1. A good blog post for Macmillan English by my NILE colleague, Jason Skeet: What is assessment for learning and why is it important? https://www.macmillanenglish.com/blog-resources/article/advancing-learning-what-is-assessment-for-learning-and-why-is-it-important

Assessment for learning is one of those terms used frequently in education but often discussed in differing ways, so it can end up meaning different things to different people. One source of confusion lies in the idea of what is meant by ‘assessment’, which for many people involves testing and grading learners. Dylan Wiliam — someone who has written extensively about assessment for learning and whose work informs most of what I have to say here — is on record as saying he wishes he could go back in time and popularise the term ‘responsive teaching’ instead. It is the notion of assessing and then responding to learners’ needs, as these needs arise in the process of the learning, that lies at the heart of effective assessment for learning.

2. Alexei Navalny’s prison diaries have just been published, as part of his about-to-be-posthumously published memoir, Patriot. Here’s an extract from them, published in The New Yorker last week, lighter in tone than one might perhaps expect:

We all have that classic labor-camp look that belongs in a movie about the Gulag. The heavy jackets, fur hats, and mittens, the enormous wooden shovels, each of which is so heavy you would think it was made of cast iron, especially after it gets saturated with water, which freezes. They are the selfsame shovels used by the soldiers who cleared the streets of my military home town when I was a child. You might have thought that in the thirty years that have passed since then shovel technology would have progressed toward production of lighter shovels, but in Russia, as with so many other things, we didn’t hack it. We were brought a couple of lightweight shovels that immediately broke. The response was the usual “Oh, well, what the hell, let them use the wooden shovels. We’ve used them for shovelling snow all our lives. They are reliable.” As if to say, our grandfathers invented these shovels and far be it from us to doubt their wisdom by trying to improve something that is already ideal.

So there I was, scowling, wearing a heavy winter jacket, and wielding a wooden shovel with snow frozen to it. The only thing that amused me, and at least partly enabled me to accept this reality, is that on these occasions I feel like the hero of my all-time favorite joke. It is a Soviet joke, but has a certain relevance today.

A boy goes out for a stroll in the courtyard of his apartment block. Boys playing soccer there invite him to join in. The boy is a bit of a stay-at-home, but he’s interested and runs over to play with them. He eventually manages to kick the ball, very hard, but unfortunately it crashes through the window of the basement room where the janitor lives. Unsurprisingly, the janitor emerges. He is unshaven, wearing a fur hat and quilted jacket, and clearly the worse for a hangover. Infuriated, the janitor stares at the boy before rushing at him.

The boy runs away as fast as he can and thinks, What do I need this for? After all, I’m a quiet, stay-at-home sort of boy. I like reading. Why play soccer with the other boys? Why am I running away right now from this scary janitor when I could be lying at home on the couch reading a book by my favorite American writer, Hemingway?

Meanwhile, Hemingway is reclining on a chaise longue in Cuba, with a glass of rum in his hand, and thinking, God, I’m so tired of this rum and Cuba. All this dancing, and shouting, and the sea. Damn it, I’m a clever guy. Why am I here instead of being in Paris discussing existentialism with my colleague Jean-Paul Sartre over a glass of Calvados?

Meanwhile, Jean-Paul Sartre, sipping Calvados, is looking at the scene in front of him and thinking, How I hate Paris. I can’t stand the sight of these boulevards. I’m sick and tired of all these rapturous students and their revolutions. Why do I have to be here, when I long to be in Moscow, engaging in fascinating dialogue with my friend Andrei Platonov, the great Russian writer?

Meanwhile, in Moscow, Platonov is running across a snow-covered courtyard and thinking, If I catch that little bastard, I’ll fucking kill him.

Here’s the BBC News piece on Patriot https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj6eppg77geo

And here’s The New Yorker piece (which – Cross fingers crossed – you might be able to read without a subscription) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/21/alexei-navalny-patriot-memoir

3. The Korean novelist Han Kang, perhaps best known for The Vegetarian, won the 117^th Nobel Prize for Literature last week, the first Korean writer to do so. Here’s a number of gift articles from The New York Times about and by her:

The announcement of her Nobel award https://tinyurl.com/utazeuxz

The 2016 NYT review of The Vegetarian https://tinyurl.com/3cxuswmm

Her own piece, Read Your Way Through Seoul https://tinyurl.com/2328xx63

4. An update on one of the bees in my bonnet, the Lucy Letby case https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/10/lucy-letby-police-cps-handling-case-raises-new-concerns-about-convictions

5. And, finally and spectacularly, the Northern Lights courtesy of Edinburgh University https://www.instagram.com/edinburghuniversity/p/DA_SdZ6idyy/?img_index=1