Tick Box Diversity

Context is everything: I am a father. I am a father to a child with a disability: Cerebral Palsy. Doctors think it was caused due to a traumatic birth and her being starved of oxygen. The form of Cerebral Palsy she has means her legs don’t work and she has problems with muscle tone and her core strength. She can walk, but only for short bits and she walks differently. We joke that she walks like she’s had fifteen pints. Her balance is terrible and a gust of wind can make her fall over. For that reason, we don’t eat beans very often. That’s why we tend to have a big car, so we can carry her wheelchair. Or, the wheels, as we like to call them. 

Even though I don’t have a disability, I have lived with disability for twelve years and my relationship has changed towards it over the years. Initially, we had the shock and denial in the early years. And now we are in a very healthy relationship. It is a part of our life. We joke about it. In fact, there are lots of joke about it and dealing with it. You probably read some of the jokes in the last paragraph and thought they were close to the knuckle. Having a disability is not about crying about it in the corner? We take the piss about it more than we cry in the corner. In fact, I can’t remember the last time we cried. In fact, we don’t. We tend to associate crying in corners with able bodied people.

Over the years, we’ve been aware of the lack of diversity for young people – especially diversity  in terms of disability. Finding a child in a book, cartoon or TV show with a disability is like finding a unicorn. They just are not there. Zero. Tell a lie: there was one cartoon, which had a 'supposed' disabled person: a teenage merman had to move around in a wheelchair when in high school, but when he is in the water he can move able with glee. But, there is very little out there. As parents, you notice this. There are no ‘That’s not my wheelchair’ or ‘We are going on a Bear Hunt, but we must look for concrete paths because of the wheel chair’. There’s been nobody we could use to help my daughter identify her place in the world. There was nobody visible in the world around her. Add to that, there is nobody in her family she could identify with, in relation to her disability.

In fact, like Harry Potter, there are two worlds that coexist. The muggle world. The able bodied world. And there’s the magic world. The world of the disability. A world that you can’t see because you don’t know it's there. I even tweeted J.K. Rowling about the use of wheelchairs in Hogwarts. Have you seen the stairs? I’d like to know what they’d do with a disabled child in Hogwarts. Magic them up the stairs. The thing is that the disabled world is hidden, forget and secret. I only know it exists and its rules, because, as a dad of a child with a disability, I was shown the secret knock to open the door to this world.

I applaud teachers’ recent efforts to include diversity and I applaud the thinking and the reasoning behind it, but I want to give some cautionary advice from my perspective:

 

One unit of work isn’t diversity

Recently, I saw a few people mention they have a ‘disability’ unit of work in English. For me, this is simplifying something that's complex, wide and nuanced. Yep, we’ve addressed disability in the whole English curriculum because we spend six weeks in Year 9 reading about it. Imagine if we treated other things in the same way. What is schools had a unit in English focusing on homosexuality? Or, a unit on men? Or, a unit on blindness? Yes, there might be an imbalance in society, but wouldn't it be better to have authentic texts throughout the curriculum rather than a discrete unit dwelling on it over six weeks? 

How would you feel in a classroom if you were the only child with a disability and you were studying a topic of unit on disability? The issue changes just like that. There becomes an elephant in the room. That child knows it. The class knows it. The intent is good, but the experience is uncomfortable. Is that supporting a child with a disability? Or is that drawing attention to a child and making them feel even more uncomfortable? Children with disability struggle with identity and their relationship with their peers. With one fell swoop, you have undone the work a child has done to fit in with their peers.

My daughter has spent periods of her growing up basking in the attention of being disabled, but then she's also spent periods of her time wanting to hide and go unnoticed and 'fit in'. 

Plus, what makes the teacher an expert on teaching a unit on ‘disability’. Even as a father, I cannot teach accurately about disability. I can share my experience as a father and on CP, but I cannot talk about being deaf, blind or another disability.

 

Disability is a wide umbrella term

The life experiences of a child with CP are very different to a child with sight problems. One child will not be able to walk and see. The other child cannot see but can walk. You cannot equate them as the same thing. Yes, they might have had struggles and difficulties, but they are not the same thing. You might think the story of a blind child will help a child with physical disability identify themselves, but they won’t. Disability is a complex thing. 

