Reading Group Years 7-9

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This year I have launched my first monthly reading group for six older students, prompted by demands of current and former students' parents. We are looking at three themed texts each term, and discussing them in detail, considering context and language choices. This will be an ongoing group - do let me know if you would like to add your child's name to the waiting list for this academic year or next. 

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Creative Writing Group Years 7-9

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Based on the demand for the Reading Group for older students, I have just formed a Creative Writing Group for older students, starting in February 2027. The group of six is full but let me know if you would like to be on the waiting list for this year or next. If there is enough demand, I may create another group.  Some of my prize-winning students are in the current group and I am hoping that all those participating will have a go at entering writing competitions in the next few months. 

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Enrichment Lessons 

English lessons shouldn't just be about examination preparation and I am delighted to say that half of my current one-to-one students are doing enrichment, having worked on their 11 plus exams with me. This winter term I am working on 'Great Expectations' with a year 6 student at St Paul's Girls' School'; 'The Great Gatsby' and 'Death of a Salesman' with a year 7 student at SPGS; Barry Hines' 'Kes' with a year 7 student at Godolphin and Latymer; Sylvia Plath's poems with a year 9 student at SPGS; Chekhov's 'Three Sisters' with a year 10 student at SPGS; and Shakespeare's 'Richard II' with a year 12 student at North London Consortium School. We decide the texts together, inspired by what they are doing already in English and often history at school, what I think might challenge them, and what might encourage them to fall even more in love with such an incredibly rich subject. 

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Creative Writing

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Encouraging young people to write creatively is central to my teaching ethos. You can't fully understand a writer's choices, until you think about your own (and vice versa). I weave creative writing into all my lessons whether 11+ prep, A level, or general enrichment, and I insist that all my students enter competitions to motivate them into writing. Students I have worked with have won or been commended for the following competitions: the Tower Poetry Prize, the H. G. Wells Short Story Competition, Author of Tomorrow, the Young Walter Scott Prize, and in 2024 alone the Foyle Young Poets, the Martha Mills Young Writer's Prize, the Daunt Books' Short Story Competition, the Elmbridge Literary Competition, the Solstice Prize and the Henrietta Branford Writing Competition. In the same year, I volunteered to a be a judge of the BBC 500 Words competition.

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Chloe is one of my enrichment students, now in Year 9. She has been a runner-up or commended in the following competitions in 2024 alone: Daunt Books, the Elmbridge Literary Competition, Solstice National Young Nature Writing Prize; Foyle's Young Poet of the Year; and was one of only 12 runners up in the second year of the Martha Mills Young Writers' Prize 2024 - it was judged by Philip Pullman and she was the youngest by far of the winners! Chloe and her parents have kindly allowed me to share her beautiful story, 'Therapy Cat' which has been published in an anthology for the Martha Mills competition. I am delighted to add that Chloe is one of the three winners for the Martha Mills Young Writers' Prize 2026; and that another student I teach is one of the runners up! 

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At St Paul's Girls' School, I was selected by the Poetry Society to be a Teacher Trailblazer in recognition of my creative writing teaching and the fact that so many of my students won competitions. See Sophie's poem below for an example of a winning poem from the time I worked at SPGS. A number of attendees of the SPGS Creative Writing Group have gone onto become published authors. Look at Lucy Webster's ground-breaking memoir 'The View from Down Here'; Granta-listed Isabella Hammad's beautiful novels including her most recent 'Enter Ghost' which was short-listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction; Imogen West-Knight's funny and disturbing novel, 'Deep Down'; and Ankita Saxena's stunning collection of poems, 'Mother/Line'.

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