Diving Bell
Visit The Craft of Writing Blog
HSC English Module C 'The Craft of Writing' continues to perplex students about the nature and possibilities of such weird animals as...
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Diving Bell
- Jan 26, 2021
- 3 min
ICT, Wisdom and the Satisfaction of Research
One of the big tasks of Term 1 is checking on the progress of senior research projects. Have students thought about them over the...
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Diving Bell
- May 26, 2020
- 3 min
Ask for power words, not techniques
Whenever you put your foot on the accelerator, there's a bang from the engine as the car goes forward. You take it to the mechanic, and...
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Diving Bell
- May 17, 2020
- 3 min
Craft of Writing: mixed mode responses
A mullet: the ultimate mixed mode response It's ok to mix modes in your writing. Most speech isn't purely one thing or another: in the...
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Diving Bell
- May 13, 2020
- 3 min
Theorizing Advanced Module A
Often we move straight into the study of the texts themselves in Module A without thinking about influence and intertextuality...
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Diving Bell
- May 5, 2020
- 3 min
But is it beautiful?
In the language of pandemic, the HSC Advanced Module B rubric says that students will develop 'detailed analytical and critical...
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Diving Bell
- Mar 24, 2020
- 2 min
New times, new text types
Like most pessimists, I perk up in times of despair. There's endless opportunities to say I told you so, and as standards become...
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Diving Bell
- Mar 16, 2020
- 3 min
Where's the argument?
Writing about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the historian Geoffrey Roberts says that On the Soviet side the pact emerged from a process of...
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Diving Bell
- Mar 11, 2020
- 2 min
What even is...a value?
This week I discovered the value of a school blazer: it clearly tells kids what the school values. 'Truth, Justice, and Diddling the Tax...
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Diving Bell
- Mar 4, 2020
- 2 min
What even is 'representation'?
Students often seem to stumble on essay questions which ask them to consider 'the representation' of something. In the previous...
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Diving Bell
- Feb 26, 2020
- 5 min
Opening êthos: how historians claim your trust
In the last History post, I suggested that students can find traces of historians' very early schooling in the way they construct their...
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Diving Bell
- Feb 20, 2020
- 2 min
Pitching the conversation concept
In this term's opening lesson on Module A: Textual Conversations, one student said 'Don't conversations involve both people taking turns?...
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Diving Bell
- Feb 12, 2020
- 2 min
History Extension and Ancient Schooling
The first topic of History Extension is easily my favourite thing to teach, because there's never a time I don't feel as if I'm teetering...
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Diving Bell
- Feb 5, 2020
- 2 min
What even is textual integrity?
When I came back to Australia from doing a DPhil in late medieval politics at Oxford and saw that English students were required to talk...
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Diving Bell
- Jan 29, 2020
- 3 min
What even IS analysis?
Last week I asked what we did when we 'did' English. It had something to do with texts, reading, and meaning, I thought. Practically...
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Diving Bell
- Jan 22, 2020
- 2 min
What do we do when we do English?
Last year I started by asking each year group that I teach 'What do we do here in English?' (for Year 7s, I asked 'What do you think...
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Diving Bell
- Jan 15, 2020
- 3 min
New year, stronger skills?
My professional weakness is graphic novels. I just hate them. I can’t see the point, and I don’t know what to do with them. I’m worried...
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Diving Bell
- Nov 9, 2019
- 2 min
A New Oodgeroo
As an immigrant to Australia (I'm white, so I gather I can call myself an immigrant, not the more PC 'migrant) I had no preconceived...
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Diving Bell
- Aug 29, 2019
- 2 min
Student blog: Essays are not a flash mob
What makes an argument? Connection, my little vegetables. Only Tinder users are hungrier for connection than an essay. And an essay requires
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Diving Bell
- Aug 21, 2019
- 3 min
Teacher blog: When it's good to say it's bad
One of the problems is that students forget that they’re supposed to be forming a personal response to the texts. And that often begins with
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