In a way, it is insulting to people if you homogenise disability. You wouldn’t equate the experiences of being a migrant from China to that of a migrant from Syria so why do the same with disability? 

There are so many variations of Cerebral Palsy that not all have the same experience. And, to think that is demeaning and largely insulting. Yes, there will be common threads, but like you: does every man or woman share the same life experiences as you?

 

Who are the books written for?

The purpose behind books is really interesting for me. I’d argue that a lot of books we commonly cite about disabled voices are not necessarily about conveying an authentic disabled voice. Instead, we have a lot of texts that are actually written to make able bodied readers understand what it is like to be disabled. We have the victim narrative. That’s a clear purpose. I understand why it is done. You can see it in films and books. Take ‘Wonder’. The book is about understanding disability from an able bodied person's perspective. Not an authentic voice about a disabled person sharing their life experiences.

For me, this is a problematic area. So, we need to be careful about the books we chose, because you need to decide if you are educating the abled bodied or helping a student to see themselves in texts. One negates the other.

Pick books where the disability is not the sole focus. A character can be disabled and the plot not centre around their specific disability. We are seeing lots of books around disability where the plot surrounds and dwells on a specific disability.  

 

The Parahuman Problem

I was part of day used to motivate Year 11 students. Throughout the day, I experienced several stories of disabled people overcoming the odds and succeeding in life. This didn’t sit well with me. It was putting disability in a strange category as if these disabled people were super human. And, forgetting that they were and are human. 

When you live with disability, you get used to the ‘sad eyes look’. People will look at me with the ‘sad eyes look’ and you can see it in the head. They are thinking: that poor child and that poor father, having to deal with disability. Disabled people don’t need pity. They need understanding and humanity. Putting them on a pedestal, just fuels the ‘sad eyes look’. You are parading them as something to be admired or pitied. This parading does do not fuel understanding. Instead it is dehumanising. 

We can call this kind of thing the Tiny Tim effect. Disability is used to make people feel something. A ploy to manipulate a person's emotions: to make the person feel guilty; or to make the person feel warmth and pride. Tiny Tim is exactly that. No a real person. Just something to make us feel something. Feeling is not understanding. I don't understand Tiny Tim's personal experience in 'A Christmas Carol', but I have a warm cosy feeling knowing he doesn't die at the end. There's a complete lack of understanding. We have to be careful that we don't turn every child into Tiny Tim. Tiny Tim can be naughty. Incredibly naughty.  Cor, we can't possibly give him a detention 'cos, ya know, he hasn't 'ad an easy life. What with his condition an' all that. I see this Tiny Tim effect bounded on Twitter sometimes. Children with SEND are viewed as being Tiny Tim by some and also have a Dickensian effort to paint SEND in rose -tainted terms. There comes a point when the child is lost behind the emotions people attach to a disability. People see the disability and experience the feelings, but they don't see the real child. The person. Does anybody really see Tiny Tim? No. All we fixate on is his disability and the feelings we feel in relation to it. Feelings are strong. Feelings are stronger than understanding. Something that happens regularly on Twitter. Everybody feels, yet not everybody understands. 

Be careful of the message you are using in assemblies. We all like an underdog story, but a lot of these stories feature disabled people overcoming the odds. They simply fuel pity and not understanding. They are also problematic because you could read them as shorthand for: you think you have it tough; what about a disabled person, so stop moaning!

My daughter and I get the ‘sad eyes look’ all the time and it is blooming annoying for both of us. That’s because the world has been conditioned to see disability as something to pity. So please don’t pity her or us. If we wanted pity, we'd call our children Tiny Tim. 

 

Diversity is a complex thing and there are no easy fixes and there are difficult questions, issues and ideas we have to consider. We should talk about it. We should explore it, but please don’t view it as a tick box exercise. The English curriculum should contain a range of authentic voices and that’s what we should be exploring all the time. Let’s ditch the idea of a easy fit unit of work that addresses diversity. Humanity is complex, shifting, changing, varied and rich. Let the texts in our schools reflect that, but that involves us as teachers reading and reading around. There are no quick fixes. 

