Tell me why I love Fridays

I don’t always write about it often, but I am a Head of Department and every so often I feel the need to share something that has worked for us. Last year, I was really concerned about work load. A new GCSE brought new problems and new issues. I remember my first driving lesson: it was a sweaty affair. I worked much harder in that first hour lesson than at any other time during my lessons. Your brain is constantly thinking. You are constantly moving. The new GCSE have brought a new workload. More planning. More resources to find. More resources to make. More effort on marking because it is all new.
I decided to make a change. A significant change. I decided that we would get all year groups, apart from Year 11 for obvious reasons, to do some old school composition. Every year group would do the same task on the same day. We would all do the same thing and treat it in the same way.

Example:

Persuade teachers that you are the best student in the school.

 Students had to include the following things:

•       A link to a historical event

•       A line from a famous song

•       A quote from a well-known speech

•       A simile 

•       A fact

They also needed to include the following word somewhere.

Indisputable  - it is true and nobody can argue with the fact

Mrs Jones’s cooking is indisputably good.

We call the whole thing the 200 Word Challenge. We tell students to write for 25 minutes and they need to write only 200 words. I spend the 25 minutes moving around the class marking and advising students.

For the second half of the lesson, students peer assess the work using this format:

Peer Assessment

[1]Highlight and label the following
A link to a historical event
A line from a famous song
A quote from a well-known speech
A simile 
A fact

[2] Circle any errors.

[3] Write down what they need to do to improve the content / structure / writing.
[4] Sign and date it.

Finally, I get students to respond to the peer assessment with this:

Correct each circled mistake and write a quick explanation of the mistake – spelling / I missed a letter / I forgot a comma 

And, in the last few minutes, I read out some of the best examples to the class. I read them rather than getting the students reading them so I can place gusto and drama in the reading. If there is a really good one, I share with the next class so it can inspire and direct them.

I then repeat this for every lesson on a Friday. My Friday planning is done months in advance. Each week has been prepared. For the rest of the year I do not have to worry about planning on a Friday. The department doesn’t need to plan or prepare work for lessons on a Friday. I don’t need to worry about cover work. A simple PowerPoint is all a cover teacher needs. In fact, with this one approach I have reduced planning and preparation down by a fifth. The department tends to relax by Thursday as we have Friday sorted.

We have done this for a second term and it is surprising to think of the results. Each student has completed over twelve separate writing tasks and each one has a different purpose, audience and content. They have argued which is the best colour. They have continued on from a line in ‘Great Expectations’. They have written the opening to story. They have write a new report. They have written a comical how to guide.

Their books are full of writing. Lots of writing. Their books are also tell a story. They tell the story of how they are getting better. Take our Year 7s. The students in Year 7 tended to turn everything into a story. Week by week, they’d all transform their writing into a story. I have had head teacher speeches written as part of a novel. After a term they got it.  This week, I had one boy in a middle set produce this as an opening to his writing persuading teachers he is the best student in the school:

In the beginning there was nothing just darkness. Then the galaxy was created. Tiny molecules came together and created life. Living things evolved and now there’s me, the best student. Other students should stop trying to be the best because I am. They should let it go, turn away and slam the door. I don’t care what they are going to say. Let me rein on. Mathematical problems never bothered me anyway.

My knowledge will have students falling to their knees like slaves forced to build pyramids, for it is one small step for me and a giant leap for common student kind. Here’s just a fact to show you how smart I am. Fasten your seatbelts. If you fall off a 40ft cliff, you die. I know, mind blown.

I have numerous examples like this. I had a great description by a boy who described my classroom as some kind of Gradgrind copy. Another boy, wrote a poem about the forgotten soldiers, when the rest of the class wrote a story about someone being forgotten. It has been a delight for me to see students rise to the challenge across all levels of ability.

Now, here’s the thing: the students love it. They love the unpredictable nature of the task. They love the routine. They love the freedom of the writing. Yes, I have had one or two students have a mental block with a task, but usually they come back with renewed vigour the following week. They love it. The teachers love it. I think we have suffered ‘connection’ issues in English. We have felt that everything has to be connected. If students write, it is usually writing something connected to the main topic. You are studying ‘A Christmas Carol’ so the students will write a carol, a Christmas card, a description of life in the Cratchit house, a ghost story and so on. Four hours a week on the same topic for seven weeks can make lessons particularly beige. More of the same thing.

