ‘symbol’s ‘mortify’, ‘a taste for
vintages’, ‘approved tolerance’, ‘extremity’, ‘inclined’,
and ‘reproved’, this is very, very daunting.
Who would want to read the poem (or Jekyll and
Hyde Chapter 1) if learning unfamiliar words is your
main starting-point – burrowing down into tiny details
before even getting a chance to discover for yourself
what kind of text this is going to be and what your first
impressions are?
I might actually give you the information about
where the place is, and perhaps even show you a photo
or two:
If a word stands in the way of your broad
understanding perhaps I might also offer that to you.
But would you really need all the word information I
gave you, up front, in order to talk interestingly about
this poem? Were the pleasures and difficulties in the
poem predominantly a question of words anyway? If
you knew all the unfamiliar words would that, in and of
itself, have opened up the poem for you?
Could you talk about it without knowing all these
words and this context, if some were missing? Could
you work out enough for yourselves? And would
doing that not then stand you in really good stead
for reading the next poem and the next one and the
one after that? This is know-how in English literature
alongside knowledge of a particular poem in relation
to others, skills at the service of knowledge and vice
versa. It’s what Professor Robert Eaglestone helpfully
describes as ‘doing English’, or more humorously ‘being
an Englisher’ – in the way that others are geographers,
historians or modern linguists, who discover the
processes which subject disciplinary experts use to ‘do’
their subject.
“English Literature is all about readers, writers
and, crucially, the relationship between them.
That’s a complex business: nerves and muscle
and bone and blood supply all operating
together to make the body work.”
The big picture: focusing on response
How about, instead, if I had asked you to focus just
on the first two lines and spend some time discussing
those, perhaps in relation to other things? Can the
students think of other things which would be beautiful
if they didn’t exist? How’s that possible? Or if I asked
you to think about that repeated phrase ‘It wouldn’t
need’, and what ‘it’ is and what exactly ‘it’ wouldn’t need
and why? Wouldn’t that take you further? Or in thinking “We need
about the question ‘what’s puzzling or intriguing?’ what
if I asked you whether this is similar or different from to resist
other poems you’ve read. Are there aspects that aren’t the subject
very poem-like? Or more poem-like?
If we narrow the focus to words only, to small shrinking
detail, and always and only to the narrower questions
of comprehension in a single poem, rather than’ big
only to what
picture’ ideas, we risk becoming blind to the aspects is assessable,
of texts that are both most important and also cause
students most difficulty. We focus students and
to resist it
their attention on little things and don’t encourage becoming
judgement about what’s significant and what isn’t. We
also narrow the conversation, confine it to elements
smaller and
that students cannot contribute much to, in which narrower and
we are the sole experts and they must rely on us for
answers, only to questions that can be answered. We
more limited,
deny the importance of their response and the fact that but instead to
sometimes their response might collectively take the
class further than just our own response – and take our allow it to be
own response further too. big, expansive,
English Literature is all about readers, writers
and, crucially, the relationship between them. That’s broad and
a complex business: nerves and muscle and bone and
blood supply and chemicals and hormones all operating
inclusive
together to make the body work. If we look only at a in all kinds
small bone in the foot in isolation, not even at a whole
skeleton, or at blood in a test tube, or at a single nerve
of different
twitching, we never see the whole body in motion. ways”
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 35
The NATE Harold Rosen Lecture 2019 – Big Picture English: Beyond the Brushstrokes

The big picture: making connections We should be drawing them into the process of being
To turn now to another question I asked about the to be able to refer back and forwards in this kind of way.
poem – ‘What does this remind you of?’ – it seems to Unprompted, they might say, for instance, ‘it’s not at all
me to be a particularly important one. The text might like that other poem we read – ‘The Sea is a Hungry
remind you of personal experiences and send the Dog’ by James Reeves – and their teacher might ask
conversation outwards (and inwards) into life and mind why. And that opens up the conversation about themes
and emotion: that’s after all, what poems are meant to and ideas – one being about this, the other about that –
do – to connect with you personally, to make you think but also about the very different poetic stances, voices,
and feel. It might bring up strongly held feelings about stylistic choices. By the time they reach GCSE and
the environment and nature. unseen poetry (and then perhaps, hopefully, A Level),
How about if I’d asked you to use the first two lines they will have broad experiences and big ideas to draw
as a starting-point for a poem of your own? Or if I’d on when looking at any single text – a rich context into
suggested that you write about a place that you think which to put it.
has been spoilt for you by people. (In my case, it might
be the Alhambra, with all its tourists taking photographs Curriculum as conversation
– or my neighbours’ new back extension, blocking out As those of you have read my blogs will know, I’m very
the light in my kitchen.) taken with the work of an American acolyte of Harold
But equally it might and should send you into other Rosen’s called Arthur Applebee. Rosen supervised
literary experiences and encourage you to make his PhD when he was living and studying in London.
connections with other reading and writers. These kinds Applebee and his colleagues, undertaking research
of conversations, with yourself and with others, are vital in 2002 into the most effective English classrooms
not only to reading literature but to studying it. They are a in the US, drew attention particularly to this idea of
fundamental part of the way all thinking and all knowledge connections – the linking of one idea to another, the
works – the categorisation of what we encounter – why drawing of parallels and relationships, the bigger
a text is this, or this, or this, but not that, or that, or that. picture of literature and the subject. The write-up of
So, encouraging those literary connections and this research says:
comparisons is really important – going out from a Interconnectedness is an important feature of effective
text in big, expansive ways and then back in again. I curriculum and instruction at virtually every level,
recognise the poem as a poem only because of others from the coherence and interconnectedness of classroom
that I’ve read. It’s more like a lyric poem than a discussion on a particular day, to connections across
narrative one. It’s short, intense and it has a point to school experiences and between school and home, to
make. I recognise it in these ways only because I’ve read the interweaving of reading writing and discussion
other poems, ones that are both like it and not like it, throughout a unit, to the exploration of key concepts
“If we narrow lyrics and narratives. I automatically start to categorise and questions over the course of a semester or year […].
the focus to it in my mind to discover what makes it special, where
it sits in the world of poems and poem-ness.
words only, It makes me think of other sea poems, Matthew
to small detail, Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’ for instance – also questioning
humanity in the wider landscape, both natural and
and always spiritual. It makes me think of Anne Stevenson’s ‘With My
and only to Sons at Boar Hills’ – a very different poem – much more
personal, using a memory of her sons as children to think
the narrower about time passing. It’s a bit more like Larkin’s ‘To the Sea’
questions of perhaps? But his vision is more photographic, and more
about people and their lives, less about nature and what
comprehension people do to it. It makes me think of William Carlos
in a single Williams – the simplicity, but also that taking you out of a
scene or a description into something more profound and
poem, rather yet still elliptical and uncertain. Or new ecological writing
in other genres – Robert Macfarlane for instance. And so
than ‘big on, and so on. If I started to talk to someone else about
picture’ this – any one of you for instance – I’d hear about other
poems, I’d remember others myself, I’d refine my thinking
ideas, we risk not only of the specific poem but also poetry in general.
becoming blind
In the classroom
to the aspects Now obviously students don’t have all these poetic
of texts that reference points. But they have to start somewhere.
And that’s with us. In English classrooms. If you’ve read
are both most only a handful of poems in detail, that gives you limited
important experience. So students should be reading lots of poetry,
in lots of different ways – sometimes close up, of course,
and also cause looking at the brush strokes, but sometimes also just
students most strolling through the gallery, noticing the different
kinds of things on offer, and visiting many different
difficulty.” kinds of galleries.

36 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22

 Features: English – The Big Picture 

In contrast, the good but not exceptional classrooms that
CELA have studied have been orderly and systematic,
but they have tended to treat ideas and experiences in
isolation from one another, as building blocks in the larger
curriculum, rather than nurturing rich layers of possible
links by inviting constant comparison, contrast, and the
re-visiting of related ideas and experiences. (Applebee,
Burroughs and Stevens : ‘Engaging Students in the
Disciplines of English: what are effective schools
doing?, 2002)
Applebee sees the English curriculum as one big,
continuing ‘conversation’. He sees knowledge as being
about entering into subject disciplinary conversations
and traditions of thought. I find this a very appealing
and intuitively ‘true’ way of thinking about the English
curriculum in schools. I can look back at my own
teaching over thirty years and at the great teaching I
saw both then and have seen since, and this particular
way of characterising it seems to me to have been a
feature of the very best of what I’ve experienced, seen
and still see in classrooms.
Two extracts from Applebee’s book Curriculum as
Conversation contain further important messages for us,
particularly at this moment, when the curriculum and
knowledge are being debated so passionately, and when
English departments are searching for a rationale and a
set of principles for new thinking. Applebee says to new
students of English:
English is like a long conversation through time. Like any
conversation, it moves over various linked themes; it has
Part Two: Conversations in the Classroom
For the second part of my talk I want to focus on what
actually happens when you construct your teaching in
this way – where conversations about individual texts
are at the heart of teaching, but where those significant
conversations go beyond the narrow confines of the
single text and reach both back into memory, sideways
into students own experiences of life and literature, and
forwards, too, anticipating, prefiguring and developing
the kinds of conversations that we hope that students
will go on to have about future texts and experiences of
literature, both in academic study and in their reading
lives as adults. “There is
It’s Good to Talk
no need
In our project, It’s Good to Talk, as its name suggests, to exclude
conversation is seen as a means of learning as a well
as being fundamental to knowledge in the subject. In
students’ own
September last year we worked with a Year 9 cohort in a experience
school in East London who were studying a novel (In the
Sea, there are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda). Half the cohort from the
did their old scheme of work – largely powerpoint-led, conversation.
with several lessons focusing on prior knowledge, little
opportunity to focus on student response), and a close In fact, the
focus on preparation for GCSE language exam questions.
The other half followed a new scheme written by myself
conversation
and one of the teachers at the school, Lucy Hinchliffe, can’t really
who was working one day a week at EMC. (See Teaching
English Issue 20 (article pictured below) for further detail
happen
about these two different approaches.) without it.”
Features: Becoming Our Own Experts

quarrels and agreements; people talk at the same time,

struggle to be heard or shout louder to dominate the debate;
people suggest fresh ideas (‘what about this’?) or respond
to earlier ones (‘can we just go back to…’); there are newer
and older participants; like all proper conversations, part
of it concerns the past of the conversation itself (‘can we
please focus on why we are discussing this?’); and now
you, doing English, have joined this conversation and will
change what’s said next. (Arthur Applebee: Curriculum
as Conversation: Transforming traditions of teaching
and learning, 1996)
In the same book, he also says:
Schooling should be organised to help students enter
into culturally significant domains for conversation,
themselves representations of broader cultural traditions
of knowing and doing. By placing the emphasis on entry
into such conversations, I seek to ensure that students will
emerge with knowledge-in-action rather than knowledge-
out-of-context. By stressing culturally significant domains
I seek to ensure that education is organised around living
traditions that look to the present and future as well as the
past. And by stressing domains for conversation, I seek
to ensure that there is an emphasis on the structure and
interrelatedness of ideas and experiences within a domain.
What I love about this is the way it encapsulates
everything I’ve said about the interrelationships between
particular bits of knowledge and textual experiences,
but also connects this with Rosen’s and others’ ideas
Rethinking KS3:
A Novel Approach
A classroom research project
on studying a novel with four
Year 9 classes
As part of the English and Media Centre’s research project
on group work in English, a school in East London worked
with the EMC on the teaching of a novel in Year 9.
Barbara Bleiman reports on the findings which led
the department to change its approach to KS3 English.
For 6 weeks, from September to the end of October texts, both at KS3 and KS4, not only towards GCSE in
2018, an English department in outer London was
involved in a Year 9 project for EMC’s group work
“This project
general but more specifically towards addressing the
specific requirements of the GCSE Language exam.
research, ‘It’s Good To Talk.’ The project was designed led to a
The new scheme involved lots of work on close
by me and Lucy Hinchliffe, who works four days a week
at the school and one day a week at EMC. It started
language analysis and paragraph writing, looking towards
significant re-
each of the sections of the Language exam and as
with the department’s desire to build more group work thinking in the
preparation for the internal assessment that forms part
and dialogic learning into their curriculum – but soon of the whole school data and student performance
became something much more all-encompassing. department
tracking. As well as focusing heavily on the GCSE

about students’ ‘perceptions, experiences, imaginings and

unsystematically acquired knowledge admitted as legitimate
curricular content.’ There is no need to exclude students’
own experience from the conversation. In fact, the
conversation can’t really happen without it.
It led to a significant re-thinking in the department
about what KS3 English should be offering to students
and what kinds of experiences will best prepare them
for GCSE without sacrificing a genuine and deep
development of subject knowledge and capability.
The existing scheme of work
The department had already been teaching In the Sea
There are Crocodiles for four or five years and had an
existing scheme of work that all the teachers followed,
taught largely from PowerPoint presentations. Last year
the scheme was adapted to explicitly focus on preparing
the students for the demands of the new Language
GCSE. This is something that English departments are
increasingly doing – slanting the experience of literary
about what
requirements, the scheme had a strong contextual ‘prior
knowledge before reading’ element, with students doing
KS3 English
their own research on the Hazaras and Pashtuns of
should be
Afghanistan and the political context which is the impetus
for the events of the novel. The teachers provided lots
offering to
of scaffolding in the form of PEETAL (Point, Evidence,
students and
Explanation, Technique, Analysis, Link) and other
forms of detailed support for writing. Inference was
what kinds of
taught explicitly, using images of Afghanistan and of
experiences
migrant journeys. The general classroom pattern was
varied, including reading, presentation, and explanation
will best
from the front, with some open tasks and opportunities
prepare
NATE | Teaching English them
| Issue 22 | 37
for talk. There was no creative/critical writing (such as
‘writing in the style of’) and it involved a significant
for GCSE.”
amount of modelling of paragraph writing.
The NATE Harold Rosen Lecture 2019 – Big Picture English: Beyond the Brushstrokes
“We asked In the original scheme, there was very little of what
I’d call big picture thinking – What’s my response? Which
ourselves what was the most powerful moment for me? What does it remind
happens when me of? What kind of book is this? How does it compare
with other novels I’ve read? and so on. The new scheme
you focus on (which came to be known by the teachers as ‘the EMC
way’) offered a radically different approach, that would
big things – encourage these kinds of ideas and insights, responses
big ideas first, and thoughts, conversations that were serious and high
level and personal and literary in their nature.
before small We asked ourselves what happens when you focus
techniques. on big things – big ideas first, before small techniques:
Right from • What is your response to the text and why? Its
subject, its events, what you find most interesting,
the start, the moving, powerful
students were • Big ideas and concepts in literature – e.g. the novel,
genre, fact/fiction
encouraged
• Significant narrative features – e.g. voice and point of
to think hard view, narrative arc, dialogue, coherence, significant
about aspects of prose style
important • What makes the text distinctive? What are the
‘characteristic’ features and qualities of the text? Big
issues – to think patterns.
big, questioning • Understandings about the way texts work that can
be taken forward into the study of the next & future
ideas and novels.
drawing in We had half the Year 9 cohort doing it the new ‘EMC’
previous way and the other half using the existing scheme of work.
Right from day one, lesson one, the students in the
experiences EMC groups were encouraged to think about these
and knowledge.” issues – to think big, not just in terms of the kinds of
ideas but also in questioning, drawing in previous
experiences and knowledge. To think hard about
important issues.
Exploring response: fragments of text
In that first lesson, they were given fragments of the text
to explore (see below) – to whet their appetite without
spoiling the book, and to set them thinking about
38 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
what kind of text this would be. Their first thoughts
about what was most significant were collected on the
whiteboard, in order to establish an on-going, class
agenda – a kind of flexible, provisional, changing,
developing, ever more sophisticated set of ideas about
what’s important to them about the book. It could be
done differently, by reading the first chapter and then
pooling ideas about important aspects of subject matter,
themes, style, voice, genre and so on. In our case, we
did it using these little fragments, that were explored in
groups and then discussed in class.
Here’s one example of an agenda that emerged from
the reading and discussion of these fragments:
• Leaving home
• Unhappy
• Away from home and imagines going back
• Some is in italics, some isn’t. Some of the italics are used
for words which are clearly from his home
• The use of dialogue between the teller and Fabio
• Moving to another family
• Money problems that cause the family to separate
• A background story?
• A move for a better life?
• No speech marks for dialogue – why?
• A poor life – the teller is not rich
• Indentation sees to show importance to some of what he’s
saying. Usually short sentences
• Based in Afghanistan
• Men are often treating our storyteller badly
• The retelling of a story that happened to them
• Conversation about the story
• Formal and informal mix – teenager?
• Cultural references
• Enaiat and Fabio

I also want to show you a tiny fragment from a student’s
exercise book, just to give you a glimpse of how these
agendas developed over time.
As lessons went by, new ideas were added, both
collectively in class, and individually by students. So we
start to hear, by lesson 2, about how they’ve been
discussing the fact that it seems to be non-fiction written
in a fiction-like way, for instance, and what that means.
“Students’ thinking was
uncompartmentalised,
grappling with themes, but
also very strongly engaged
with the subject, the characters,
the events, the ways of telling.”
(Incidentally, as an aside, it’s worth thinking about
the use of subject terminology here. The language of
the subject is being included quite simply & naturally.
No lesson time was given separately to explaining the
meanings of words like protagonist, imagery, voice,
rites of passage and so on but they were being used. In
lessons, useful terms were used – when they were useful.
They came up naturally in classroom conversations. No
modelling was needed to incorporate them in writing
because students had heard them said enough to know
how to do so. Students weren’t rewarded for using, or
not using them. What was valued was good ideas well
expressed in whatever way one can best express them.)
Here, just a couple of lessons into the study of the
book, you see a student adding their own ideas to what’s
been discussed to the agenda – a rich mix of stylistic
observations and ones about the events of the novel and
what their underlying implications are. They write:
• Conversation between the teller and writer are
in italics to show present tense and when they’re
having a conversation.
• He wants to move to Iran for a new life.
• People are racist to him.
• He changes during the chapters, becoming braver.
Features: English – The Big Picture 
This gives a sense of the range of thinking going on –
uncompartmentalised, grappling with themes, but also
very strongly engaged with the subject, the characters,
the events, the ways of telling.
Challenging statements
In another lesson, Lucy gave her students the following
challenging statements cut up in envelopes:
1. Fiction and non-fiction are both entertaining. In lots of
ways, they cross over
2. Non-fiction can never be 100% fact. It’s always going to
have elements of forgotten memories or exaggeration
3. It is not right to tell someone´s sad story to
entertain readers
4. Non-fiction should always lead us to think about
serious issues
5. Non-fiction cannot be !00% not fiction if it is written
to entertain
6. Non-fiction is not written to entertain. It is only
written to tell
7. The truth can never be 100% the truth
8. It is possible to tell both the truth and an entertaining
story
9. A person cannot tell another person’s story 100%
accurately. That would be impossible
10. Children see things differently than adults. A child’s
perspective can be captured in writing though
They had to agree/disagree, pick ones they were most “Students’ first
interested in, talk about them and then choose one to
write about in an exploratory way. She read to them thoughts about
something she’d written herself about an entirely what was most
different statement, to show how she used writing to
think and explore, to work out her own ideas about it. significant
Here one student chooses to write about the were collected
statement ‘It’s possible to tell both the truth and an
entertaining story’: on the
whiteboard,
in order to
establish an
on-going,
class agenda
– a kind of
Now, if you were going to mark this on GCSE criteria,
you’d probably complain about all sorts of things. You’d flexible,
see it through a very different set of lenses to the ones I provisional,
hope we can all see it through. The student is struggling
a bit to express his ideas. But what he’s trying to express changing,
is really difficult and interesting. It’s at the heart of what developing,
makes this book especially complex and special – the
telling of someone’s real life story as fiction, but with ever more
the teller stepping out of the fiction from time to time,
to include fragments of dialogue between himself and
sophisticated
the real boy whose story he is telling. set of ideas
One extra question from Lucy, as a kind of ‘think
harder’ question, elicits a range of sophisticated thoughts
about what’s
about how the writer has crafted a ‘novel’ out of fact – important to
the difference between Geda (the writer) and the boy –
which involves the complex issue of voice and viewpoint,
them about
the sequencing of events, and the hook at the start. the book.”
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 39
The NATE Harold Rosen Lecture 2019 – Big Picture English: Beyond the Brushstrokes
Lucy’s focus is on developing the student’s ideas. There’s
no formalistic attention paid to a structure into which
these ideas must fit. It’s exploratory and developmental
in nature, at this stage, not writing to a GCSE question
task. And what emerges is good thinking in my view, for
Year 9:
He’s exploring the text in ways that will stand him in
very good stead when he goes on to his next novel –
in this case Great Expectations – allowing him to engage
in Applebee’s connected curriculum, in a long-term
set of ‘conversations’ between one text and the next.
“If we want (Lucy did, in fact, find that students drew spontaneous,
insightful parallels and contrasts with In the Sea There
our subject are Crocodiles as soon as they started work on the
to thrive and Dickens – exploring ideas about rites of passage novels,
differing narrative arcs, child’s eye perspectives and so
grow, it has on – often without prompting).
to be a subject From informal to formal: from exploration to
that brings writing
What kind of writing emerged from the EMC groups
students on generally, as compared with the non-EMC ones, who
board, that were doing something very different in classwork (lots
of PEETAL paragraphs and constant reference made to
takes them the demands of the GCSE Language paper)?
and their own Here are a couple of short examples of writing
taken from the student exercise books. The questions,
contributions as you’ll see were slightly different – in seemingly
seriously, and small but significant ways. The non-EMC questions
always mirrored the GCSE Language exam. The EMC
allows them questions varied, but writing about extracts quite often
to take a full took the form of ‘in what ways is this extract characteristic
of the rest of the novel’, with students being expected to
part in the draw into close reading their understanding of the text
conversation. as a whole – small detail at the service of big picture
thinking.
It’s what made Here is Student A’s response (non-EMC), answering
the question: ‘A student reading this extract said: ‘In this
the subject extract Enaiat is clearly struggling to survive. It makes me
one we all feel sorry for him’. To what extent do you agree?’
chose to do I agree completely with the students who says that he feels
sorry for Enaiat. When Enaiatollah is making his way to
ourselves. Van, he encounters ‘wind that was like a razor’. This quote
We shouldn’t means that the wind was so incredulously cold that it felt
like it was cutting at his cheek. This is a simile because
expect them of how it is comparing the wind to a razor. This makes
to settle for me feel sorry for Enaiat because of how cold he must
be feeing. A razor is sharp and would cut you, and this
anything less.” suggests that it was so cold during the journey that it felt
40 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
like he was being pierced by a really sharp wind. Razor is a
second key word. It’s a noun that makes you feel sorry for
Enaiat as the wind was so harsh and freezing cold that it
cut your cheek, similar to a razor. Therefore this leads me
to agree with the statement because of the use of a simile.
What do we notice about this? For me, PEETAL
has shrunk literary studies to words and phrases,
disconnected from bigger, more significant meanings.
Endless mining of single words or phrases means
we have no sense at all about what makes this book
special, why it’s been written, what its impact is, what’s
been learned about how narrative texts work. And the
exploration of the words themselves ends up being
repetitive, banal, not very illuminating at all.
Here’s an extract from a much, much longer piece
by Student B, a student in Lucy’s ‘EMC’ group. It was
written for homework, based on the student’s own
annotations of a different extract, responding to the
question: ‘How is this extract characteristic of the rest of the
novel?’
This extract is characteristic of the whole novel in the way
that something positive happens but it is always followed
by something negative […]
The way that parenthesis is used is similar to the rest
of the novel in some ways, as it keeps up the sense of a
conversation. For example, Enaiat says ‘I’ve already said
– if I’m not mistaken’ and he says ‘and one of the most
appropriate (so I believed).’ This shows his uncertainty
to his memories. Also it reminds us of the age that he is
narrating and that it was long ago when it happened. It
shows us the unreliability of his memories and it reminds
us that the book is a work of fiction Also it is a constant
reminder that Enaiat is telling Geda about his experience.
[…]
The way Enaiat has both adult and childlike qualities and
the way he yearns to remain a child, is also characteristic
of the novel …
In this you can see the use being made of the
sophisticated thinking that started in the very first
lesson, and in the one about the nature of fiction and
non-fiction. Her reflections on the use of parentheses
are rooted in thinking about the nature of the narrative
and the way it is told. Even in this tiny extract, one has
a good sense of it being about this particular novel and
what makes it special.
What’s interesting about the ‘EMC way’ students’
writing is that, although there is a common spine to
their writing – the things that have been emerging
through the collective agenda – how they choose to
write about these things and what they focus on is
very, very different. Even writing about a short extract,
they choose different quotations to focus on, they say
different things, they say them differently. They select
what they genuinely deem to be most interesting and
important. No two pieces of writing reads the same. By
contrast, the other groups focus on just a handful of
the same quotations that have been modelled in class.
Across the whole book, when you look through their
exercise books you see that they have only focused on a
few quotations. They don’t make judgements, decisions,
choices for themselves, nor do they apply knowledge
to fresh evidence themselves. They have some limited
knowledge, but little know-how.