The Canon is a chimera and should change and adapt, but let’s focus on the bigger picture: let’s agree that across the five years student will experience a range of authentic voices and it is our duty to explore and introduce those voices, but let’s not place too much emphasis on the engineering of texts to a particular group of students. After all, my daughter has identified with Bella in the Twilight books. Students find the connection in books. Identification with texts comes naturally and without the help of a teacher. Books speak to us. Our duty is to give students a wide variety of texts, watering and tending the field where connections can grow. Allow them to be seen, but also allow to do the seeing, searching and exploring for connections. 

There are no wheelchairs in Twilight. As far as I know, Stephanie Meyer isn’t disabled or has ever been in a wheelchair, yet my daughter identifies and connects with it. After spending years of me being conscious of not having enough role models for her, she picks someone without a disability to be her idol. Books are escapism too. 

Explore, introduce and discuss diversity but don’t obsess and fixate on it. We can do damage with our good intentions. Easily. We must be careful and cautious with good intentions.  

Thanks for reading. I hope this inspires discussion and thoughts around diversity. 

Xris  

How can we use sonnets to teach non-fiction?

The sonnet, for me, represents the perfect structure of a literature text. A perfect structure that allows for flexibility yet maintains a high degree of control at the same time. You have an idea and then  you explore the opposite or a part of the idea. Then, you top it off with an inversion of the original idea. Simply put: idea, but and however. A sonnet is a thing of beauty. Yet, when we come to non-fiction we lack anything close to this level of control, structure or even beauty when getting student to write non-fiction.

Whilst storytelling is in our blood, non-fiction writing isn’t. I love it, but mostly I am in the minority. There are, for me, some problematic ideas surrounding the writing of non-fiction, which along the years have been stumbling blocks for students and ultimately the writing process. Here are some of things I recommend teachers to think of in planning the teaching of non-fiction:

Ideas

We’ve got into our heads, collectively, that planning for non-fiction involves writing loads of ideas down on the paper. Ideas. The plural. If I am honest, when I write this blog I have one idea. I sit on that idea, like a hen and wait for it to hatch. Yet, we get students to rush to get them down on the paper. Come on Frank: bullet point your ideas on the page. We probably say: ‘List all your ideas down on the page.’ We talk of ideas in the plural rather than the singular. Writers take a germ of an idea and develop it. That’s why some students go blank, because there is a false expectation for lots of ideas to be produced in the planning stage. They think they cannot do it because they can only think of one idea.

We must challenge the (singular) idea. Look at any editorial piece. You’ll see that it focuses on one idea rather than cover every possible thread and perspective on an issue.

What if, like a sonnet, students structure their whole text around one idea? Then the writing is about developing that idea.  

Structuring ideas  

Students default to listing ideas naturally in non-fiction writing. One idea … Another idea… A final idea … Sadly, this creates no cohesion in a text. You simply have different floating ideas in a sea and the only thing that ties them together are discourse markers – and those are particularly loose. There’s no development and that’s what is needed. More ideas don’t develop or extend an idea. They water them down instead.

Here something I have shared with students:

There are number of ways that you could develop an argument.

·       Pick an aspect of the idea and investigate it – Parents track our bedtime, our meals, our free time.

·       Give a hypothetical situation or scenario – Imagine parents being tracked.

·       Explore the end consequences of the issue - There will be no surprises. No surprise visits. No surprise presents. Everything becomes predictable.

·       Draw attention to the flaws or weaknesses – Phones are easily lost, forgotten or stolen.

·       Share the emotional impact – Freedom is precious, but parents are looking to rip that away from young people.

·       Share a history of the issue – Parents since the dawn of time have always wanted to know where their child is and what they are up to.

·       Define or give a clarification of something people might not know – Tracking means watching and following the movement of a person.

 The connection between paragraphs is explicit. What are you doing with the original idea? It is not adding another idea to dwarf the previous one. You are building cohesion across the text. They are doing something purposeful with the idea and avoiding the ‘next please’ principle.

