MOOC: Graphic novels
A brief update that may interest some subscibers: Coursera and the University of Colorado Boulder are offering a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Comic Books and Graphic Novels. The course begins...
Language Bullies Eating Cheesecake, Circa 2013
How is work? Are you coping? Teaching is, after all, a demanding profession. The rewards are not always pecuniary, the ‘long’ holidays hardly compensate for the punishing demands of term time, and then...
Motivation: drop the carrot and the stick!
I once spoke to one of my form group students (that’s a home room student or a tutee, for those not familiar with UK terminology) about her general lack of motivation – in all school subjects - to read...
Digging, and the Mutable Life of Pronouns
Seamus Heaney is dead. A good friend, who knows Heaney’s poetry well, texted me with the sad news. He wrote, ‘best poet of our generation’. One of the aims of the Language and Literature course is to...
Planning to teach the student, not the subject
As the May session IB teachers really get to grips with their courses for class of 2015, I started my own course planning with a reflection on the difference between subject-centred and student-centred...
Looking forward: plans, plans and more plans
Hello again, and welcome to part 2 of my introduction. Joining an already existing team in their development of a successful and well developed website is something of a daunting proposal. I have spent...
Introduction of a new writer
Hello, teachers of English A: language and literature. My name is Alison Whitehurst. I will soon be joining David McIntyre to help out with the maintenance of this InThinking resources website. I'd like...
Foregrounding, Backgrounding
A few things of interest this week to the teacher of Language and Literature: The first item, brought to my attention by my dedicated and gifted colleague Di, concerns the film 'The Sapphires'. The film,...
On Accents
Some subscribers to this website know me personally. They know I speak English with an accent. Specifically, they know I speak with a Glaswegian accent. I can’t really help it; I was born and grew up...
World Exclusive: Andy Murray Wins Wimbledon
Okay, not the most up-to-the-minute post, I admit it. And, I'm sure you already know that Andy Murray recently won Wimbledon, becoming the first British player to win the Men's Singles Championship since...