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