Being freed up to talk about what’s genuinely
interesting and significant also means that the EMC
students go into many more areas of language, in
much more varied ways. The non-EMC students are
so focused on proving their knowledge of language in
PEETAL style, that they only ever talk about metaphors
and similes, as if that’s all language is.
And one thing that is also really noticeable is the
authenticity of the EMC students’ response – the
language in which they express it. So they use phrases
like ‘What stands out for me’, ‘What intrigued me the
most’ [as in this example], or ‘I was struck by’ or ‘I
think’ or ‘I hope that’. The students own ‘perceptions,
experiences, thoughts, imaginings’ (as Harold Rosen
describes them) find a valid, important place in their
writing and their writing is all the richer and more
authentically ‘English’ for that.
Conclusion: Beyond the Brushstrokes
There’s been a lot of interest in the novel project. But
it’s not just about novels. It’s about everything. It’s about
how we work on texts across the whole landscape of
English. So let me conclude by going back to the idea
of how students work and think about poetry, which we
examined earlier, when we looked at the poem about
the beach in Picardy.
The brushstrokes of close reading are important, of
course they are – but in the wider context of the painting,
the movement, the whole gallery, and many, many
different galleries. And here’s what happens when you
allow students to walk around a gallery, enjoying the
art works before looking at the brushstrokes of a
single painting – allowing them to read openly and
enthusiastically and develop points of reference and
comparison of their own, engaging with important ideas.
Richard Long, a Head of Department in High
Wycombe who has been a hugely enthusiastic, committed
member of EMC’s project, worked with me on poetry
at KS3. Here’s what happened in the first lesson:
1. Teacher chose a poem, read it to the class, they talked
about it – what they liked about it, what’s puzzling,
surprising, intriguing about it.
2. Students were given a small cluster of 5 or 6 poems
to choose between (individually), with the same
prompts – what do I like, what puzzles me, etc.
3. Students worked in groups, presenting their poems
to each other, and picked one that the whole group
liked. Prepared to read it and present it to the whole
class.
4. Students individually wrote about one poem chosen
from all those encountered in the lesson, in an open,
exploratory way, on a class blog.
The student choices were fascinating, often not at all
what their teachers expected. 11-year-old boys were
choosing Maya Angelou and saying ‘I really, really like
that!’. Students were picking challenging and enigmatic
poems – sometimes ones the teachers had been a bit
reluctant to include – rather than the simplest.
Naomi-Lee picked her favourite poem (‘This poem
is dangerous’) from the lesson to write about in the
blog. (Read the poem at: https://teifidancer-teifidancer.
blogspot.com/2010/09/this-poem-elma-mitchell.html).
Her response was addressed to Richard and to the
other students:
Features: English – The Big Picture 
“The students own ‘perceptions, experiences,
thoughts, imaginings’ (as Harold Rosen
describes them) find a valid, important place in
their writing and their writing is all the richer
and more authentically ‘English’ for that.”
For me, Naomi-Lee is fully entering our subject discipline
and, aged 11, doing it with gusto. She’s engaging in the
big, important conversations of English. She’s doing
just what Applebee talks about in terms of engaging
in disciplinary traditions, and just what Harold Rosen
describes as bringing in ‘affective’ and ‘unpredictable’
elements. For me, (as in the work of the students on the
Year 9 novel), this is indeed, ‘knowledge made not given’
and these students’ ‘perceptions, experiences, imaginings
and unsystematically acquired knowledge’ have truly been
‘admitted as legitimate curricular content.’
If we want our subject to thrive and grow, if we want
students to choose to study it at A Level and at university
– and if we want students to do well at GCSE – this is
what it has to be: a subject with genuine intellectual
interest, that brings students on board, that takes them
and their own contributions seriously and allows them
to take a full part in the conversation. It’s what made
the subject one we all chose to do ourselves – and they
have an entitlement to that. We shouldn’t expect them
to settle for anything less.
Barbara Bleiman
is an editor of emagazine, and a former Director of
the English and Media Centre. She was presented
with NATE’s award for an outstanding contribution
to the teaching of English in 2019
References
Arthur Applebee (1996): Curriculum as Conversation:
Transforming traditions of teaching and learning,
Chicago University Press.
Applebee, Burroughs and Stevens (2002): ‘Engaging
Students in the Disciplines of English: what are
effective schools doing?’, The English Journal, Vol
91, No 6, NCTE.
Harold Rosen (1981): ‘Neither Bleak House not Liberty
Hall: English in the Curriculum’ (1981), in John
Richmond: Harold Rosen: Writings on life, language and
learning, 1958–2008, UCL London.
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 41
 Daring to be a Writer
Arvon Creative Writing Retreats for Teachers
Jonathan Morgan, NATE’s Director, explains how an Arvon
Teacher Week helped him reconnect with his inner writer.
I’ve always fancied myself as a bit of a writer. Maybe
I’ve deluded myself into believing that working within
education has simply been a preparation for – perhaps
a distraction from – achieving the aim of becoming a
full-time writer. I’ve done an MA in Scriptwriting, and
“English written some short stories, poems and book reviews
teachers are – though the only things I’ve had published are
educational textbooks and articles such as this one.
naturally Being a published writer is obviously something to
perceptive be proud of – even though the majority of my textbooks
are out of print and out of date! That professional and
readers of personal desire to have something published is something
texts, but I’m NATE appreciates and supports, and it provides many
opportunities for teachers to have their work published
not sure we in its publications and through CPD: here I am exploiting
have the same my role as Director of NATE to get my work out there.
Let me not kid myself, though: writing creatively –
confidence being the genius sitting in that dusty attic, or, better still,
when writing a theatre café bar (where my lucky BBC scriptwriting
friend spends most of his day drinking coffee, musing
creatively and, of course, writing occasionally) – has always been
– or about an aspiration, albeit perhaps a pretty unrealistic one.
exposing our Teachers as writers
own writing Being an English teacher with a good understanding
of the writing process – planning, narrative, character,
to scrutiny, theme, editing, redrafting, etc. – has in many ways
rather than inhibited me (and others I’ve spoken to) from writing
creatively: it has made me very self-conscious as a
reflecting writer. Every time I vary sentence length or include a
on someone literary device I am perhaps thinking too much about
the craft, the process and reader impact – rather than
else’s.” simply writing for myself and seeing what I come up
42 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
with. Or maybe that’s just an excuse ... (What was it that
George Bernard Shaw said? “He who can does; he who
cannot, teaches.” What ever happened to him anyway?!)
In my view, though, writing for pleasure has been
neglected in the English teaching community, with
other issues having dominated the national agenda
for too long. English teachers are naturally critical and
perceptive readers of texts, but I’m not sure we have
the same confidence when writing creatively – and we
naturally have some anxiety about exposing our own
writing to scrutiny, rather than reflecting on someone
else’s. Many schools contain reading groups and book
clubs for teachers, but not many have teacher writing
groups – though the National Writing Project, led
by Jeni Smith and Simon Wrigley, has done amazing
work setting up local teacher writing groups across
the country (see www.nationalwritingproject.uk), and
I would urge you to join one of these if you can.
The Arvon Foundation
Another way to get writing is to enrol on a course, such
as one run by The Arvon Foundation – www.arvon.org
– which has a well-established programme of creative
writing courses and retreats, tutored by leading authors,
in its three rural centres. Recently I had the opportunity
to attend an Arvon teachers’ week at one of its centres,
The Hurst, in the beautiful Shropshire village of Clun.
I saw this as a perfect moment to reconnect with my
love of creative writing (whilst of course selflessly fulfilling
my role at NATE of sharing good practice and developing
creativity in teachers). I was a little apprehensive – and
daunted by being in a room with ‘real’ writers: the
incredibly talented Cliff Yates, Catherine Johnson and
 Features: English – The Big Picture 

Emma Carroll. Moreover, I’ve always had a rather

sceptical attitude towards the idea of a retreat, with its
connotations of team-building staff training days, post-
it notes, flip-chart paper, highlighters and even – as in
the case of my previous role as a National Strategy
consultant – using potatoes, plasticine and spaghetti to
create a spaceship as a way of demonstrating AFL in
action (though not quite sure what that taught me about
effective feedback and marking).
I did feel some slight awkwardness and anxiety on
arrival – despite how welcoming everyone was, and
despite the inspirational surrounding of The Hurst.
Sitting in a circle with other teachers – including two
headteachers and a science specialist (a great example
of literacy across the curriculum!) – we nervously made
our introductions. However, supported by Arvon’s
understanding ethos, it felt a real privilege to be in the
company of teachers who also struggled with daring
to call themselves ‘a writer’. We were quickly told that
teachers don’t need permission to be writers and that all
writers suffer with ‘imposter syndrome’ – a condition
that can cause insecurity and doubt as a writer.
Some teachers in the group had full novels all ready
to go, whereas others were like me – with a very small
portfolio of work that needed development. One of the
teachers made the perceptive point that ‘when teachers
become writers they have a greater voice in the classroom’:
being able to model good writing is important, but
having experience of the struggles of a writer in finding
ideas and inspirations and coping with that ‘blank page’
syndrome is also essential.

The Arvon experience

Arvon has been successfully running writing retreats for
over fifty years, and the organisation and structure of the
week proved this. There was a perfect mix of workshops,
individual tutorials, down-time to actually write (what
a treat!), and, most importantly, for those five days, the
opportunity to actually think and feel like a writer. We
were all treated as writers, rather than teachers, and
the tutors were very clear in communicating that the
purpose of the sessions was to develop confidence in
the person – not to help with writing a scheme of work
back at school. I was also struck by the commitment to
be ‘off grid’ and reconnect with a pen and paper – rather
than using technology.
The workshops typically stated with ‘free writing’ –
not a new concept of course to teachers, though as a
writer it was a strange experience, and a rather cathartic
one, to let oneself off the leash, without fear of being
judged or ridiculed. We encourage students to plan for
creative writing – but I’m not sure, following this course,
that this is the best way of expressing free thought: it can
be restrictive too. We were told that ‘thinking is the thief of
time’ which I thought was a fantastic way of describing
procrastination. Yes, you sometimes look back at what
you have written and squirm – but that wasn’t the point.
We are happy with the concept of ‘warming’ up before
we engage in exercise – shouldn’t the same process be
applied to writing creatively? (Indeed, it’s a shame our
students don’t have this privilege in their exams).
The range of writing activities that we engaged in
really helped to develop resilience and confidence –
drawing upon personal experience and memories that
I had actually forgotten about until I was prompted.
We were often told that writing should be ‘like being a
5-year-old with play dough’ and ‘like walking around in other
people’s lives’. It’s clear that we all have stories to tell – it
“Supported
is just the mechanics of how we tell those stories that by Arvon’s
inhibit us – as well as issues of self-belief.
The one-to one workshops with the writers
understanding
were hugely beneficial because the feedback was ethos, it felt a
direct, personal, honest whilst being supportive and
encouraging. The evening talks from the writers were
real privilege
also inspirational – not only because we (rather jealously to be in the
perhaps) heard about their successes as writers, but also
because we gained invaluable insights into the social company
and psychological demands of being a writer. Despite of teachers
their successes, they too can feel insecure about
their writing. who also
Beyond the formal aspects of the course, we struggled with
also developed friendships through having group
responsibility for preparing a meal for the whole team daring to call
– and the less said about my onion ‘gravy’ the better! themselves
And finally … ‘a writer’.”
Thank you to the Arvon team, tutors, and fellow writers
(also known as teachers) for an incredible week, which
really motivated me to work to develop the creativity
of English teachers, as well as to reconnect with
my own personal interest in writing. NATE plans to
have a creative writing competition for teachers so
watch this space…
On the next page, you can read some comments by
participants, and some poems written on the course.
Jonathan Morgan
is Director of NATE

NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 43

Daring to be a Writer – Arvon Creative Writing Retreats for Teachers

41 Molesworth Street
41 Molesworth Street,
Cookstown,
County Tyrone.
The address I learnt to spell
and write correctly.
The house where I was born,
I told the teacher.
‘Not exactly,’ she corrected.
‘Yes exactly,’ I confirmed.
I was born in the back bedroom

What the participants said while Mum read, ‘Gone with the Wind’.
She had no answer
to that.
Cliff Yates – course tutor (https://cliffyates.wordpress.com/):
It was a brilliant week. The group gelled instantly, they were mutually supportive and A house on a street,
the atmosphere was great. They had no trouble seeing themselves as writers rather attached to a shop.
than teachers. Occasionally the experience of discussing their poems led to real insight I remember the parquet floor,
into implications for their teaching. During a tutorial one of them said: ‘when a teacher a mouse under the china cabinet,
becomes a writer they have a clearer voice in the classroom.’ Brilliant! Hearing that was waiting for Santa.
so great - you can imagine. I remember the settee,
The teachers quickly grasped the implications of their new insights for their teaching sage green and bobbly.
of the reading of poetry as well as their teaching of writing. As a former teacher I always On 16th July 1969
wanted to teach this course – I enjoy working with teachers, and realising how this will the sofa became a bed.
benefit so many children and students. I didn’t know
it could do that
Rhonda Glasgow – teacher on the course (An example of a poem Turned out it was just
Rhonda wrote during the week is below): that one time.
For a Belfast primary school teacher, passionate about literacy and writing, the Arvon
Teachers’ Week was both a luxury and an adventure. The adventure was into the unknown Rhonda Glasgow
world of poetry writing, inspired by the unique talents of poet Cliff Yates. He said to read
it aloud, to use specific names, and that only you can write what you write. I loved it. I’m a writer – don’t slay
Let’s play –
The Arvon Foundation: sweep inhibitions away.
For Arvon, teachers are among our most important partners, as the benefits of their
Kneading the dough,
experiences on our creative writing courses are multiplied many times over in the
moulding some clay –
resulting impact on their students. Arvon Teacher courses offer a chance to develop
at least for today.
as both a teacher and a writer, and by going through this creative journey themselves,
teachers gain insights that help them empathise with the struggles their students face Awaken the midnight
when exploring their own creativity. We’re heartened by the positive feedback from storm within us
these courses, with many teachers telling us the Arvon week revived their enthusiasm that’s not perfect.
for the profession at a time when they had been considering leaving teaching altogether. Stitching and glitching.
Through our teacher courses and our research partnerships such as Teachers as Writers
and The Craft of Writing, we hope to continue to have a lasting impact on how both “I’m a writer”
teachers and the children they work with express themselves through writing. Don’t slay.
Jonathan Morgan

Poems written on the course

Rockport shoes Northenden, Manchester.
Rockport shoes, Grab a granny night.

£100, Dress code ironically smart.

Smart shoes.
Hurley’s golf shop, Caterpillar, Kickers though especially
Manchester, Rockport – my Rockport shoes.
1996.
Had to take Steve home
Strong, black, brown on route to Friday’s
smelt like treacle toffee. to get his work shoes.
Sometimes smelling is the best bit – He hated that.
that mark of quality We are in.
that lasted 10 years – No grannies grabbed
a tenner for every year. Just beer stained Rockport.
So what then? They cleaned up a treat mind.
‘Friday’s night club’.
Jonathan Morgan

44 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22

 Features: English – The Big Picture 

Mind
the Gap!
Perspectives on
the Transition
from Primary
to Secondary
English

Raina Parker and Carol Robertson, secondary and

primary teachers respectively, reflect on some of the
issues confronting English in relation to the transition
from Year 6 to Year 7.

1  Observing the Transition

In the first of a series on issues around classroom observation,
Raina Parker argues that going into primary schools to observe
students learning is a vital step in thinking about easing the
transition from primary to secondary school.
At the start of each school year a new group of students Year 7 is probably the most difficult for secondary
arrive – in your classroom, in your school, in your key school teachers. Over the decades I’ve been teaching
stage. Knowing what they did last year, how well they Year 7, I have seen transition develop from ‘keep ‘em
did it, and what they need to work on – as well as a range scared, keep ‘em keen,’ to taster days, visits from secondary
of pastoral information – helps us to make sure that each Heads of Year to the feeder primaries, masterclasses
year builds effectively on the last. Sometimes finding this at the secondary school, and files of data containing
information is easy: you wander along to the staff room, levels and sublevels (until levels disappeared) and
department office, or wherever your colleagues hang varying quantities of detail (if such files make it into
out, and you ask them – ‘Little Johnny? Who had him school, into the trays of Heads of Department, in a
last year then?’ Sometimes it is much more challenging. timely manner).

NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 45

Mind the Gap! – Perspectives on the Transition from Primary to Secondary English
“English The wasted years?
Over the past decade there have been a number of books,
transition articles and research projects looking into what makes
needs to effective transition from Primary to Secondary school.
In 2010 Bristol University gave us Supporting learning in
build on work the transition from primary to secondary schools, followed
completed at a year later by Routledge’s Bridging the Transition from
Primary to Secondary School. Barely a year has gone by
primary level since without a publication on the subject. Ofsted’s
Key Stage 3: The Wasted Years? in 2015 made a point of
and ensure stating that most schools focus on pastoral rather than
that students academic transition, and argued that this was part of
the cause for the recognised fall in progress from Year 6
go on making to Year 7, and subsequent lower average progress at the
progress. One end of KS3, particularly in Maths and English.
But what does this look like for the English teacher,
way to do this in the classroom? I know that, in the schools in which I
is to use the have worked, we don’t feel we are ‘wasting’ three years
of our students’ education (60% of their experience
language and of English). However, I do feel that there is a missing
terminology element in the hard work of transition, and that focusing
more on academic transition is something that English
of primary teachers could be doing themselves to aid both students
teachers in who are already in KS3, and those who will become
‘ours’ in the near future. It could also be excellent CPD
Year 7 so for us, on several levels.
that students Consolidating academic transition
realise they Academic transition is additional to pastoral, and is
subject-based. English transition needs to build on
are working the work completed at primary level and ensure that
on something students go on making progress. This has to start
with secondary teachers knowing what is going on
familiar, but in primary in practical terms. Data is important, but
applying it in that is summative and summary by nature. We need
to understand what ‘working at greater depth’ (as the
more depth, SATs assessment puts it) looks like – but also what it
or with higher took to get there. The quickest way to find this out it
expectations.”
46 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
to talk to teachers of Year 6, and to use the National
Curriculum Appendix as a starting point for those
discussions: they really do cover it all, and we need to
keep up the momentum.
One way to do this is to use the language and
terminology of primary teachers in Year 7 so that students
realise they are working on something familiar, but
applying it in more depth, or with higher expectations.
James Durran, of North Yorkshire Advisory Service,
spoke very wisely at NATE Conference last year about
the difference between ‘look for all the adjectives’ on the
one hand, and ‘what is the impact of these adjectives?’ or
‘find five ominous verbs’ on the other. The latter is far
more challenging, and builds on students’ foundational
knowledge.
I used to say that students start Year 7 knowing ‘what’
a linguistic feature is, whilst through KS3 they learn to
analyse ‘why’ a writer uses it. I think this is probably
outdated now – but I do know that my Year 7 class is
very comfortable saying ‘Miss that’s a fronted adverbial so
there ought to be a comma after it,’ and not at thinking,
‘hmm, what does Matthew Arnold mean here and how is he
communicating it?’. (Of course, I would be happy if some
of my Year 11s could manage either!)
And that, perhaps, is one of the places transition goes
‘wrong’. We concentrate (if we concentrate) on Year 7.
Then KS3 content takes over, and we forget to revisit
the terminology and skills with which they finished
Year 6, so they wither away. (Recently, we gave all our
A Level Language students the 2019 SAT grammar test.
No one got full marks.)
Observing primary classrooms
Mainly, though – and this draws on experience over a
dozen different schools and more than two decades – I
feel that transition goes wrong with the divided nature
of the key stages, and the isolated nature of secondary
school classrooms. For instance, when I talk to primary

