Caffeine. Teach. Read. Repeat.

An incredible debut, full of excitement and curiosity. The story begins with an introduction to the Strangeworlds Travel Agency, before moving to the story of Flick Hudson, a girl who has just moved into the area with her parents and little brother. As she's exploring, she is drawn to the mysterious building and feels compelled to go inside. There, she meets Jonathan Mercurator, who when realises that Flick has the ability to 'see' magic, introduces her to the world-hopping adventures that the Agency provides. As expected, things start to take a more sinister and interesting turn, as a disappearance investigation leads them to discover that the worlds they visit appear to be changing. Journeys to other worlds are often seen in children's books, but as long as they offer something different and are exciting, I think there's room for them all. What I loved about this book are the descriptions of the worlds visited and their inhabitants. It reminded me of Doctor Who or...

The buzz surrounding Struan Murray’s debut made it one of the most anticipated book releases for me in early 2020, a bold claim when considering the other well-hyped releases that are due out the same time. The buzz appeared genuine too, and now I’ve read it, it was completely deserved. I was hooked (no pun intended) from the opening scene - a whale found of the rooftop of a chapel in a mountainous city half-submerged by the sea - and I devoured the pages in the same greedy way the waves attacked the city. The story remains as unique, strange and gripping throughout, but the world Murray has created and the characters inhabiting it are so realistic that it’s like reading a historical retelling of an usual, but very real, past. There were moments where I audibly gasped as the stories unfurled, the weaving of two tales, one being from the diary entries of a former city resident, working seamlessly to create intrigue, suspense and sadness. This book  raised so many questions to me ab...

Like many schools, we've made our humanities curriculum - not topic! - a priority this year. Not just for Ofsted, but because we'd had the curriculum planned for a while and we had puts things in place, it still wasn't getting the time and attention it needed to really come alive and be properly great. It's been the basis of many staff meetings recently, the phase leaders (including myself) have been sent to either geography or history conferences, and our humanities lessons are getting a lot a lot more scrutiny than before. (By a lot more, I mean there was very little if any before and there is some now - nothing horrendous!) We're still working on it but I thought I'd share some of what I've done so far this year, in case it's useful to anyone else. Timeline Our head makes the things she doesn't like very clear, and timelines from a well-known resource company (think Heather) is one of them. She has a point. I've 'done' those timeli...