Reading

Extreme Stories from Our Earth

By Alan Parkinson   Most days go according to plan. Nothing out of the ordinary happens and they pass without incident. There is a Latin phrase, Carpe diem, which means to ‘seize the day’, but most days we let drift by ‘unseized’. Some people, however, do things differently, and their… Read More

Writing for different purposes: Brazil 2014

This summer Brazil will be hot news and not just for the tropical weather there for, in June, it hosts the 2014 FIFA World Cup and two years later will host the Olympic Games. How much do you, your friends or your family know about the… Read More

A New Reader: Call Me Drog

Call Me Drog is a refreshing new novel for the classroom and would work well with Lower Key Stage three classes. It is a different and absorbing book that will appeal to both boys and girls. The story is centred around and told… Read More

Read to Succeed!

  As English teachers we all know the benefits of reading. However, it can be more difficult persuading others in school of this. And I do not just mean the students! I’ve done some work helping to lead a county-wide working party focusing on developing reading cultures in… Read More

Wish you were…analysing language!

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 recent… Read More

How are you celebrating World Book Day?

Ask any parent what they most want from their children’s school and they will probably put two things at the top of their list. They will want their children to be happy and safe and they will want them to read fluently and widely.Now this World Book Day there will… Read More

The Horror Genre: Creating Atmosphere

by Naomi Hursthouse What is it about the horror genre that continues to grip teenage readers? Two hundred years ago the young Mary Shelley was so enthralled by the ghost stories she heard that her imagination gave birth to Frankenstein. And now, my students still flock to the horror section of… Read More

Writing and editing with Darren Shan

The idea for Cirque Du Freak popped into my head one day when I was sitting in a car, babysitting a young cousin who was asleep on the back seat. The question a writer gets asked the most is “Where do your… Read More

Fun with Foreshadowing

By Cathy MacPhail You know the kind of stories I love? The kind of stories that begin like this: We all arrived at the lakeside cottage, my friends and I, for a weekend of fun. The lake sparkled in the sun; we could hear the birds singing… Read More