teachers and head teachers (at least termly), they are
always willing to have visitors and engage with dialogue
about what and why they do things. However trying
to actually arrange a visit is like trying to prise open
an oyster: there is a great gift inside, but opening it –
finding mutually convenient times, in between the
challenges of Christmas concerts, mocks, external
visits, and so on – can prove impossible.
But we keep trying. And when we succeed, I see
the most amazing things. Students who are working
independently, quietly, moving around the space
maturely, completing work to high, high standards. I
return to a Year 9 class who can’t actually get their books
out of their bags without a reminder. I have to remind
myself that these are teenagers, with a lot more going
on in their school day than those 10-year-olds, more
adults to negotiate, more spaces to inhabit, different
expectations to adjust to, and so on. They still compare
negatively to the Year 6 class I just left, though!
2  Resourcing the Transition
Carol Robertson argues that some of the problems of transition
could be eased if secondary schools used easily available Year 6
curriculum and assessment resources to inform Year 7 work.
Anyone with the slightest knowledge of education knows
that the transition from primary to secondary school is
one fraught with issues, pitfalls and barriers. I’ve worked
in primaries for over 23 years, but I also have some
knowledge of secondaries through family members and
friends who have focused their careers on older children
and young people. My own view is that other than
having the word ‘school’ in common, there is actually
very little crossover between the two educational
establishments. They are two very different beasts!
The primary-secondary divide
Issues of transition rear their heads every year.
Colleagues from secondary establishments try to make
contact with their primary equivalents – and realise
that they don’t exist, because we don’t have huge staff
bases with specific people allocated to the role of
‘transition lead’, or even ‘free periods’ in school time to
meet with them.
The primary equivalent of a transition lead is actually
marking SATs papers, writing reports, making a realistic
WWII Lancaster bomber from cardboard and paint
for the end of term assembly, and trying to cope with
the various emotional and behavioural responses the
children who have been part of our school community
are facing as they start coming to terms with ‘leaving
us’ and all that is familiar and safe. For many of those
children, we have been the ones who changed their wet
pants after those accidents in Year 1, who mopped up
their sick on the coach to the safari park, who explained
why everyone in their house was crying when they first
experienced death: these children are part of our pack….
and they’re about to go off and try to integrate into a
whole new one!
I’m not claiming that primaries have a monopoly on
supporting children and being their emotional and
physical crutch: secondaries take over when the
Features: English – The Big Picture 
What saddens me is that I am often the only one
who gets to experience the wonders of the primary
classroom. It is a magical place, and I have only respect
for those who teach in them and create that magic.
Too many secondary school teachers won’t or can’t
go. We are all too busy – so, so busy. But then again,
this is important: successful transition means we
can build successful progress in Year 7 and on into
GCSE.
And finally …
If I could change one thing, it would be that all secondary
English teachers would have to spend half a day a year
visiting a primary classroom – and that they would have
to spend half a day a year watching their secondary
colleagues teach too: but that’s another article!
Raina Parker
teaches English in Cumbria and is Vice Chair of NATE
hormones kick in, when first heartbreak hits, when
social media issues cross over into the dangerous side of
acceptable. And take over they certainly do, embracing
those children into the new pack. They also have a
mammoth job trying to integrate all those different packs
together. I am simply in awe of how secondaries manage
this with the massive cohort in Year 7, every year.
We’re expecting children who are the oldest and
most responsible in school – who’ve become not only “What saddens
accustomed to but confident with a particular set of
rules, expectations and adults – to scatter themselves me is that I am
into a whole new world: one where they are back to
being the newbies, the ones who get lost, who can’t find
often the only
the toilets, and who don’t know which older kids are one who gets
the ones that will ‘understand’. And they even have to
do it wearing different clothes! I know of one student
to experience
who completely lost the plot upon discovering that they the wonders
would ‘not be blue anymore.’
of the primary
Transition – from pastoral to academic classroom. If I
The local secondary schools who work with my primary
school try in every way possible to overcome these
could change
issues. We’ve seen transition experiences increase from one thing, it
single afternoons to three-day visits – and staff don’t
just ask for data: they want to talk about each child, and would be that
listen when we tell them that Minnie and Mickey really all secondary
must stay together, but Donald really needs to not be in
the same class as them. (Several years ago this wasn’t English
the case.)
However, much as secondaries appear, in my
teachers would
experience, to be really upping their game and creating have to spend
supportive packages for pupils to help nurture their
emotional health and social anxieties, I am not sure
half a day a
the same can be said about the curriculum. Ask year visiting
someone in a secondary what a moderated end-of-
year-6 piece of writing which meets the criteria for
a primary
‘greater depth’ looks like. They frequently wouldn’t know. classroom.”
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 47
Mind the Gap! – Perspectives on the Transition from Primary to Secondary English
(Similarly, of course, ask primary colleagues what a
piece of writing for a decent pass grade at GCSE looks
like – and they frequently wouldn’t know either.)
I’m not sure what the answer is. It goes back to those
different beasts. But I think I can see some possible
fixes that are not too difficult and that could help.
Fixing it: continuity and progression
Easy Fix 1: The National Standards required to reach
‘secure’ or ‘greater depth’ at the end of Year 6 are out
there. There are multiple examples of work available,
and primary colleagues attend lots of moderation
activities throughout the year to ensure that their
view of a ‘secure’ child matches the generally accepted
standard. Secondary colleagues need to look at this and
build on it, focusing especially on ‘greater depth’.
“The local secondary schools who work with
my primary school try hard to overcome
pastoral transition issues, creating supportive
packages for pupils to help nurture their
emotional health and social anxieties. I am not
sure the same can be said about the curriculum.”
Some of those kids are writing really fabulous pieces
of multi-genre narrative and non-narrative; they are
able to use complex sentence structures; they have
developed their own writing style, and they are able
to use an incredible range of language accurately to
articulate very specific moods and characterisation.
They have to do all this to reach the standard. Failing
to give them opportunities to stretch those writing legs
they have built up is like expecting a primed athlete to
48 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
become enthusiastic about being a stopwatch monitor.
They’ll get bored and give up – and you’ll have to train
them all over again as that muscle tone is lost.
Easy Fix 2: Use a common language. Children in Year
1 are taught phonics using the very specific terminology
associated with it. 6-year-olds know what split digraphs
and graphemes are, and, over their time in KS1 and KS2,
we build on this to introduce everything from noun
phrases and subordinating conjunctions to the past
progressive tense, so that they can be comfortable using
the terminology to name structures of language when
presented with them in an author’s work and when
writing their own pieces.
Secondary colleagues should expect this of students
who have reached the expected standard for the
end of Year 6. With the building blocks in place and
secure, the joy of KS3 onwards should be enabling
choice, development and experimentation, whilst still
maintaining those expectations.
Easy Fix 3: Diversity of previous teaching does not
mean you shouldn’t expect the same standards from the
students. There are resources out there for English; there
is a common, accepted standard – and it’s moderated,
so you can and should trust it. If children reached the
end of Year 6 having achieved the expected standard
in writing, reading, Maths, and grammar, spelling and
punctuation then, regardless of the primary setting
in which they learned, they should be working on a
common foundation.
If pupils arrive at KS3 and there are profound
inconsistencies, do, of course, talk to primary staff,
primary moderators and headteachers and local
authority advisors and show them your issues. But go
back to the expectations for the end of Year 6 and get to
know them. The children will know them like the back
of their hands.
And finally …
Communicating effectively and in the best interests of
the pupils is crucial. I have tried to suggest that, with
some commonly available resources and some efficient
liaison, there are some things which can be done
relatively easily.
And imagine the time that could be saved from those
‘What’s going wrong in KS3?’ meetings …!
Carol Robertson
is Deputy Headteacher of a primary school in the North
West of England
References
Evangelou M., et al. (2008) ‘What Makes a Successful
Transition from Primary to Secondary School?’
https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=
3431&context=sspapers
Howe, A., ed., (2011) Bridging the Transition from Primary
to Secondary School. Routledge
Sutherland R. et al. (2010) Supporting learning in the
transition from primary to secondary schools. University
of Bristol School of Education
Nottingham Education Partners (2019) Strategic School
Improvement Project – 1: Reading Transition Toolkit KS2 –
KS3, www.nottinghamschools.org.uk/media/1536189/
transition-toolkit-v6.pdf
Ofsted (2015) www.gov.uk/government/publications/
key-stage-3-the-wasted-years
8
8 Ways to Teach Spelling,
Punctuation and Grammar
How do we help our students to become more
confident with the demands of ‘SPaG’ in formal
writing? Francis Gilbert sets out some approaches
based on investigating and working with language
in real reading and writing contexts.
For many English teachers, teaching Spelling,
Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG) is daunting. The
stakes have always been high: students who are not
good spellers, struggle to punctuate correctly, and have
a tendency to use non-standard forms in their writing
are unlikely to achieve highly in exams. But since
2010, the stakes have been ramped up another notch
as Conservative ministers have imposed SPaG tests
on primary schools and insisted on greater weighting
on SPaG in GCSE and A Level English exams – all of
which has raised anxieties considerably.
English teachers could be forgiven for feeling very
jaded about SPaG. During my career as an English
teacher, and now as a teacher-educator, I’ve always felt
very ambivalent about it. The grammar books that I was
asked to use in some schools where I taught – such as
First Aid in English (Maciver 2004) and others – were
horribly dull and didn’t achieve good results: pupils
would plough through various tasks and tests and then
forget all that they had supposedly learnt when they
came to do some ‘real’ writing. I found, though, that the
message got through when I myself was enthusiastic
about language and showed that I loved investigating it.
Features: English – The Big Picture 
With this in mind, this article aims to provide some
tried and tested ways to diffuse some of these worries
about SPaG, drawing together the best research and
practice.
1. Etymology: discovering the magical origins
of words
On one of those occasions when I discovered the power
of enthusiasm and investigation, I saw that too many
students in one class were not spelling ‘necessary’
correctly. ‘Hey, this is a weird word, isn’t it?’, I said. “The SPaG
‘Because you’d think it should be spelt ‘nessersary’. So why is message got
there is a ‘c’ acting as an ‘s’ in it?’ Then, in front of the class,
I looked the etymology up – and this is what I found: through when
Necessary, adj I myself was
late 14c. “needed, required, essential, indispensable,” from enthusiastic
Old French necessaire “necessary, urgent, compelling”
(13c.), and directly from Latin necessarius “unavoidable,
about language
indispensable, necessary,” from necesse “unavoidable, and showed
indispensable,” originally “no backing away,” from
ne- “not” + cedere “to withdraw, go away, yield” (from
that I loved
PIE root *ked- “to go, yield”). The root sense is of that investigating it.”
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 49
8 Ways to Teach Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar
from which there is no evasion, that which is inevitable.
Necessary house “privy” is from c. 1600. Necessary evil
is from 1540s (the original reference was to “woman”).
https://www.etymonline.com/word/necessary
This led to a discussion about how the word comes from
the French and Latin. We all laughed about ‘necessary
house’ when I told them what a ‘privy’ was; we thought
about it meaning ‘no backing away’. Now a sort of magic
pervaded the word – and the students’ ability to spell it
improved. From that time onwards, I began to discuss
the etymology of important words with my classes,
finding that it really helped with pupils’ spelling.
2. Working words out: modelling learning
Some teachers might bridle at the thought of looking
up a word in class with students, because, as an English
teacher, students think you are supposed to know the
meaning of every single word in the language, and their
spellings. This is, of course, an absolute impossibility.
Moreover, research has shown that when a teacher
‘models’ how they discover things in front of the class
“When and then encourages their pupils to do the same, they
students read really help their pupils to learn both more quickly and
more happily (Watkins, 2010).
aloud, they What does this mean in practice? It means being
begin to spot honest! If you don’t know the meaning of a word in a
passage you are reading, then tell your students that
most of their you find it difficult and show them how you might work
out the meaning. Recent research (Giovanelli, Mason:
own mistakes: 2015) has shown that reading is often best taught when
spelling, a teacher doesn’t know the text and is reading it the first
time with the students – or at least giving the impression
punctuation that they are. In part, this produces better outcomes
and grammar. from students because the teacher is able to model how
they find out what difficult words and phrases mean
The act of by re-reading them, by asking questions, by looking up
reading aloud words in a dictionary. I have observed too many lessons
– and been guilty of delivering them myself – where the
is central to meanings of difficult words are supplied in a glossary.
them realising The process of looking words up in a dictionary aids
spelling and comprehension because students will
their errors.” internalise the word, making it their own.
50 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
3. Reading aloud: expressing yourself, finding
your errors
Getting students to read aloud is really important if you
want them to improve their SPaG. This became clear to
me when I once asked a student to read what they had
written in their book to me. (I was sitting beside them so
they weren’t embarrassed that everyone was listening.)
Their work, which I had not marked, was full of SPaG
errors. As they read, they began to realise most of their
own mistakes: spelling, punctuation and grammar. The
act of reading aloud was absolutely central to them
realising their errors. From that time onwards, I asked
my students to read their work to each other in pairs or
groups on a regular basis and found that if I asked them
to stop and correct their work when appropriate, this
had amazingly good results.
4. Real contexts: SPaG through reading and
writing
While decontextualised tests can have their place (see
below), the overwhelming evidence is that pupils learn
to spell, punctuate and discuss grammar when they
are reading ‘real’ pieces of writing and exploring ‘real’
situations. This is why giving them lots of high-stakes
spelling and grammar tests where they are only writing
one-word answers is a waste of time.
You’re far better off using some of the excellent
resources published by the likes the University of
Exeter: these are free, research informed and supported
by yours truly, NATE (see below for details). These
resources can be used in the classroom with little or
no modifications. They model for teachers how the
teaching of grammar in particular can be embedded
within the teaching of such texts as A Monster Calls,
Touching the Void, Lord of the Flies and Great Expectations.
If you don’t feel confident about teaching grammar,
they are a great place to start because lesson plans and
resources are provided. Once you’ve used them, you’ll
grow in confidence and then use their ideas to inform
your teaching of other texts.
The English and Media Centre’s All Sorts (a series of
teaching ideas, resources & plans) also contains some
brilliant ready-made lessons on the teaching of spelling

(‘Word Banks’) and grammar (‘Proper English’) as
well. Recently, How to Teach Grammar (OUP 2019) by
Bas Aarts, Ian Cushing, and Richard Hudson has also
illustrated best practice.
5. Marking: approaches to assessment
One of the problems with marking every single piece
of work for SPaG errors is that pupils don’t learn to
look for mistakes themselves, but expect the teacher to
do this. Furthermore, teachers don’t acquire a proper
record of the errors. One of the best ways to assess SPaG
productively, then, is to write students’ errors on one
‘assessment’ sheet while you are marking a set of books.
Keep these sheets in your record systems, which could
look like this:
Spelling
issues
Punctuation
issues
Grammar
issues
Other
points
You can then experiment with not marking students’
work but simply telling your classes that you found
these errors, getting students to re-read their work to
see where they made them, and asking them to correct
their errors. This helps them to acquire the vital skill
of proof-reading and saves you a great deal of time too.
The key point is to gain a central record of errors/
issues and then systematically target addressing them
in your subsequent lessons. Putting all your comments
on one sheet is a great way of doing this. You show
parents and managers that you are marking the work by
photocopying this sheet and asking students to put it in
their books, and then reflect upon how they are addressing
the relevant issues. Research (Black et al. 2004) shows
this is a more effective and much less time-consuming
way of marking than annotating individual books.
Features: English – The Big Picture 
6. Finding patterns, making sense
NATE published a wonderful resource in 1996 entitled
“Teaching
The Grammar Book: Finding Patterns – Making Sense, SPaG
which just about sums the whole thing up. Teaching
SPaG effectively is about encouraging students to
effectively
see the patterns that exist in spellings, sentence is about
structures, word order and meanings. When you look
closely, strict ‘rules’ rarely exist, but recognisable
encouraging
patterns often do. For example, some spelling patterns students to see
are much more reliable than others: the famous
‘i before e except after c’ rule’ has so many exceptions the patterns
(neighbour, weight, etc.) that some experts claim it’s that exist
not worth teaching. Estimates say that there are
923 exceptions and only 44 words that follow the in spellings,
rule. The appendix for the National Curriculum is sentence
pretty useful in terms of suggesting ‘rules’ but its
prescriptive approach is not helpful for nurturing structures,
enlightened teaching which really gets students
improving their spelling.
word order
and meanings.”
7. Creative re-drafting
As an English teacher I never enjoyed giving spelling
tests; I learnt quite quickly that scouring pupils’ work
with red marks highlighting all their inaccuracies
was not productive. I realised that it was much better
to systematically get students to re-draft their work,
considering deeply how I might motivate them to do
this well.
A great way to do this is to give pupils real audiences
to write for. This makes a huge difference. So, for
example, some of the most effective SPaG lessons I
taught were when I asked my difficult Year 9 students,
many of whom struggled with SPaG, to write exciting
stories for the new Year 7 students; drafting was built
into the process and much else beside.
The Year 9 students met with the Year 7s, interviewed
them about the stories they liked, then planned and
drafted their stories a few times, getting their peers to
assess and correct them; at the same time I circulated
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 51
8 Ways to Teach Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar
“Giving pupils around the class doing ‘in-class’ marking where
appropriate. I made a point of saying that I expected
real audiences the students themselves to make the stories ‘SPaG’-
perfect and that they were role models for the Year
to write for 7 students.
makes a huge This sense of having a real audience inspired the
students to correct errors themselves and learn from their
difference, mistakes. Because this idea worked so well, I used it to
inspiring inform my teaching when SPaG problems occurred with
other classes. For example, I once received some very
them to weak essays on Shakespeare’s Macbeth from my Year 10s.
Instead of getting them to re-write the dreary essays and
correct errors correct errors, I asked them to use their knowledge of the
themselves play to write Macbeth leaflets for my Year 7 class, which
were aimed at giving eleven-year-olds a sense of the plot,
and learn characters, themes and imagery. The Year 10s learnt more
from their about Macbeth and SPaG than they’d ever done when
writing ‘lit-crit’-style exam responses because they
mistakes.” were motivated to tell the Year 7s about what they knew.
8. A case for explicit instruction?
All this said, research also shows that short bursts of
targeted, explicit, ‘decontextualised’ instruction can have
its place, particularly with pupils who are struggling.
Harris et al. (2017) point out that ‘weak spellers are weak
writers because they spend much of their time thinking about
how to spell words rather than thinking about the content of
what they are writing.’ (p. 264). This research team go on
to point out two vital strategies that go hand in hand: (a)
teaching students how to spell high frequency words
they don’t know how to spell automatically and (b)
teaching students how to plan, draft, re-draft and
evaluate their work (as suggested in no. 7 above).
Their paper is well worth reading if you are teaching
students who have significant problems with spelling.
They suggest that students with very poor handwriting
need to trace words and then visualise them using the
‘look, cover, say, write’ approach; they also suggest playing
spelling games such as Word Bingo in pairs, setting clear
goals for themselves. They argue that actually there are
only really about a hundred words that most learners find
difficult to spell and that if these words are mastered,
students will progress quickly. Above all, however, students
need plenty of practice with reading and writing.
Resources, Further Reading, References
Aarts, B., Cushing, I., Hudson, R. (2019) Oxford Teaching
Guides: How to Teach Grammar. Oxford University
Press, Oxford. A short, very useful guide on all the thorny
topics. It’s particularly good on grammar terminology.
Bain, Elspeth, et al. (1996) The Grammar Book: Finding
Patterns – Making Sense. NATE, 1996. Sadly, this
wonderful resource too often is languishing on English
teachers’ shelves in schools. Look at it! Use it, it’s great;
easy to use and teaches grammar in context.
Black, P. et al. (2004) ‘Working inside the Black Box:
Assessment for Learning in the Classroom’. Phi
Delta Kappan Magazine, 86(1), pp.8–21. A nice
summary of important research into Assessment for
Learning, which is very relevant for SPaG teaching.
Maciver, A. (2004) First Aid in English. Hodder
Education. London. A dry text book, which possibly
creates more problems than it solves in that many of the
tasks are decontextualized exercises, with pupils gaining
little idea of how SPaG issues exist in context. Books of
this type are widely used in schools.
52 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
Giovanelli, M., and Mason, J. (2015) “‘Well I Don’t Feel
That’: Schemas, Worlds and Authentic Reading in
the Classroom.” English in Education, 49 (1). 41–55.
While Giovanelli and Mason’s work is academic, it has
huge implications for English teachers; using a powerful
evidence base, it argues that English teachers should read
alongside their students like a real reader rather than
supplying them with lots of pre-prepared interpretations.
I would take this a step further and argue that they need
to model authentic learning about SPAG (see above).
Department for Education (2013), National Curriculum
– Appendix 1: Spelling. I find the tone and prescriptions
in this Appendix (full of statutory learning of words etc.)
off-putting, but the document is clearly laid out. I think
the key lesson is that these spellings need to be taught
creatively and imaginatively.
English and Media Centre (2007) English Allsorts,
including ‘Word Banks’ and ‘Proper English’. These
resources are fantastic! They may be quite old now, but
they’re gems, and never failed to work with my classes.
The unit on Word Banks is particularly good for SPaG.
Harris, Karen R, et al. “Teaching Spelling, Writing,
and Reading for Writing: Powerful Evidence-Based
Practices.” Teaching Exceptional Children, vol. 49,
no. 4, 2017, pp. 262–272. A very useful academic article
and resource for teachers working with SEND students
who are really struggling.
Harris, Ann, and Marie Helks. “What, Why and How
– the Policy, Purpose and Practice of Grammatical
Terminology.” English in Education, vol. 52, no. 3,
2018, pp. 169–185. Key quote: ‘Teachers may well be
without a suitable repertoire of pedagogical approaches at
a time when accountability, high-stakes assessment and
curricular expectations are at their highest…’ (p. 181)
Kress, G.R., (2000). Early spelling: between convention
and creativity. London: Routledge. A classic by the
late, great Kress, who did so much to make the teaching
of English a creative, joyful process. It is aimed younger
children, but so much is appropriate for older students too.
Maciver, Angus (2004) The New First Aid in English.
Hodder Education. London. Arrgh! Death of the soul,
but still – or iterations of it – sadly being used in many
English classrooms today I think.
University of Exeter Centre for Research in Writing
(accessed 2020) ‘Grammar as Choice: Resources
for Teachers’. http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/
education/research/centres/writing/grammar-
teacher-resources/thegrammarforwritingpedagogy.
These resources are really useful, and free; far better than
many of the very expensive resources you can buy, so well
worth taking a look at them.
Watkins, Chris. (2010). Learning, Performance and
Improvement. INSI Research Matters series No. 34.
www.ioe-rdnetwork.com/uploads/2/1/6/3/21631832/
c_watkins_learning_performance_improvement.pdf.
Watkins really shows how obsessing about results as
opposed to nurturing learning in a relaxed, happy way
backfires both in terms of results and pupils’ attitudes.
Waugh, David, et al. (2016) Teaching Grammar,
Punctuation and Spelling in Primary Schools (Sage,
2013). This book is aimed at primary school teachers,
but I think secondary English teachers could find it very
useful too.
Francis Gilbert
is Senior Lecturer in Education at Goldsmiths University
of London
 Features: English – The Big Picture 

Putting
the Art
in English
Opportunities
for creativity
in the English
Curriculum

