As published in the Christ's College magazine "College", Issue 44, 2024 HoD – English Chris Waugh opens the classroom door on the student experience. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ Shakespeare had it right...
In the third week of the school year, Chris and Gena explored the new year as a fresh start, including Chris' newly 'upgraded' classroom (complete with LEDs and a lava lamp). The conversation shifted to celebrating Gena's outstanding achievement of three English...
As a coda to last week's episode about the harm AI is doing to boys' learning in English classes, today Bags and Chris offer some discrete and specific examples of what actually happens in their English classrooms. Bags talks about the analysis of the Denis Glover...
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 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...
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.
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,...
A quick interrogation of assessment outcomes for boys in New Zealand education renders some alarming results. Boys achievement is some 30% beneath that of their female counterparts in almost every measure you can come up with. HoDs of English Gena Bagley (Otago Boys'...