Bags explores how she creates rich discussion in her English classroom.
English Scholarship
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.
Push Through the Tears
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...
Open Evening
Around this time of the year, across the Motu, teachers in secondary schools crack out their very best craft skills and upgrade the displays in their classrooms and departments in readiness for the school Open Evening. Bags and Chris talk about this phenomenon (and...
Appendix 6
23 years ago Chris wrote an entry in his online journal that described his time at Otago Boys' High School. This was subsequently published in a history of Otago Boys' High School that was published for its 150th. We'd been searching around for a text to analyse on...
Patterns and Cognitive Overload
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.
Routines and Bagley's Age
This week we start looking inside (and as it happens, outside) the doors of our classrooms with an exploration of the routines we operate in our classes to support safe healthy relationships and to keep the focus on the learning. Today's routines are the macro ones,...
Just Do Your Job
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.
The Conference
So we succeeded at putting on a conference that focussed our attention on Teaching Boys English, and by all accounts it was a real success. Gena and Chris chat about the messages of the event - including a few reasonably contentious points of view - until we were...
Manage Your Wriggling
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,...