Visual art can provide a stimulus for thought, discussion

and writing in English, argues Anna Foster, offering
an enjoyable space for the imagination and personal
response to flourish. Here, she explains how she works
with trainee teachers to develop these possibilities.
Art helps us see connections and brings a more coherent
meaning to our world – Ernest Boyer, President,
Carnegie Foundation
Under the new Ofsted framework, the idea of a broad
and balanced curriculum has re-emerged. Many
suggestions have been offered as to how this can be
interpreted and encouraged through the breadth of
texts taught in English, and there is often a focus on
developing awareness of genre, making thematic links
between texts, and providing opportunities for students
to experience texts through other media, including
links to music, film or performance.
All of these approaches are part of the toolkit of
most English teachers, but one area which is often
overlooked is the use of art. Images are widely used in
PowerPoints to support learners in visualising context
or to generate vocabulary to support writing, but this
tends to be where it ends. Art is seen as an image on a
board, a starter task, or a supplementary resource: yet it
can be so much more.
In order to encourage the use of art within English –
and thus broaden the knowledge and experiences offered
to students – and in order to develop awareness of
alternative resources, we take a group of English PGDE
trainees to the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester
where various exhibits are used to help them consider how
they could be linked to the current English curriculum.
Here, we explore the purposes and processes of the visit
and the ideas which have emerged about ways in which
art can be incorporated within English.
Why art in English?
Many choose to enter teaching as a profession because
of their passion for the subject and the opportunities
for creativity it offers. However, with the recruitment
and retention crisis in full flow, many are leaving the
profession within the first five years, often citing “Art is seen
burnout and lack of creative opportunities amongst
their reasons. Our visit to an art gallery is aimed at
as an image
allowing trainees to consider how art can be used to on a board,
support the teaching of English, to flex their creative
muscles by exploring the art available as well as creating
a starter
some of their own, and to reflect on how whole lessons task, or a
can be taught without the requirement for PowerPoint
presentations or copious worksheets. By immersing the
supplementary
trainees in art for an afternoon, without PowerPoint, we resource: yet
encourage them to do the same in their own teaching,
exploring creative approaches to teaching both
it can be so
literature and language. much more.”
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 53
Putting the Art in English – Opportunities for creativity in the English Curriculum
Although we give trainees the opportunity to visit the
art gallery on this occasion, it’s not suggested that teachers
must take students to visit a gallery in order to engage with
art. Certainly, where this is possible, it offers a valuable
experience – the opportunity to expand cultural capital
and move learning beyond the classroom. But the emphasis
here is not on the location or on the value of organising a
trip: it is on the exhibits themselves – many of which could
be sourced in alternative ways, or used conceptually by the
“The visit trainee to develop alternative classroom pedagogies. It
is aimed at should also be noted that expertise in art is not a
requirement. Indeed, due to the nature of exhibits in the
allowing Whitworth, which regularly change, all the art used
trainees to within the session is new and relatively unfamiliar: there
are no tried and tested exhibits used which have been
flex their explored with multiple cohorts over a number of years.
creative The session is planned and delivered over the course
of just two visits to the gallery. The first visit involves a
muscles.” ‘recce’ – as the tutor, I visit the gallery, speak with the
54 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
secondary and post-16 coordinator and explore the current
exhibits to see what is available and identify which
provide most scope to discuss in relation to the teaching
of English, focusing on which exhibits resonate with me
and which I feel would make a useful starting point for
discussion. Following the visit, I source one non-fiction
text as a supporting resource to facilitate discussion and
exploration of one of the selected exhibits, and then
schedule a self-guided tour (which incurs no costs) for
myself and the English PDGE trainees (38 this year)
who have commenced the course just four weeks earlier.
Exploring art conceptually
This year, we began by visiting the Li Yuan-chia
exhibition. This offered stunning photography,
beautifully hand-painted by the artist. Taking
inspiration from this, trainees were encouraged to
consider how the same technique could be used to
connect images and literature together, moving away
from simple identification of features or providing
visual representation of context to consider how use
of colour could facilitate greater connection with
mood, tone and emotion within a text, or how use of
contrasting colours or colour accents could visually
model a writer’s approach to drawing the reader in.
The process here is simple: students are provided
with a black and white image which in some way
connects to the text they are reading. Rather than using
this simply to visualise context, they are encouraged to
look at the image in a new way. Focusing on description
in the text, they alter the image with the following
questions identified as a starting point for any text:
• What aspects might be highlighted?
• What colours might be added?
• Are there any parts of the image which might
become blurred?
• Are there any parts of the image that might be redacted?
• How might the image be altered for different
characters/narrators?
The same approach is then also considered in relation to
figurative meaning, moving beyond the literal description
within the text to explore perspectives and themes,
using the same questions. Here, trainees are encouraged
to use the approach as a tool to develop inference.
 Features: English – The Big Picture 

Physical objects
Moving on from this, trainees then visited ‘The Reno
@ The Whitworth’ which offered a fabulous opportunity
to explore a local community project in relation to
themes of identity and place. Trainees were encouraged
to reflect upon the poetic form of a displayed timeline,
consider the impact of collage as a stimulus material,
and explore the use of everyday items and artefacts to
make connections with a text as well as supporting
development of narratives within writing.
The Reno exhibit offered trainees an insight into
a specific place – a cellar club which acted as an
unofficial community hub for mixed-race Mancunians “Trainees
throughout the 1970s and 80s. The excavation of
artefacts from the site and their display in the gallery
reflected on
alongside images of local people who frequented the the different
club, as well as video testimony and the opportunity to
listen to music typical of that played, gave trainees the
forms which
opportunity to reflect upon the different forms which art can take,
art can take and the immersive experience provided
by presenting physical objects alongside other forms
and the
of information; and to connect these to potential immersive
teaching opportunities from familiar texts.
Trainees identified and discussed specific artefacts
experience
from the exhibition, reflecting on why they resonated provided by
with them and sharing their ideas about how this
might be used within a lesson. An example of this
presenting
was the use of rusted and discarded cans, broken and physical
covered in dirt, which was suggested as a possible focus
for the teaching of Tatamkhulu Afrika’s ‘Nothing’s objects
Changed’, providing a tangible object for learners to alongside
explore connotations and denotations through a wider
sensory experience, with the potential to use this a other forms
starting point for exploring themes within the poem of information,
itself as well as presenting opportunities for wider
creative responses. making
connections
Exploring contrasting perspectives
One of the highlights of the session was the with potential
opportunity to explore a large-scale installation – an
assemblage of lost items presented within Ibrahim
teaching
Mahama’s exhibition ‘Parliament of Ghosts’ – offering opportunities
a unique opportunity to use the installation itself as
both teaching space and resource. As trainees sat
for familiar
on the aged and abandoned train seats which have texts.”
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 55
Putting the Art in English – Opportunities for creativity in the English Curriculum

“Trainees been so carefully constructed into the awe-inspiring

parliament which is at the heart of this exhibition, they
explored how were encouraged to connect with the perspectives and
art can be used meanings suggested by the furniture, photographs and
fabrics they were surrounded by.
to draw out As a starting point, trainees were again encouraged
to reflect on their own ideas on the exhibition and on
language what each item suggested about Mahama’s perspective
and take this on Ghana and what he hoped to communicate through
the collection. They then considered how this could
forward into be connected to the teaching of non-fiction texts.
writing. They They were provided with a piece of travel writing on
Ghana from the Lonely Planet guide, and thought about
considered how comparison of perspectives is a skill that can be
how to taught in different ways, perhaps offering exposure to a
broader range of resources and approaches than simply
overcome comparing two texts on a similar theme. The approach
pupils’ fears generated a range of ideas, with trainees suggesting
opportunities for using, for instance, images from
of being the exhibition, and even a scaled down ‘installation’
presented approach within the classroom, which could allow
students to engage with comparative skills whilst and poems were explored, as well as opportunities to
with a blank removing the barriers some might experience when develop vocabulary in a collaborative way, passing their
creations amongst each other to add words or adapt
page, moving faced with analysing texts.
the object in some way to create new opportunities and
beyond Art into writing ideas for how the object and associated lexical choices
Finally, trainees worked with freelance creative could be used.
planning consultant Johnny Woodhams to explore how art can
grids and be used to draw out language and take this forward into And finally …
writing. They considered how to overcome pupils’ fears By the end of the afternoon, trainees had generated a
mind-maps.” of being presented with a blank page, creating vessels wide variety of ideas. All had their own perspectives on
from paper and using this as the starting point for the session, and made individual suggestions about ways
developing creative writing. Thus they moved beyond in which they could apply what they had experienced to
the planning grids and mind-maps so frequently the teaching of reading, writing and oracy. They spoke
encountered as a starting point for creative thinking, of their enthusiasm for trying these approaches within
and on to a simple yet innovative approach to build into their placements and were keen to explore further
their repertoire. opportunities to embed the use of art within their
Trainees created their own resources from blank teaching – encouraged by the simplicity suggested by
A4 paper, producing a wide range of stimulus materials each approach. All without a PowerPoint in sight!
from birds and planes to swords. They ripped and
shaped their paper to create an object which could be Anna Foster
both the focal point for a piece of creative writing and is Lecturer in English Education at Manchester
the material upon which it was written. Ideas for stories Institute of Education

56 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22


Learning
to Teach
English
RQT perspectives
on the Secondary
English PGCE
Clare Lawrence set out to discover what three of her
recent ex-trainees think about the PGCE English course
now that they are fully-fledged teachers.
One of the joys of my position as teacher-educator
is that many of my trainees take teaching positions
locally, frequently taking up posts offered to them by
their placement schools. This means that when I make
observation visits to schools it is not uncommon to
come across competent, professional, enthusiastic
teachers whom I knew as anxious trainees just starting
out in the profession.
But what do they make of this business of teaching
English, and what do they make of the PGCE English
course, now that they can look back at it? I asked
three teachers who completed the course two years
ago to reflect on these questions and to give me their
perspective now that they are ‘doing it for real’.
1. Relationships
Feedback from all the teachers focused strongly on
relationships. They articulated that they had felt,
during training, an unnecessary and self-inflicted focus
on their individual ‘performance’ in the classroom and
that only with greater experience do they understand
the extent to which teaching is a team effort.
They now plan collaboratively, support and feel
supported by colleagues, discuss issues and share ideas
and resources, but were reluctant to do so during the
course. They suggested that this reluctance may have
been because of their belief that they were being
compared with each other, and their perception that
the university makes judgements that some trainees are
Features: English – The Big Picture 
‘better’ than others. They described how the grading
system for the PGCE creates an artificial sense of
different skills being categorised, where the emphasis
could more usefully be on successful meeting of the “They argued
Teachers’ Standards as a whole and of the achievement
overall of skills enabling the gaining of Qualified the importance
Teacher Status. of autonomy
They acknowledged that some of their perception of
being in competition with each other was fair in the sense in choosing
that they found themselves applying for the same jobs, texts in KS3
and they articulated that losing a position at interview
to a fellow trainee was a difficult situation for both parties.
and why
They discussed how the combination of training and ‘teaching
job applications put a particular strain on relationships,
particularly towards the later stages of the course.
stuff you love’
makes for
2. Confidence
The teachers were able to describe, from their position
the strongest
now as successful classroom practitioners, the extent to lessons. All
which they had lacked confidence in their own teaching wanted to
styles during the PGCE year. One described how during
the PGCE they had been ‘trying on different jackets’ promote
as they adapted their approach to be like those around English above
them. They discussed the need to be able to ask for
advice and to learn from other teachers, but also the and beyond
need to develop confidence in their own emerging GCSE through
style and to have the self-belief, when observing an
experienced teacher, to ask themselves ‘how would I
widening the
do it differently?’ curriculum.”
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 57
Learning to Teach English – RQT perspectives on the Secondary English PGCE
“They valued One of the teachers – who is now a mentor –
articulated how important it is to allow trainees to make
being part mistakes and to find ways to manage these situations for
of a network themselves rather than stepping in too quickly to help.
She acknowledged: ‘they may not do it your way; lead by
of English example, but don’t be hurt when the trainee does it differently
teachers … and don’t be afraid to learn from the trainee’.
The concept of mentor fragility – the feeling that
to have your teaching has to be perfect – was an interesting one
discussions to the other teachers who have not acted as mentor yet.
They continued to view the relationship very much from
about the remembered experience of being the mentee: ‘Your
education mentor is your first (sometimes your only) point of contact;
he or she needs to understand your vulnerability and that the
and English, you are not … someone to be moulded into their image’.
to have Everyone agreed on the need for patience, the
importance of acknowledging trainees’ emotions and
opportunities for trainees to be supported to learn at their own pace.
to plan
3. Course content
together With the benefit of reflection, the teachers acknowledge
and share that the ‘boring stuff’ of the course may, in fact, have
been necessary: ‘As time goes on, you realise you need
experiences, to know about how to teach (i.e. pedagogy) and why that
and to form works, as opposed to just surviving in the classroom!’
Some elements of the course were particularly valued,
a ‘collective including consideration of how to manage discussions,
protection how to manage group work, and ‘why ‘less safe’ teaching
approaches matter and how to do them.
against They acknowledged a journey on the course from
acronyms focusing on their teaching (a largely ‘lecture style’
delivery) to a focus on pupils’ learning. They enjoyed the
and the opportunity to experience elements that they now teach
gobbledegook’.” (‘tackling things like the Reconstructive Writing Task for
ourselves on the course really put us into the position of
learners’) and appreciated the need to consider challenges
such as how to teach pupils who may be cleverer than
themselves. They each remembered the frustration of
an EAL lecture that was delivered in Polish, and now
appreciate its purpose (‘it’s good to experience what it is
like to be flummoxed’) and, with experience, are far more
sensitive to the need to spend time learning about specific
SEND challenges and how to meet them successfully.
They discussed the need to support trainees to know
what they are looking at when observing lessons early
in the course. Indeed, they identified that ‘observing
until you’ve tried it is less useful’, so suggested greater
interleaving of ‘doing’ and ‘watching’. Regarding
feedback given to them after observations they were
keen that everyone remember how vulnerable it can
feel: ‘be honest but not brutal’.
4. Teachers as researchers
The teachers appreciated the concept that their on-
going research in the classroom matters. Two had
worked together on a published paper, and all had had
the experience of feeding back on on-going ‘trying-it-
out’ projects to their colleagues. They acknowledged
that the assignment undertaken for the PGCE of a
report on a piece of Action Research was useful and
helped to establish what they do in their own minds as
research. They particularly valued the concept within
the course of ‘finding things out’. They continue to be
curious and experimental and have begun to realise
that this approach as researchers is part of their on-
going development as teachers.
58 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
Their opinions varied about the exact nature of this
research, although all agreed on the need for support
with the process, given that at this early stage in their
career they remain professionally vulnerable. One
was keen to take a formal research route, including
professional and academic publication and contribution
to conferences. Others stressed that research need not
necessarily be academic. They argued that ‘staying in
touch’ could be by many means, Including Twitter,
blogs etc., and that this awareness of the voice of the
wider profession should be part of a teacher’s everyday
life: ‘We’re all ‘seeing how this works’ all the time.’
They were keen to be seen less as craftsmen/women
who ‘do’ and more as professionals with real understanding
to underpin their teaching, and suggested that a more
cohesive link could be made between training, teaching
and researching: ‘The Education goalposts [are] always
changing; we need to be able to follow and evaluate research
and should feel able to add to the discussions ourselves’.
They championed the idea of ‘embedding curiosity’
into the profession and suggested the importance of
being given time and support to attend conferences and
to profess that ‘the PGCE is not the end!’
5. Subject English
All the teachers expressed the importance of enthusiasm
for their subject, and the challenge to maintain that
enthusiasm in a system that can feel restrictive.
Although they were well able to articulate all of the
many issues with this system, they were, interestingly,
more keen to discuss the ‘good stuff’.
They argued the importance of autonomy in
choosing texts in KS3 and why ‘teaching stuff you love’
makes for the strongest lessons. They emphasised the
importance of wider reading (while acknowledging
the challenge to this made by shortage of time), and all
wanted to promote English above and beyond GCSE
through widening the curriculum.
They valued being part of a network of English
teachers – both through staying in touch with fellow
trainees and through membership of organisations
such as NATE – to take time to have discussions about
education and English, to have opportunities to plan
together and share experiences, and to form a ‘collective
protection against acronyms and the gobbledegook!’
And finally …
It was lovely, of course, to catch up with these teachers
and to have an opportunity to spend a little more time
talking to them. They, and the others I pass in corridors
or who pop their heads out of their classroom doors,
encourage me that English teaching, and the training
of English teachers, is not in as bad a place as we
might think. It’s not perfect; there is always so much
we could do better, and so much that teachers would
like that would make the profession stronger and
more sustainable. However, these teachers give me
hope. Their resilience is impressive; despite the many
pressures, frustrations, restrictions and demands of the
job, they are staying in it – and, perhaps most important
of all, they seem to be actually enjoying it. That can’t
be bad!
Clare Lawrence
is a Senior Lecturer and leads the English PGCE
at Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln
 Features: English – The Big Picture 

‘Ah Ha!’
and
‘Ha Ha!’
Teaching
and Stand-
Up Comedy

Does teaching have something to learn from stand-up

comedy? You must be joking! Teacher and stand-up
comedian Martin Billingham suggests that understanding
the relationship between the two can help us to develop
a dialogic classroom.
‘...only the teacher and the stand-up comedian rely on Did they get that? Can we move on? Are they on board?
the continuous interaction between themselves and the Should I challenge or ignore that behaviour? Is that glazed
people in front of them.’ (McCarron 2007) look boredom or tiredness? I’m losing them, do I try

Picture this: you are stood up in front of a group of

people you’re going to have to engage with. You have
prepared material, you’ve spent hours carefully crafting
ideas to be shared. The result of all this preparation
depends upon the response you get to your ideas, and
as you start to speak you’re ready to weave these
responses into the narrative that you’ve prepared.
But you’ve been around the block, you’ve earned your
stripes, and you know to expect the unexpected. You’re
aware that there are many variables and unknown
factors within this socially dynamic environment. You
have to constantly gauge the mood of the room, edit on
the fly and adapt your material to suit the group, right
here and right now. The group is made up of individuals
with different experiences, attitudes and behaviours –
but your goal is for them to act as one and be ‘on the same
page.` You’ve got to make decisions at a mile a minute:
something new or press on? Are they trying their best to
derail my train of thought?
“Both teaching
So, where are you? Is this your tricky Year 8 English and stand-up
class on a Friday afternoon, or a rowdy Saturday night
at the Glasgow Empire comedy club?
comedy
Comedy may not be at the heart of teaching in the depend upon
same way as it is at the heart of stand-up, but I hope I’ve
demonstrated that there are fundamental similarities
constant and
between teaching and stand-up comedy. Teaching adaptive
is public performance, but it’s not about ‘acting’: it’s
about interacting. Both teaching and stand-up comedy
interaction
depend upon constant and adaptive interaction with with an
an audience – dialogue as opposed to monologue,
speaking with our ‘public’ not at them – which makes
audience
them different from other types of public speaking – dialogue
and performance. And both comedians and teachers
aim to spark a change in behaviour and in cognition
as opposed to
with their respective groups. monologue.”
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 59
‘Ah Ha!’ and ‘Ha Ha!’ – Teaching and Stand-Up Comedy
Comedy and cognition: tickle my funny lobe
Kevin McCarron, Literature Professor at Roehampton
University, writes (2009): ‘It is not uncommon to hear
academics referring to teaching as a performance. What is
uncommon is to encounter any further analysis of what kind
of performance it is.’ So here comes the science bit…
The communicative and participatory interaction
in teaching might seem obvious: we ask questions
of our students, they answer (we hope), we discuss,
we debate, we share. But what’s more fascinating
is the growing body of evidence from the field of
neuroscience connecting the ‘Ah ha! I get it’ to the ‘Ha
ha! I get it’ moment within the brain. Robert G. Franklin
(2011) placed subjects within an MRI machine to
observe the response to watching stand-up comedy of
participants’ brains. He discovered that areas of the
brain associated with the construction of logic, social
cultural memory and socio-emotional response were
engaged throughout – a veritable fireworks display of
cognitive activity was on display. In other words, in
order to ‘get’ a joke audiences have to make cognitive
leaps – processing the (often incongruous) logic of the
joke, accessing the interplay between social and cultural
references, and deciding whether the joke is acceptable
within our social group. Going to a stand-up comedy gig
is like a mental gym – to ‘make them laugh’ you’ve got
to ‘make them think’ – and comedy audiences are not
passive, they are participatory. They don’t just interact
vocally (by laughing, booing, heckling or withholding
laughter); they have to engage their intellect.
The point is that the mental gymnastics necessary in
order to ‘get’ a joke may relate to the process required in
order to ‘get’ an idea. Stand-up comedians and teachers
aim to set in motion the cogs of cognition, and they do
this through effective communication.
“I do not advocate the production of funny
teachers, or even (necessarily) the use of
jokes in the classroom: but there is a veritable
arsenal of transferable techniques in stand-up
comedy that can be used to improve teaching.”
The bad news and the good news
The bad news is that stand-up comedians are afforded
something special: constant, conspicuous and immediate
feedback – you get a laugh, or you don’t. If you do, you
keep going; if you don’t, it’s time to change things up. In
contrast, it is extremely difficult for teachers, especially
trainees and early career teachers, to ‘read the room’:
eliciting and prompting the responses you want are skills
that need years of practice. Stand-up comedians don’t
have summative assessments at the end of the show:
they depend utterly upon their ability to formatively
assess both the group in front of them and their own
ability to communicate and engage with them.
60 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
The good news is that this isn’t some shamanistic
magic, and the stand-up comedian does not represent
some naturally gifted pinnacle of perception. Rather,
it’s a learning experience and, as with teaching,
improvements are only made through an iterative
process. The more you do it, the better you get at
it. In short, there are a number of transferable and
transformative skills that can be taken from the comedy
club into the classroom that could help with eliciting and
managing a ‘live’ and immediate feedback loop in the
classroom. As a teacher, one is completely dependent on
the dynamic of dialogue with the group in front of you
that provides endless scope for formative assessment of
the ability of the group and your own ability to connect,
interact and engage with them.
Let’s be clear: I do not advocate the production
of funny teachers, or even (necessarily) the use of
jokes in the classroom: humour is simply an effective
communicative tool within a wide variety of tools
that a stand-up comedian has to hand. But there is
a veritable arsenal of transferable techniques, skills
and experiences in stand-up comedy that can be used
to improve teaching practice, and there are serious
insights to be gained from those who ‘make them laugh’
by those that ‘make them learn’.
And finally …
I’ve had the pleasure and the challenge of having a
foot in both worlds – I’ve studied both, I’ve done both
and, through the insights I’ve gained, I now train
teachers to improve their abilities through the use
of stand-up comedy techniques. I was a speaker and
panellist at Brunel University’s Centre for Comedy
Research conference last year,exploring ‘Comedy and
the Classroom’, and I’m currently investigating the
relationship between assessment, communication and
education. If you would like to learn more, please visit
my website or email me:
Website: https://www.listen-learn-standup-speak.com
E-mail: martinbillingham3@gmail.com
Papers: https://ucl.academia.edu/MartinBillingham;
Videos: www.youtube.com/channel/
UC2YTblj2Qgcxtv6jgeD67cw
Martin Billingham
is currently studying for a PhD at the Institute of
Education, University College London
References
Franklin, R, Adams, B. (2011) ‘The Reward of a Good
Joke: Neural Correlates of Viewing Dynamic
Displays of Stand-up Comedy’, Cognitive, Affective,
& Behavioral Neuroscience, Vol 11, No 4.
McCarron, K. (2007) ‘Outside the Box: Teaching
American literature and performing stand-up
comedy’, Teaching American Literature: A Journal
of Theory and Practice. Vol 1, No. 2
McCarron, K. (2009) ‘Stand-Up Comedy and Teaching
in a “Global Age”’
Reflecting Education. Vol 5, No. 1
Comedy and the Classroom conference: https://www.
brunel.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/articles/How-
successful-can-teachers-be-with-comedy
 Features: English – The Big Picture 

… TO ENGAGING
WITH POETRY
Reading and writing poems
in the English classroom

The seventh instalment of this series, in which

Trevor Millum and Chris Warren suggest 39 enjoyable
approaches to poetry in the English classroom, explores
poems with a twist, poems with an unusual perspective,
and poems that exploit compressed expression.

NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 61

39 Steps … to Engaging with Poetry – Reading and writing poems in the English classroom
Step 19
Distillation
One of the ways of looking at poetry is to see it as a compressed form of
expression, in which every word that is not absolutely necessary has been
squeezed out. Thinking of the poetry of Gerald Manley Hopkins, you
can see where this might lead: sometimes a compression so severe that
it is hard to comprehend. Nevertheless, the idea of distilling sentences
or thoughts until they become more focused and intense is a useful way
of talking about poems with students, especially if they don’t ‘get’ poetry.
Example
Here’s an example from a Y9 student:
My cat
is as vain as a film star
her green eyes shine
like emeralds
she dribbles in contentment
lazy as a cow
but graceful as a ballerina
she’s a tightrope walker
on padded paws
my furry
fat cat
You can see how the poem has been distilled from a much longer
description:
My cat is as vain as a film star or a queen like Cleopatra. She purrs like she has
an engine deep down in her throat or her chest and her evil green eyes shine in
her face like emeralds. She meows pathetically and gets ignored or fed. But later
behind her half-closed eyelids she dribbles in contentment. She sleeps all day,
lazy as a cow but I suppose she’s as gentle and as graceful as a ballerina when
she wants to be. When she walks along the wall it’s as if she’s a tightrope walker
on padded paws. When she’s asleep she’s just like any other furry fat cat.
Teaching tips
Set students a homework task to observe an animal, whether it be a
pet, a bird in the garden or even an insect on the window pane. They
should write down everything they see or hear: what it looks like, what
it does, how it moves, what it reminds them of… These notes are to be
brought back and written up into a short descriptive passage. These
descriptions can be shared in groups with group members underlining
or highlighting phrases they like. The descriptions are then returned
to their authors to whom it is suggested they remove all the words that
have not been highlighted and see what is left. Further small edits can
be made but the aim should be concision. Arrange each phrase on a new
line and the result will almost certainly be a poem.
This activity should not only produce some interesting writing but
act as an eye-opener with regard to the nature of poetry. Many poems
appear to have gone through such a process, whether literally or in the
mind of the poet. Think of Edward Thomas’s ‘Tall Nettles’ for example.
Writing Suggestions
In addition to the approach described above, students could take an
existing passage of fiction or non-fiction and select the phrases that
appeal to them, copying them out and arranging them as they think
most effective. The description of the Red Room from Jane Eyre
would be one powerful passage to use. Do not exclude non-fiction.
Travel books and even cookery books can provide some rich material!
62 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
Step 20
Life seen from another angle
Poems can offer a way of looking at life from an unusual
perspective. For example, from the point of view of an
animal or an outsider. The ultimate outsider is the alien
or a robot.
Examples
Craig Raine’s ‘A Martian Sends a Postcard Home’ is one
of the most well-known and can easily be found on-
line. It begins:
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings --
they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.
I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.
The poem becomes a series of metaphors to unravel
or, really, riddles to solve. Students shouldn’t leave it
at that, though. Get them to discuss how successful
they think the comparisons are. Are some better
thought out than others? (‘…cause the eyes to melt’
might be deemed effective whereas ‘snores’ might be
questioned in the lines ‘a haunted apparatus sleeps, /
that snores when you pick it up.’) The next stage would
be to invent some descriptions of their own. For
example, ‘Bright metal capsules eat their owners and
hurry along dry river beds’.
The poem that begins ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, /
The king-size bed is soft and deep... / I sleep right in the
centre groove / My human can hardly move!’ is variously
titled ‘A Cat’s Prayer’ and ‘A Dog’s Prayer’. Either way, it
sees the world from the point of view of an animal.
Can students find others written from an animal’s
point of view?
Writing Suggestions
Students generally find it enjoyable to write from the
point of view of an animal but may need help in order to
give the poem structure. ‘A day in the life of…’ or ‘Five
things I dislike about my human’ provide plenty of
opportunities for an unusual take on life and for humour,
of course. Humour would be replaced by serious message
if the animal in question was an endangered one, for
instance. Alternatively, they might like to consider
themselves robots. ‘Beep beep / I wake / voice calls / I eat’
– and so on through a school day with bells determining
one’s actions.
Teaching Tips
Use this opportunity to discuss the notion of persona.
We all tend to assume that, if written in the first person,
the voice of the poem is the voice of the poet and this,
of course, is often not the case. The use of a Martian
voice, or a dog’s voice makes it clear that the poet can
write from any viewpoint. Some poems are not so
obvious, especially when the poet is employing irony.
If appropriate, seek out and discuss one or two of these.
 Features: English – The Big Picture 

Step 21
A Bit of a Twist
These poems seem to be going in one direction and then at the end, there’s a twist, something unexpected.

Examples:
– from the sublime to the ridiculous:

‘Remember’ – Christina Rossetti ‘My Seven Days of Dieting’

Remember me when I am gone away, On the first day of dieting
Gone far away into the silent land; The only thing I ate
When you can no more hold me by the hand, Was a piece of crispy rye bread Christina Rossetti.
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. …
Remember me when no more, day by day, On the sixth day of dieting
You tell me of our future that you planned: The only things I ate
Only remember me; you understand Were 6 grated carrots
It will be late to counsel then or pray. 5 lettuce leaves
Yet if you should forget me for a while 4 chopped-up walnuts
And afterwards remember, do not grieve: 3 natural yoghurts
For if the darkness and corruption leave 2 tubs of coleslaw
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, and a piece of crispy rye bread
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad. On the seventh day of dieting
The only things I ate
Were 7 choc-chip cookies Craig Raine.
6 white bread sarnies
5 jam doughnuts
4 English muffins
3 Eccles cakes
2 chip butties
and no bloody crispy rye bread.

Rossetti’s poem seems to be heading in an obvious direction and then in the last few lines, she switches,
with powerful effect.
‘My Seven Days of Dieting’ employs a switch for comic effect, which is a more common use of the
technique.
In ‘My Seven Days of Dieting’, the last verse is also a relief from the repetition of the previous ones.
(It’s a poem which is best read aloud as there needs to be variation through the verses.)
(See also Leigh Hunt’s ‘Abou Ben Adhem’ and Louis Macneice’s ‘Prayer Before Birth’.)

Writing Suggestions
To create a poem with a twist at the end, try this simple pattern, which can be applied to almost any topic,
for example, Winter. ‘I hate the way the cold nips at my toes; / I hate the way I can’t see the ball at night …’ and so
on until ‘But I love the cosy evening firelight.’ Or the reverse, of course.
Or the description of a person. ‘X was no good at …, X couldn’t ever …’ and so on until ‘But X saved my cat from
next door’s dog.’ This simple form can be used with serious effect to tackle stereotypes, for instance.

Teaching Tips
Take any of the poems mentioned above and read them aloud until the point where the poem changes.
Alternatively give students a copy with the last lines omitted. In each case ask how they think the poem
might be finished. They could try writing a few lines or simply suggest the kind of ending.

Trevor Millum and Chris Warren

are the authors of Unlocking Poetry (NATE/Routledge 2012) and members of the NATE ICT Committee

NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 63

English and Media Centre

‘Big Picture’
Writing
Andrew McCallum suggests approaches
to writing that will help to build students’
knowledge, confidence and motivation.

“When The concept of ‘big picture’ English is generally applied

to work around reading (see Barbara Bleiman´s Harold
teachers build Rosen Lecture in this edition of the magazine). Students
in plenty of grapple with a whole text, with priority given to how
they articulate their thoughts and ideas across the
time to develop whole piece. They narrow down to smaller details as
and when necessary.
knowledge and But what about ‘big picture’ writing? What might this
understanding, look like and why might it be of pedagogical value? And
how might big picture approaches apply to different
and avoid kinds of writing: creative, critical, analytical and so on?
pushing Big picture writing, I would suggest, starts from the
premise that just about all young people, particularly at
students to secondary level, can produce substantial, whole texts,
write formally on their own, from scratch. This runs counter to the
classroom experience of students having nothing to
or critically say when set a writing task, a problem that all English
teachers are likely to face at one time or another – a
too soon, they problem which can be caused by a number of factors.
often find that Perhaps students don’t have enough knowledge of the
topic they have to write about; perhaps they don’t feel
ideas flow and confident that they understand what is required from
the blank page a writing task; or perhaps they are lacking motivation
and simply don’t feel like putting pen to paper.
is soon filled. It’s worth thinking about why these barriers to
Without this, independent writing might occur and what strategies
can help to overcome them.
they’re less
Creating knowledgeable students
likely to Students most effectively gain knowledge of a new topic
develop the or text by actively engaging with it. The most productive
and time efficient way of doing this is to get students
cognitive- talking with each other. They might also write about the
recursive material they are working on (novel, poem, non-fiction
extracts, etc.) in a form of their own choosing: the form,
processes that at this point, is less important than the act of writing,
allow them to a process that in and of itself develops knowledge and
understanding. When teachers build in plenty of time to
draw on their develop knowledge and understanding in this way, and
own thoughts avoid pushing students to write formally or critically
too soon, they often find that ideas flow and the blank
and ideas page is soon filled.
In the current educational climate, there are some
when tasked voices likely to question this approach and call instead
with writing.” for more direct teacher instruction: just tell students
what they need to know and then they can go off
and reproduce it in their own writing. But there are
serious flaws in this approach if the end-goal is self-
directed ‘big picture’ writing. If students aren’t working
on material directly themselves, then they’re less likely
to develop the cognitive-recursive processes that allow
them to draw on their own thoughts and ideas when
tasked with writing.
Creating confident students
The inability to write can come from a fear of getting
it wrong. The more prescribed the form of writing
required, the more likely this is to happen. This is
particularly true when students are asked to write
critical essays too soon. The critical essay is a highly
specialised, difficult form. It’s an absolute requirement
of English teaching that students learn how to tackle
it. However, if they are required to write critical essays
when they are too young, or in the early stages of
study, then they are unlikely to be able to do so without
considerable intervention from their teacher in the
form of writing frames and sentence starters. These
can often be so detailed that there is little of the finished
piece that comes from the student at all. In such cases,
students are developing neither their own writing, nor
their own thinking.
There is an alternative approach. If students are
given a degree of freedom about their form of response,
then they are often confident enough to write at length
with only minimal direction. Freed from anxiety about
form (how do I write this?), they are able to focus on
content (what do I write about this?). For example, they
might write up a Q+A with the writer, turn an episode
from their reading into a newspaper article, or write in
the voice of a character.
Creating motivated students
Motivation is closely linked to confidence, but can also
come from a sense that work is being valued. This can
come from structuring writing tasks so that they have
a real audience and purpose, or from encouraging
students to write about their own lives and experiences.
What better way to challenge the tyranny of the blank
page than to draw on what is already known? When
responding to texts, this might mean always starting

64 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22


with personal response: initial thoughts, links to prior
reading or viewing, likes and dislikes, and so on. For
original writing, it might mean lots of opportunities to
write about their own lived experiences. New learning
in this model is far from redundant: freed from having
to draw on new material and ideas, students can
concentrate fully on form, voice and expression.
Just Write…
At EMC we’ve tried to address the three barriers to
writing identified above in our Just Write publication
for Year 7/8 students (with a follow-up for Year 9/10,
Write On, due this summer). It’s a beautifully illustrated
workbook, containing 44 writing activities. Students get
their own copy and are free to complete the activities
in any order they like. Each task directs students to
write for a different purpose and audience, with a
variety of forms to choose from. In writing, then,
they develop their understanding of how to draw on,
adapt and craft their existing language resources for
particular effect. Learning comes from knowledgeable,
confident, motivated doing, with teacher advice after
the event offering ways to develop further. In tackling
a wide range of tasks students develop their ability to
write flexibly and confidently in a full range of forms,
including critical.
The response to the books has been amazing,
absolutely proving that big picture writing is valuable
and possible for all, given the right conditions. The
testimony below is from a writer working with young
offenders. Her previous experience of working with
them was that it was very, very difficult to get them to
write anything.
News from EMC
New Publications
As well as the follow up to Just Write, Write On, mentioned
in the article above, we’ll soon be publishing Exploring
Atonement: EMC Approaches, the latest in our series
of download publications for A Level Literature.
Other titles in the series are Exploring Nineteen Eighty-
Four, Exploring A Doll’s House, Exploring Things Fall
Apart, and Exploring Mrs Dalloway. We’re also
currently putting the finishing touches to Barbara
Bleiman’s What Matters in English: Collected Blogs and
Other Writing. A distillation of the experience Barbara
has gained from working in the subject for over 40
years, we think this is a landmark publication, not just
for EMC, but for the subject community as a whole.
What Matters in English: EMC Conference
and CPD
To mark the publication of Barbara Bleiman’s new
book, we’re holding a conference to explore the
key issues current in English at the moment. We’ve
presentations and a panel featuring leading experts
in the subject, including Michael Rosen, Kate Clanchy
and several practising teachers, plus breakout
sessions for discussion and professional development.
Features: English – The Big Picture 
My current creative writing class has eight boys – hard to
manage and settle but full of ideas and charm. They are a
mixed ability group with a high level of additional needs.
Most of them have missed out on large parts of their
education: all are serving prison sentences of anything
from a few months to life.
I could see that the boys were intrigued by the ‘Just
Write’ books – drawn to them. The layout, the tasks, the
colourful illustrations are immediately appealing. At first,
they flicked through the pages muttering things like ‘shit’
and ‘boring’ – the expected response to anything new. I
told them that the books now belonged to them and asked
them to write their names on the front. They didn’t. They
chatted about an adult prison and ‘Love Island’ and who
had and hadn’t been to the gym. Then gradually, almost
surreptitiously, they picked up their pens.
What is so compelling about these books is the freedom
they give to be creative. By the end of the session, every
boy had written something independently – a rap, a story,
poetic prose. When the guards came to collect them, I
shook the boys’ hands and thanked them for the session.
No fights. No tantrums. No abuse. ‘Love Island’ almost
forgotten. And eight books carefully piled up in the middle
of the table – each with a name neatly (proudly) written
on the front.
Andrew McCallum
is Director of the English and Media Centre
Held at the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education,
near Waterloo Station, there are still places available
at the time of writing, though these may go soon.
EMC Out and About
While we’re London based, given availability we love
to visit English and Media teachers in other parts of
the country. Recently we’ve worked with teachers in
Bury, Brecon, Cambridge, Coventry and Manchester.
If you’re interested in working with us, then do get in
touch via our website.
EMC PGCEs for Media and for English
We’ve been running a Media (with English) and an
English (with Media and Drama) PGCE course for
several years now in partnership with two London
universities. Any prospective teacher should jump at
the chance to train under the expert tutelage of Claire
Pollard (Media) and Emma Barker (English). Please
encourage any prospective teachers to get in touch
via info@englishandmedia.co.uk if they’re interested
in applying for a place.
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 65
Findings
Developing Writers as
a Developing Teacher
Next in our classroom research series, Vincent Byrne
explains how he negotiated the teaching of academic
writing at KS3 and KS4 during his teacher training year,
and argues that we need to be flexible in our use of
formulaic writing frameworks to develop skills effectively.
A key focus of my training year was the development of
strategies to build students’ confidence in academic
writing. Whist students’ ability to ‘understand and critically
evaluate texts’ (DfE, 2014, p.6) is integral to success in GCSE
English, as teachers of English we endeavour to empower
all students in becoming articulate communicators of the
written word beyond examinations – to provide ‘access
to power’ (Myhill and Watson, 2011, p.59) not only in
academic contexts, but also for the communicatory
demands of adult life (‘adult needs’ – Cox, 1989, p.60). As
such, I felt that my journey in building a repertoire of
methods to approach the task of academic writing was
central to my development as a teacher of English.
In considering the theoretical frameworks behind
the process of writing, Myhill and Watson (2011, p.59–
62) note three main disciplinary approaches: cognitive
psychological, linguistic, and socio-cultural. My
experience in the training year led me to recognise that
all three of these disciplinary approaches are integral
to the development of young writers. The present
study will focus on the use of cognitive psychological
and social-cultural approaches in relation to the
development of students’ academic writing.
66 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
Getting to grips with GCSE
Sam Counsell notes a shift in the way in which students
approach texts when preparing for GCSE examination,
with both teacher and student ‘[beginning] to interrogate
texts with formal, summative assessments firmly in
mind’ (2015, p.41). Despite my belief that the study of
English should focus on ‘connections between life and art’
(Marshall, 2003, p.82), the ‘endgame’ of the summative
GCSE examination inevitably becomes a priority in
planning and teaching in KS4. With writing still being
the ‘dominant mode for accessing educational success’
(Myhill and Watson, 2011, p.59), I felt it was necessary
to establish a framework to help students craft coherent
written responses from the very beginning of Year 10.
My initial approach incorporated the first two
elements of the cognitive psychological process as
presented by Hayes and Flower: ‘planning (goal setting,
generation of content, organisation of ideas) and translating
(turning thoughts in words and sentences…)’ (Myhill
and Watson, 2011, p.59). In seeking to build on the
pupils’ capabilities and prior knowledge, I felt that a
standardised approach to academic writing would be
useful because the middle-ability class was comprised

of students from five different form groups and as
such the students were coming from differing ‘starting
points’. From the outset, neither my mentor nor I saw
the framework as something to which students should
rigidly adhere, but rather as a guide to an ‘in house’ style
that would allow them organise their ideas.
During the first half term, students were guided on
using the ‘Point, Evidence, Explain, Analyse, Reader
Response’ (PEEAR) framework through ‘scaffolded’
activities that culminated in students writing an
extended essay response. The task of marking and
reflecting upon these responses served as a ‘critical
event’; it influenced both my planning for the group
thereafter and understanding of how my implementation
of the framework needed to be adapted based on the
present intellectual development of the group. Perhaps
the most notable ‘revelation’ was the disparity between
some students’ cogent verbal responses in class and the
strength of their written work; something that has been
noted by other practitioners (Counsell, 2015, p. 41).
Contrastingly, some of the strongest writers were those
who were less vocal in class.
As a result of this experience, I began to name particular
students in my planning and PowerPoint presentations
in order to ensure that all students were included in class
discussions. I used the naming strategy in a positive way
– for instance, such a questions would always contain a
merit point incentive and would be pitched according
to my prior knowledge of individual ability. This
technique helped me to promote good behaviour for
learning and made all students aware of my expectations
for everyone to participate fully in class discussions.
Beyond formulae
Whilst it was clear that the PEEAR framework had
helped some students to structure their arguments, it
did not fully address specific skills relating to academic
writing. Reflecting on the success criteria I had used
during my teaching prior to marking the assessments, it
was clear that some of my expected outcomes in written
tasks lacked a specific skills-based focus, for instance:
‘Students will use the PEEAR method to discuss how Priestley
uses language to explore a character under pressure’. Up
until the internal ‘common assessment’ at the end of the
first half term, the focus in developing students’ ability
to provide a critical written response was primarily
based around their structuring of paragraphs. It was
now time to tackle specific skills necessary for effective
academic writing.
Louisa Enstone notes that ‘academic prose is obscure
and foreign to students’ (2017, p.33) and as ‘beginning
writers’ in the context of GCSE requirements, it was
clear that the PEEAR framework has served to promote
‘content generation rather than … the needs of the audience’
(Myhill and Waston, 2011, p.60). My next step was to
help students write for the specific requirements of the
mark scheme. Conversations with my mentor led me to
the realisation that students needed to have a precise
understanding of what they were being assessed on – in
effect writing for the ‘needs of the audience’.
My tutor and I agreed that in the first instance I
should select key objectives from the mark scheme
and present them in an accessible manner. ‘Use textual
references, including quotations, to support and illustrate
interpretations’ (AQA GCSE English Literature,
Assessment Objective 1) was reworded and presented to
Features: English – The Big Picture 
students as ‘using quotes to support my Explanation’. I was
still promoting the use of PEEAR, but now also seeking
to build specific skills in academic writing.
One particularly successful example of this was
a lesson that focussed on the embedding of quotes
(Evidence) into analytical passages. Students had
become so accustomed to organising quotes and
analysis into separate sections of a response that one
student remarked ‘can you actually put ‘Evidence’ into
the ‘Analysis’ section?’ I took the opportunity to remind
students that the PEEAR framework was a guide rather
than something stipulated by the exam board. By
encouraging students to consider exam-based criteria,
they were now progressing from the ‘planning and
translating’ stage of writing to the final ‘reviewing’ stage
of the Hayes and Flower cognitive model of writing (as
presented by Myhill and Watson, 2011, p.59) because
they were reviewing their writing in the context of its
ultimate purpose.
“Whilst recognising the benefits of developing
a cognitive approach via writing frameworks,
I felt that this was still too focused on following
specific forms and addressing a set mark
scheme rather than encouraging students to
discuss texts in relation to their own personal
experiences and opinions.”
Towards personal response
Whilst recognising the benefits of developing a
cognitive approach via writing frameworks, I felt
that such an approach was still too focused on
following specific forms and addressing a set mark
scheme rather than encouraging students to discuss
texts in relation to their own personal experiences
and opinions (a socio-cultural approach). Whereas
the first term had been spent providing students with
a framework from which to work, as I entered into
my Second School Experience (based in an inner-
city, mixed gender comprehensive school) I was keen
to observe and incorporate different approaches the
teaching of writing into my pedagogy.
In this new context, the primary writing framework
for academic writing was Point, Evidence, Technique,
Analyse, Link (to the original question) and Evaluate
(a variation on the Reader Response): PETALE. This
strategy was used universally across the department at
GCSE, and also for middle and higher ability groups in
Key Stage 3. However, a critical event emerged from my
teaching of AQA English Language Paper 2 to a middle
ability Year 10 class.
I had used the PETALE framework to guide
students through Question 3, in which students are
asked to consider a writer’s use of language. I found
that the framework was, in effect, ‘too large’ for
students to make numerous points in the recommended
allocated time for the question. Whereas the PETALE
framework encouraged students to provide a detailed
extended response, elements such as ‘Linking’ back
to question, or ‘Evaluating’ one’s response as a reader
in every paragraph seemed redundant in the context
of Question 3.
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 67
Developing Writers as a Developing Teacher
It was a particularly challenging experience because
I had consciously selected extracts that explored
controversial and thought provoking topics (such as
teenage knife crime in Birmingham, conspiracy theories
and terrorism) in order to encourage students to debate
issues and ideas that impacted their experiences as
teenagers in an urban environment. In the planning
stage students has made a mind map based on peer-led
discussion and had produced thoughtful ideas as to why
the writer (in this case, Sam Harris) had made certain
linguistic choices to influence his readers. However, in
writing a formal response, I felt the PETALE framework
was preventing many in the class from fully expressing
their personal response to the texts.
“In the planning stage students had produced
thoughtful ideas as to why the writer had made
certain linguistic choices to influence his readers.
However, in writing a formal response, I felt the
writing framework was preventing many from fully
expressing their personal response to the texts.”
68 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
Stating a thesis
I discussed these concerns with my mentor, who
suggested introducing a shorter framework to guide
students through Question 3: Statement, Quote and
Inference (SQI). I applied this framework and noticed a
substantial change in the quality of the students’ written
work: immediately the shortened framework enabled
students to make a greater number of perceptive points,
but still maintain a coherent structure to their argument.
The experience demonstrated the necessity of tailoring
frameworks to the requirements of specific types of
questions. However, this struck me as problematic
because of the varied nature of the questions asked in
GCSE English examinations – was it really necessary to
have a different framework for each question?
This led me to consider the ever present ‘endgame’
in preparing students for GCSE examination. In
considering the problems that can emerge from
overreliance on writing frameworks, Louisa Enstone
notes that academic writing is ‘an expert form, requiring
expert thought, understanding, processing and then
articulation’ (Enstone, 2017, p.33): she asserts that all too
often we as teachers ‘expect [students] to write [academic
prose] well without giving much thought to the process of
writing’. The dilemma arises in helping students to
develop the ability to write in an ‘expert form’, whilst
going beyond writing frameworks and ‘generic sentence
stems’. Therefore, I went on to trial Enstone’s strategy
of crafting ‘thesis statements’ which focused on ‘the
creation of well-written, detailed and sophisticated “points”’
(Enstone, 2017, p.36) when the same group had moved
on to the study of poetry.
My introduction of the thesis statement strategy
was heavily scaffolded (see diagram, left) with the
intention of helping students to understand how one
statement could be analysed to elicit greater depths
or ‘layers of meaning’. Interestingly, the students
responded enthusiastically to this new style of writing;
having spent a previous lesson considering the
contextual background to Rupert Brooke’s The Soldier,
the students were generally keen to reveal the depths
of their knowledge and also pose and answer their
own questions to an initial statement. However, some
students in the class relied strongly on the initial scaffold
in order to tackle the more conceptual nature of having
to question their own statements in the independent
thesis statement task.
It is impossible for me to assess the long term effect
of such strategies in helping students to develop an
effective academic style rooted in a student’s own
personal response (in contrast with Enstone’s research,
which took place over a number of years). Because
my introduction to thesis statements was scaffolded,
it might be argued that eventually such an approach
would lead to a formulaic response in which students
felt that they had to ask a set number of questions per
paragraph. However, it is worth noting that Enstone
proposes such techniques as one element within a
wider repertoire of strategies to help students consider
the deeper implications of their own assertions and by
extension encourage independent critical thought.
Quote explosions
As I prepared to return to my lead school at the
beginning of the summer term, I was keen to trial
other strategies I had developed during my second
 Features: English – The Big Picture 

school experience – most notably, the use of a ‘quote

explosion’ to aid students in analysing a text before
crafting an extended academic response (see diagram,
right). I had adapted this technique from my mentor
whom I observed using it as a tool for analysing poetry.
The strategy worked well in my teaching of Macbeth to
a middle ability Year 9 class. It aided students’ ability to
comprehend the key ideas of a scene by presenting an
accessible and ‘scaffolded’ key quote from the text, and
I was able to tailor the length of the quote and degree of
scaffolding depending on students’ ability.
In the upper half of the task (the ‘explosion’), I
encouraged students to provide an ‘initial language
response’ based on the underlined words, thus
developing their skills of analysing key words: but I
made it clear that there was no correct answer, and that
it was rather about their own personal response to the
language. In the lower half of the task, pupils provided
a more formal response based on the notes they had
made in the explosion. This strategy worked well
because students were able to trial their ideas in bullet
point form first before answering a question formally.
The Year 10 boys at the lead school, however, did
not respond quite as well to repeated use of the ‘quote
explosion’ strategy in the context of analysing poetry
for the AQA Power and Conflict Cluster. Whereas
regular use of the strategy had provided middle ability
students in Year 9 with a formula for ‘breaking down’
archaic language in a larger text, in the context of
poetry the Year 10 boys became increasingly disengaged
with the strategy. I encountered a ‘critical event’ in my
second week back at the lead school, whilst teaching
Browning’s My Last Duchess. The boys gave a collective
groan upon my introduction of the quote explosion task
and I found it difficult to motivate many in the group to
take the task seriously.

