Category: Pedagogy
Blogging Alchemy: Success in Secondary Student Blogging
I have set up a comprehensive student blogging platform for my classes. I have a blog for every class with a lesson stream that tracks and compiles the daily traffic of the classroom, I publish my …
Why should my students blog?
Two days ago the long-awaited installation of internet-connected devices landed in my underground classroom. The buzz was palpable. My students, unable to contain their enthusiasm, started to burble inchoate (and largely unwarranted) references to my …
Learn Through Making: The World’s Best Film Club
The London Nautical School has for the past 4 years had the privilege of participating in an international film making programme run by the French film archive the Cinematheque Francaise. This is a film learning …
Winning Hurts
Most of what I know about learning I discovered through running on mountain trails. This journal entry represents my manifesto for teaching and learning in my classroom. I want to make something perfectly clear from …
The Real World – A Meta-Letter to My Pupils
Picture this: a classroom inhabited by a class preparing for a “functional skills” English assessment. The students are clear about what was expected of them. They are working with focus and the atmosphere in the …
First Impressions Count
Here I write some of my thoughts as I head into the new teaching year. I recently received a message from a newly qualified teacher who was filled with anxiety about her first week at …
Transcending Grade Boundaries
In the eye of the GCSE English “grade manipulation storm”, I’m seeing a silver lining Almost as soon as this year’s GCSE English grades were released, the twittersphere, broadsheets and tabloids were set alight, first …
Why I’m an Openly Gay Teacher
The Importance of Being … Out Why Sexuality Matters in English Chris Waugh reflects on his experiences as a gay English teacher, arguing that openness about sexuality is a crucial element of the work …