An Early New Year's Resolution

I came over here today to do my December monthly round up, but I've decided not to do them any more. They're time-consuming and don't really add anything. So I'll just stick to the three times a week routine here, and updating my teacherly website regularly too. I've set up a Facebook page this month that I'm using to feed English- and Language- related stories and to show when I've updated the website (along with occasional blog links too), so if you were reading the website update stuff, just click on the Facebook feed link on the right and 'like' the page to get the updates in your timeline.

Thank you for reading and Happy New Year!
Here's to a fab 2013.

Round-up for November

It's that time again already! Here's a round-up of what's been going on over the last month, both here and at my website. I'm shifting to doing these on the last day of the month, whenever it falls (I was doing them on the last Sunday of the month). This change means that two of the posts listed in this round-up were actually from October after the round-up.

November Reviews

• How to Make a Heron Happy, Lari Don (picture book)
• Katya's World, Jonathan L Howard (YA sci-fi)
• A Dog Called Homeless, Sarah Lean (MG/YA contemporary family)
• Operation Bunny, Sally Gardner (MG fantasy)
• VIII, H M Castor (YA historical)
• Pigeon English, Stephen Kelman (crossover contemporary)

Other November Bookishness

• The CILIP Carnegie Longlist - how many have you read?
• Top Five Things I Get From a Good Read - why do you read?

Other posts for November

• Happy Halloween! Marking the Festival Creatively
• Hurrah for Creativity (my youngest won a magazine competition)
• Stress and Aromatherapy
• Are You Ready for the Season? (all about our advent tradition)
• Top Five Reasons I'm a Tweeter, Not a Facebooker

Material on my website this month:

My website is focused on the teaching of English A Levels, especially Language, and is built around a collection of revision notes for students. I recently began a big revamp project, including new material which is updated fortnightly - a series of features for students, along with tips/activities/ideas/resources for teachers. The notes are fairly extensive at this point; this round-up will focus on the regularly updated content.

For teachers: a record of the students' features (with occasional linked resources) and teaching tips:

• Marking reduction ideas 
• A new online resource about grammar teaching
• Ways of checking set reading

On the students' page:

• Features on: whether anyone really speaks 'properly'; quotatives and age; 
• Vocabulary pieces on: discreet and discrete; imply and infer
• Books for wider reading: The Color Purple; So Long a Letter
• Reads to relax with: Leigh Bardugo's The Gathering Dark; Cath Crowley's Graffiti Moon

Round up for October

It's that time again already! Here's a round-up of what's been going on over the last month, both here and at my website.

October Reviews

• The Story of the Olympics by Richard Brassey - kids' non-fic that's fun for all ages
• The Girl on the Stairs by Louise Welsh - adult crime thriller
• Two #UKYA series (When I Was Joe, Keren David & Firebrand, Gillian Philip) - contemporary realism or sweeping fantasy, something for everyone here!
• The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers - lit fic dystopian
• Lance of Truth by Katherine Roberts - kids' fantasy based on the Arthurian legends
• Breathe by Sarah Crossan - YA dystopian centred on a world with limited oxygen
• Street Duty: Knock Down by Chris Ould - YA crime featuring teen police trainees

4 YA (2 fantasy, 2 realism), 2 kids' (1 fantasy fiction, 1 non-fiction) and 2 adults' (1 lit fid, 1 crime fic).

Other posts for October

• The Magic of Autumn discussing the link between creativity and the seasons
• A Sad Time for Feminism lamenting various recent unpleasant stories and highlighting the debate around female 'dominance' in YA novels
• Recommended Writers' Resources 3: The DIY Special focusing on resources helpful to self-publishers (or self-printers)
• The Problem with NaNoWriMo - the occasional snobbiness of some published writers, and what NaNo is all about

Material on my website this month:

My website is focused on the teaching of English A Levels, especially Language, and is built around a collection of revision notes for students. I recently began a big revamp project, including new material which is updated weekly - a series of features for students, along with tips/activities/ideas/resources for teachers. The notes are fairly extensive at this point; this round-up will focus on the regularly updated content.

For teachers: a record of the students' features (with occasional linked resources) and teaching tips:

• a no-prep end-of-topic starter activity
• a tip about getting Language students writing about meaning as well as showing off their new-found terminology
• a discussion of How Much Grammar students need for Language A Level
• a tip on using exemplar essays

On the students' page:

• Features on: child phonology; NaNoWriMo; semantic weakening (is it really 'epic'?); new words as a sign of the times.
• Vocabulary pieces on: guiding the reader; being tentative about meaning; avoiding the vague adjectives 'positive' and 'negative'; using connectives logically.
• Books for wider reading: Dante's Inferno; Jenefer Shute's Life-Size.
• Reads to relax with: The Hunting Ground by Cliff McNish; Dark Parties by Sara Grant; The Storyteller by Antonia Michaelis; Poltergeeks by Sean Cummings.

My other big website announcement of the month is that I have collated all my 'Frameworks' notes (the key terms for English Language or English Language and Literature A Level) into an ebook and self-published it in Kindle format. Should you know anyone this would be helpful for, please do send them to my Frameworks pages for more info. The notes will continue to be freely available online, but the ebook version may be more convenient on the go.

Round up for September

I thought I'd start including monthly round-ups here, as I've found them helpful on others' blogs. I'll do them on the last Sunday of the month from now on.

September Reviews

The Odds by Adam Perrott
Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
The Obsidian Mirror by Catherine Fisher
Horrid Henry's A-Z of Everything Horrid
The Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin

2 YA (both fantasy, broadly), 2 kids' (1 fiction, 1 non-fiction) and 1 women's fiction

Other posts for September

Changes around the Hearthfire explaining my new posting schedule
Recommended Writers' Resources 2 - a helpful blogpost and a handy book
Interview with James Dawson, Author of Hollow Pike - James talks about the book, the Queen of Teen award and his writing habits
Doing More Things: A Happiness Project of Sorts - a personal post
GCSEs - the English grade boundaries issue and the current position on the EBC, the replacement for GCSEs

Material on my website this month:

My website is focused on the teaching of English A Levels, especially Language, and is built around a collection of revision notes for students. I recently began a big revamp project, including new material which is updated weekly - a series of features for students, along with tips/activities/ideas/resources for teachers. The notes are fairly extensive at this point; this round-up will focus on the regularly updated content.

For teachers: a record of the students' features (with occasional linked resources) and teaching tips:

• using starters to create groups
• differentiating analysis tasks
• focused research tasks
• activities building and testing linguistic frameworks knowledge.

On the students' pages:

• Features on: the Olympics and 'new' verbs; a child language semantic error example; language and sexuality and the implications of the Andrew Mitchell 'f*ing plebs' incident.
• Vocabulary pieces on: synonyms for 'emphasises'; ambiguity; imperious; affect/effect.
• Books for wider reading: Angela Carter's The Magic Toyshop and Alexander Masters' Stuart: A Life Backwards.
• Reads to relax with: Keris Stainton's Della Says OMG!, Jessie Hearts NY and Emma Hearts LA; Alan Gibbons' An Act of Love; Victoria Lamb's Witchstruck and Keren David's When I Was Joe.

(For the website, the links will take you to this week's page. Older material is available in the 'archive' section.)