The best laid plans…

I initially felt justified for using the technique because
in each lesson we were exploring a new poem: however,
upon further reflection and consultation with my
mentor it became clear that whilst consistent use of the
strategy had given students in a middle ability group in
KS3 confidence to develop a personal response, regular
use of the same strategy had led to a perception of
lack of challenge amongst KS4 students in a grammar
school. Moreover, whilst the technique had value in
analysing an individual text, it did not prepare students
sufficiently for making broader comparative points “I have developed an increasing awareness of
between two poems in the GCSE Conflict Poetry
examination. Arguably, this is the most challenging
the need to adapt strategies to suit the needs and
critical skill to develop in the context of planning and ability of particular groups. Recent experience
composition because students have to develop two
‘high order’ skills: firstly, detailed analysis of individual
has also demonstrated that they can be put in
poems and, secondly, a comparison between the two place at the point of planning or ‘initial response’
poems that considers each writers’ use of literary
techniques, purpose and context. rather than at the point of composition.”
I recognised that from a cognitive psychological
perspective, there was a need to revisit techniques to Technique, Purpose grid. This was used as a shorthand
aid effective organisation of ideas. Familiarity with way of giving students a planning ‘bank’ from which
the expectations for GCSE writing had given the boys they could make comparative points.
confidence in the ‘translating’ stage so I now sought to The next step was to consider how to structure the
reduce the scaffold of the PEEAR and instead place an comparative points. From the outset it was necessary to
emphasis on the ‘planning’ stage of writing. I developed set the parameters as to what comparison was (i.e., the
a model of my own construction to direct the boys’ consideration of similarities and differences). Once this
attention towards analysing a writer’s purpose: a Quote, was established I introduced the Venn diagram as way

NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 69

Developing Writers as a Developing Teacher
for students to conceptualise the process of comparison
(see diagram, below). Students would then return to
their ‘data’ (the QTP grid) and use their analysis of the
writer’s purpose as the focus for comparison. From the
planning framework of the Venn diagram, students
then proceeded to use the plan as a template for their
comparative points.
Returning to the planning stage of the cognitive
model through use of QTP grids and Venn diagrams has
served as a reminder that the development of writing is
an ongoing process and that all models of writing need
to be reviewed and adapted in the context of students’
prior learning and the context of the task. At the time
of writing, the students have completed an end-of-year
common assessment based on comparing poetry from
the GCSE conflict cluster. From the perspective of a
‘cognitive psychological’ approach to writing, the next
step in developing students’ ability will be to review
their extended responses based on the needs of the
mark scheme.
“Writing frameworks are not in themselves
detrimental to development of pupils’ ability
to write in an academic manner, but such
strategies are not the only option in helping
students to grow as academic writers.”
70 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
The need for flexibility of approach
A notable feature of my development of academic
writing strategies has been an increasing awareness of
the need to adapt differing strategies to suit the needs
and ability of particular groups. Whilst I maintain that
the writing frameworks that I introduced and refined
during the first half of my training year are not in of
themselves detrimental to development of pupil’s
ability to write in an academic manner, I concur with
Enstone (2017, p. 36), that such strategies should
not be used as the only option in helping students to
grow as academic writers. More recent experience has
demonstrated that strategies can be put in place at the
point of planning or ‘initial response’ rather than at the
point of composition.
Looking forward to areas for development in the
NQT year, I am interested in trialling the use of ‘thesis
statements’ further as a strategy for encouraging
deeper levels of thought. However, at this early stage
in my career I would be reluctant to dismiss writing
frameworks altogether from my teaching. Reflecting
upon the practice of my colleagues has led me to
consider options that discreetly address areas of
analysis in a less formal way, such as a ‘quote explosion’,
which can then be used to inform an extended response
without the constraints of a sometimes arbitrary
acronyms. However, my experience of using quote
explosions in the context of a grammar school has
demonstrated that such smaller scaffolded responses
need to be used sparingly and in the context of
particularly demanding texts. This experience has also
led me to develop my own strategies for scaffolding
writing (Quote, Technique, Purpose), which has been
developed for the specific needs of a particular group –
an experience which will encourage me to adopt a more
flexible approach when using writing frameworks in my
teaching during the NQT year.
Bibliography
Counsell, S. (2015) Thinking, Talking, Writing:
Collaborative Reasoning in the Classroom. Teaching
English. Issue 9, pp. 41–44.
Clayton, P. (2016) The Post-16 GCSE Challenge. Teaching
English. Issue 11, pp. 14–15.
Cox, B. (1989) English for ages 5–16, DES, London.
Department for Education. (2014) The national
curriculum in England (English). London, Her
Majesty’s Stationery Office.
Enstone, Louisa. (2017) Time to stop ‘PEE’-ing?
Developing academic writing in KS3 English beyond
the ‘PEE’ formula. Teaching English, Issue 13, pp.
33–36.
Goodwyn, A. (1992) English Teachers and the Cox Models.
English in Education. Volume 26, Issue 3, pp. 4 –11.
Goodwyn, A. (2011) The Expert Teacher of English.
Abingdon, Routledge.
Marshall, B. (2003) The write kind of knowledge in
English. English Teaching: Practice and Critique.
Volume 2, Number 3, pp. 83–94
Myhill and Watson (2011) Becoming a Reflective English
Teacher. Maidenhead, Open University Press.
Vincent Byrne
teaches English at Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School
Reviews of Children’s Books
Book Box
From the Editor’s Desk:
Children’s Picturebooks
A wonderful – and beautifully illustrated – celebration
of the world of children’s picturebooks, part history,
part analysis, part overview.
Children’s Picturebooks
The art of visual storytelling
Martin Salisbury, Morag Styles (Second edition)
Laurence King Publishing 2020, £29.99
This beautiful, lavishly illustrated large format art
book about children’s picturebooks – celebrating one
of the major intersections between art, literature and
education – is written by the two acknowledged experts
in the field: Martin Salisbury, Professor of Illustration at
Cambridge School of Art in Anglia Ruskin University,
and Morag Styles (who is well-known to NATE
members), Professor (now Emeritus) in Children’s
Literature at the University of Cambridge.
It’s perhaps best described as an illustrated survey of
an art form – partly about history, partly about the crafts
of illustration, writing and book-making, partly about
publishing, and partly about reading and education. The
introduction defines the picturebook form – making
the crucial distinction between an ‘illustrated book’
and a ‘picturebook’. In the latter, ‘words and pictures
combine in varying ratios to deliver the overall meaning,
complementing, teasing and often contradicting each other’
– as distinct from the illustrated book, in which ‘the
images enhance and augment the text but are not essential
to its understanding’. The rest of the book systematically
explores the various facets of this form.
Chapter 1, A Brief History of the Picturebook,
contextualises picturebooks within the broader form of
‘pictorial storytelling’ – think Neolithic cave paintings!
– but focuses on printed books from the 15th century
onwards, from Leonardo and Gutenburg in the
Renaissance to Jon Klassen, Isabelle Arsenault, Sydney
Smith and the contemporary Chinese picturebook
revolution in the 21st century. It takes in, along the way,
William Blake, Thomas Bewick, Heinrich Hoffman (Der
Struwwelpeter), Edward Lear, Randolph Caldecott (‘the
father of the picturebook’), Walter Crane, Kate Greenaway,
John Tenniel, Arthur Rackham, Jean de Brunhoff (Babar),
Edward Ardizzone, Puffin Picture Books, Paul Rand,
Antonio Frasconi (See and Say), Andre Francois, Charles
Keeping, Raymond Briggs, John Burningham, Richard
Scarry, Judith Kerr, Miroslav Sasek, Maurice Sendak,
Tomi Ungerer, Anthony Browne, Julia McRae, David
McKee, Janet Ahlberg, Shaun Tan – and many others.
Reviews and Columns 
(And if that hasn’t whetted your appetite, it’s hard to
know what would.)
Chapter 2 explores The Picturebook Maker’s Art,
examining the relationship between art and illustration.
Locating the topic within broader questions about the
relationship between ‘art’ and ‘design’, this chapter
offers an overview of debates about whether the
picturebook ‘counts’ as art, and asks what the specialist
art of the picturebook consists of, and how the skills are
acquired, focusing especially on debates about visual
literacy and communication in the 20th century. The
chapter concludes with fascinating case studies of the
work of Jon Klassen, Sydney Smith, Beatrice Alemagna,
and two Chinese illustrators Ya-Ling Hueng and Ye-
seul Cho – and such case studies conclude most of the
remaining chapters in the book.
Chapter 3, The Picturebook and the Child, focuses on the
relationship between the child and the book, returning
to issues of visual literacy and communication but from
the reader’s perspective, whilst Chapter 4, Word and Image,
Word as Image, gives an overview of the theory of the
picturebook – the ways in which words and images
interrelate in this hybrid form – drawing on key theorists
in children’s reading such as Margaret Meek, William
Moebius and Maria Nikolajeva. There’s also a survey of
some of the different forms this interrelationship has
taken, including wordless books and graphic novels.
Chapter 5, Suitable for Children?, explores treatments
of violence, love and sex, death and sadness, and
inhumanity in picturebooks. Chapter 6, Print and
Process: The Shock of the Old, explores some of the
historical art processes of the picturebook – relief
printing, etching, lithograohy, monotype, and digital
printmaking. Chapter 7 deals with the explosion in
Non-Fiction picturebooks. The final chapter gives an
overview of The Children’s Publishing Industry.
This wonderful book certainly does not shy away
from history and theory, but nevertheless succeeds
completely in being both a beautiful and fascinating read
for the layperson and a key contribution to the literature
on children’s books – essential for teacher education,
and a treat for English teachers and children’s literature
enthusiasts. Highly recommended.
Gary Snapper
Editor, Teaching English
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 71
Book Box
Cloud Boy
Marcia Williams
Walker, 2019, £6.99
Cloud Boy is a heart-warming story of friendship and
loss, an engrossing tale of hope and sadness, a depiction
of a child’s ability to demonstrate resilience in the face
of grief.
Written in the form of a diary, the novel tells us the
story of Angie Moon and her best friend and almost-
twin, Harry Christmas. When Harry’s persistent
headaches turn out to be far more serious than the pair
could ever have imagined, their friendship is put to its
biggest test yet. Harry is an avid cloud collector (which
means he keeps a diary noting the type and name of
each cloud he sees) and Angie likes to draw them. The
pair are looking forward to enjoying their brand new
tree house retreat when Harry’s health takes a turn for
the worse.
Marcia Williams’ ability to capture the voice of a
child is something that I first encountered in another
of my favourite reads, Flossie Albright’s War Diary, and
Cloud Boy offers a similarly believable character in
Angie Moon. The protagonist leads her reader on an
emotional journey as she deals with the ups and downs
of friendship, experiencing anger, fear, love and joy in
equal measure.
Angie’s diary is interspersed with letters written by
her Grandmother throughout her time as a prisoner
of the Japanese in Changi Prison, Singapore, during
World War 2. The letters provide Angie and Harry with
a welcome distraction and introduce young readers to
an often untold story of life during the war. Grandma’s
letters detail the conditions in Changi Prison and
highlight how the prisoners fought boredom by creating
their own Girl Guide group and secretly crafting a quilt
made from scraps. I found myself eager to flick to the
additional information at the back of the book, which
details the true events that inspired this portion of the
tale. At first, while they are interesting, the letters seem
to be a random interruption to the flow of the story but
as the events unfold, Grandma’s letters take on more
and more relevance to Angie’s problems and the two
stories are woven together beautifully. The historical
angle provides a depth to the story that would appeal
to readers of all ages and makes the book a real page-
turner.
Cloud Boy is a lively narrative that I read in one sitting
and look forward to recommending to young readers.
The book deals with highly sensitive issues written in
a form that is very accessible to children, and is often
very humorous. I loved details such as the noting of the
current cloud formations in each diary entry that seem
to mirror Angie’s emotions.
‘I may as well tell you straight away that I hate writing!’
is Angie’s opening line. Well, I’m glad that the young
protagonist continued with her efforts, resulting in a
charming book that will stay with you long after you’ve
read it.
Sarah Jarman
Holden Clough Primary School
72 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
I Cosmo
Charlie Sorosiak
Nosy Crow 2019, £6.99
I suspect many of us have been in a situation or two
like that experienced by Cosmo and his family in the
opening of this book. We’ve been late for our children’s
school play, or missed the beginning of a special event
because of work, and had to face the wrath of our
partner and the disappointment of the rest of the family
as a result. What does a dog do in these situations? How
can he keep the peace when his family is falling apart?
How can he stop it happening? Such are the problems
faced by Cosmo, the narrator of this story.
Cosmo is an aging, slightly arthritic golden retriever.
He is a year older than his beloved 12-year-old boy Max.
Cosmo is close to all the members of his family but
particularly to Max. They have grown up together and
are inseparable. His family, to whom he is also devoted,
is struggling and are at breaking point. The adults
constantly bicker and the children, Max and Emmaline,
are bewildered and scared about what might happen
to them if their parents separate. Max, in particular,
is very anxious about being torn from his best friend
Cosmo who, in turn, sees it as his duty to keep the
family together.
The dog’s solution is to reinvent himself, courtesy of
Max’s dog-trainer uncle, into the dancer he has always
dreamed of being. He aims, despite his rickety joints and
painful back, to win the prize of a star role in a film and
thus make his family proud and happy to be together. In
this often amusing but sometimes heart-wrenching tale,
things do not work out exactly as Cosmo would like.
Parents separate and children cry, but, in the process,
they discover different forms a love and ways of living
where they are happy together, yet apart.
The themes of this book, and possibly the
circumstances, will be familiar to many 8–12 year olds at
whom this book is pitched. However, it is by no means
an easy read and the language and vocabulary may
well stretch some younger readers. It is, in many ways,
quite sophisticated and philosophical, which may be a
bit off-putting for the more immature reader. However,
for those who stick with it, I Cosmo is an intelligent,
moving, poignant view of family life – from a loveable
dog’s point of view.
Barbara Conridge
NATE Primary Committee

The Space We’re In
Katya Balen
Illustrated by Laura Carlin
Bloomsbury 2019, £10.99
Frank is a much loved ten-year-old who is obsessed
by codes and numbers. (The chapters of his story are
linked together by counting days to and from major
events.) He is the brother of Max, an autistic five-year-
old, whose special needs dominate his life and that of
his family. Frank loves his brother, and understands
his moods and worries, but is frustrated by the way his
own life is impacted, though he often patiently deals
with the problems. But he also seethes with some of
the injustices of his life, jealous of the constant cleaving
of Max to his mother, and how his desires cannot be
fulfilled because Max can’t cope. He is sometimes
guiltily disloyal, for example, laughing and using ‘bad
words’ about Max with older boys in the park.
The book opens with the countdown to Max’s
starting at special school as Frank begins in Year Six.
On a dramatic first day of the new school term, Frank
has an accident and a hospital visit, and spends the day
with his mother, enjoying the attention despite the pain
of a broken arm. He also basks in the adulation of his
school mates, until one of them, Noah, ruins it with
cruel references and mimicking of Max, exacerbating
the guilt still rumbling after the park incident.
Life continues with a variety of ups and downs.
Max makes progress at school. Frank’s friends, and the
next-door-neighbour, Neil and his dog, provide him
with understanding and support. He has a great day
just before half term on the Year Six trip to the Natural
History Museum.
And then there is an unbearable tragedy – which
actually brought tears to my eyes, as despite some
earlier indications in the story, I had not foreseen it.
The family struggles to cope. Will there be any light at
the end of the tunnel?
Katya Balen, who is co-director of Mainspring
Arts, a not-for-profit organization that supports
neurodivergent and autistic people, and whose Master’s
degree researched the impact of stories on autistic
children, has used her expert knowledge to write a novel
that is both heart-warming and heart-rending. It shows
deep insight into the dilemmas and triumphs of families
that have to cope with children with special needs and
with tragic events. Balen gets into the mind of a 10-year-
old boy and gives a moving and realistic portrayal of
his passions, thoughts, feelings and struggles with a
complicated and difficult life. A moving and inspiring
read.
Lana Boztas
Reviews and Columns 
The Wild Book
Juan Villoro
Hope Road 2019, £8.99
This is a beautifully written book by one of Mexico’s
most prolific authors. Just translated into English, it
was first published in Mexico in 2008, and is a book
which is all about reading – reading to solve problems
and just for enjoyment. Villoro creates a fascination
about books and the stories they can tell, all cleverly
interwoven within the plot.
Juan is a 13-year-old boy whose parents are
separating. His father has gone off to Paris to build a
bridge, while his mum struggles to cope, especially
when she hears about his father’s girlfriend. She needs
time to heal herself, so whilst his sister Carmen goes
to live with friends, Juan is packed off to live with his
eccentric uncle Tito, who lives with his three cats and
a home filled to the brim with books, and has some
peculiar habits. One is drinking lapsang tea; another is
going to the loo numerous times.
Despite initial reservations about his Uncle, Juan
soon enjoys spending time pouring himself over the
vast qualities of books his uncle has to offer. What is
magical is that the books in Uncle Tito’s house have
lives of their own: they constantly move whenever and
wherever they want, and stories change depending who
is reading them.
The one book that has never been read is the ‘Wild
Book’ that has managed to remain hidden from Uncle
Tito. This book will choose who will be able to read
it. Tito is thrilled about Juan’s visit because Juan, it
becomes clear, has a special power when it comes to
books, and Tito hopes he can find this elusive ‘Wild
Book’.
Juan soon befriends a young girl at the local
pharmacy, where he has arranged to use their phone
to keep in contact with his mum. Catalina and Juan
soon start sharing their love of reading with adventures
that take them both by surprise. Eventually, Carmen
also comes to stay, along with her menagerie of stuffed
animals, which, in this magical house, come to life at
various times.
As the summer draws to the end, the hunt becomes
more frantic. Will Juan and Catalina be able to find the
book before they all have to return home?
This book has a magical quality about it and reminds
me of good old classics like The Magician’s Nephew or
The Firework-Maker’s Daughter. It’s certainly full of
interesting antidotes and phrases and above all captures
and excites a love of reading - which surely can’t be bad!
Jo Robinson
NATE Primary Committee
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 73
Book Box
A Postcard to Ollis
Ingunn Thon
Wacky Bee 2019, £6.99
A Postcard to Ollis is a truly delightful book published
by the independent publishers Wacky Bee, who pride
themselves on being ‘inclusive and diverse’, and for
whom representation is a watchword. One of their
specialities is books in translation: this one is translated
from Norwegian, written by Ingunn Thon, a script-
writer and puppeteer for the Norwegian Broadcasting
Corporation, and beautifully illustrated by Nora Brech.
Ollis Haalsen is 10 years old. Her full name is Oda
Lise Luise Ingrid Sonja, but she’s known by the initials
of those names – each one the name of an inspirational
woman from Norwegian history. She lives, in a village
near mountains and forests, with her mother, Elisabeth,
her five-month-old brother Ian, and her recently
arrived step-father Einar, the father of Ian. She’s bright,
and she wants to be an inventor. Meanwhile, though,
she is dealing with the fallout from the arrival of Einar
– who she doesn’t like – and baby Ian.
Her escape from all this is her best friend, the fearless
Gro. And comfort is also found in the family dogs, Micro
and Macro. Somewhere in the background is Ollis’s real
father, Borgepa, who she’s never lived with – but who,
she tells Gro, she goes to stay with in the holidays.
Exploring on their bikes in the forest one day, having
managed to get past the frightening Goat of Christmas
Past on the nearby farm, they stumble across an
abandoned yellow postbox in which they find a postcard
mysteriously addressed to Ollis: ‘Hi Ollis. It’s me. Happy
Birthday. I love you.’
Things move quickly from here, and the mystery
deepens. Who sent the postcard and why does it have
the same symbol on it as an old photo in Ollis’s desk?
Who exactly is Borgny Klokk and why is her house
in the forest full of undelivered letters? What exactly
is Ollis’s relationship with her father, Borgepa? Less
mysteriously, why does Ollis feel a fog in her chest when
she is around her mother and Einar? What happened to
the old days when it was just Ollis and her mum together
and they got on so well? And what happens when you lie
to your best friend?
This is a tremendously engaging read – a fun,
intriguing and well-written adventure story which is
also a very moving narrative about mothers, fathers,
daughters and families. You may shed a tear: I certainly
did.
Gary Snapper
Editor, Teaching English
74 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
The Clockwork Crow
Catherine Fisher
Firefly Press 2018, £6.99
Catherine Fisher is a well-established author of books
for children and teenagers. She was awarded the Times
Children’s Book of the Year prize for Incarceron and she
has written many other books including The Crystal
Stair, two trilogies (Snow-Walker and Oracle) and the
Chronoptika series. A mistress of creepy fantasy, her two
novels for younger readers, The Clockwork Crow and The
Velvet Fox, do not disappoint.
On the way to her new home from St Mary’s
orphanage, where she has lived since the death of her
parents, Seren meets a strange and anxious man at the
station and, much to her surprise, ends up in possession
of a mysterious newspaper parcel. When she arrives
at Plas-y-Fran, her new home in the wilds of Wales,
Seren’s dreams of a perfect future with her new family
quickly disappear as she realizes that Plas-y-Fran is a
cold and secretive place. Captain Jones and Lady Mair,
the owners of the house, cannot bear to live there after
the disappearance of their son, Tomos, and Seren is left
to the dubious mercies of Mrs Villiers the housekeeper.
Left to her own devices, Seren investigates the
contents of the parcel and discovers it contains all the
parts needed to make the Clockwork Crow. The crow
is a grumpy and quick-tempered bird who claims to be
a bewitched prince. During her adventures with this
mysterious mechanical creature, Seren comes across
a dusty nursery that hasn’t been occupied for some
time. Surely this is Tomos’s room. She must unravel
the mystery of his absence. Maybe the secret lies in the
collection of snow globes left in the attic. With the help
of the Clockwork Crow, Seren manages to rescue Tomos
from the disturbing Fair family, who live on a parallel
plane at Plas-y-Fran.
This is an atmospheric and satisfyingly mysterious
Victorian Christmas story that we would recommend
for readers aged 9-11.
Bethia Green
(Year 5, All Saints Primary School)
Andrew Green
(Brunel University)

