It feels like ages since I took one of these, let alone posted it. In fact, this image was taken back in 2012!
A fellow of infinite jest …
Category: Teaching Shakespeare
Age cannot wither him …
… nor custom stale his infinite variety. (Enobarbus: ANTHONY AND CLEOPATRA: II.ii.245-246) [bastardised by me, obviously]
Our timetables for next year were finalised last Friday, and this is what mine looks like – at least in terms of Shakespeare / EMP material. It’s more of the same, basically – although I finally lost The Tempest – which Top Set Y11 had voted to study back in the day when I had complete freedom about what to teach. I think it could be the last year I teach this combination – I want to make at least one change …
Can you overdose on Shakespeare?
‘Give me excess of it, that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die.’
(DUKE ORSINO: Twelfth Night, I.i.2-3)
So, as we enter the final stretch, you’d think that we teachers would be winding down, right? Imitating Will Kemp in his warm up for his ‘Nine Days’ Wonder‘, by cavorting up and down the corridors of the English block in carefree abandon, greeting fellow English teachers with a hearty ‘hey, nonny nonny!‘ as we pass their empty classrooms?
Not a bit of it, sadly. Whilst our exam classes have donned their gladrags and tottered off into the distance on their improbable high heels (and that’s just the boys, obviously), we’re left with end-of-year assessments for everyone else, which naturally have to be turned around pretty damn quickly.
Lend me your ears: support Drew Dzwonkowski’s ‘foolish’ side project …
A running theme in the play is how Caesar’s assassination is going to be remembered and reenacted for centuries to come, so I drew the swimmers in modern clothes.
I had a ‘tense’ conversation with a Y10 lad today. He has about a week to work on a 5-minute or so presentation. The subject is entirely open to him, but it ought to be something he has sufficient interest in that he can produce a structured, coherent talk, with the ability to think on his feet and answer potentially tricky questions on it afterwards (if he wants to get a decent mark). It contributes towards his GCSE qualification under the new specification, and he could be asked to reprise the performance at our school’s ‘Work-Ready Day‘ in two weeks’ time: an important shop window for pupils to get noticed by major local employers, where talent HAS been ‘spotted’ in the past. And ‘scouted’. Despite the fact that the students would rather eat their own tongues than do the presentation once, let alone twice …
Why am I telling you this?
Continue reading “Lend me your ears: support Drew Dzwonkowski’s ‘foolish’ side project …”
‘Upping my game’ …
Picture the scene – I was told today by one of my sixth-form students that an English lecturer at a university taster was ‘really funny’ …
PTS 03/020: The Enemy Within
Is it me, or does the guy in the picture look like a young James Comey?
Henry VI part III: act V
So, very belatedly, we reach the end of the road for Henry VI, and of history plays for a short while. I’m sad to say goodbye. The comedies aren’t generally my favourites, and these three HVI plays have been ones I’ve unjustly avoided until now. It’s been a brilliant rollercoaster ride.
Last time round, I said there could only be one, and finally, mercifully, someone does for Henry. And we all know who that someone is, right? Only one man for the job …
Crimes against Shakespeare 003
or simply Much Ado About Nothing … ?
students were in tears after the exam
A multiple choice question for the adults. Or for my students, who sat their Shakespeare exam on Monday just gone. You sit an exam where you have a choice of two questions. One question appears to make no sense. Do you:
The Long Goodbye …
If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
If not, why then, this parting was well made. (Brutus, Julius Caesar: Act V, scene I)
This morning, at 9am, my Y11 students sit their first GCSE English exam – 1 hour, 45 minutes on The Tempest and Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four … and so begins the ‘long goodbye’ …
Beat the Teacher (Part 2)
Our Y11 (15/16 year old) students have the first of their English Literature GCSE exams on Monday …
This is the last year, at my school, when we will (effectively) have autonomy over the texts we teach. Next year, we will only offer Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet at GCSE. It sounds like a retrograde move, but what it does ensure – I suppose – is that we have teachers, multiple, who can deliver the texts, both in the classroom and – importantly, considering I am in school today (Sunday) – in revision sessions. I am largely in school today because I’m the only one who can do The Tempest … nobody’s fault but mine, as Led Zeppelin might say.
The AQA specification offers the following texts:
The Tempest: GCSE Model Essay 2 for Y11s
If this is the first time you’ve read an essay here, please take a look at this post before proceeding.
MY CLASS WILL BE TAKING THEIR GCSE PAPER ON THE TEMPEST THIS MONDAY. I WISH THEM THE VERY BEST OF LUCK!
It is this lack of intelligence, or of understanding, that propels him towards making the same offers to Stephano as he did to Prospero twelve years earlier – a move which led to his enslavement. Sections of the audience would approve of the ways in which Caliban is easily taken advantage of. John Hawkins started the slave trade with his first voyage in 1562, just two years before Shakespeare was born. For many Europeans, blacks were simply slaves.
GCSE MODEL Essay based on AQA specimen question paper, and marked as follows:
The Boar's Head, Eastcheap 