Collects primary pupils' views of themselves as writers and their preferences, attitudes and awareness of the source of their ideas in the context of England's National Literacy Strategy. Underlines the importance of listening to pupils' views about literacy, in order to create a more open dialogue about language and learning, and to negotiate the…

Discusses Eric Lomax's autobiographical book "The Railway Man." Notes how it chronicles his boyhood obsession with train-spotting and the subsequent ways in which his life has been freaked by railway co-incidences. Describes how the author invited Eric Lomax to come and discuss this work with his students. (SG)

Explores how students' concept formation can be promoted and outlines findings from an action research project undertaken with a class of 17-year-old AS Media Studies students as a submission for the British Film Institute's MA Certificate in Media Education in 2001. Argues that academic concepts can neither be allowed to develop spontaneously nor…

Considers how the depiction of good and evil as discernibly polarized opposites in the most popular of juvenile fantasy texts cultivates a perception in children that the real world is similarly organized. Proposes that the dichotomized view of good and evil that these texts promote, rather than cultivating a broad educated outlook, prepares…

Notes how "The Writers' Zone" project took place in an 11-18 mixed comprehensive school in south-east Essex and involved 16 Year 7 boys identified as having a high level of performance in non-verbal reasoning but low levels of performance in verbal reasoning. Details the structure of the project and evaluates its success in accessing writing…

Presents current thinking and practices in Queensland, Australia, about how to do critical assessment in the English classroom. Proposes and discusses a framework that brings together interest in text analysis and social practices. Applies the framework showing how it can be used to generate writing tasks and assessment criteria that are…

Provides both a description of a pedagogic method and a demonstration of that method in practice. Describes the use of learning journals in a particular Shakespeare course. Explains that as a part of this course, student who are studying for degrees in English or Drama teach a Shakespeare play to classes in local Year 6, 7, and 8 inner-city London…

Considers the arguments for seeing work rather than response as key to the poetic experience. Explains the development of such experience in the classroom. Notes that this is worth exploring not only in terms of literacy curriculum, but with respect to curriculum as a whole, since poetry is often invoked as an important resource for the…

Outlines a weekend residential program that uses creative writing to raise environmental awareness through a polemical engagement with a specific local environmental issue. Notes that poetry, narrative, discursive writing, interview, and group presentations were all used in what became an introduction to environmental politics. Proposes that a…

Offers an interview between Bethan Marshall, a Lecturer in Education at King's College, London, and Dylan Wiliam, a Professor of Assessment in the Department of Education at King's College. Notes that he has been involved in work on assessment, both in research and government policy, for many years. Explores the findings of his research and its…

Examines the work of four writers who have influenced the teaching of poetry writing to primary school children. Considers the merits of each, particularly in the context of arguments about "voice" and "form," and links their explicit and implicit philosophies and approaches. Supports "grace,""voice" and "form," and argues that one need not…

Investigates two types of texts (a reading scheme book and a children's literature text) to see how the reader is constructed by the text, and what kind of reading support is offered. Finds that the literary text offers more reading support than the supposedly carefully constructed reading scheme book, which constructs a passive reader to whom…

Analyzes how a young child made sense of the stories she watched on video. Discusses how she used what was "at hand" to represent and re-represent the world; how she used repeated viewings to make sense of screen codes and conventions; and how initially watching a video in the company of an adult offered guided participation around televisual…

Describes an action research project on digital editing being carried out by a group of teachers. Evaluates a conceptual framework for editing digitized moving images, under three headings: literacies and communicative practices; creativity; and social roles and learning styles. Presents three teacher accounts of student projects involving digital…

Describes a method of helping students to invent characters in the context of a creative writing workshop for undergraduates. Considers how students draw composition characters for which they can write a profile using the surrealist technique of "exquisite corpses." Uses student work to illustrate how such characters feed into the story writing…