Welcome to this week's post which celebrates the wonderful poem of one of our pupils at Elisa's Tutorial School. Marta Boczkowska, aged 10, wrote a wonderful poem called Noises in the night which I am sharing with you here.

The Moon activity books, downloadable from my website, are available for sale. The activities within these books have inspired pupils to do work of their own away from our teaching and learning environment. This is a sample of work encouraging research and development of general knowledge as well as independent learning and vocabulary development and […]

For someone who was never trained in art and instead read English at Cambridge, Sir Quentin Blake is one of the most distinctive artists in the world. Not only were his illustrations ground-breaking for being quite as important as the Dahl stories they depicted, his work actually is intrinsically linked to our enjoyment of the […]

HERE IS A SHORT EXTRACT FROM MY CURRENT WORK IN PROGRESS, A CHILDREN'S MAGICAL FANTASY NOVEL, WHICH I AM CURRENTLY HAVING EDITED, WHILE I WORK ON REWRITES AND AMENDMENTS...IT PROMISES TO BE A TRULY FANTASTIC READ FOR BOTH BOYS AND GIRLS.   I STARTED WRITING THE BOOK TWENTY YEARS AGO AND INCORPORATES STORIES TOLD TO […]

As you know, I am an author. I write children’s books and I’m working on my children’s magical fantasy novel called Tredicino right now. I also blog. I also tutor and teach. I take care of a family, complete with dog. So, as you can see, I do a lot of things besides write. And […]

When I read this I was not as shocked as I thought I would be…everything nowadays can be bought on the internet and everything is available if you have the money! People, especially students, are so used to having information and services at their fingertips that they would, I suppose, not think twice about getting […]

Our dear Thomas the Tank Engine is going multicultural and has even had discussions to ensure it is politically correct with the United Nations. I’m not sure how I really feel about this! While I believe in being inclusive and opening the world of classic children’s stories to all I kind of believe that Thomas […]

Government figures of the latest test results show more than a third of children have not reached SATS targets as they leave primary school, 64% of students got the required results in the 3 Rs tested by the SATs in KS2. Though this figure is up from 61% last year and 53% the year before, […]

How can government spending on education be at record levels and yet funds be cut per student by 8% since 2010? It’s because pupil numbers are rising every year. Plus local authority funding, which directly impacts school funding in the area, is also being cut. So, despite the fact that the government says that it […]

When we send our children to school, we expect them to learn and to become independent learners. Not just learn Literacy and Maths or about the Battle of Waterloo, but also how to live in the world that they will soon join as adults. However, do not assume that life-skills are included as part of […]