gcse english

Here's a thought experiment: what current books will be read in the future? What movies and TV shows will they watch a century from now? What songs from 2015 will they listen to in 2215? I don’t mean this in an academic or archival sense; I'm talking about the works people pick up and enjoy on their own — the way Pride and Prejudice and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes still grip us despite being over a century old. Read More

What can be done in Year 9 to ease students into the new demands they will face? The Collins GCSE Core book includes a suggested scheme of work for the year which highlights three different phases over the school year. The Teacher’s Guide spells out a range of ideas, but I want to deal with elaborating on one from the first term in the scheme - ‘Building skills and sharing stories’ Read More

The re-introduction of the 19th century novel onto the GCSE English Literature syllabus is one of the greatest challenges for teachers today. This isn’t because we haven’t taught it before, or because we don’t believe that students will benefit from reading novels from the Literary canon. It is because, all students, of all abilities will now be tested on their knowledge of these novels in exam conditions. They will not only need to have read, understood and analysed these texts, but remember them well enough to refer to them, unaided, in the exam. As I see it, there are five key challenges facing teachers. Here are my ideas on how to overcome them. Read More

Here are our top tips on how to get your students engaged in nineteenth-century literature and excited for every lesson! Read More

The re-introduction of the 19th century novel onto the GCSE English Literature syllabus is one of the greatest challenges for teachers today. This isn’t because we haven’t taught it before, or because we don’t believe that students will benefit from reading novels from the Literary canon. Read More

By Robbie Gibbons   My dad, Alan Gibbons, was performing writing workshops in schools and community centres around the country. When I had time off from university I helped out. Part of the sessions involved ‘scaffolding’ a story with the kids. We would give them a step-by-step plot, but leave… Read More

Being able to comment on the effects of language choices is essential to achieving grade C and above in GCSE English. Nonetheless students often struggle with this, getting tangled up in knots listing any literary terms they can remember and forgetting that the foundation of all language is words. A… Read More

So what is this nebulous image that the student has disdained to divulge? Which elusive emotion is it that the reader is supposedly experiencing? And, indeed, yes, just what on earth is going on!? Such bland and unfocused ‘explanations’ as these could refer to any one of millions of evocative words or phrases whereas a well-targeted response will be specific to just one particular word or phrase and will outline one or more very precise ways in which this particular instance of the writer’s use of language may affect a reader. It might help students to answer such a question more directly, and astutely, if they firstly consider the various possible ways in which a writer’s use of language can affect a reader: Read More

Literacy is at the forefront of the educational agenda at the moment, with a clear focus in improving students’ levels of written and spoken English. With the reintroduction of SPAG marks at GCSE, there is also even more of an incentive for students to pick up (and learn to spell!)… Read More