How do you get pupils analysing style for themselves?
by Set texts and the search for style points can bring many pupils – even good linguists – down to earth with a bump. How exciting, …
Author: Dom
Hi! I began my career in 2011, teaching English on the Teach First programme. In 2014 I returned to the Classics fold, teaching at Westminster School for six years. I founded Quinquennium in 2019 with the aim of stimulating discussion and reflection among early career practitioners: those who are happily established but still eager to learn. I now head the Classics department at King Edward's School, Birmingham.
Review: Oh My Gods! by Alexandra Sheppard (2019)
‘He’s like the Beyoncé of my immortal family.’ Guess the god. And which Olympian likes sauerkraut, Crocs and car boot sales ‘somewhere off the North …
What’s the point of a vocab test?
This post is about the power of tests as learning events. But first allow me to share a memory of my very earliest teaching days… …
Last Supper in Pompeii: what will your pupils get out of it?
With the new term looming like a superheated ash cloud, I got on an escape train to Oxford last Friday in order to see the …
Teaching at the JACT Latin Summer School 2019: what did I learn?
Tell any acquaintance that you’re spending two weeks in July teaching Latin to teenagers and they’ll likely look at you a bit funny. You can …
Four ways to introduce the Aeneid
Where do you begin with a text so gargantuan? How do you hook a teenage audience? Below are four keys that I have used to …
How to prepare for teaching new texts?
You don’t mean working over the summer, do you? I know- time is a teacher’s currency and once we’ve tasted freedom each July it can …
What does a new teacher need from their HoD?
I’m a big believer in the mantra ‘recruit good people and let them get on with it’. If you give people- and pupils- trust and …
Are you a classicist or a Classics teacher?
This question I aired at a Keynote conference in January 2016. Think back to your last year of university… How do undergraduates operate? Compound adjectives …
What happens after five years teaching Classics?
It was my late uncle- an English teacher and Deputy Head- who at the outset of my career told me it takes five years to …