Category: literature
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We often talk about the function of Literature as one of nurturing students to know how to read. To build the skill of reading, we focus on sustained and focused reading time, reading aloud, retrieval and recall questions. The progress and attainment of reading is often measured through reading age or NRSS scores. But, these…
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We teach students to search poetry for meaning, as though every poem contains a hidden answer waiting to be uncovered. But what if that assumption is wrong? In War Photographer, Carol Ann Duffy presents us with a figure caught between professionalism and guilt, compassion and detachment, witness and participant. Yet the closer we examine the…
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What if every story is really the same story? A recent lesson began with a challenge to a common assumption in English teaching: that students learn Literature by studying individual texts. Instead, students were introduced to the idea of literary genealogy—the concept that all stories belong to the same enduring tradition and share a common…
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You might be a critic if… requires some love of reading for sure, but literary study is not book club to spend time in the warm glow of a narrative. A critic is ‘reading’, ‘experiencing’ and ‘reacting’ differently to a mere reader-for-pleasure.
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Perspectives in stories matter. Typically, the perspective that we follow is the ‘protagonist’ – and typically we align the protagonist with the function of the hero. Few stories subvert this but by deconstructing and rebuilding Macbeth, we might get a very different view of what role each character fulfills.
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At DisciplineofEnglish.co.uk, we’re making the actual knowledge of English explicit: closed, defined, teachable, and measurable. That means every learning objective becomes a buildable workbook, a markable task, and a teachable concept — not a vague gesture toward an exam.
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Much of the work in DisciplineOfEnglish.co.uk is centered around a critical perspective that requires more reading, more tracing, more historical contexts, more structural connections. Whether it be the factual defining characteristics, the historicity of sign systems, or the cultural theories which have all now been detailed extensively here – where ever you turn within this…
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The function and purpose of assessing at KS3 is not always clearly outlined, because the questions that need answering are hard. But if they are answered, some of the barriers to good marking can be lifted. It’s a conceptual problem that is worth investing in.
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Words don’t have meanings, they get meanings. Structuralism is a difficult and abstract concept to understand, but there’s a meme that absolutely nails this.
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The way we perceive Literature is an important gatekeeper to analysing Literature. Metacognition is an important step that departments rarely formalise into actual lessons. But it can be quite simple, and a couple of jokes can really elevate the plinth from which we stand and view the field.
