Caffeine. Teach. Read. Repeat.

The buzz surrounding Struan Murray’s debut made it one of the most anticipated book releases for me in early 2020, a bold claim when considering the other well-hyped releases that are due out the same time. The buzz appeared genuine too, and now I’ve read it, it was completely deserved. I was hooked (no pun intended) from the opening scene - a whale found of the rooftop of a chapel in a mountainous city half-submerged by the sea - and I devoured the pages in the same greedy way the waves attacked the city. The story remains as unique, strange and gripping throughout, but the world Murray has created and the characters inhabiting it are so realistic that it’s like reading a historical retelling of an usual, but very real, past. There were moments where I audibly gasped as the stories unfurled, the weaving of two tales, one being from the diary entries of a former city resident, working seamlessly to create intrigue, suspense and sadness. This book  raised so many questions to me about

Like many schools, we've made our humanities curriculum - not topic! - a priority this year. Not just for Ofsted, but because we'd had the curriculum planned for a while and we had puts things in place, it still wasn't getting the time and attention it needed to really come alive and be properly great. It's been the basis of many staff meetings recently, the phase leaders (including myself) have been sent to either geography or history conferences, and our humanities lessons are getting a lot a lot more scrutiny than before. (By a lot more, I mean there was very little if any before and there is some now - nothing horrendous!) We're still working on it but I thought I'd share some of what I've done so far this year, in case it's useful to anyone else. Timeline Our head makes the things she doesn't like very clear, and timelines from a well-known resource company (think Heather) is one of them. She has a point. I've 'done' those timeli

I can't remember how I first came across Hamilton. It was on YouTube and may have been the Tony opening which made me curious. Over here in the UK, it didn't have the same buzz around it at the time, if any. I found videos of the songs performed at the White House to the Obamas and I became slightly obsessed. I registered for the pre-sale list for the UK show and listened to the soundtrack on repeat. I discovered there are few things as sweet as getting Lafayette's parts in Guns and Ships down for the first time. A few months later, I got the date when the tickets went on sale and a while after that, I bought my ticket. It was for the 99th UK performance and would be a few weeks after my 40th birthday. I booked everything I needed to for the weekend and started to countdown, even though it was over a year away at that point. I was going to see the Saturday matinee and on the Thursday before, during my lunch hour, I noticed I had a lot of messages from some online friends

Firstly, apologies for the dated, rather obvious title (it's half-term and I don't have the patience or energy to think of anything better) but it perfectly encapsulates the two things this post is about: gender and the subject formerly known as SRE. Gender Like I'm sure most of us do, I've always tried to be aware of avoiding gender stereotypes in the classroom and actively try to incorporate equality as much as I can. I make sure the texts we read have strong female leads as well as male and that they don't rely on outdated male/female stereotypes, that strong, successful women and their achievements are taught as much as their male counterparts, and make sure I use the word 'parent' or 'adult' instead of 'mum' when referring to anything that happens at home. For example, avoiding, 'It's not down to your mum to do everything'. There are a thousand different other ways I make a conscious effort to foster equality in my classr

My first blog post was about how we tried to spread a love of reading across the school. I thought I'd write a new blog about the things we have continued to do to, and the new things I have tried or am trying. Firstly, there may be some ideas which others may not have heard in 50 other different blogs, and secondly, it will remind me of all of the things I can remind staff at my school of when I do a staff meeting on it. Reading buddies We're now in our third year of having reading buddies in school and they continue to get even better. The bonds between the buddies are stronger and the impact on the child of having an adult in the school who is your reading advocate, your reader, your audience, your support and just your person appears to be huge. My reading buddy has now started turning up at my lunchtime maths group, bringing friends and joining in. Sometimes they just turn up to see what I'm doing. Sometimes it's just to play on the interactive board... One

For the latter part of last week, I was preoccupied with attending a wonderful Reading for Pleasure conference, organised by the fantastic Marilyn Brocklehurst , (separate post to come), organising a Take Over day for Children in Need, planning our enterprise project for the Christmas fair (a Dragon's Den style challenge for Years 5 & 6) and thinking about the thousand things that need considering for next week's residential trip. This is in addition to the usual amount of stuff that comes with being a parent and a teacher. The one thing that refuses to settle in my mind though, is that I missed reading with my reading buddy last week (conference) and will again next week (residential). We normally do it the next day, on the rare occasions it doesn't happen at the usual time - Wednesdays at 1.30pm - but last week it was impossible: he was on a school trip on the Thursday and it was Children in Need on Friday. Next week, I'm away all week. This has affected me much m