Another interesting aspect is about the response from the different genders. Both have liked for particular reasons. Girls seem to like for the creative writing element; boys, however, have liked it for the lack of rules. Yep, you heard me right. There seems to be a lot of theory about boys needing structure and clear routines. In fact, all the examples from students above are from boys. They have responded really well to composition tasks. Why? Maybe, because the way we have written things in lessons has been a little bit ‘female’. We tend to spend five weeks preparing for writing. We might spend a week planning. A week looking at how others write. A week looking at techniques. A week drafting. A week writing. Maybe, a more masculine approach of writing is doing it off the cuff, in the moment and doing it now.

When I think about how I write, I notice that I write very quickly and with very little preparation. I might have a thought or idea in the week, but that’s all the planning and drafting I do. What do you mean ‘you can tell’? I don’t agonise over things – maybe I should. I sit down and write. In a way, the exam system promotes this ‘masculine’ way of approaching writing. The coursework promotes the ‘feminine’ way of writing, slow, steady and thoughtful. You’ll note I am using inverted commas when referring to the gender, because there will be one person who will say I am female and I use the masculine approach to writing. Plus, I am also hesitant to fully commit to such a generalisation as it being a clear and concrete trait.

We know we have a problems with boys, but I think in part how the work has been structured could have, in part, created this problem. Boys are usually impulsive, yet we have structured work and writing to work against this impulsiveness. Instead of getting boys to get an idea written down, we have asked the boys to hold that thought for a bit longer… and a bit longer… a bit more longer… a bit more… now get it down. Is there any wonder that boys have struggled in school when they have work cognitively and behaviourally in different ways? It is like asking Usain Bolt to race people in a mobility scooter and he has to ride in one too. The frustration. The anger. The resentment that must create.  We are asking boys who want to do it now to go up on a mountain and sit and ponder the meaning of life. Remember ‘Karate Kid’. Education has been asking boys to ‘wax on and wax off’ and paint the fence, when they just want to jump over the fence and go kick a football with their friends.

Look at all the rubbish we have had to deal with lesson observations. We have been asked in the past to make things more active for students, because boys like active stuff. We have been told to put quizzes into lessons, because we know boys like competitions. What if it is simpler than that? How boys think.

In my department, the boys are writing more than they ever have done before and they are enjoying it. The weekly writing task will lead to another assessment in the year. We are going to ask students to turn their best 200 word writing task into an assessment later in the year. They’ll have a range of examples to pick from. We will do that other kind of writing – the slow and methodical writing – across the year.   

If you could reduce your work by a fifth wouldn’t you tell the world about it?  Oh, and if it benefitted the boys, wouldn’t you also scream about it?

Thanks for reading,

Xris

Term 1

	Task	Area of focus
Week 1	Describe a setting from two people’s perspective	Perspective
Week 2	Write an opening to a head teacher’s speech persuading students to improve their behaviour	Persuasive writing
Week 3	What is the most important colour in the world? Why?	Extended thinking
Week 4	Write the opening page to a novel entitled ‘The Forgotten’	Creativity
Week 5	Creative writing inspired by a picture	Creativity
Week 6	Write a news report on yesterday’s English lesson – it must be sensational	Newspaper featured

Term 2

	Task	Area of focus
Week 1	A humorous ‘how to guide’ on something dull. How to use a paperclip?	Voice / tone
Week 2	Students continue on from an extract from a novel	Style
Week 3	Describe a character from a story from three different perspectives	Perspective
Week 4	Persuade teachers that you are the best student in the school	Persuasive writing
Week 5	Describe the journey to school as a wild adventure	Creativity
Week 6	Intelligence is far more important than strength and beauty in life.   Discuss.	Extended thinking

