Jennifer Webb - Trust Director for English and Literacy - Leeds

The Leading, Language and Literature Podcast

In this episode I’m speaking to Jennifer Webb. Jenny is nothing short of a legend in English teaching after writing a number of hugely beneficial books ranging from how to teach reading and writing to metacognition as well as grammar instruction for secondary professionals. On top of this, she is a constant source of insight via her in person and virtual CPD events, which encompass advice on almost every element of secondary academic life imaginable.

Following what has been an incredible couple of years for English teachers around curriculum development, I wanted to ask Jenny a number of questions about how she, the schools she works with and the departments she advises have interpreted these new ideas.

We discuss:

1. What Jenny thinks of organising the curriculum by concept as opposed to earlier approaches through theme or task type.
2. How Jenny feels about the government’s pledge to improve oracy in schools
3. The extent to which kids need to learn to learn or be more meta-cognitively aware
4. When considering text choices through an unapologetically ambitious lens, does Jenny mean more full texts, extracts or something else?
5. And finally, Teach like a Writer offers insights into how English happens in an authentic context. To what extent does Jenny think kids need to be assessed by producing a text that resembles the ‘real thing’ in English.

Thanks again to Jenny for offering so much insight about many of the most popular topics for discussion around at the moment. In addition to this, I hope she realises the massively positive impact she has had on the profession as well as the many ideas she she has shared that make the job all the more effective and therefore enjoyable on a daily basis.

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Links:

Jenny’s books

Jenny’s (free) CPD