 What if, like a sonnet, students worked on the relationship between the idea and the however element? What if we looked at how to create a volta within the flow of ideas?  

 

Counterarguments  

Counterarguments in my personal opinion are subtle and tiny things that are sneaked into a piece of writing. They are not a juggernaut for shaping an argument, yet they’ve become behemoths for non-fiction writing. When you are spending time teaching students to communicate an idea, you then go tell them to water it down with other perspectives. When you want students to convince a reader of an idea, we then get them to think about another perspective and another way of seeing things.  I shudder when I see the words ‘for’ and ‘against’ when used in association with non-fiction writing. That is cause to explore and water down thinking.

What if, like a sonnet, students work on just expressing their voice and opinion?  

 

Purpose   

Quite a few years back, I got rid of the idea of teaching the writing triplets. The National Curriculum created triplets around writing. Instead of writing, students would write to argue, persuade or advise. Teachers would ensure they taught students how to argue, persuade and advise for exams. This created a huge problem. The emphasis was on the features associated with those fictious writing styles rather than develop and extending thinking and ideas. I, you can give me a squillion pounds now DfE, reduced all of them to the concept and word: ‘convince’. Convince the reader to agree with your perspective. Naturally, when we convince we argue, persuade, advise, inform, describe, explain, narrate all at the same time. Like the zords in Power Rangers they combine together in that one concept. Teach students to convince a reader and the rest follows.

 What if, like a sonnet, students work on convincing the reader to their way of thinking?

 

Fluffy writing

Through secondary schooling, there is a snowball effect on writing. Students get good at writing in a particular style of writing. I tend to call it ‘beige writing’. That’s how they can include ‘however’ and ‘therefore’ repeatedly in their writing. It also includes classics such as ‘one reason’ and ‘another reason’. The writing is pretty formulaic. That’s because it is a formula that works for most lessons and that’s fine, but the problem that this is the default method for writing. Students get story writing is different so that isn’t a problem, but non-fiction writing gets sucked up by their functionary style of writing. It is the default writing style which is easy and automatic. That means with non-fiction writing we need to spend more time breaking the ‘default writing style’ and focus more on writing with more clarity.

What if, like a sonnet, students work on communicating that one idea in the most succinct and effective way?

There’s a lot we can use from sonnet when teaching students how to write a piece of non-fiction. For me a sonnet represents everything we are aiming for with writing. Focus. Depth. Clarity. Structure.

For too long we’ve looked at non-fiction in terms of pretty baubles that will make the writing look impressive. Maybe, we need to go back to the beginning. Non-fiction is about communicating an idea. A real idea. We need to get back to communicating things clear and succinctly. A sonnet does it, so why can a piece of non-fiction do it?

 

Thanks for reading,

 

Xris

Vocabulary is just a little piece of hokum

Houston, I think we have a problem with vocabulary. A tiny problem when it comes to writing and, occasionally, reading. The interconnectivity of words. How a simple word has tendrils that reach to other words and sentences within a paragraph.

We’ve always had an issue with vocabulary and the perception of some words seemingly to show a great level of sophistication. Students are impressed with the word ‘discombobulated’ yet poets and famous writers alike avoid such an ugly word. Story writing is shaped by the student around the word rather than the word be used to help express an idea. Therefore, you get clunky writing. It might look impressive, but it doesn’t fit the meaning or the syntax of a sentence.  Plus, there’s only about six writers in the whole world who’d consider using it in a piece of writing and that will probably be to obscure their meaning.

We have students learning lots of words which is, in part, great but we are getting students with lots of words but no idea of how these words have tendrils and links to meaning. When students learn terms like socialism in association with ‘An Inspector Calls’, they tend to either define it or flag it up in their writing. Is there an understanding of the concept and its meaning in relation to this context and text? Very little, if we are honest. Let’s call it ‘flagging’. The student is flagging they know something. Yet, it doesn’t have the depth of understanding to go any further.  You need to explore the idea in great depth to make it of use.

