Category Archives: My English classroom

Remembering C. A. (‘Dinger’) Bell

Posted on November 16, 2009 by

My English teacher in 1965, C.A. (‘Dinger’) Bell, was a man of few words, and I remember only four of them being addressed to me. “Not without merit, Shann,” he said one day as he handed back a piece of … Continue reading →

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Some thoughts on the fly

Posted on August 26, 2009 by

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. A lot has happened, is happening, and I keep trying to find time to write about it. There’s no substantial time right now, with journals to read, schools to visit and lessons to … Continue reading →

Posted in literacy, My English classroom, Pedagogy, University classes | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Discussing classic texts with Year 11 students

Posted on August 9, 2009 by

My year 11 Extension class is doing a course called ‘Text-Value-Culture’, and last term we read ‘The Odyssey’ and talked about the way this story has been appropriated by different writers for different purposes. This term each of the students … Continue reading →

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Walking through the barrier: Josh Part 3

Posted on June 20, 2009 by

Preface In a month I’ll be teaching a postgraduate education unit called ‘Literacy across the curriculum’, and I’ll be asking each of the 90 students to report on a high school student’s reading. The project is described in more detail … Continue reading →

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Doubts and loves: Josh Part 2

Posted on June 10, 2009 by

The Place Where We Are Right by Yehuda Amichai From the place where we are right Flowers will never grow In the spring. The place where we are right Is hard and trampled Like a yard. But doubts and loves … Continue reading →

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The walled city: Josh Part 1

Posted on June 9, 2009 by

I want to start this post with Josh. Josh is the boy who has agreed to be a part of a small research project I’ve decided to do. The idea is to trial a task I’m going to be setting … Continue reading →

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Alex the parrot, Elizabeth Bennet and the soul’s code

Posted on May 27, 2009 by

As I read Maja Wilson’s Rethinking Rubrics and followed the discussion about this book on the English Companion Ning, I kept thinking about a growing divide amongst teachers around the question of what we’re meant to be doing in the … Continue reading →

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Why am I passionate about the English discipline?

Posted on May 21, 2009 by

A colleague on staff has just written to us, partly as follows: As you may or may not be aware, our Year Ten RaVE syllabus includes a fairly extended unit on Theory of Knowledge (Epistemology). All of us deal, in … Continue reading →

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Play the game!

Posted on May 16, 2009 by

Last Tuesday I walked into my Year 11 class in a rage. I was full of what my father once called ‘Steve’s white hot indignation’. I’d just read a number of comments on our class Ning that indicated that some … Continue reading →

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Some responses to the last post

Posted on March 28, 2009 by

I copied my last post ‘Expectations, optimism and student performance’ over at the English Companion Ning, and an interesting discussion has followed over there, led by Michael Umphrey, J.D. Wilson Jnr and Clix. If you haven’t seen it already, you … Continue reading →

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