Term 3

	Task	Area of focus
Week 1	Create a short story that is told backwards	Perspective
Week 2	School doesn’t prepare students for life. Invent new subject for school. What would it be?	Extended thinking
Week 3	Take one aspect of English or another subject and try to make it interesting for a text book	Creativity
Week 4	Create a small script for a short play entitled ‘The Challenge’	Features of a script
Week 5	A cartoon character has died. Write a speech for its funeral.	Tone

Term 4

	Task	Area of focus
Week 1	Write a magazine article exploring the dangers of…	Tone
Week 2	Describe a setting – change the mood halfway through the extract	Creativity
Week 3	Write a monologue exploring why someone committed a crime	Dramatic monologue form
Week 4	Write about a time you felt lonely	Empathic writing
Week 5	Write for thirty minutes on the topic of horses.	Extended thinking
Week 6	Write a response on the emotion ‘jealously’	Creativity
Week 7	Write a television programme review – it must be humorous	Tone

Term 5

	Task	Area of focus
Week 1	Write the last two paragraphs in response to a piece of non-fiction read	Style
Week 2	Describe a supermarket on a Saturday morning	Creativity
Week 3	We are all born equal. Discuss.	Extended thinking
Week 4	Using the style of one poem as a guide, write a poem inspired by a place, person or feeling	Style
Week 5	Write a letter requesting that your parents are given a pay rise	Tone

Term 6

	Task	Area of focus
Week 1	Write a review of a place you have been on holiday to	Tone
Week 2	Describe an activity, but don’t use any words associated with that activity	Style
Week 3	Write speech for a new political party	Persuasive writing
Week 4	Describe a building in an interesting way	Creativity
Week 5	Write about anything and in any style	Creativity
Week 6	Describe a famous event from an unusual perspective	Perspective
Week 7	Describe a place during the day and during the night	Style
Week 8

Behaviour: Homepride Education or melior est canis dominum

There seems to be a lot about behaviour at the moment and I thought I’d add my oar, and boat, to the ocean of arguments.

I think we have a problem with three things in education: pride; shame; and respect. Western culture, and British culture, loves an underdog. In fact, that is the motto written in invisible ink on the Education Bill: Melior est canis dominum. Why is the education system based on this principle? The amount of money, funding and care given to education and especially education in some parts of Britain is criminal. We like people to achieve things despite the odds. Despite the fact that the classroom has a leaking roof. Despite the fact that there isn’t enough money to fund textbooks for everyone. Despite the fact the child rarely has a cooked meal at home.

Western culture is full of this idea of turning something good out of nothing. For a start, we have the ‘American Dream’. The idea that no matter who you are or where you are from will not be a barrier to success. We even have some guy turning water into wine. Everybody is at it. We have loads of celebrities. J.K. Rowling. Richard Branson. Alan Sugar. We love them. Look at these people; they had nothing, but look at them now: they are so successful. They are seen as a measuring stick in our culture. That too could be you. They were the underdog. Look at television and you’ll see that we are inundated with people who are quickly transforming their lives. We do it for normal people. X-Factor. We do it for celebrities. I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. We do it for all kinds of people.

Everybody in society is now an underdog. Everything is a fight. Everything is about challenging the master. The dogs are fighting back. Look at our political situation at home and abroad. The underdog has won. Why has this happened? Well, in part, I think it has happened for the same reasons we have a problem in education. People have been undervalued. They haven’t had a voice or discussion in the political debate.  The problem with the ‘underdog’ idea is that everybody then is the victim of something and there is always a tyrannical master to beat. Some Americans felt they weren’t heard and so viewed themselves as victims and turned on their ‘tyrannical’ master.

Our education system tends to echo and embody this ‘underdog’ idea. Treat teachers and students as dogs so therefore only a few will succeed. Treat everyone like a master and you give everyone a chance to succeed. Look at how education has been funded. The best funded areas are doing really well and they are seen as the masters. The underdogs, like my county, are the worst funded regions in the whole of the UK and in comparison they are doing badly. Look at the way grammar schools are being suggested as a new model for teaching. That builds in, officially, a transparent system of master and dogs. It is openly making our education system fit this ‘limited success’ model. Some will succeed. You’re not telling me that the introduction of a grammar school in a town or city will not absorb the best students and the best teachers in the region. What does that leave behind?