I feel that we have to teach more than vocabulary. We need to teach phrases and, in particular, noun phrases to add meaning and to unlock elements of analysis. Take the phrases  ‘socialist tendencies’  or ‘socialist agenda’. When faced with these phrases and trying to put them in a sentence, students will have to justify why there is an agenda or a tendency for socialism. There’s a greater level of building tendrils and connections to other parts of explanation. The phrase forces the syntax of a sentence. With a single noun, you can place it anywhere.

Partly, based on ‘The Writing Revolution’ by Judith C. Hochman and Natalie Wexler, I have been looking at supporting students with writing and talking about poetry for the GCSE exams. Instead of providing a list of words for each poem, I have been included some phrases to explain some of the aspects. The idea is that the students use the sheet when discussing or writing the poems. There isn’t a need to mention all, but it is about selecting the best choice for the idea they are explaining. In the classroom, we often struggle to find the right way of expressing an idea. This is aimed to help them express ideas with some clarity and hopefully some complexity.

Vocabulary and phrases to extend thinking

Charge of the Light Brigade	Exposure
bombastic emotive  epic fast-moving glorifying immortalising jingoistic lyrical passionate patriotic rhythmic romanticised rousing stirring visual	atmospheric bleak melancholic nightmarish painful personal pitiful psychological realistic slow-paced stoic visual
imminent danger personal cost cannon fodder failed advance celebrated sacrifice inspiring act valiantly facing death blind faith badly outgunned	bleak depiction of suffering collective loss of faith constant feeling of being in edge driving force emotional roller coaster of suffering experienced soldiers futility of war harrowing experience horrific fare true cost

Remains	Bayonet Charge
anecdotal colloquial confused disjointed dreamlike graphic  haunting informal nightmarish patriotic psychological questioning shocking visual vivid warning	challenging confused desensitised determined discovery distancing emotionless futile helplessness isolating patriotic proud questioning reflective repressed stoic thoughtful
broken soldiers with broken minds distant memories functioning minds hazy memories immaturity of soldiers lack of understanding mental consequences ordinary people sleep walking stain on his soul traumatic events	a great masterplan a helpless pawn a moment of clarity a tool for war awaken to reality blind faith challenging deceptions dutiful soldiers psychological conflict thoughtless actions unwanted memories

 

London	War Photographer
accurate angry challenging corruption critical freedom haunting illuminating lyrical moralising political realistic simplistic uncovering visual	angry apathy cynical desensitised emotionless haunting moralising muted poignant repressed simplistic sombre   stoic visual voyeuristic
consequences of revolution controlling authorities impact of capitalism physical and psychological imprisoning powerful ruling class social commentary stark inequalities and injustice suffocating society visible hypocrisy	blind to the truth contrasting worlds distraction from life hidden suffering insignificance of events lasting impact sacred to face the reality selfish society simplification of war the reduction of importance

 

Ozymandias	Storm on the Island
anecdotal arrogance attacking bombastic critical god-like ironic political pride satirical timeless tragic visual vivid	conversational deceptive disgusted inclusive political realistic restless sensory symbolic understated uniting visual
corrupting influence of power futility of mankind hierarchical power structures inequality between different people ruling class social commentary the arrogance of mankind unstoppable force of nature	destructive yet deceptive force imminent danger lack of protection limited power of man practical nature of living suffering of humanity underwhelming power vast power of nature

I really like ‘The Writing Revolution’ because it’s emphasis on developing syntax and ensuring students build up sentences. It isn’t just vocabulary that improves a student’s writing, but the combination of words and how those words are positioned in a sentence.

We’ve recently been using No More Marking for Question 5 and we’ve noticed something that separates the average writing and the really impressive writing: the students with impressive vocabulary don’t do as well as others. It is the students who use vocabulary meaningfully that do better. They often have better combinations of words or phrasing. In fact, we were pointing out how the phrases were lifting pieces and not the words. It is the precision in its use.

Maybe, we should not just be providing students with vocabulary associated to texts, but also noun phrases associated with aspects related to the text. That way we can help students build on their sentence writing and expression. For a long time, it was always about sentence starters. What if forget the start and focus on 'idea starters'? It isn't the start of the sentence that students struggle with, but the ideas in the middle and end. So rather than focus on sentences, we should focus on phrases and look to how students can stich those phrases  together in a sentence. 

