English podcasts
As I said in my last post, I’m a recent convert to podcasts. I really like the fact that I can slip my phone in my pocket, plug my headphones in, and learn something new while I’m washing up or cleaning the windows! It makes the munane tasks seem a bit more bearable!
I’m not a GCSE teacher so I can’t vouch for the quality of the podcasts mentioned in this post, but you may find them useful.
GCSE Revisionpod – I really like this one. The banter between the two presenters keeps it light-hearted.
Revise GCSE English Literature
Approaching Shakespeare – this one isn’t GCSE specific, but there are some really interesting insights into Shakespeare’s plays.
Mr Bruff podcast – I know lots of people really like Mr Bruff’s website as I see it recommended quite a lot. I didn’t find this podcast as engaging as GCSE Revisionpod (above) but everyone has different tastes.
Found Poems
I recently did a course about writing poems with FutureLearn. I have never really enjoyed poetry and I know that I tend to neglect it when I teach, so I was hoping that the course would give me some new ideas for helping me to enjoy teaching poetry and for helping my pupils develop their poetry writing skills.
One of the types of poetry mentioned on the course was “found poems” and I found this very interesting. The idea is to write a poem using only words and phrases that you can hear or see at the time of writing. The words don’t have to be used in the order that they are overheard or seen so you have to play around a bit to find an order that makes sense, but I liked the idea that pupils could be creative without having come up with their own ideas which many people find difficult.
An example of a found poem is written below. This was written using words I could see while sitting at my desk – from snack packets, various items pinned to a corkboard, German post-it notes and a framed picture. The only addition to this poem were the words “No inspiration.”
Lo-fat yoghurt,
Salt and Vinegar,
Paracetamol.
No inspiration.
Pay credit card,
Write to Rachel,
Email Emma.
No inspiration.
Thank you for booking….
You are cordially invited…
Next day guaranteed.
No inspiration.
Plötzlich….I’m begeistert!
No inspiration ursprünglich
but im Augenblick
I’m away with the fairy lights…
and it’s gruselig!
I shall definitely try this out with some of my tuition pupils in the coming year. If anybody wants more ideas of how to write a poem I can recommend the FutureLearn course “How to Make a Poem“.
Related post: The 10 Step Cheat’s Guide to Writing a Poem
The 10 Step Cheat’s Guide to Writing a Poem
I had a panicked phone call from my niece the other day. She’d been off school for a few days, and she’d just had a text from a friend telling her that they had to hand in a poem about sweets the next morning. It was already almost bedtime, so time was short.
Usually when teaching poetry, I’d have a selection available so that we could look at the structure of them, and choose one to use as a framework. There was no time for any of this however, so we had to bluff it. This is how she wrote a poem in 15 minutes…
- She chose the sweet she was going to write about – Turkish Delight
- She wrote down as many words to describe it as she could: lovely, jelly, pink, yellow, sugary, chocolate, flavours, strawberry, lemon, rose, cubes, sweet, tangy, nice.
- She wrote down words to describe what it felt like in her mouth (chewy, like heaven) and how she felt when she ate it (happy)
- She used a thesaurus to replace all the boring words (nice became enjoyable, lovely became delicious, happy became joyful)
- She grouped together words that started with the same sound (alliteration) so we got “joyful jelly (an example of personification) and “chewy, chocolate-covered cubes”.
- She mixed up the senses so that feelings and colours had tastes (tangy yellow)
- She was insistent that this poem had to rhyme, even though poetry doesn’t have to, so she chose some words she thought it would be easy to find rhymes for (jelly, rose, sweet, pink) and made a list of all the words she came up with that rhymed. She also looked at her initial list of words to see if there were any rhymes or near rhymes.
- She looked at the words she hadn’t used from her initial list, and picked out a couple of her favourites.
- She kept moving the groups of words around until she found an order she was happy with.
10. She wrote the final version out in her book in neat.
This is the final poem:
Strawberry-flavoured, joyful jelly
Feels delicious in my belly.
Chocolate-covered cubes of heaven
Sugar-coated, rose and lemon.
Tangy yellow, pink so sweet
Makes an enjoyable evening treat.
Ok, it’s not going to win any literary prizes but it’s not bad for a late-night, ¼ hour Skype video chat.
A Day in the Life of a Self-employed Teacher
Recently I signed up to a blogging challenge and one of the suggestions was to write a blog post about a typical day. That sounds all well and good…..except that I don’t have a typical working day!
Often I have work booked in in advance, which is great. On those days I get ready for work and I go. Other days I wait to see if the phone rings. Most days it does and off I go to work. Other days it doesn’t and then I work from home.
But, whether the phone rings at the last minute, or the day is booked in advance, the work I do when I get there is the same though – right? Er…no! I teach across a whole range of ages, and teach every subject on the primary curriculum as well as specialising in languages. One day I could be playing dolls houses and making chocolate crispie cakes in Nursery; the next teaching French to graduates at a local university. The day after that could be a 1960s themed day with Year 6, followed by a day split between Years 1 and 2 doing some Latin. The week could end with a day teaching deaf children.
On those days when I work from home the days are still varied. I maintain my own website and this blog, and also have responsibility for my husband’s website and blog for his tour guiding business. There are always emails that need answering and I sometimes proofread my husband’s translation work for him. I’m part of Team 100WC so I make sure I find time to read the children’s writing and leave comments for them.
I also take my CPD seriously, so a work from home day will include doing my homework for my British Sign Language level 3 course and reading and research for a level 3 course in Dyslexia Awareness, Support and Screening.
Four evenings a week and Saturday mornings I do private tuition for children aged 6-12, but again every lesson is different. Some of the children I work with need help with just maths, some just English and some both. Some have dyslexia and need a different sort of help, and some find the work they do at school easy and need stretching. As if that wasn’t enough variety, I am planning to branch out into 11+ tuition, and language teaching for businesses as well.
So – thanks very much to Nikki Pilkington for the suggestion in her 30 Day Blogging Challenge, but I’m afraid this is about as typical as it gets!