Sophie Alexandra: Private Tutor

Summer teaching and learning showcase 🌊🦈 Day 4 🦈🌊

Take care out in the sea this summer— you never know what might be lurking beneath the waves. At least Milan (Y9) is well-versed in the dangers of the ocean, thanks to his excellent evaluation of an extract from Jaws by Peter Benchley.

Summer teaching and learning showcase: 🪞day 3🪞

At the end of the teaching year, Lucas (Y6) and I studied some classic and contemporary sci-fi, including H.G. Wells' 'The Time Machine' and Ted Chiang's 'The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate'. Inspired by these short stories, I asked Lucas to imagine stepping through a portal and meeting himself in twenty years' time...

Received an incredibly generous hamper from a happy family today. 🧡 I’ve already started on the chocolate buttons…

Summer teaching and learning showcase 🧙‍♀️ Day 2 🧙

As part of her study of Roald Dahl's 'Boy,' Matilda (Y4) created her own fiendish characters. Michelle and Jennifer are locked in a toxic friendship. One night, Jennifer decides to play a trick on her BFF (Best Foe Forever)...

Read Matilda's deliciously twisted story below:

Summer teaching and learning showcase: 🍓🍉 Day 1 🍓🍉
Over a bowl of fresh fruit from my garden, my Y4 student and I explored 'Strawberrying' by May Swenson. We began with predictions and went onto close analysis of selected stanzas. We then wrote a poem about a different fruit, inspired by Swenson's personification. Bianca (Y4) did an *amazing* job with this poem about watermelons, confidence and identity.

'You will recall [...] the houses described in Leviticus as 'leprous,' tsaraas, or Homer's phrase for the underworld: aidao domos, the house of Hades; I need not remind you, I think, that the concept of certain houses as unclean and forbidden - perhaps sacred - is as old as the mind of man'.

Really enjoying putting together the material for a lesson on Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, a story I've lived in and loved all my life, though my first encounter with it was through cinema. I've included lots of pictures of the glorious Ettington Park hotel, where the external shots of the 1963 film were taken and where, on a hot Saturday last summer, I spent an afternoon basking in Neo-Gothic splendour. What do we make of it? Disturbed? Leprous? Deranged?

Exploring hauntology in The Apparition Phase with an AP student. Good times (which persist... and repeat...):

Meditation on nothingness Provided to YouTube by The state51 ConspiracyMeditation on nothingness · RojThe Transactional Dharma of Roj℗ 2009 Richard Bancroft StevensReleased on: 2009-0...

It’s almost the end of the school year! Time to say goodbye to some students I’ve been teaching for ages 🥲

I'm having way too much fun creating this Medieval Monsters unit for my Y9. First time I've dug out my PhD folders in ages!

It can be tempting to focus so much on learning and results that we forget to look after ourselves. I believe wellbeing and good mental health are central not only to performing at our best, but also recovering from setbacks and developing helpful habits of mind that can last a lifetime. That's why I've trained as a Mental Health First Aider - to better support the students in my care. While, in a way, I hope I'll never have to use these skills (wouldn't it be lovely to exist in a world where young people never experience poor mental health?), I'm looking forward to approaching problems with a greater degree of confidence when they do arise, and helping students to take positive steps forward.