What aspect of your practice in the field of English, Media, Drama teaching interests you?
· How has this area of interest come to be important to you?
(In addressing this question, you might want to write about a longer history of your interest — going back before the NQT year, before the PGCE …)
· How has this area of interest figured in your practice this year as an NQT?
· How does this interest relate to broader issues of policy, at local (school) and national level?
2. Reading
What have you read that might shed light on this subject, or help you to think more about it?
(You might want to make a list of titles/authors here — but it would also be helpful to indicate briefly how these works are relevant to you.)
3. Evidence
What evidence will you draw on and analyse in making sense of your area of interest?
(Remember that evidence might include moments of teaching and learning as well as samples of students’ work, plans, departmental documents, different kinds of assessment data …)
4. Your question
A useful stage in the writing is to try to formulate a question that your writing will address. This should help you to sort out what you need to explore and what kinds of evidence you need to gather. We do not expect you, at this stage of the process, to have a fully-worked-out research question — but we would like you to have a first go, here, at expressing your central interest as a question.
There are three essential aspects to a good assignment:
1. Sustained, critical reflection on some aspect of your teaching;
2. Substantial reading to underpin the assignment and to enable student teachers to put their own experiences into wider contexts;
3. Pupils, and some moments of their learning, at the heart of the assignment.
You should consider how your assignment relates to one or more of the following key issues within the field of English studies:
· Literature and English
· New technologies and English
· Language and English
· Identities and English
Possible foci for your assignment include the following (this is not an exhaustive list):
· Teaching the class novel
· Teaching and learning Drama, approaches to the curriculum
· Boys as reluctant readers
· Teaching Shakespeare in the multilingual classroom
· Teaching Shakespeare dramatically
· Teaching poetry from the English heritage to EAL learners
· Developing independent reading
· Using paintings in the teaching of English literature published pre-1918
· Creative writing in Key Stage 3
· Talk in the English classroom
· ‘Problems’ with poetry
· Media in English
· Teaching multicultural literature
· Teaching English through drama
· English teaching and ICT
The evidence from school practice can be very varied, and examples of it include:
· Pupils’ work and responses to it
· Transcripts of discussions with pupils
· Lesson planning and resources to support student learning
· Video material
· Excerpts from lesson evaluations
We ask you to consider the contexts in which your evidence was produced, as follows:
· The context of the particular classroom and school
· The context of national trends
· The context of policy-making and curriculum and initiatives development
· The wider social and cultural contexts
You are writing this assignment as an English teacher. Please ask if you are unsure
