Diving into books

Many of my colleagues are preparing to teach literature for the first time with the new GCSE and A level specifications.  There are some great resources out there to help, notably the Association for Language Learning wiki on literature which contains advice and links to sources.

However, we shouldn’t forget that our friends in the English department are experts in introducing literary texts in unfamiliar language to teenagers.  Looking at articles aimed at English teachers can give lots of tips, such as this one by Jon Seal in Teach Secondary magazine.

I have done some teaching of literature over the years, aided by the fact that I took English Literature as a second subject on my PGCE and ended up teaching King Lear on placement!  The key is to make the text accessible and I will add posts about this as I develop my resources for September.