Now, we are always compared to other countries and other education systems. It is interesting to see that we have attempted to inherit some aspects of school from other countries. But, the one things we miss is the mind set underwritten behind culture. It is one based on pride and shame. In some cultures, it is incredibly shameful for a child to fail. Alternatively, it is an immense sense of pride for the child, parents and family if they succeed and achieve. They never see themselves as the victim. They see themselves as an important part of their family and culture. Their work is part of their life. What they do in the classroom has ripples in their life? They know those ripples. Their parents know the ripples. The value of education is so important in other countries. Parents know and feel this. Children know and feel this. It isn’t grit and it isn’t resilience; it is a sense of duty, pride.  

The problem we have in society is that people don’t see the relevance and importance of education. We have students who walk into a classroom and feel they are owed something. They feel they are automatically in the right. They feel they are the victim of something. They have an emotional detachment to education. The teacher is the master and the student is the ‘underdog’ to defeat the master. The teacher isn’t a person, in their eyes.

Let’s take this principle: your behaviour / work in school will give either shame or pride to your parents and family name. In a way, we need parents to accept the behaviour of their child. I think parents need to express and articulate shame or pride. I think parents and children need to talk about the shame or pride associated with the behaviour of the child. Instead, we have this terrible situation where some parents are on the attack all the time. They attack at every moment. In honesty, they are saving face. They see themselves as the victim, the underdog, against the big nasty masters, teachers.

We are members of the Facebook generation. We are quick to boast and even quicker to attack and criticise something or someone. That sadly has meant that we have very poor self-awareness. Added to this is a lack of connection to the real events. We have created distance rather than connections.

My daughters know that to be sent to the head teacher’s office for their behaviour is the most shameful thing. They know the shame it will bring them. They also know the pride I have about one of them being close to getting a pen licence. They know their behaviour and work in school has an emotional impact and ripples on me, and the family. Could one of the reasons private schools are so success be the fact that students and parents have a clear idea of what is at stake in their education? The children know how much has been spent on their schooling so they know the connection between parent and school.  

We need to stop people, students and parents seeing themselves as the victim. We should be a team, working together to enable success. We should discuss the shameful things and build up a student's sense of pride. Pride cannot exist in isolation. You need an awareness of shame to have some sense of pride. This all starts at home.

I am working class and proud; I don’t watch football, smoke or own a flat cap, but I have a working class ethic and attitude. I am never a victim. I am not the underdog; I am a person with a strong sense of pride and a healthy fear of shame. Between those two things, I’d like to think I have created respect. One thing for sure is I never thought that ‘respect’ was a god given right for me. I have always worked hard to earn people’s respect.

Thank you for reading,

Xris

P.S. I apologise if the Latin is wrong. I’m working class – you should applaud the fact that I know it is Latin.

Glossing over the gist and glossaries with Matthew and his ‘Effect T-shirt’

The longer I teach English, the more I feel that traditional approaches we have used time and time again are sometimes counterproductive and, possibly, damaging. We tell students to visualise, empathise, question, skim and scan a text so they understand it better. I like to think of myself as a better than average reader, yet I have never sat down and thought about drawing a picture as a result of my reading. I am in the process of reading ‘Middlemarch’ again, but at no point have I felt the need, desire or compulsion to draw the place Middlemarch. Neither have I stopped to think about my emotions about characters nor have I skimmed a section to find something out. In fact, those activities are micro activities that might take place; they are not the titans of reading, yet we have over the years insisted that they are the titans of reading. Oooh – you are stuck. I tell you what, draw a picture. That will help you.

So, what should be doing to help students understand complex texts? Well, I don’t think I have an easy answer. Instead, let me tell you what I do, personally. What are my titans of reading? This is how I approach reading a section of text I am unfamiliar with. Note: at no stage is a pencil used to draw.

I tend to…

Read the section again a few times.

Read the text before the section.  

Read the text after the section.

Identify the word or section that is the cause of confusion.

Research the word / information causing the confusion.

Talk to someone else about the point of confusion.

That’s what I tend to do. All the visualising, empathising, questioning and skimming in the world is useless, if the meaning isn’t clear. All processes, in my opinion, are rubbish without the meaning in place. The meaning and understanding should be at the centre of any reading approach.