Thanks for reading,

Xris

What a teacher wants, what a writer needs

Like others, I have been working on getting students to balance ideas, discussion on language choices and the writer’s message or intent. For some, this comes easily and for others no so. The one thing that is quite elusive, for most, is the writer’s intent.  

A lot of the time, when we are talking about intent, we use stock statements. Dickens was challenging the status quo. Shakespeare is highlighting the different types if love. Those statements are handy and helpful in terms of joining the dots. But, I find the jump to the end point and conclusion. We force feed students these writer’s messages. We teach texts around these messages. We even punctuate lessons with socialism and equality when discussing texts like ‘An Inspector Calls’. We force this end point in terms of discussing the writer’s intent. We even add words around this to help jumpstart the process. The writer is either challenging, highlighting, questioning, or some other suitable verb, the idea.  We might even give them little titbits like ‘inequality’, ‘differences’ or ‘the relationship between x and y’ to help them form sentences that sound impressive but at the same time they are hollow and meaningless.

Student become obsessed with this kind of benign writer’s intent statements. They pepper their writing with them and rarely move beyond the superficial level of understanding. We see this when they struggled with the GCSE English Language papers. Exam papers where the focus is clearly on the intent. Yes, it does look at meaning and choices, but largely it is about the writer’s intent. Paper 2 has even got the word ‘perspectives’ in its title. Umm. That just means the writer’s intent. It’s just dressed up in a fancy word.  This where the problem lies. Because we have a simplistic approach to intent with literature, we then have this process fed across other elements. That’s why we get crazy statements from students when they look at the texts. The writer presents the boat in the way he does because he wants to challenge the inequality in society and the patriarchal superiority of the existing social structures. It is a boat. A thing that sits in the water. A big boaty thing. The poor thing just wants to be a boat. And play like the other boats in the wild.

The problem is counterfeit intellectualism. We saw something similar with wow words and vocabulary. They were the trappings of good writing, but that’s all they were…trappings. The idea that showing a few clever words and ideas in a paragraph is the instant key to successful writing. Added to this is the notion that there’s a set structure or even a check list that all Grade 9 students to is damaging to what we teach and how we teach it. We see this counterfeit intellectualism played again and again in English and I think it is largely damaging. Look at the obscure use of terminology in analysis. Some, if we are honest, that didn’t even appear in any of our undergraduate courses. There is a good argument for teaching some of these techniques, but it is the way that they are used that I have a problem with. I’d rather have a student who can tell me a detailed why Shakespeare did something rather than the student who can fit catharsis, hamartia, hubris, anagnorisis and peripeteia in one sentence and spell it correctly. For me it is the depth of understanding and I think we have to challenge this counterfeit intellectualism for what it is. Counterfeit intellectualism is about quick fixes, easy answers, quickly recalled things and shiny bauble things that looks good to a complete stranger. The more the better with counterfeit intellectualism.

This counterfeit intellectualism has a drawback. Engagement. We are not teaching students to engage with a writer’s ideas. We are not allowing that level of depth to grow naturally and in an explorative way. Students need to engage with texts on a number of levels and even more importantly on a personal level. I don’t think the new (can I still call them new?) GCSE have created the situation, but I think people have created this situation around the new GCSE. They’ve created elements of counterfeit intellectualism around what they perceive the examiner wants to see.

A really good answer sings in the ears of a teacher or examiner. There is a level of subtly and depth that you cannot mimic, copy or even bottle up. The melody comes from years of teaching and not just a simple ingredient added to the mix.  

Right, back to the writer’s intent. We have over complicated the writer’s intent to such an extend it is hard for students to engage in texts. That’s why this term I have, in my COVID regulation lessons, been focusing on building and securing my Year 10s knowledge and skills with poetry. Two simple questions have really helped and supported students when looking at the texts:

What does the writer want?

What does the writer need the reader to think / feel /question?  

They are rubbish questions, Chris! My ferret can produce much better questions than that when it sits on my laptop and does a dance blindfolded whilst listening to the Vengaboys!