Monster
Michael Grant
Electric Monkey 2017, £7.99
To start to tell the back-story of a book series running to
six volumes and over 3000 pages is a bit of a tall order
– but here goes. A large meteorite crashes into southern
California, absorbing the town of San Perdido into an
enormous impenetrable dome, along with a twenty
mile stretch of surrounding countryside. Everyone
over the age of fourteen gets ejected from the bubble,
leaving the remaining youngsters to wage a Lord of the
Flies-style war against each other. And, to make matters
worse, they have acquired superhuman powers in the
process. Phew.
Monster is the first book in the follow-up series,
and begins with the dome being blasted open, and the
surviving occupants either being killed or slipping
back into the real world. Unfortunately, the problems
for Earth have not gone away as further fragments of
meteorite are timed to arrive from the depths of space,
triggering massive changes in anyone who chooses to
swallow any of the rock. It is left to Shade Darby and
various other survivors to lead the fight against the
resultant evil in a swirling, action-packed battle which
sweeps across western U.S.A.
The plot hammers along at break-neck speed, and
there is rarely a dull moment. The action is high-
octane stuff, with lots of blood and gore flying around,
as well as the occasional limb. Some of the set-piece
confrontations are brilliantly written, the escape from
the secret laboratory and the battle on the Golden Gate
bridge being especially exciting. There is an escalating
sense of tension as the various strands of plot lead to the
final battle on the San Francisco waterfront. Excellent
stuff.
One interesting premise is the way that the
superpowers of the various protagonists are linked to
their actual personality. Of particular note is Cruz, a
transgender character who has spent their life trying
not to be noticed and who consequently develops the
power of invisibility. Others have these links developed
equally well, although perhaps the toddler who is
always putting things into his mouth and who turns
into a variation on the very hungry caterpillar takes the
story dangerously close to farcical.
Inevitably in a book of this kind there has to be a
major suspension of disbelief. Some of the science
seems highly unlikely (being able to track a small piece
of meteorite from the orbit of Jupiter to a particular
part of a particular field in Nebraska being a case in
point). The characterisation is also at times a little
cursory, perhaps not surprising given the break-neck
speed of the plot. For example, we are told within half
a page of meeting Justin that he is brilliant, talented,
sociopathic, maladjusted, a predator and utterly devoid
of a moral centre. He’s a villain, by the way.
Apart from the reservations above, I thoroughly
enjoyed Monster. It is very much an action-fest, but the
basic premise is so intriguing that that can be forgiven.
It has its young-adult target market very much in mind,
but is nonetheless recommended.
Phil Kendall
Reviews and Columns 
Lightning Chase Me Home
Amber Lee Dodd
Scholastic 2019, £6.99
This second novel by Dodd focuses on Amelia Hester
Macleod, named after two lady explorers. She lives with
her father and grandfather on an imaginary Scottish
island, her parents having separated 711 days (we are
told by the protagonist) before the novel begins. Amelia
has previously been home-educated by her mother,
having been dismissed as ‘unteachable’ because of her
dyslexia. Now that her mother has left the family home,
Amelia has to attend an academy on another island as
her home education cannot continue.
This is a coming of age novel in which the protagonist
encounters a new school where she knows no-one;
new pupils, including the class bully; a father who is
struggling to cope with his own emotions with none
left over for comforting his daughter; a grandfather
suffering from dementia; and two rather strange
neighbours of whom Amelia is afraid. Into this mix is
thrown some myth and magic to create a somewhat
unsettled and chaotic world. Its placement in the
Scottish islands lends it atmosphere. The plot would not
have worked in an inner city where the myths are urban
and the only magic how fast something disappears if
not left secure!
Although the protagonist is 11 when the novel begins
and 12 at its end, it is more suited to KS2 readers in
its style than the KS3 readers the age might suggest.
Children tend to read above their age level anyway but
also there is perhaps not enough grit in the narrative to
engage the KS3 reader. Its tone is light and humorous
which creates some difficulty for the author when
she wants to introduce darker themes. It sometimes
sits uncomfortably between comedy and issues-based
writing, inhabiting neither fully. This is a shame, as there
is a lot in the narrative that will appeal to readers - not
only those suffering similar problems with friendships
and family life but also those wanting a good adventure
story.
Amelia Hester Macleod does manage to face up to
her fears and, in doing so, discovers that they can be
overcome. “The only thing we have to fear is...fear itself”, as
Franklin D Roosevelt said.
Lorna Cowburn
Royal Masonic School
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 75
Book Box
Children of Blood and Bone
Tomi Adeyemi
Macmillan 2019, £12.99
This is a YA fantasy novel by a Nigerian-American
writer who uses her African roots to create a world of
magic and spirituality which – although timeless in its
portrayal of oppression – is rooted in the myths and
legends of her parents’ homeland.
The setting of the book is Orisha – a land where
the Magic that is at the core of the narrative has, over
centuries, resided in the hands of 10 Magi Clans who are
part of a complex and elaborate network wherein each
clan has its own deity and a title that indicates its power
(‘Reaper’, ‘Burner’, ‘Connector’, etc). Unfortunately for
the Magi, the magic that has always been a part of each
clan’s birthright is seen, by King Saran, as a threat and
he has ruthlessly set about destroying every sign of it in
his realm so that, by the start of the book, it has been
almost totally suppressed and outlawed.
The novel has echoes of Lord of the Rings as it works
its way through a variety of exotic scenarios during
the quest undertaken by the four central characters
to overcome the forces of Saran and to re-invest the
Magi Clans with their magical powers. Two of these
protagonists are Zelie and Tzain – the offspring of a
Magi Reaper – and the other two are Amari and Inan –
the son and daughter of the King. The reader views the
narrative through the consecutive, first person accounts
of three of these characters (it’s never made clear
why Tzain doesn’t have a voice) and so has an insight
into the conflict’s origins from different perspectives
including the reasons for Saran’s antipathy to Magic.
So – although there are the usual tensions between
good and evil - there is a degree of nuance at play that
tends to cloud the moral certainties that often come
with more traditional fantasy tales. This complexity is
enhanced through the developing sexual chemistry in
the relationships between the two sets of ‘rival’ siblings.
The various battle scenes are spectacularly
portrayed with an obvious eye to a future film version
(the sudden deaths of a number of characters are mildly
reminiscent of A Game of Thrones) and the reader is
carried along at a galloping pace although, at times,
the writing would have benefited from a rather more
rigorous editing process as it sometimes tends to labour
over a descriptive passage or give too much time to
certain episodes. This can result in a lack of clarity or
coherence particularly in such a complicated narrative.
This issue of over-writing is also evident in the gushing
tones of the four-page list of ‘acknowledgements’ at the
end of the book.
There is much to be admired in the ambitious scope
and scale of the novel but, with its 531 pages, it is not
a book to recommend to a reluctant – or even a non-
avid – reader. It is not helped by the frustrating – almost
inevitable – fact that it is the first part of a trilogy and
many will find the lack of resolution at the end of such
a mammoth read deeply unsatisfying. If asked if I will
read the second book in the series – I would have to say
that I’m not sure.
John Hickman
76 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
Joe Quinn’s Poltergeist
David Almond
Illustrated by Dave McKean
Walker Books 2019, £10.99
Am I attracted to weird books? Last time it was Travels
in the Underworld of Orpheus Black. Now it’s Joe Quinn’s
Poltergeist. It wasn’t the title, honest, it was the fact that
it was a graphic novel written by David Almond. But it
lives up to its title, and it is weird.
The story is set in an ordinary town in the North East
as so many of Almond’s books are. Davie is the central
character who is curious to see if Joe Quinn is telling
the truth about the poltergeist in his house. Of course
he is. No sooner has Davie sat down to chip butties than
slices of bread and chips start flying about.
Davie comes from a Catholic family, it seems, and
the other-worldly Mrs Quinn (‘There is a disturbance.
We’re passing through some kind of vortex.’) wonders if the
local priest might help. It so happens that Davie bumps
into the new young priest from Ireland, Father Kelly,
a chain smoker with unconventional beliefs who then
gets involved with the poltergeist and the Quinn family.
It’s difficult to describe where the story goes after
this so I won’t try. Suffice to say there’s a lot going on in
Davie’s head. ‘I feel the thinness of me, the littleness of
me, and the vastness and the weirdness of me. I become
the darkness all around, I become the night.’ His
feelings are given further depth through his memories
of his younger sister who died some years ago.
There are a few moments of humour. ‘I’m starting to
believe in things I shouldn’t,’ says Davie. ‘Protestantism?’
says Father Kelly. ‘No, Father.’ ‘Atheism?’ ‘No, Father.’ ‘It’s
never Sunderland?’ ‘No, Father.’ ‘Well that all seems pretty
safe. Your seat in Heaven is assured.’
I’m not sure of the intended audience. Issues of life,
death, religion and the universe will be of interest to
many a young reader but the approach is so off-beat that
it’s hard to see quite who it will appeal to. However, its
brilliant illustrations will appeal to many, mainly male,
readers so perhaps it’s worth giving it to that particular
student you know: possibly a reluctant reader or the one
who’s interested in ghosts – or graphic design.
Trevor Millum

The Gifted, the Talented and Me
William Sutcliffe
Bloomsbury 2019, £7.99
The basic premise of this novel is that a family – on
suddenly becoming rich – decide to move to London
where the parents send their two sons and daughter to
a fee-paying school for the gifted and talented. Freya,
the 7-year-old daughter and Ethan, the 17-year-old son,
relish this opportunity but the first-person narrator Sam
who is in Yr10, sees himself as ‘normal’: ungifted and
untalented. He has no desire to attend such a school and
the reader has a continual insight into his experiences,
his thoughts and his angst as he tries to come to terms
with his new life.
Leaving aside the morality of a private education –
let alone one with a G&T tag – this scenario has obvious
story-telling potential particularly when its intention
is to be amusing. Indeed, there are echoes of Adrian
Mole in much of the writing and there are attempts
to deal with issues of belonging, sexual awakening and
the notion of real friendship. Much of the dialogue,
involving the adolescents in the text, is sharp and
engaging as is Sam’s interior monologue which is often
poignantly comedic.
However, the characterisation of the adults
is superficial to the point of caricature. The best
comedy writing often has its roots in a version of
reality – particularly when dealing with some of the
aforementioned issues – but here it is impossible to find
genuine credibility in any of the adult characters or in
the very existence of the school that provides the back-
drop for most of the action. Waugh could get away with
this in Decline and Fall, but, unfortunately, the words put
in the mouths of the mother and the teachers in The
Gifted, The Talented and Me fall far short of either reality
or satire and will simply grate with many readers. A
couple of examples will help to explain this criticism:
the form tutor who says: ‘your parents must have told
you about our pedagogical ethos. We have a child-centred,
non-hierarchical framework here’; and the drama teacher
who leaves a pupil with the comment ‘I’ll look forward
to seeing you bring to life some of your internal conflicts in
my next lesson. There is a respectful and appropriate way
to physicalise even the darkest thoughts. Harnessing inner
trauma is key to releasing your full potential’. These are just
two of many and, for me, they undermine the humour
and reduce some characters to the one-dimensional.
In general I found the novel underwhelming and, at
times, annoying – but this could simply be the musings
of an out-of-touch, retired teacher. I would be very
interested to hear the views of typical Year 10 students
who may find the whole thing hilarious.
John Hickman
Reviews and Columns 
A Cake for the Gestapo
Jacqueline King
Zuntold 2019, £7.99
Jersey, 1940. Joe Le Carin, Spinner Braye, Ginger Martin
and Clem Percheron are 12- and 13-year old kids trying
to conduct their childhoods against the background of
war. There are the usual childhood challenges – like
how to deal with school bully Percy du Brin, and how
to manage Joe’s dysfunctional parents. But there’s also
Ginger’s dad and Clem’s brother away fighting with the
British army, the German planes flying overhead each
night, the noise of explosions and the view of fires on
the French coast, the blackout routine every night, and
the growing fear of a German invasion. Not to mention
all the little boats going to rescue British soldiers from
St Malo – and the news that France has fallen to the
Germans.
The kids form a ‘Resistance Club’ and plan how they
will ‘dent enemy morale’ if the Germans invade. A few
days later, there’s a German bombing raid. Then the
soldiers land. Suddenly life changes dramatically for the
tight-knit community on the island. But Joe, Spinner,
Ginger and Clem haven’t given up on their resistance
plan.
A Cake for the Gestapo tells the relatively little-
known story of the Nazi occupation of the Channel
Islands from the perspective of these four children who
collectively represent the camaraderie, the bravery –
and sometimes the foolhardiness – of the real islanders
who had to face this threat. Author and former teacher
Jacqueline King, who grew up on Jersey and learnt
the history of the Nazi occupation of the island first-
hand from those who had experienced it, draws on the
real-life accounts of the islanders, and, as she says in
the acknowledgements, on her reading of pretty much
everything written about the occupation of Jersey.
At the end, there’s an ‘afterword’ in which King
explains her motives for writing the book: she found
that many on the mainland knew nothing of the
fact that a part of Britain had been occupied by the
Germans, and that the children she’d told about it were
fascinated by what it would have been like to live under
occupation. The afterword also explains something
of how she moulded source material into fictional
narrative, and, last but not least, acknowledges that she
had to negotiate certain sensitivities: ‘things happened
which people wanted to forget, and still do’.
King paints an atmospheric, absorbing and
occasionally extremely dramatic picture of a traumatic
but under-represented moment in British history. In
many ways it’s old-fashioned ‘kids in wartime’ adventure
storytelling, rich in detail and characterisation – but
with some very dark and dangerous moments. It’s
certain to appeal to keen KS2 and KS3 readers.
Gary Snapper
Editor, Teaching English
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 77
Book Box

Colour Me In A Strange Kind of Brave

By Lydia Ruffles Sarah Moore Fitzgerald
Hodder & Stoughton 2018, £7.99 Orion 2019, £7.99

Colour Me In is Lydia Ruffle’s second novel following
the success of The Taste of Blue Light and it reintroduces
the reader to a character who is briefly mentioned in
her debut novel. We follow Arlo Thomas, a 19-year-old
actor, who flees to the other side of the world following
a tragedy. He takes with him only a sketchbook full
of maps and embarks on a journey where he explores
derelict buildings in a beautifully described Japan,
although the county is never formally named as such.
From the first sentence, ‘Memories of the little forest at the
bottom of the swimming pool flood Arlo the second the plane
flings its great bulk into the sky’, you know that you are in
safe hands and that you can let the rich description and
imagery wash over you. It is through this deep and slow
unravelling and exploration that the novel opens up and
gives you a real insight into Arlo and his inner turmoil.
This is a novel which depicts grief, mental illness,
toxic masculinity and friendship in beautiful and heart-
breaking detail. The narrative is presented in the third
person and so the reader is always held an arm’s length
away from our protagonist. However, this only ever
serves to make us feel more of a connection with him and
affords us the chance to witness the importance of the
relationships that he has with others. At the start of the
novel in London, the friendship between Arlo and Luke
feels genuinely real and it is rare to see a heterosexual
relationship between two young men presented in such
a tender and loving way. Upon departing to get lost in
Japan, Arlo meets with Mizuki, a fellow traveller, and
we are afforded a window into Arlo’s thoughts through
their conversations. It is in this middle section of the
novel where Ruffles slowly and meticulously depicts the
complexity and depth of grief and mental illness. Her
description of a panic attack is vivid and disorientating:
‘When it hits, it’s as if a seatbelt comes undone and he
sails through shattered glass into a brick wall… Arlo can’t
breathe’. Equally, her depiction of the paralysing and
all-encompassing nature of depression is beautiful and
dark: ‘shadows and black weeds twisted through Arlo’s brain
and body, pinning him to his bed.’ This is a novel which
sweeps you up in the richness of its prose and dream
like depictions of labyrinthian cities but ultimately
exposes inner trauma.
Fundamentally, it is a novel about being young and
lost. The conceit of running away to find yourself is
not new but there is something original and refreshing
about the way that it is done here. The presentation of
Arlo as a young, broken man feels timely and explores
the notion of masculinity whether it be tender or toxic.
However, this is not a bleak or mawkish read; it is life
affirming and hopeful in outlook and an important
addition to contemporary young adult fiction.
Talk about grabbing the reader’s attention in the
opening paragraph: how about this first line? ‘Yesterday,
I killed a boy on Clanfedden Bridge and then I drove away.’
To quote my Year 9s: ‘made me want to read on.’ I was
instantly drawn in and could not put the book down,
reading it in one sitting.
The villain of the story, Jake McCormack, represents
one of the main themes in book. He has bullied and
tormented the people of Clanfedden, and the story
shows what happens when someone finally finds the
strength and courage to stand up to him. I really enjoyed
the mystery surrounding his character. He is a truly
unlikeable character – although not always believable.
Allie and Luca are the true heroes of the book,
demonstrating resilience, strength and the courage to
stand up to Jake the way they do. Other themes such
as friendship, love and loss are also explored through
these young protagonists without it ever getting too
deep for the reader. I really empathised with both of
these characters.
I particularly enjoyed the multiple narratives in this
book. This provided an element of mystery as I figured
out the connections between characters and events
from the various narrative threads. It really feels like
you’re getting the whole story. I also love a good twist
to a book and this one certainly has an unexpected one
that kept me guessing until the end.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading A Strange Kind of Brave
– an emotional, gripping book that I’ll definitely be
recommending to my students.
Michelle Shufflebottom
Ulverston Victoria High School