Now, here the crux of things: I personally think an obsession over the gist of things and glossaries hinder this reading process.

The Gist

Don’t worry about understanding things; focus on getting the gist. Really? We want to promote this as an approach to reading! An approach which is based on several markers in a text and not the whole unit of meaning. I can’t read a text written in French even though I know some French words.  I can’t do this, because whole text understanding and whole sentence understanding is crucial. You cannot rely on a few points of understanding and just fill in the gaps.

Sometimes, and sonnets are a good example of this, the meaning of a text depends on the meaning of one word. Miss that word out and you fail to understand the text. But, it is okay, as long as you have the gist, right? Focusing on the gist means we are promoting word blindness to students. It is actively saying to students, miss out a few words here and there, and it will be fine. Do we want to tell students that they should miss out all the difficult words in a text? Do we want students to colour in all the difficult words, because they are not going to use them? Do we heck.

Focus on the gist and you are telling students to be blind to words and phrases.     

The Glossary

If we want to avoid word blindness, then maybe glossaries are the answer. I think, however, glossaries are problematic too and not the answer. I once spent a sunny summer in Derbyshire creating a glossary for ‘Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde’. Page by page, I lovely crafted this glossary booklet to help students and it was useless. Why? Well, the process then became about translating and not understanding.  Having the glossary did not make students understand the text better. They knew what a word meant, but they did not understand it better. In fact, I’d be bold in saying that a glossary gives just the illusion of understanding. False understanding. Fake understanding. Understanding takes time, space, explanation and some brain processing.

This year, I have changed my approach to looking at texts based on the new GCSE specifications. Getting the gist of the text will not be enough for students. Nor will a simple glossary. Instead of going for an optimistic, word blind approach, I have started students reading unseen texts by being realistic about what they don’t understand.

I start all unseen texts by getting students to highlight the words students don’t know. How many times have I waited ages for students to come up with ideas about a text when first faced with a new piece of writing? I have almost had to coax the gist of the text out of them. It is amazing how quick students respond when you start the reading of a text with them focusing and sharing what they don’t understand. Sir, I don’t understand the word ‘wheezing’. I don’t understand ‘ruddy’. I don’t understand ‘palpable’. They bloody love it. They are talking from a point of strength. They are starting from a point that assumes they are not perfect and know everything.

The freedom this approach allows for thought and discussion is great. We are engaging with a text quickly and addressing the meaning from the start. Once, we have highlighted all the bits they don’t understand, we discuss each one. We check whether anybody in the group knows the word or phrase. We see if another word would make sense in the context. We dig out a dictionary if needed. We discuss each word or phrase. We don’t gloss over the words because the meaning is vital and integral to getting things right. Then, we read the text again with the words we now understand. The students are able to understand the whole text then. Yes, it takes time, discussion and focus, but in terms of planning it is a breeze. We even buy cheap copies of the set texts so students can write in them to pin down meanings of unfamiliar words.  

You see there is this person could Matthew, and lots of people in education talk about him because he has this effect. Well, surely an explicit and honest focus on what a student doesn’t know is far better than assuming a student can cope regardless of knowledge and ability. Each child is a vessel of words. Each vessel contains different words. Matthew might have a fairly empty vessel compared to other students, but surely a process that avoids word blindness will support him and he can reduce the effect. Asking Matthew to get the gist of things and assume a position which actively forces him to be blind to words when reading. How will Matthew learn things when we promoting word blindness?

Let’s ‘man-up’ or ‘woman-up’ and hit the nail on the head: Matthew doesn’t know some words. Let’s identify the words he doesn’t understand and help him get the meaning of them. If we are going to stop Matthew wearing his ‘Effect’ t-shirt, we need to ask him: ‘What bits of the text don’t you understand?’   

In the beginning there was the word, so, maybe, the beginning of reading should be the word that they don’t understand.  