In fact, I be bold to say that technical students only need the words ‘want’ and ‘need’. Why?

‘Want’ is a pure and simple way of addressing the writer’s purpose. It is a way of putting it simply to the students. What does the writer want? Dickens wants the poor and rich to work together.

‘Need’ is a something that students get easily. If you want something, you need something else to happen for this to occur. Dickens wants the poor and rich to work together so he needs the reader to understand that world where the rich and poor work together is much better than a world with them working against each other.

‘Need’ can incorporate feelings or thoughts or even questions. Dickens wants the public to understand the difficulties the poor face so he needs them to care for Oliver Twist and feel genuine concern for his plight.

I have been using ‘want’ and ‘need’ with my Year 10s and it has made a marked difference in how they explain poetry. Instead of trying to recall what the bloke at the front of the class, they are now forming more of their own ideas about the texts. They are talking about what Tennyson wants and want he needs the reader to think or feel. They have a much better understanding of the writer than they have done before. Plus, they are writing much better about it by just using the words ‘want’ and ‘need’. The interrogation of the want and needs allows for the depth, but they have a way in to exploring the writer’s intent without the need of those silly triplets (to argue, to advise, blah, blah) or prepared comments from the statement bank.

If we can get students to think about the want and needs in literature texts, then when it comes to non-fiction and boats they can discuss the writer’s purpose easily. They can say the writer presents the boat in the way because he wants to show how prepared they were as he needs the reader to understand they were delusional and overly confident.  The same applies to Paper 1 and the creative writer. The writer starts the opening this way because she wants… and so she needs the reader to feel…

So, let’s work on depth in English by working on how students interact with texts. Let’s make them interact with them. Let’s make them connect with them. After all, we all have wants and needs. Seeing a text from a want and a need perspective, makes the texts relatable. Students have wants and needs too. Those wants and needs unite us.

Thanks for reading,

Xris

Losing my Revision

 You have a test next Friday so your homework for this week is to revise for this test.

You see systems and processes differently to teacher when your children are in a secondary school. You see the impact of the processes.  Revision is one such process I have seen differently. A process that is a largely invisible process in schools. We expect it to happen. We expect students to do it. We expect it to have a benefit. We expect students to have learnt it through primary school. We expect students to have a clear idea of how to do it . We expect all students to do, but it is an invisible thing. Hidden. Locked away. Secretive.

If truth be told, the majority of interventions in school are largely based on the principle that a student will not be independent enough to do the work at home. That’s why we have booster sessions. We have catchup sessions. We have mad panic dashes of knowledge, because the students don’t revise. We, in fact, have a constant cycle of topping up of knowledge when, all to often, the answer is the student’s relationship with revision. I’d be bold to say that when teachers compile lists for interventions it leads heavily on the underperforming and lack of revision. The lovely student with pastel coloured highlighters and a itemised plan of revision doesn’t get a look in. Really, you want to come to the afterschool session? But, you revise?

I also think Knowledge Organisers haven’t helped with revision. They have added to the over simplification of revision. All you need to do is revise what is on the sheet. Just revise the sheet. What we see as obvious and easy isn’t always so. The process is assumed rather than modelled. The assumption is that by giving students a sheet of people they will know what to do with and how to use it.

Our current situation has highlighted how important we get what students do at home right. Revision is even more important now than ever. But, we can’t expect to paper over the cracks with extra interventions. We can’t expect that students will pick up the knowledge through natural osmosis. Osmosis occurs when the student is in the room. That osmosis doesn’t happen when a student isolates for weeks. Thereby, revision is paramount and we have to look at how that revision looks.

This week I have set my Year 10s to revise for an assessment. They have been studying six of the AQA poetry anthology poems. Instead of giving them a simple instruction to revise and leaving all the complexities of revising to inference,  I have created a sheet for them to use for revision. Now, I don’t think it will change the world, but it is a staggered approach to helping Year 10s revise. See a picture of the sheet here:

 

I have based this on the principle of sifting and refining their notes. They are to give three bullet points for each box. Then, at the end, further summarise with three overall things to remember. The sheet will

show me they have revised for the assessment. I have even said to the students that I will collect the sheet before the assessment. The thinking is that if something goes wrong in the assessment, they have a back-up to prove they had revised. After all, the default reasoning in a poor assessment is that the student did not revise.

