We may be in the minority, but Bags and Chris are in full accord on this one: AI is going to do untold damage to boys' learning in English. Only this week, articles in the Christchurch Press Number of illiterate uni students ‘at crisis level’ and the Otago Daily Times...
Bags explores how she creates rich discussion in her English classroom.
Bags and Chris compare notes on how they tend to approach the preparation of students for the Unfamiliar Texts section in the New Zealand English Scholarship examination.
Bags relays an experience she had recently with a student who was struggling to speak in front of the class and then Chris grabs the microphone and talks for too long in order to attempt to explain how Grammar for Writing actually works in the context of a Year 9...
8 Years ago, Bagley's daughter Scarlett died, age 7. We take some time in this episode to examine how this deep loss strengthens her work in the classroom. Rarely does anyone gain an insight like this into the privacy of another person's grief. As a listener to this...
Bags and Chris come out of their respective closets for Pride week and we discuss how setting up patterns in the classroom accelerates boys' learning.
This week we get to hear what advice Bags gave the delegates during her conference presentation and we reflect on how to get the culture right in the teaching of boys. There are some new boys' voices too.
Our last episode attracted some really interesting feedback, so we've used that to cue us into this week's discussion. After setting out our stall last week with apocalyptic statistics about boys' education - we're now embarking on our mission to explore what we do,...
This presentation was made to an assembly of 15-18 year olds on the day of their receiving their results from a series of practice examinations. The quote can be attributed to Sir Edmund Hilary. Thanks to Cath Wilberforce for filming it!
Homework is one of the most fraught areas of secondary teaching. We know it's important, its impact is visible and its routines don't offend common sense. Yet in the daily reality of the classroom homework is so often reduced to an after-thought, a misery and a...