Collins Schools

Visibility of disabilities in children's books

Visibility of disabilities in children's books

Growing up I clung to the characters in books I could identify with; Sophie from ‘The Sophie Stories’ by Dick King Smith (same name, brown hair, likes animals), Susan from Jacqueline Wilson’s Candyfloss (brown hair, glasses, a bit of a...

3 min

Cultivating Essential Evaluation Skills for Cambridge International AS Level English General Paper and Beyond

Cultivating Essential Evaluation Skills for Cambridge International AS Level English General Paper and Beyond

In an age of constant information flow, especially through social media, online news and AI generated content, students need to develop the ability not only to locate information but to judge its quality. For teachers of the Cambridge International...

5 min

Teaching poetry beyond the classics

Teaching poetry beyond the classics

When we think of poetry in schools, the first things that often come to mind are the classics: Shakespeare, Keats, Wordsworth – stalwarts of the literary canon whose work has been admired for centuries. But while these poets undeniably offer...

6 min

The Goldilocks test: getting our poetry teaching ‘just right’

The Goldilocks test: getting our poetry teaching ‘just right’

It was a lively and energetic time in the Year 4 classroom. Towards the end of a unit on poetry, we had explored a huge variety of poetic devices and strategies. The working wall was plastered with the words SIMILE,...

6 min

Djamila Boothman - Why isn't everyone talking about oracy?

Djamila Boothman - Why isn't everyone talking about oracy?

Why isn’t everyone talking about oracy? ‘Why are so many people talking about oracy recently?’ a colleague whispers to me during a staff training session on the topic. I chuckle because of course, I’ve noticed that following Sir Keir Starmer’s...

5 min

Giving the answers: a way to teach different interpretations in poetry.

Giving the answers: a way to teach different interpretations in poetry.

When teaching poetry, I often come up against a multitude of defensive barriers that teenagers have erected to prevent them from having to engage with the poems in front of them. And the reason for these fortresses of resistance?

2 min

Practical approaches to teaching KS3 Shakespeare

Practical approaches to teaching KS3 Shakespeare

Reframing or reimagining how we tackle Shakespeare in schools begins with our perception of it being boring, irrelevant or too difficult, especially if we teach in schools with high numbers of SEND, EAL or FSM. It is,...

4 min

Getting comfortable with unseen poetry

Getting comfortable with unseen poetry

Of all the different forms of writing that we study in English, poetry often seems to be the one with which students feel the least comfortable.  The fact that it simply doesn’t look like prose creates an instant barrier.

5 min

Avoiding empty analysis in GCSE English

Avoiding empty analysis in GCSE English

It’s important that we encourage students to explore structure and form when they are analysing a literary text.  However, this can sometimes lead to empty analysis.  I’ve regularly read comments on exam papers like, ‘The writer uses a comma...

4 min

Modelling exam answers for GCSE English

Modelling exam answers for GCSE English

I love discussing a text with my classes: ethical issues in ‘Never Let Me Go’, duality in ‘Jekyll and Hyde’, how far we think Macbeth’s a tragic figure, the sheer horror of war in poems like ‘Exposure’… But...

5 min

How to develop brilliant reading at KS3

How to develop brilliant reading at KS3

Reading is in vogue at the moment – and rightly so! Several factors have raised the priority of reading in schools. The number of students reading at home has slowly dwindled as the number of distractions has dramatically increased....

6 min

Leaping across the writing gap: building resilience and independence at KS3

Leaping across the writing gap: building resilience and independence at KS3

The impact of the disrupted nature of the last few years is perhaps most felt on the continuity which is key to progression. It is surely harder than ever to get a sense of just what level students transition...

5 min