Amy Staniforth - Acting Head of Department and Author - Norfolk

In this episode I’m speaking with Amy Staniforth. Amy is an Acting Head of Department, Assistant Principal and co-author of the amazing Ready to Teach Macbeth. 

We discuss:

1. The best text Amy’s ever read, taught or been taught

2. What kind of timescale and process goes into planning the books in her ‘Ready to teach…’ series

3.  What made Amy and Stuart choose Macbeth and A Christmas Carol and whether the guides are written with any particular Key Stage in mind

4. How Amy approaches a significant extract of a play or novel with her students

5. One area of practice she’d like to improve on

6. The texts Amy’s department covers at Key Stage 3 and why

7. And lastly, when we can expect Ready to Teach A Christmas Carol to be ready 

With Twitter always ready to offer an incredibly diverse and insightful amount of reading material, I hope I managed to convey to Amy the outstanding effect that Ready to Teach Macbeth has had on my teaching and its place as an outstanding resource for English teachers around the world. I imagine that my anticipation for Ready to Teach A Christmas Carol is also shared by all those who are lucky enough to be familiar with Amy and Stuart’s work and are looking forward to reading it later this year. 

If you want to be kept up to date on when educational chat like this happens, then be sure to subscribe to the podcast and/or follow me on Twitter @chrisjordanhk 

Links:

Guardian article on teacher questioning

Say it Again Better strategy (halfway down the post)

The Fire Eaters by David Almond

Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo