Teaching and Learning resources
Revising literary works
You will almost certainly have found yourself giving students advice about the best ways they might consider revising their set works, and this is not always an easy thing to do. Perhaps the most important...
Teaching and Learning resources
Critical thinking
Characteristics associated with the best responses to literary works often demonstrate the ability to think about them in different ways. Sometimes the difference between remembering or knowing and analysing,...
Teaching and Learning resources
Teaching poetry
Teaching the language, form and content of poetry is for many a kind of foundation for our course. Perhaps this is because of the way it typically generates meaning in such concentrated ways, and of course...
.jpg)
Teaching and Learning resources
The first few lessons
The first time you meet any class is an exciting (and sometimes slightly daunting!) experience but of course a very important one. The 'approaches to learning' that teachers adopt might be very varied: some...
Teaching and Learning resources
Teaching drama
Drama teaching on the course has of necessity to tread a careful line between treatment of the work as a literary text and analysis of it as a piece of theatre. Successful teaching of Shakespeare, for...
Teaching and Learning resources
Poetry: reading aloud..?
It is a frequently uttered maxim that poetry should be 'heard' or 'read aloud'. This is typically said in view of the way poetry in particular makes use of elements of sound and rhythm, which are not...
Teaching and Learning resources
The 'Mary Sue' character: Silly Novels by Lady Novelists
This extract from George Eliot's essay, Silly Novels by Lady Novelists, was once used as a Paper 1 text many, many years ago (before the IB changed the English A courses in 2013). While it is unlikely...
Teaching and Learning resources
Voice and perspective: Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
The following passage from Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha has always been a favourite. It captures a child's point of view with beautiful simplicity: the warmth and safety of home, the delicious secrecy...
Teaching and Learning resources
Metaphor: Campaign by Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy wrote this poem in response to the 2017 general election result, a result that took almost everyone by surprise, not least Theresa May, the subject of Duffy's piece. As the poem is short...
Teaching and Learning resources
Sensory imagery: Antony and Cleopatra
This famous description of Cleopatra, delivered as a monologue by Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra, is well known for the richness of the sensory descriptions used to convey the Egyptian queen's beauty...