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Dear Reader,

How are you gearing up for the new school year? Have you got:

✔ Teaching materials sorted

✔ Teaching wardrobe ready

✔ Human batteries appropriately charged?

No? Cool: welcome to 99% of the teaching population! It's welcoming, cosy and non-competitive here - we're a scatterbrained but nice bunch.

School has been underway for well over a week this side of the Pond and against all odds, this beginning of the school year was again successfully survived by all.

To make this start sweeter for myself, I took some time to do one of the things I most enjoy: visiting old historical stuff. Does this help you recharge your batteries? It does mine. This time, I visited an underrated place that proved fatal in the Henry VIII-Catherine Howard-Thomas Culpeper love triangle: Pontefract Castle.

So today, let me talk you through:

• the storied and somewhat scandalous history of Pontefract Castle
• a new free webinar I'm giving for Macmillan about using literature
• some fabulous guessing games for teaching literature

Pontefract: the ruins of a castle... and of Catherine Howard

So, the basics: while you might have (rightfully) never heard of it, Pontefract Castle was in fact once one of the main fortresses in Britain - in the words of the BBC, it was "certainly something that Cromwell's soldiers knocked about a bit".

Its history dates back to the Norman Conquest: it was built initially as an earth and timber fortress in the 1080s, then rebuilt in stone in the 12th century. Ever since, it has been known as the "Key to the North" and it played a key role in the Civil Wars, where it was a major Royalist stronghold, surviving (ish, if you look at it today...) repeated sieges.

Was it all fun and games at the castle? While they did apparently grow an insane amount of liquorice there, which I dare anyone not to find delightful, there were also a number of incarcerations and executions.

The most famous of these fairly truculent (but expected, because hey, this is British history?!) episodes is to do with Richard II. It was 1399 when King Richard II was unceremoniously captured by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster. Nice guy that he was, Henry imprisoned Richard in Pontefract Castle, where he later died by starvation. And guess what? You get to enjoy a dramatisation of this by none other than Shakespeare in this extract from Richard II, filmed at Pontefract Castle:

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But is this enough history for one castle, do you think? I guess you know the answer can only be a resounding no, so: I bet you remember the man who is a friend and foe of all English language teachers. Let me give you a hint: "divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived"¹. Yes, of course I'm talking about Henry VIII.

Well, it appears that Henry VIII went on a summer tour of Yorkshire with his then-wife Catherine Howard (his fifth one, in case you were wondering). It also appears that Henry's courtier and friend Thomas Culpeper joined them and during their visit to Pontefract Castle, the two began an affair. During this summer, Catherine also wrote him a love letter: this was later found and used as evidence in the efforts that led to her and Culpeper's executions by beheading only a few months later.

Had enough of the history? If not, you can spend a little of your Sunday learning more about it here (and here for the salacious and ultimately very sad story of Catherine and Thomas).

Now, if this has got you in a bit of a teaching mode and you're thinking "ooh, I really want to step up my literature and history teaching game!", I think I've got just the thing for you!

My upcoming free webinar for Macmillan

If you're free at some point on Wednesday 23, you can attend one of the amazing talks in the Macmillan's New Voices event:

My talk is called "Beyond Shakespeare: 15 ideas to use literature creatively in the classroom" and it runs at 11AM UK time. This is less than ideal for many of you, so before you ask: you can register for free and get access to the recording and slides. I also recommend exploring all the other presentations as there are some true gems in there. They run at 11AM, 4PM and 10.30PM Italy time and you can watch all the recordings later, too.

The presentations are all 15 minutes long, so I hope it's a nice little way to get energised at the start of the school year.

Speaking of which: with the school year starting, perhaps a couple of activities to teach literature will come in handy? Worry not, for I can help!

Guessing games to teach literature

You might be a fellow lover of all things board games/crosswords, or you might not be, but nobody can deny that guessing games bring one key thing to our classrooms: engagement. This is sometimes missing, particularly when we teach literature, but it doesn't need to be.

Here are some ways you can use guessing games to spruce up literature lessons. You can create printed materials with them, combine them with your coursebook or just use them on your interactive whiteboard. Speaking of which: where are you on a scale from "super technological teacher" to "I'm addicted to the sound of rustling paper"?

What kind of teaching materials do you use most often? Digital resources (e.g. digital coursebook, PowerPoints, online quizzes) Paper resources (e.g. printed coursebook, paper worksheets)

Here are 3 activities you can easily adapt for both:

1. Spot the lie

A marvellous activity by Joanne Collie and Stephen Slater: first, give your students some biographical facts about an author you're covering. It may look something like this:

Born 1856 / father a corn miller who was a heavy drinker / his parents’ marriage was an unhappy one / mother left the family home in Dublin and moved to London with Shaw’s two sisters / Shaw joined them in 1876 / Shaw had various jobs – assistant to a land agent, book reviewer, music critic / married a rich Irishwoman at the age of 42 / Nobel Prize for Literature 1925 / wrote more plays than Shakespeare / died in Hertfordshire in 1950.

I would suggest this is already in itself a guessing game: who could this author be? Did you figure it out?

It's George Bernard Shaw. Kudos if you got it!

Now, after giving students the biographical facts, give them 4 additional ones, such as:

1. Shaw made provision in his will for over £350,000 to be given to the campaign for spelling reform.
2. Shaw was politically neutral.
3. Shaw never had any children.
4. Shaw was a lifelong teetotaller.

Can they spot the lie and justify their answers? (By the way: can you?²)

2. What happens next?

Simple, low-prep and creative: students read the beginning of a text, then continue writing based on their imagination and predictions of what happens next. With lower level classes, students can draw or work in groups with the teacher's support.

3. Guess the story from the icons

In my talk on 23 September, I will discuss how we can encourage students to transform literary texts: for example, by turning them into visual representations, such as infographics describing the evolution of a story or character, mind maps or... actual maps, e.g. a map of Middle Earth with key events from The Hobbit.

But why not reverse it, too? Take this (fairly clever, I think) icon-based diagram: what story does it represent?³

Students can discuss in groups, try to come up with the story themselves, then all the groups share their stories: it will be fun to see how different their interpretations of the very same diagram are! Then, reveal the actual story: by this stage, you will have created motivation for them to learn and, why not, compare the actual story to their own. Maybe they think they can do better than Shakespeare?

That brings me to the end of today's newsletter. If you enjoyed it and you try some of it out, let me know; if you want to hear of other off-the-beaten-track-but-surprisingly-interesting British spots, let me know; if you've got something swirling in your mind that you've been wanting to tell me, let me know. In short: I'm here, let me know!

Wishing you a lovely Sunday with your loved ones.

Take care, dear teacher ✨

¹ Believe it or not, children in the UK know and use this little, and frankly a bit disturbing, rhyme to memorise the fate of Henry's six wives.

² I bet you got this right: the lie was the second one. Shaw was very much not politically neutral.

³ Yup, it's Romeo and Juliet!

P.S.: My weekly suggestion for things to listen to/watch/read to improve your English while relaxing: I've not been able to stop laughing since I watched this: Ben Knight tells us of the little telltale signs that substitute teachers can look for to tell you what a class is going to be like before students even come in. Here's to hoping you only get one, well-behaved Oliver!

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