Next week, I am off to the ResearchEd event and this is the
second one focused on English. Yesterday, I thought, what did I have to offer? What
would I impart if I was speaking at the event?
Well, since the start of the academic year I have made all
Year 7, 8 and 9 students write every week for a lesson. People familiar withthe blog will know about the 200 Word Challenge. Students are given a different
writing task each week and there are certain ingredients students must include and
those ingredients vary each week.
As a result of all this, I have read hundreds of examples of
work over the last few terms. The same task has been used with each year group
and that has produced some interesting results.
Findings
1. Year 7s default mode is narrative writing.
With several modes of writing, the Year 7s turned everything
into a story. I had some ‘interesting’ pieces of writing about the ‘dangers of
smoking’ told as a story. In fact, when a student decided to use one of them as
an assessment piece, it took us three drafts to get the student to realise that
it wouldn’t work for a whole text.
2. Year 7s struggled conceptually with speech
writing.
We asked students to write a speech from the head teacher
persuading students to work harder. Boy, did they struggle with this. Here’s a
typical approach:
The head teacher walked to the stage. “Now, the reason I
have called you together is…
3. Dramatic
monologues produced the greatest level of creativity in students.
This was really interesting because we hadn’t explicitly
taught dramatic monologues, but the detail, creativity on this style was phenomenal.
Their attempts to recreate natural speech was much better than their scripts –
another 200 task. Plus, naturally, they played around with holding back
information from the audience. The task was to write a dramatic monologue based
on someone committing a crime.
4. Some very able
boys struggled with humour and audience.
These boys saw the tasks as an opportunity to show me their
wit, but sadly their attempts weren’t very witty. They took every writing task
as an opportunity to have a laugh. One student tried to include Bob Marley in
every piece and another student used absurd humour. What is interesting is that
they were writing for themselves? When, they discovered they were writing for
an unknown reader, their writing got better. The Bob Marley student is writing
the best in the class at the moment.
5. Boys tended to
demonstrate a clear, opinionated voice than girls.
Comparing hundreds of students together, it seemed that, in
terms of writing, the boys had more to say in their writing. Plus, their voices
were a lot more distinct and clear. They had an opinion and their writing. The
girls were often vague and lacked perspective when it came to opinionated when
conveying a point. Boys, after a while, took really pleasure from being bombastic
and controversial. We’ll explore how we can get girls to do this.
6. Students
struggled the most with changing perspective.
We asked students to describe a character from three
different perspectives. They really struggled with this one, suggesting that
maybe our students aren’t forced into writing from different perspectives
enough. They are limited by the narrow first person and third person and are
unaware of the variations within and between those two.
7. Quiet girls
have responded very positively to the weekly writing.
Parents and students alike of very quiet students have
commented on how much they have enjoyed the weekly experience. Some said that
this was a result of the extra creativity, whilst I think it might also be a
result of them having a lesson without the risk of attention.
8. All students
struggled when the writing did not follow a linear order.
We asked student to write a story at the end and then
describe how you got to the end. There was much head scratching. In fact, to
get the gist of the task, we had to repeat the instructions and provide an
example.
9. Writing
inspired by a picture was problematic.
It seems that students need a number of structures to
approach this task. There clearly needs to be a way in.
10. Non-fiction
writing always produced the shortest paragraphs compared to fiction.
On all pieces of non-fiction, it was common to see that
students wrote brief and glib paragraphs. Their writing was often very general
and vague. There seems to be a real problem with students writing directly and
precisely with non-fiction.
11. Overtime, the
writing fed in to other lessons.
Last week, I student make a connection between a writing
task and a scene in Macbeth. ‘Shakespeare has structured this scene like the
writing task we did about a change of mood in the middle.’ Ideas from lessons
surrounding the writing task also fed into the writing.
12. Girls used more
figurative writing in their texts than boys. The boys were always literal with
their ideas and writing.
13. When given a
choice, the boys selected a non-fiction task instead of the fiction tasks.
The girls would pick a non-fiction task if it was on a topic
they could choose. However, they gravitated to the narrative tasks.
14. Boys used more
humour in their writing.
In fact, the girls’
writing was devoid of humour. There was none. The boys relished the opportunity
to use humour. The girls didn’t.
There will be more findings in time. Some of these points
will change. But, they do make some interesting points. I have never really
been in this position before. A position where I can see trends across year
groups. As a teacher, I can see the differences and similarities across the
years. The above finds are based on all three year groups.
I will continue to explore are watch the trends and adapt my
teaching as a result.
Thanks for reading,
Xris
P.S. Technically, it hasn’t been a full year.
