Mr Gunn's English Room

"In a moment, I am going to pour you a cup of coffee," she said as she set a cup in front of Fumiko. "Coffee? Why coffee?" "Your time in the past will begin from the time the coffee is poured..." Kazu said, ignoring the question from Fumiko, who was nevertheless reassured by the news it would be happening soon. "And you must return before the coffee goes cold." Fumiko's confidence vanished in a flash. "What? That soon?" "The last and the most important rule..." The talking never ends. Fumiko was itching to go. "Too many rules..." she muttered as she gripped the coffee cup placed before her. The vessel was quite unremarkable: just a cup which had not yet had coffee poured into it. But she thought it felt noticeably cooler than the usual porcelain. "Are you listening?" Kazu continues. "When you return to the past, you must drink the entire cup before the coffee goes cold." "Uh. I don...

One positive I'm taking from all this social distancing is that I'm getting a brilliant amount of time to read. Before our school closed its doors on Friday, a number of my younger students came to my room to borrow books for the lockdown period, which came as a wonderful surprise. Two girls took home a collection that, I imagine, probably weighed more than the two of them put together. Alongside lessons like these ones, I hope that kids across the country are filling at least some of their time away from school with a book in their hands. When it comes to English and the Humanities in particular, there's not much else that will improve comprehension and linguistic skills like regular reading. My most recent read was Adventures of a Young Naturalist  by David Attenborough - three separate recounts of his journeys through Guyana, Indonesia, and Paraguay where he was sent to collect (or capture, more accurately) animals for London Zoo while filming documentaries about the l...

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. - Robert Frost, 1916 For the longest time, The Road Not Taken  has been my favourite poem. I love the  natural imagery of the speaker standing in a lush wood, out for a hike, deciding which path of the two ...

While English can be a fairly rigid subject in terms of what we can teach to our older students, there's always been a lot of wiggle-room for the younger years. Alongside the more 'traditional' topics, our school has some excellent schemes of work designed around subjects like Greek Mythology, Poetry Through Time, and Mystery Stories - all of which engage and excite the students while introducing them to whole new worlds of language and literature. One thing that never manages to work its way in, however, is sport. Sure, the occasional Language Paper might have a couple of sources about surfing or skiing, but its extremely rare to find an English lesson centred around sport, despite the fact that sports journalism must be one of the most widely-read sources of information in the country today. How many people (and I include myself in this) turn immediately to the back pages of any paper they happen to pick up? I often find, in fact, that relating English to sport is one o...

In a mythological world full of crime and punishment (sometimes fair, more often not), the story of Prometheus is potentially the most well-known. Prometheus was a Titan that fought on the side of Zeus and the Olympian Gods in the Titanomachy - the war which resulted in Zeus overthrowing his father, Cronus, and becoming King of Olympus. While most people know the story of Prometheus stealing fire from the Gods, fewer know that it was Prometheus himself that created humans in the image of the Olympians themselves. Seeing that his beloved creations were suffering, Prometheus brought them fire from Olympus which allowed them to cook, create, and keep themselves safe. Enraged by this betrayal, Zeus ordered Prometheus to be chained to the side of a mountain for eternity, where each day he would be attacked by a ravenous bird which would rip out and eat the Titan's liver, only for it to grow back overnight to be devoured again the next day. Stoically, Prometheus endured this ...

Morning! For all of us (myself firmly included), today marks the start of a very strange journey. While some students will continue to attend school, albeit in a much-reduced capacity, the majority will be at home for the foreseeable future. While I'm sure every school has supplied plenty of work for students to be getting on with, I feel it's a responsibility of teachers everywhere to ensure that parents have a variety of activities and exercises available to them in order to keep their children stimulated and to continue their academic development. As such, I've decided to set up this blog as a place to share the resources I will be creating over this unprecedented period of time. As an English teacher, my focus is usually reserved for those tried and tested subjects: Mr Dickens, Mr Shakespeare, Mr Russell... a lot of "misters", really. However, we're all well aware that most students have as much interest in Shakespeare as we did at their age (no matte...