Back in 2001, a wonderful website called TeachIt appeared. It pooled resources created by English teachers for teachers, so we didn’t all have to reinvent the wheel every time we had to teach something new (or old!). I started contributing in 2002 — and some of those early resources are still active, reaping in royalties every six months — enough to buy a new Moleskine, should I give in to temptation!

Over the years, I’ve uploaded a few resources (19 to be precise), but I’ve hardly been prolific simply because I’m no longer in the secondary-school classroom, so my finger isn’t really on the current curriculum pulse (is anyone’s?!), but some of the stuff I create for uni, I adapt and offer up for anyone who might like them. And it seems some do. Five people ‘love’ a piece I wrote about mobile phones, in which students need to correct  some pretty vile grammar crimes.

A few weeks ago, the resource lady at TeachIt asked if I’d be interested in putting together some ideas for the classroom. Why not? It would be nice to a. get a bit of cash coming in, and b. get my brain thinking GCSE again a bit. So it did. And what fun I had last week racking my brain for creative approaches to listening and speaking, and non-fiction and media writing.

Teaching a Listening and Speaking course at Salzburg Uni made coming up with ideas for the speaking and listening resource pretty easy, but trying to think of ways to get students writing in any other way but actually just writing was flipping difficult! It seems, though, that I did OK: “these are brilliant, I’ve passed round a few to the other editors and these have been the most highly praised”

*blushes*