1. This piece of research, reported on in The Guardian, puzzles me. England state school pupils as happy with life as private school peers is the headline https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/apr/07/england-state-school-pupils-as-happy-with-life-as-private-school-peers-survey

But what do you make of this? “Those who attended fee-paying independent schools did report higher levels of life satisfaction in their 20s. But after responses were adjusted to exclude the effects of advantages such as higher income, house ownership and better exam results, the researchers again found no substantial differences in satisfaction levels.” Perverse, surely, to exclude the ways in which the alumni of fee-paying schools live a better life – higher income, house ownership, better exam results – and then conclude that state school pupils are just as satisfied with life?

Maybe I’m missing the point …

2. A new FutureLearn MOOC likely to be of wide interest, I think, begins on Monday 25^th April Dyslexia and language teaching MOOC https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/dyslexia/8

“Learn more about dyslexia, and gain practical teaching tools and insights to help dyslexic students learn foreign languages.”

3. We should all be eating more pepper, it seems https://theconversation.com/black-pepper-healthy-or-not-179815

My assumption is that many of these pieces from The Conversation lend themselves quite well to use in class with older students – let me know if that’s the wrong assumption, please!

4. And, finally, today’s poetry for Ukraine comes from episode 45 of the Books for Breakfast podcast, which features two Ukrainian poems: ‘Crow, Wheels’ by  Lyuba Yakimchuk, and ‘We Lived Happily During the War’  by Ilya Kaminsky https://www.buzzsprout.com/1162427/10281667-45-wendy-erskine-ukrainian-poetry

All the episodes of Books for Breakfast here https://www.buzzsprout.com/1162427