Defragmenting memories

This week I had a look at the some materials released for the new GCSE exams. And, it raised an interesting point, about the use of quotes. No spoilers here but there was one example that featured quotes. The student in question used two one word quotes repeatedly in their answer and achieved a high mark. This got me thinking…

Teachers are looking at how to best prepare out students for the future exams. We know that success, for our students, is dependent on what information they can retain and recall. The new exams are incredibly dependent on knowledge and retained information. For years, I have attended exam specification meetings to be told terminology isn’t necessary. Therefore, most of my teaching has focused on practising and practising skills in preparation for the exams. Now, I am focused on making sure students know key terms, key contextual facts, key quotes and key ideas relating to the texts studied. All this has come to a head as we prepare the Year 11s for their mocks in December.

Across the school there is a lot of knowledge students need to retain for different subjects. As we know, students will prioritise and subjects like Science and History tend to take precedent in the knowledge stakes, because they are seen as subjects by my students as having the most content to learn. Students assume in English that they are competent because they can read and write, but in other subjects confidence and security is based on knowledge. So, how to we get students to see knowledge as an important factor in English?

We have started this year a regular knowledge test of key basic concepts relating to literary devices and grammar terms. Each term students are tested on that core knowledge. However, how do we approach quotes?
This week I am going to try to different focus on quote learning. I am going to teach students words instead of full quotes. There’s a simple reason for this. How do you decide and whittle down a play to twenty or so quotes? You could argue that a student should know everything, but realistically there is only so much a student can learn. Now, I used to love defragmenting my old computer. It was a pretty slow process and every so often I would have to defragment the hard drive to speed things up, which was activated with a simple click of a button. After clicking the button, the computer would rearrange files and delete old and used stuff; it tidied things up. In my mind, it placed files in the crooks and crannies on the computer. It found space and filled the gaps in the memory. A small file would fit in this small gap here. A large file would fit in this gap here. And here’s the rub: do we need to clever about knowledge?  Are we helping students to fragment their knowledge? Treating each piece of knowledge as a colossal titan causes conflict. There’s only so much a brain can take. Not every Greek god lived on Mount Olympus.
By helping students, to learn key words, I am, in theory, helping them to retain more in an easier way. My memory is terrible. To think, I always wanted to be an actor. I always struggled to learn lines and, during some plays, I adlibbed a lot. But, one things I did when I adlibbed or paraphrased was latch on to a key word or phrase. I then built my line around it. If we provide students with the words, then they can build the thinking around the word. After all, one word is a quote. Why spend time learning those extra words in a long quote when you can just use one word?

Take these words used to describe Juliet:

shrine                  saint                      ripe                        jewel                     sun                         light                                                        

In truth, we have six separate quotes in a line. The same amount of words as one standard quote. But, here we have several more possibilities for ideas than we would have with that one quote. Here’s some possible ideas for their use in an essay:

The father’s view of his daughter – ‘ripe’

Romeo’s view of Juliet – ‘saint’, ‘jewel’ and ‘light’

Romeo’s consistent view of Juliet in the play – always refers to light

Romeo’s view that he isn’t worthy of her – ‘shrine’ and ‘saint’

The theme of fate and the inevitability and Juliet’s will die - ‘sun’  

This way students can have more quotes and a wider breadth of the whole play. They key thing is getting students to recall when and where the quote is used. They must know who and what. Then, students can easily make links across the whole play with these short quotes. They can say that ‘star-crossed lovers’ links to Romeo’s reference to the ‘sun’ when describing Juliet in the balcony scene and that links ‘light’ used to describe her in the tomb at the end of the play.  The three simple quotes link three different parts of the text.

Surely, if we approach other aspects of the text in the same way, then we could have fifty words. Fifty different quotes from different parts of the text. A network of ideas and points of reference. For example: Romeo is a described as a ‘rose’ by Juliet and interestingly her father refers to her as a ‘ripe’ when describing her to Paris. Those fifty words could sit alongside some bigger quotes like the whole prologue, but do you know what? Those fifty words can easily sit behind other knowledge and fill the gaps. Those fifty words can be used by students so they use quotes effectively and judiciously in their writing. We want students to be making links across the whole text naturally.

Now, it is up to me work on my fifty words. I might up it to one hundred by Easter.

Thanks for reading,

Xris  

Update - here's a start with the words.