Barbara Bleiman 🎓 Education is Conversation
@BarbaraBleiman
Education consultant, EMC; NATE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Teaching of English (2019); 'An Inspector Called & Other Short Stories' (Sept 2022);
Well that was fun! (Fun & hard work - not dichotomous or incompatible.) I had everyone doing a few bits of writing, including being required to use a sentence type in a response, to see the impact on cognitive load, their thinking about the text, quality of what was written etc.
Looking forward to a training day for ourselves at @EngMediaCentre today with this year's superb Associate Teachers, plus the newly appointed ones & EMC colleagues. I'm doing a session on 'Big Picture Writing' – even more relevant in light of the new Writing Framework doc.
Looking forward to a training day for ourselves at @EngMediaCentre today with this year's superb Associate Teachers, plus the newly appointed ones & EMC colleagues. I'm doing a session on 'Big Picture Writing' – even more relevant in light of the new Writing Framework doc.
BLOG: FINDING THE 'PERFECT' NOVEL EMC Associate Teacher, Holly Maguire, explains how she went about finding + teaching a new novel for Y7 englishandmedia.co.uk/blog/searching…
This is a damaging binary, children enjoy learning when they see and feel the purpose of it. Increasingly we’ve lost the pupils voice in their education. We need to meet the children in their education journey. smithsmm.wordpress.com/2017/03/04/the…
📣 2 years ago, Sir Keir Starmer pledged to embed #oracy in the curriculum. Today, a coalition of parliamentarians, education experts & schools are calling on him to deliver on that pledge. Read the letter here: eu1.hubs.ly/H0lX7_s0
📰 See Guardian coverage here 👇 theguardian.com/education/2025…
Ten days until the 4th anniversary of the inaugural flight of the Dirigible Balloon. I think we should do something to celebrate. #PoetryForChildren #DirigibleBalloon Here's a post from July 28th 2021 as lift-off approached >>> northernjim.wordpress.com/2021/07/28/lif…
"Generating syntax is not the same thing as writing. Writing is an embodied act of thinking and feeling. Writing is communicating with intention." - @biblioracle
The perfect book for any occasion but especially apt today
On #WorldBrainDay is this the perfect book to read? Find out about its author, Sarah Ziman, and read some of her work plus my review of her book here - brian-moses.blogspot.com/2020/01/guest-… @BardyMum @TroikaBooks
This Pearson survey of 800 English teachers paints a very worrying picture - it's one that many of us in the English teaching community have been aware of for a considerable time, echoing findings from an @EngMediaCentre survey of 2017 & by @NATEfeed pearson.com/content/dam/gl…
Another really terrific guest blog by Holly Maguire, one of the @EngMediaCentre Associate Teachers 2024/5, on choosing a novel for a Y7 class & what she did with it, including radically transformed assessment at the end! A must-read for English teachers imo.
BLOG: FINDING THE 'PERFECT' NOVEL EMC Associate Teacher, Holly Maguire, explains how she went about finding + teaching a new novel for Y7 englishandmedia.co.uk/blog/searching…
Shocking if unsurprising findings. Of 800 English teachers: Only 1 in 5 say GCSE English is enjoyable to teach. More than half say it focuses on the wrong things. 54% say it doesn’t meet the needs of all students. Pearson’s #LetsTalkEnglish campaign. bit.ly/3GAKAAy
Some lovely post today. SNAP! by Barbara Bleiman. Wonderful stuff! Always a delight when poets whose work first appeared on the Dirigible Balloon send a copy of their collections to Balloon Central. Thank you @BarbaraBleiman (your acknowledgement is very much appreciated). JH x
Great discussion on writing and whether pupils have too much of it "done" for them...
I always find @lit4pleasure blogs v thoughtful & well-evidenced but this one is especially good! If you read nothing else today, read how one small child draws on rich reading & stories heard to fuel her own writing. And how to embed these writing processes for all children!
I always find @lit4pleasure blogs v thoughtful & well-evidenced but this one is especially good! If you read nothing else today, read how one small child draws on rich reading & stories heard to fuel her own writing. And how to embed these writing processes for all children!
Bringing pleasure to reading lessons through writing “If we want to attract children like bees to the idea of writing for pleasure, we must treat our classroom as a field and fill it with the sweetest of nectar – good literature.” writing4pleasure.com/2025/07/18/bri…
Hey you crumpets and croissants. Join me on the radio - Sunday 7-9am. Butter thickly spread please, coffee black and strong. Alarms at the ready. 🎶📻☕🥐🐦⬛ @Suffolk_Sound 👈🏽
Really? How about the large army of teachers who knew all along that it was hard work & effortful & consistently, over time, have found a myriad of ways of making that effort fun for students? A reductive binary that risks misrepresenting the work of many superb teachers.
Every few years we rediscover that learning is hard work and effortful in the short term. Then we spend the next few years trying to make it fun and effortless again.
This. 100%. In fact I’m wondering if it would work as tattoo…
Every few years we rediscover that learning is hard work and effortful in the short term. Then we spend the next few years trying to make it fun and effortless again.
These comments are just lovely. They show what really matters to children and their parents - belonging, feeling valued, being happy, having teachers who bring out the best in them and care about them.
Haven’t posted on X in a long time but just needed to share some messages from parents. It was good to get reminders of what we do and why we do it. Seeing so many children driven out of schools and not able to manage within the system, just needed to say there’s another way
There it is! Number 8 in Humorous Poetry for Children, next to Spike Milligan and close to @MichaelRosenYes That's just fine by me! And the reviews so far are really lovely too. shorturl.at/zFxLt
Music Video: Bruno Souber - 'Used To Love Her' Creativity: Sebastian Ortiz - 'Dreams in Doses'