This professional development booklet offers ideas for innovative planning in English teaching. It could be used by individual teachers, colleagues within an English department, local authority personnel working with teacher groups or initial teacher education lecturers to support their work with student teachers. Although the examples included here focus on teaching English at key stage 3, the underlying principles of innovation and critical enquiry are readily applicable to key stage 4, and to primary classrooms.
The material gives examples of innovative planning for English teaching where:
• year 7 students co-construct a series of lessons based on a detective novel
• a year 9 class explore a wordless graphic novel
• pupils create poetry anthologies.
The booklet also includes guidance for undertaking a small-scale critical enquiry in the classroom.
Alison Binney has also written about the work featured in Planning for Innovation on Shaun Tan’s blogsite. Visit it at:
Free copy of the professional development materials Raising Standards through Innovations in English teaching: creativity and critical reflection if you buy ten copies.
This book is also now available as an e-book from the NIACE website here.
Published by UKLA Publications
ISBN-13: 978 1 897638 54 5
Format: Paperback
Published in 2010
UKLA Members' price: £11.00
