A training week in English
15th October 2026
It was a busy week at work for me last week as I was involved in subject-related training at NTTC. As a teacher in secondary English and an ITE English specialist in previous roles, this is where my heart lies and I do miss it! Delivering a day of English-focused training on the secondary English programme and a morning of oracy for our whole secondary cohort was an absolute pleasure. To make sure that my own knowledge stays current, I keep in touch with teaching networks and have signed up for NATE's ITE conference in November - and I hope to see some friends there too.
My approach to the curriculum work I do at NTTC is this: as trainee teachers, you are our educational decision-makers of the future. I can't tell you what decisions you should make - that is up to you - but you'll leave this programme equipped to make informed, rigorous decisions - with a toolkit for understanding as well as doing. I also very much subscribe to Kat Howard's statement that knowledge of subject is one of the most important things for teacher wellbeing. Last year's trainees told us that the subject days were most effective when they could see teaching in action, create and share resources, and dig deep into subject pedagogy and assessment - we're using this feedback to plan the shape of the year subject-wise.
With these things in mind, our English day focused on foundational skills and we discussed the skills needed for reading, using Scarborough's reading rope as a prompt for understanding the complexity of comprehension, and reflecting on the role of teachers in supporting students to develop the skills, knowledge and understanding for reading comprehension. We looked at the Scaffolded Reading Experience as a framework for teaching both longer texts - Much Ado About Nothing was our key text here. We also looked at some of the poems from the Worlds and Lives cluster. This meant we could discuss recent diversification of the poetry syllabus in particular, as well as using the Lit in Colour report to explore why these changes have been so urgent. The Scaffolded Reading Experience helped us to explore poetry, paying attention to anti-racist approaches to teaching. In particular, we considered different questions we might ask about our reading, bringing both Aiden Chambers' Tell Me questions and Michael Rosen's question matrix into play. We also considered more broadly how weaving context into the teaching of texts, as opposed to front-loading at the beginning of a series of lessons, can support students to respond personally to their reading before considering how the texts were shaped by time and experience.
We didn't get any time to talk about writing - that's for next time. As a member of the Norfolk branch of the National Writing Project's Teachers' Writing Group (find out more about what we did last month here: Groups' Latest — National Writing Project (UK)), my approach on writing will be to explore how the Teaching Writing Sequence supports both teachers and young people to express themselves in authentic and genuine ways. As John Dixon said, 'The purpose of language: to share experience.'
My morning with the whole secondary cohort - spanning eleven subjects - was focused around oracy. I used frameworks and materials from Voice 21 and Oracy Cambridge to explore the concept of learning through talk, with some excellent examples from the English and Media Centre to support our learning about what exploratory talk is, why it is so important, and how we can create effective conditions for learning through talk. Trainees had plenty to take back to their placement schools to talk to their mentors about, and some clear focuses for observing their colleagues teach.
I will be doing more subject-related work across the year: more with the English subject programme, including organising a visit into a local school to observe more effective practice and broaden placement experiences; a creative-writing workshop with primary trainees; a session relating to SPaG with a focus on KS2 SATs with primary trainees; foundational reading and writing in your subject for the secondary cohort.
We're proud of the subject-knowledge work that we do at NTTC and we're lucky to be working with a network of experts in a range of subjects across the region.