How does this interest relate to broader issues of policy,at local school and national level?
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?
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.)
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 …)
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.