Tom Cranfield
Francis Coombe Academy

78 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22


Dear Evan Hansen – The Novel
Val Emmich
Penguin 2018, £7.99
Dear Evan Hansen expands upon the six-time Tony
Award-winning musical of the same name. It is told
from the perspectives of Evan Hansen, a teenage boy
with crippling anxiety who is struggling to be ‘part of
something’ and Connor Murphy, after his untimely
death.
This coming-of-age story deals with heavy topics
including suicide, grief, anxiety, depression, and acute
loneliness in a believable if slightly uncomfortable
way. Perhaps this is due to the majority of the book
being written from an extremely awkward teenager’s
perspective. The story takes us into the highly
medicated mind of Evan who is struggling with himself,
therapy and fitting in to the typical maelstrom of high
school. He is desperate to be noticed; until he is – and
then one lie becomes a complex rewriting of history
to help a family deal with their grief but also gives
Connor everything he has always wanted. That is until
everything inevitably implodes.
The characterisation of Evan is well executed and
his anxiety is portrayed honestly with the nuances that
make it distinct from depression clearly represented. It
is noteworthy to see this side of mental illness portrayed
as it is not written about as often or as well. The use
of text interaction between Evan and Jared his ’family
friend’ is also highly believable and injects a little well
needed humour into what is otherwise quite a heavy
storyline.
On the other hand the other characters were sadly
undeveloped. There were remnants of personalities
there and traits to enjoy within each character, but
they were nowhere near as well rounded as Evan and
unfortunately became more like stock characters
we have all seen before. This meant that as a reader
I started to disengage, especially as the character of
Connor, whose suicide the whole storyline hangs on,
is a rather confusing contradiction delivered in stages.
The few times he takes the reigns as narrator whilst
navigating the afterlife is intriguing and his dark
humour and brutal honesty when describing his current
situation and feelings about the storyline unfolding is
an effective foil to Evan’s overly apologetic struggle to
put his feelings into words. Without the advantage of
seeing the characters come to life on stage you can’t
help but feel there is more to them but we are not given
the insight.
The irony is neither Evan nor Connor can talk
about what they really need to when they really need
to; leading them both to take desperate measures with
dire consequences. The feeling of intense isolation
many young people suffer is very real and poignantly
presented, but the storyline is painfully obvious from
the beginning and really fizzles at the end. You find
yourself wanting more of a significant resolution but
it is definitely worth a read if only to offer insight into
teenage male anxiety, depression and the exhausting
daily battle of someone struggling with mental illness.
Katherine Burr
Cardinal Newman Schoo
Reviews and Columns 
White Rabbit Red Wolf
Thomas Pollock
Walker 2018, £7.99
White Rabbit Red Wolf is a fast-paced fall into the
bewildering warren of Peter Blankman’s life. Even the
surface layer of his existence is extraordinary – with a
highly respected Doctor for a mother, a twin sister with
a wildly protective temper, and of course he himself, a
Maths prodigy who measures probability of disaster at
every turn. However, things get even more twisted when
his mother is attacked and his twin goes missing. Peter
unfortunately ends up in the hands of an organisation
one would rather stay well away from.
The novel itself moves quickly, bouncing from one
plot twist to another with the reader left ricocheting
along the walls of Pollock’s imagination (along with his
protagonist). The ‘recoils’ that Peter experience cleverly
allow for flashbacks of increasingly unusual events
which lead to the night of Peter’s mother’s attack. The
cast of characters are curious, each with quirks of their
own. Pollock does not allow any less than interesting
figures to feature in his story, even minor ones. The real
conundrum is who from this cast can Peter really trust?
This is exacerbated by the protagonist’s anxiety, which
is palpable throughout the novel. Pollock exhibits an
intimate understanding of the struggles young people
face with mental health and illustrates the tumult with
tact and skill.
Our protagonist Peter is unique and atypical of
your traditional hero; nervous and shy whilst shiningly
academic, he navigates a world that he is in constant
fear of. Pollock is successful in capturing an authentic
teenage boy’s voice, cleverly veering away from typical
young adult character tropes. The treatment of the
twins’ relationship invites the reader into the warmth
and closeness the two share, whilst also holding Belle at
arm’s length to maintain the mystery and conflict Peter
faces about her.
Whilst the story begins with a relatively domestic
school life, the book’s genre is ambitious in its
exploration of different avenues of story-telling. Pollock
dips his pen into supernatural science, crime drama,
coming-of-age narrative and even a touch of romance.
This is a whirlwind for the reader and can at times be
described as disorientating; more than a couple times
the thread of the plot becomes almost too tangled, yet
it always seems to unknot before frustration sets in. A
rip roar of a ride that promises to continue catapulting
even when you think Peter has survived the many
crescendos of his adventure. Into the ‘white’ rabbit hole
the reader is compelled to go!
Avril Dowdeswell
Cardinal Newman School, Luton
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 79
Reviews of Books and Resources for Teachers
Texts for Teachers
From the Editor’s Desk:
The Art of Drama: Guides for GCSE
Literature (and beyond)
Following the excellent ‘Art of Poetry’ series, here are the first two
volumes in a new ‘Art of Drama’ series aimed at students working
at Grade 6 and above at GCSE.
The Art of Drama
Vol 1: An Inspector Calls
Neil Bowen, Neil Jones, Michael Meally,
Kathrine Mortimore
Peripeteia Press 2019, £12.99
The Art of Drama
Vol 2: Macbeth
Neil Bowen, Neil Jones, Michael Meally,
Kathrine Mortimore
Peripeteia Press 2019, £12.99
Anyone who is familiar with Neil Bowen’s ‘Art of
Poetry’ series, designed for GCSE and A Level English
Literature, will know what to expect from this new series
on drama: intelligent, enjoyable, accessible, well-written
and wide-ranging commentary on set texts, written
to engage students in critical thinking and to broaden
their view of the text in question. Aimed particularly
at challenging more able GCSE students, these books,
like the poetry ones, will also be useful for teachers –
partly because of the teaching ideas at the back, partly
as a source of accessible critical writing which might
be used as stimulus or models with students, and partly
as a reminder of some critical approaches to the texts
which could form the basis of a scheme of work and/or
individual lessons within a broader scheme.
The chief distinguishing feature of the books is
that, rather than provide yet another set of anodyne
study notes, they provide accessible, context-informed,
response-based critical essays which are designed to
‘provoke, stimulate and inform your own thinking’, as well
as to suggest a model of subtle, well-informed analytical
writing. Bowen and his co-authors stress that ‘our essays
were not written in timed examination conditions and are
not examples of what an exam board would expect from
80 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22
you in those conditions’, and that they are not intended
as exemplars intended to ‘close down your thinking and
encourage regurgitation.’ Rather, they are designed to
‘make you think again, perhaps even think differently’.
Each book begins with a section which locates the
text within the broader form of drama – emphasising
in particular the difference between the craft of the
novelist and the craft of the playwright, and exploring
the concept and various elements of stagecraft in some
detail – ranging across sets, costumes, props, lighting,
sound, movement, dialogue, and stage directions, and
making explicit the links between this perspective
and theatre studies. The theatricality of the plays is
emphasised throughout the book, too.
The next section explores the plays’ genres,
sketching in the background of detective narrative,
well-made play, political drama and social realism for
An Inspector Calls, and tragedy for Macbeth. At this point,
the Macbeth volume also contains short sections on key
themes and aspects of language. The central section of
each book consists of ‘critical commentaries on key scenes’
and ‘critical commentaries on characters’. The key scenes
sections do not attempt comprehensive coverage
but rather exemplar discussions of selected scenes.
Finally, there is a short list of ‘teaching and revision ideas’,
noteworthy because of its emphasis on active, creative
activities which seek to engage students in articulating
their responses by re-making, re-ordering, or re-
thinking the text in one way or another. The Inspector
volume also includes an activity on evaluating exemplar
exam answers, whilst the Macbeth volume has a short
section, too, on critical reception.
These books are characterised by an enjoyable and
accessible content, and enthusiastic and yet always
critical personal voice, and an engaging sense of debate
and discussion throughout. They are a very valuable
addition to the resources available for teaching and
studying these most venerable of GCSE texts.
Gary Snapper
Editor, Teaching English

Don’t Believe a Word:
The Surprising Truth
About Language
David Shariatmadari
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2019, £8.99
Popular linguistics books are undergoing a bit of a
renaissance at the moment and Don’t Believe a Word is
a welcome addition to the genre. David Shariatmadari
writes on language for The Guardian, has a background
in Linguistics and demonstrates a good eye for what
makes a language topic interesting for the lay reader.
Don’t Believe a Word is quite ambitious, as the author sets
out to ‘change the way you think about a fundamental daily
activity’ and one approach in doing so is to bust language
myths, be they hoary old tropes such as English being
a language in decline or the ‘etymological fallacy’ that
word meanings should always be true to their origins
(so ‘decimate’ should only ever mean ‘destroy 1 in 10’,
‘transpire’ to ‘breathe out’ and err… ‘treacle’ to mean
a ‘wild beast’). As the last example proves – in fact, as
all of them show – meanings change over time and just
because a word has its roots in one place doesn’t mean
that word can’t be planted in a new place and develop a
new life of its own.
By tracing the semantic changes behind ‘toilet’ (at
different times, a piece of cloth used to wrap items
of clothing, a cloth spread over a dressing table, the
dressing table itself, the act of using the dressing
table, the room the dressing table was in and then the
porcelain object we all sit on (unless you’re the Queen
and then it’s a golden lavatory) Shariatmadari shows
the routes words often take as they enter English and fit
to the uses we put them to. Drawing on Iris Murdoch’s
idea of language as a net, cast over the reality we can
all sense, he argues that words themselves do not have
ownership over meaning but act as symbols which we
as humans put to use in the ways that work for us. So,
going back to the etymological fallacy, just because a
word was once used to ‘mean’ one thing doesn’t mean it
still has to ‘mean’ the same thing now.
As you might imagine, arguments like this are
bound to rile those of a more prescriptive mindset,
and Shariatmadari challenges the worldview of the
language-is-going-to-the-dogs-brigade in Chapter One,
stating clearly that ‘We need not fear a breakdown in
communication. Our language will always be as flexible and
sophisticated as it has been up to now. Those who warn about
the deterioration of English haven’t learned about the history
of the language, and don’t understand the nature of their
complaints…’. While he’s not exactly the first to argue
this point – and it has become the default position of
most A Level English Language students in recent years
– he does make the argument very well and with plenty
of clear examples.
But Don’t Believe a Word is definitely more than just a
myth-buster about wrongheaded prescriptivism: there
are also excellent chapters on how we define (and often
argue about) dialects and languages, how we create and
interpret meanings at a level beyond semantics and
syntax (pragmatics, essentially), recent challenges to
Chomskyan theories of child language development
Reviews and Columns 
and the nature of human language compared to other
animal communication. As Shariatmadari says at the
end, ‘language is a subject that will never exhaust your
capacity for wonder’, and his book is an excellent way of
stoking that wonder and developing a clearer grasp of
how it all works.
Dan Clayton
English and Media Centre
Teaching Nineteenth
Century Literature:
An Essential Guide for
Secondary Teachers
Rachel Fenn and Anna McGlynn
David Fulton 2018, £19.99
This very welcome book is nothing if not topical. The
new National Curriculum has forced departments to
place a greater emphasis on 19th century literature
in order to prepare them for the compulsory analysis
of 19th century fiction and non-fiction in the GCSE
exam. However much we might disagree with this as
a curricular model, it’s clear that the 19th century now
needs to be a more significant formal presence in KS3
and KS4 English than it may have been in the past
(though let’s not forget that it has always been there
in various forms, and always recognised by English
teachers as a potentially rewarding topic.) The question
is – as, for instance, with Shakespeare – how can we
most effectively introduce students to 19th century
literature in a way that is enjoyable, rewarding and
accessible, whilst also bearing in mind the difficult work
that will be required at GCSE? In this book, Rachel Fenn
and Anna McGlynn give lots of good answers.
It has been widely recognised that one way of
helping students to deal with unseen 19th-century
texts at GCSE is to familiarise them with 19th century
context, and so the book starts by helpfully outlining
key aspects of Victorian context – politics, religion,
class and gender, etc – which might aid the teacher in
planning some coverage of these issues. There are then
very useful chapters on fiction and poetry at KS4 and
KS5, on teaching KS3, and on tackling long novels and
non-fiction. The book ends with a range of well-chosen
extracts for unseen practice.
Readers of Teaching English who saw Anna McGlynn’s
recent article on teaching neo-Victorian children’s
literature (material which forms the major part of the
chapter on KS3 in this book) will be aware that Fenn
and McGlynn’s approach is imaginative, enjoyable and
wide-ranging, with a welcome emphasis on humane
reading practices and response-focused activity, whilst
always keeping an eye on the eventual demands of the
GCSE exam.
This timely book is a must for every English department.
It will be especially welcome as an introductory guide
for newly qualified teachers, but most definitely contains
something for everyone.
Gary Snapper
Editor, Teaching English
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 81
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE
TEACHING OF ENGLISH SERIES
Co-published by Routledge and the National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE),
this series reflects NATE’s dedication to promoting standards of excellence in the teaching of English,
from early years through to university level.
W
W
NE
NE
New
THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH
TEACHING WORLDWIDE
Celebrating 50 Years from the
Dartmouth Conference
Edited by Andrew Goodwyn, Cal Durrant,
Wayne Sawyer, Lisa Scherff and Don Zancanella
Pb: 9781138452278: £32.99 £23.99
New
TEACHING ENGLISH
LANGUAGE 16-19
A Comprehensive Guide for Teachers
of AS an A Level English
Martin Illingworth and Nick Hall
Pb: 9781138579958: £23.99 £19.19
INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
ON THE TEACHING OF
LITERATURE IN SCHOOLS
Global Principles and Practices
Edited by Andrew Goodwyn, Cal Durrant, Louann
Reid and Lisa Scherff
Pb: 978113822721: £29.99 £23.99
STUDENTS, PLACES AND
IDENTITIES IN ENGLISH AND
THE ARTS
Creative Spaces in Education
Edited by David Stevens and Karen Lockney
Pb: 9781138694552: £29.99 £23.99
ENGLISH AND ITS TEACHERS
A History of Policy, Pedagogy and Practice
Simon Gibbons
Pb: 9781138948938: £29.99 £23.99
TEACHING ENGLISH
LITERATURE 16–19
An Essential Guide
Carol Atherton, Andrew Green and Gary Snapper
Pb: 9780415528238: £27.99 £22.39
TEACHING ENGLISH
LANGUAGE 16–19
A Comprehensive Guide for Teachers
of AS/A2 Level English Language
Martin Illingworth and Nick Hall
Pb: 9780415528252: £22.99 £18.39
TEACHING GRAMMAR,
STRUCTURE AND MEANING
Exploring Theory and Practice for Post-16
English Language Teachers
Marcello Giovanelli
Pb: 9780415709880: £27.99 £22.39
INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
ON TEACHING ENGLISH IN A
GLOBALISED WORLD
Edited by Andrew Goodwyn, Louann Reid
and Cal Durrant
Pb: 9780415504478: £29.99 £23.99
To discover the full series, or to order online,
please visit: www.routledge.com/series/NATE
www.nate.org.uk
RESEARCHING AND
TEACHING READING
Developing Pedagogy Through Critical Enquiry
Gabrielle Cliff Hodges
Pb: 9781138816558: £29.99 £23.99
CREATIVE APPROACHES TO
TEACHING GRAMMAR
Developing Your Students as Writers and Readers
Martin Illingworth and Nick Hall
Pb: 9781138819290: £23.99 £19.19
KNOWING ABOUT LANGUAGE
Linguistics and the Secondary English Classroom
Edited by Marcello Giovanelli and Dan Clayton
Pb: 9781138856233: £29.99 £23.99
TEACHING CARIBBEAN POETRY
Edited by Beverley Bryan and Morag Styles
Pb: 9780415640480: £25.99 £20.79
INTRODUCING TEACHERS’
WRITING GROUPS
Exploring the Theory and Practice
Jenifer Smith and Simon Wrigley
Pb: 9781138797437: £25.99 £20.79
Save 20% when you order online
at Routledge.com
using the offer code NATE
20% discount offer is only available on print titles ordered directly
from www.routledge.com, until 31st December 2020 and cannot be
combined with any other offer or discounts.
Media Studies: English in the News
Who’s the determiner?
Tom Rank surveys media coverage of English – in which Michael Gove
doesn’t know the difference between a preposition and a determiner,
her Majesty is accused of not knowing the Queen’s English, and
‘ignorance and laziness’ defeat the Apostrophe Protection Society.
During the last days of the 2019 UK
election campaign, when the Prime
Minister declined to take part in the
Channel 4 Leaders’ Debate on the climate,
the Conservative Party sent Michael
Gove instead. Challenged by a reporter,
he responded: ‘I am a leader.’ Reporter:
‘You’re not the leader, come on.’ Gove: ‘Let’s
not quibble over prepositions because
the proposition is the important thing.’
The nifty wordplay went down badly
with teachers, as this was the man who
mandated compulsory grammar tests for 11
year olds. Michael Rosen tweeted: Yes he has
got it ‘wrong’. He doesn’t know the difference
between a ‘preposition’ and a ‘determiner’. He
probably doesn’t need to know. And neither
do millions of primary school children. Year
6, you can study English at Oxford, write
leading articles for The Times and become
Secretary of State for Education without
knowing a determiner, but he’s determined
that you can’t.
Michael Gove’s grammar:
former education minister
is gonna rue the day he
used Nonstandard English
Our former leader’s language came under
the microscope again when he told Andrew
Neil on TV: That ain’t gonna happen… There
ain’t gonna be no second referendum. Emma
Moore, Professor of Sociolinguistics at
Sheffield, commented in The Conversation:
Sometimes Nonstandard English can be
the right way to speak – it communicates
a message quickly, efficiently and directly,
and it does so better than a Standard English
‘equivalent’ might. Contrasting this with the
heavy emphasis on Standard English in
the National Curriculum and GCSE, she
concluded: Gove’s use of nonstandard negative
constructions in speech not only exposes the
flexibility of grammatical variation and its rich
social meaning potentials, it also exposes the
flaws in his National Curriculum policy. In two
small statements about Brexit, Gove has been
hoisted by his own petard.
IF THE QUEEN CAN’T GET IT
RIGHT, WHAT HOPE IS THERE
FOR THE REST OF US?
Worse was to come. Jan Prebble wrote to
The Times complaining that in the Queen’s
Christmas message, Instead of the correct use
of ‘from’, she remarked: ‘The challenges many
people face today may be different to those
faced by my generation.’ If the Queen can’t get
it right, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Times leader writer Oliver Kamm
responded on Twitter: Dearie me. The Queen
does actually know how to speak English. I
assume our reader has gone through life
without thinking to check whether this
linguistic peeve is true. Others have their
peeves too, of course: Philip Pullman was
one of the more prominent critics calling for
calls for a boycott of Brexit 50p coin over
‘missing’ Oxford comma in the slogan ‘Peace,
prosperity and friendship with all nations’ as
the Guardian reported. Times Literary
Supplement editor Stig Abell wrote that,
while it was ‘not perhaps the only objection’ to
the Brexit-celebrating coin, ‘the lack of a
comma after ‘prosperity’ is killing me’.
How the internet is
changing language as
we know it (ikr lol)
In her new book Because Internet:
Understanding How Language Is Changing,
sociolinguist Gretchen McCulloch argues:
Internet writing is a distinct genre with its
own goals, and to accomplish those goals
successfully requires subtly tuned awareness
of the full spectrum of the language. Guardian
journalist Richard Godwin commented: In
the past it was only novelists, playwrights and
screenwriters who had to worry about how to
elicit emotional responses with their writing.
For the generation who have come of age on
the internet – the ‘full internet people’ in her
terminology – this is a fundamental skill. It’s
something you have to learn if you want to have
any kind of social life.
Reviews and Columns 
Why grammar tests are
not improving literacy
Not that new-fangled thinking has infected the
DfE. The TES reported in January that the
Standards and Testing Agency did not have
‘sufficient resource’ to look into ‘ridiculously hard’
SATs reading paper in 2016 which left 10-year-
olds in tears. A teacher said: If ever a test was set
up to prepare children to fail, this was it. Yet as an
article in the same publication by UCL linguist
Ian Cushing noted: Grammar tests are not
improving literacy. England may have shot up the
PISA rankings for reading, but the Key Stage 2
grammar tests are having a hugely negative impact
on writing, teaching approaches in primary and
on how we perceive spoken English. Undeterred,
Ofsted to fail ITT providers over non-phonics
reading, the TES announced in February.
Primary training providers to be deemed
inadequate if they also teach any other reading
method. Cushing’s own research led to the TES
headline: Teachers’ slang bans ‘likely to cause
long-term damage’. One school, he found, banned
the use of ‘Yorkshire verbs’ and gave Year 7 students
the role of ‘grammar police’. Quick, send in Leeds
University’s Survey of English Dialects to save
them Yorkshire verbs! Under the headline
Ferntickles or murfles? The Guardian reported
that the groundbreaking 1950s language survey
is to be revived, so somebody cares.
LAZINESS HAS WON’: APOSTROPHE
SOCIETY ADMITS ITS DEFEAT
The pedants’ pedant, as the Guardian put it, the
Apostrophe Protection Society has closed in disgust.
The barbarians have won. Chairman John
Richards said poignantly, At 96, I am cutting
back on my commitments. Linguistic barbarian
Rob Drummond shed only crocodile tears in
The Conversation: Where does this leave the rest
of us? If there is no APS, who is actually in charge
of apostrophes? How will we know how to use
them? Then he came clean: Far from indicating
a win for ignorance and laziness, this is a victory
for common sense and freedom.
Tom Rank
is an examiner, consultant and member
of NATE’s ICT committee
NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22 | 83
The Teacher Feature Reviews and Columns 

Anthony Cockerill
In this column, NATE invites one of its active members to reflect
on some of the things that have inspired them in life, literature and
English teaching. This term: Anthony Cockerill, Head of English at
Boroughbridge High School.
The Books?
• My favourite comfort read is Donna Tartt’s The Secret
History. This undoubtedly makes me sound odd,
given that it’s a book about murder and conspiracy,
but I love the evocation of that particular world.
• I usually have a large stack of non-fiction by my bed.
Currently, the stack includes Grayson Perry’s The
Descent of Man, Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia and Robert
MacFarlane’s The Wild Places. I can easily have several
non-fiction books on the go at the same time and
switch from one to the other, depending on my mood.
• I’ve always enjoyed travel writing. I’ve recently read
John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, which offers
an insight into the great man in his twilight years.
I’m also reading Paul Theroux’s Deep South, which is
characteristically well-observed.
• I enjoy twentieth-century American poetry, especially
Robert Lowell, William Stafford and Hart Crane. Yorkshire Dales

The Culture? The Spare Time?

• I enjoy listening to folk music, jazz, ambient electronica
and indie, as well as guitar-based music from the
1990s. I can’t get enough of Lord Huron right now.
• Give me a Wes Anderson film any day. The Royal
Tenenbaums is my favourite.
• Time for television is limited so I have to be
selective with what I watch, although I keep a list of
recommendations from people which I’ll hopefully
have time to get through at some point in the future.
I loved Stranger Things and as of yet, it shows no signs
of jumping the shark, which is promising.
The Royal Tenenbaums
• I play guitar and sing a little in York-based traditional
folk trio Steam Pigeon. We play music that traces the
early transatlantic influences that led to the blues,
country, jazz and rock and roll.
• I love hiking in the North York Moors and the
Yorkshire Dales. I enjoy camping trips to the Lake
District with my family.
• York has always been a great city for pubs and
continues to be a beacon for craft beer. I avail myself of
the opportunity to sample these beers whenever I can.
The Teaching?
• I’ve spent most of my career at Boroughbridge High
School in North Yorkshire, where opportunities for
professional growth have been abundant. Having
begun as a teacher of English, I began leading Media
Studies and then served as Acting Second in English.
I spent several years as Head of KS4 English before
becoming Head of Department in 2014.
• I enjoy blogging and writing about teaching English,
writing and the written word. I’d love to do much
more of this in the next phase of my career. It was a
privilege to be asked to lead a session based around
my work with film and creative writing at the 2019
NATE conference. This was such a brilliant event
to attend: amazingly generous people, inspirational
keynote speakers and extremely useful workshops.
• Through the years, I’ve been blessed with some amazing
colleagues and great students at Boroughbridge.
Like in all schools, I’m sure, there’s been some ups
and downs, but it really is a special place to work.

84 | NATE | Teaching English | Issue 22

 Why become a
NATE MEMBER?

“Through NATE I’ve met so many people who have inspired me, provided me with
an incredible support network and helped me with classroom resources”
ACCESS TO EXCLUSIVE RESOURCES
» NATE’s regular e-newsletter NATE NEWS - always brimming with useful links to essential news items, research and
events.
» IllumiNATE, NATE’s regular email publication, providing innovative and creative teaching ideas designed to broaden
your teaching repertoire and improve student engagement.
» Access to the NATE Members’ Area, which contains a comprehensive digital catalogue of all current and previous
magazines and journals, including Teaching English, English Drama Media, NATE Classroom, Primary Matters
and NATE’s prestigious research journal, English in Education.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOUR PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

» The opportunity to have your work promoted, shared and published within the wider English community through
our digital resources, magazines, research journal and conferences.
» Being represented and having a voice on national issues which will directly affect your practice –
a specialist, experienced voice which wouldn’t be heard without member support.
» The opportunity to network with the country’s leading practitioners in the teaching of English, and to be recognised
as a committed professional – a worthwhile addition to any teacher’s CV.
» Listing on the Membership Portal, allowing you to network with other NATE Members
» Voting rights for NATE committee posts and the chance to stand for these positions.

ACCESS TO DISCOUNTS
» A range of discounts on our publications and courses, including up to £100 off our Annual Conference.

BECOME A MEMBER NOW

For further details visit www.nate.org.uk/become-a-member or call 0330 333 5050
Membership can be paid by monthly or yearly direct debit
NATE Members can claim tax relief on their membership payment
 Inspirational
writing from EMC’s
Barbara Bleiman

Addressed to teachers, What Matters

in English Teaching gives an informed,
principled, sometimes unashamedly
polemical, account of English teaching
today, reflecting on and arguing
for a particular vision of the subject
– its pedagogies, practices and
curriculum content.
Drawing and expanding on Barbara
Bleiman’s thought-provoking and
highly influential blogs, this collection
addresses the most important
issues and concerns facing English
teachers, including:
• Versions of English
• Big Picture English
• Group work and dialogic learning
• Teaching the class novel
• What do we mean by
knowledge in English?
• Vocabulary
• Creativity and criticality – reading as a AVAILABLE APRIL!
writer, writing as a reader
• What’s important in teaching poetry
• The responsive English teacher.

See website for full details and sample pages:

www.englishandmedia.co.uk/publications