A-Level Syllabus Poet, Owen Sheers, Visits School

This Monday and Tuesday was a special moment for students studying English at KS4 and KS5, along with their teachers. The world renowned poet, novelist, dramatist, film-maker and professor, Owen Sheers, was in school from the 24-25th February 2020 to help our students and teachers get to grips with a range of literary topics.

Starting Monday by spending a whole day working with the A-Level class who are studying his collection, Skirrid Hill, Owen shed light on the stories and processes behind this award-winning collection. Then on Tuesday he did some work with all of Year 10 and 11 on his novel, ‘Resistance’, which was made into a movie in 2011.

The day continued with a screening of his BBC movie-poem, ‘The Green Hollow’ for English and History A-Level students and one last Q&A and debate with the Literature A-Level class.

The day ended with Owen running a CPD staff-training session for our English staff about how to harness the creative process in young people, getting our own teachers laughing and crying as we had a go at writing our own poems.

This visit has been a wonderful opportunity for students to encounter one of the UK’s most exciting and treasured young writers, and for our teachers to see the human being behind an exam text which many of us have now been teaching for ten years.

We greatly look forward to the chance to work with other exciting world-class practitioners from the full range of disciplines in the future.

Click >> for more pics…