Wednesday, 20 March 2024

My books about reading, poetry and writing (all mostly in a educational contexts)

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  'What is a Bong Tree? Articles and talks 1976-2021' (edited by John Richmond) 'Write to Feel Right' in the Big Cat series,...
Sunday, 10 March 2024

Ofsted try to 'do' literature and end up with pap

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  This comes from the new Ofsted Subject Report for English: There's a lot here to chew over: it's the kind of report that doesn...
Saturday, 2 March 2024

Poetry is 'memorable speech'.- [blog updated and extended]

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The poet WH Auden coined or adopted the phrase 'memorable speech' to describe poetry (rather than define it). This is a rich vein to...
Tuesday, 12 December 2023

Letter sent to Guardian about Covid Inquiry and Herd Immunity

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  I've spent the last few days struggling with your headline and the testimony given by Mr Chris Whitty ('Herd immunity was never UK...
Wednesday, 22 November 2023

Some responses to this week's Covid inquiry

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  (1) Patrick Vallance (from Guardian Nov 20 2023) Vallance diary: “PM meeting – begins to argue for letting it all rip. Saying yes there wi...
Friday, 17 November 2023

Some ideas about writing and recovery

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This week, I gave a talk to Lewisham headteachers about writing and recovery. I read some poems and talked about why and how I wrote them. H...
Thursday, 25 May 2023

My thoughts on this year's Key Stage 2 Grammar, punctuation and spelling test (which used to be the SPaG test)

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I am looking at the 2023, 'Key stage 2, English grammar, punctuation and spelling test. Paper 1:  questions' My first thought, as ev...