The Trouble with English and How to Address It: A Practical Guide to Designing and Delivering a Concept-Led Curriculum

This essential book will help English teachers to address the challenges and opportunities in creating a powerful, knowledge-rich, concept-led curriculum, which draws on lived experience and engages with cognitive science and other educational research. It explores persistent problems in the teaching of English, why we have struggled to address them and how we can go about creating a curriculum which enables all pupils to achieve.

Written by experienced English teachers and teacher educators, the book empowers teachers to reclaim their subject as one which has the power to change lives, and to deliver it with passion and authenticity. The Trouble with English and How to Address It contains:

• A detailed exploration of the challenges English teachers face in designing and delivering a rigorous, coherent, sequenced curriculum
• An overview of the implications of cognitive science research for the teaching of English
• Approaches to building a powerful, knowledge-rich curriculum which encompasses concepts, contexts and content in English
• Suggestions for how to use curriculum design and implementation as a training opportunity in departments
• Practical strategies for English teachers which provide the link between cognitive science research and their classroom practice

To equip leaders and classroom teachers with everything they might need to improve their provision, this book provides a forensic account of what to change, why and how, moving from the big picture into fine details about what we might see in a highly successful English classroom.

Zoe Helman is a highly experienced teacher and Education Consultant from West Yorkshire. She is co-founder of English-Ed which works with secondary schools to transform their English provision. Her main interest is in using Continuing Professional Development (CPD) to improve outcomes for disadvantaged pupils. She was also involved, as an Advisor and Assessor, with the CPD Assessment Pilot set up by the Wellcome Trust.

Sam Gibbs is Trust Lead for Pedagogy and Curriculum across secondary schools in Greater Manchester. She is an experienced teacher educator and coach, who has delivered evidence-informed training on curriculum design and implementation to primary and secondary schools across the country. She co-founded English-Ed with Zoe and was previously an Advanced Skills Teacher and leader in English departments. Sam lives in Leeds with her husband and three children.