We need to make it clearer to students what revision looks like and we need to be explicit that it involves more than reading over their notes again and again. I think as teachers we should model the revision processes for students. Instead of telling students to revise, we model steps and approaches to do. Here, I am trying a ‘summarise in three’ approach. I am sure you could use questioning or dual coding for whatever you are doing.

I feel that we need steps in building revision into our curriculums. We have a note sheet system in KS3. Students can take one sheet into an assessment. That sheet is A4 in Year 7, A5 in Year 8 and A6 in Year 9. We are in the business of teaching our subject but we need to be better at teaching how to revise for our subjects. We might talk about how to revise and give some tips, but do we really check and study their revision? Or, do we just rely on it being invisible and intangible? The problem is: if we treat revision as invisible and intangible, then the students who really need to revise will also see it as invisible and intangible that they don’t have to do it.

Revise. A word that has so much packed in it. A simple command but a whole lot of untapped potential. Let’s change that! Show me your revision. Show. Me. Your. Revision.

Thanks for reading,

 

Xris

 

 

I’m defining Gravity and you won’t bring me down

‘Cold’ seems to be ‘in vogue’ in the classroom. Things are getting a bit chilly.  We’ve had cold calling for a while, but now we have cold questions and cold reading. We even have cold classrooms as result of the cold Covid which might be a cold, but we can’t tell. I am even thinking of branding our blended learning as cold blended learning. In fact, for 2020 only  I am adding ‘cold’ to everything associated in teaching. I am planning my cold curriculum and, thankfully, I have already decided on my cold intent whilst thinking about my cold interventions for the cold gaps in the cold students’ cold memory. 

I admit I am terrible when it comes to reading education books. I download them with good and charitable intentions, yet they sit neglected on a shelf next to a thriller or juicy novel. I buy them with great intentions but I am sucker for plot. I am a story addict. For my sins, I downloaded Doug Lemov’s ‘Teach Like a Champion’ on my Kindle and it sat next to the latest Scandinavian thriller. It slowly got pushed to the back until a student teacher observed a lesson and noted that the lesson modelled Lemov’s techniques well. I smiled and then distracted the student by pointing out some meaningful graffiti on a chair. 

Cold calling, in the classroom, has had its critics. Possibly from people who associate it with cold calling on telephones. They probably think teachers have a list of students’ names and the teacher speaks to them about timeshare options whilst the teacher stares at the computer screen and follows the same script all the time. Hello, [insert name], are you the homeowner? No, I am a kid!  Well, I hadn’t realised I have been cold calling for quite a bit and I have mainly been using it for teaching vocabulary. Let’s, umm, call it cold vocabulary. 

Currently, I am working through some on the GCSE poems with Year 10 and we are exploring each poem over a few lessons. This week we looked at ‘Bayonet Charge’ by Ted Hughes. Here are some of the questions asked of the class. They don’t all relate to lugged, but to simplify things here I have linked to that one word. They are not every question I ask directly, because I ask probably a billion questions over the week. 

[1] What does the word ‘lugged’ mean? 

[2] Is it a positive or negative word? Then – why? 

[3] Where have you seen that word before? 

[4] Can you give me a different word for ‘lugged’? 

[5] What would I mean if I said ‘Tom had lugged his bag from lesson to lesson’? 

[6] What other words does the word sound like? 

[7] Is this a word we’d normally use in this situation? 

[8] Give me a sentence with the word in it. 

[9] What does the prefix ‘anti-‘ mean? 

I find that there is a team identity in the classroom and cold calling actually fosters that team spirit. Collectively we are working to a common goal. Each student has a collective responsibility to understanding the text. Each student has a duty. That’s quite empowering for me as a teacher as you value the contribution of all students and not solely the confident-fluent-and-well-articulated-hand-up-all-the-time-students. 

I use the classroom as a metaphorical dictionary and thesaurus. I used to prepare for lessons by strategically analysing a text for the difficult words or complex vocabulary. I’d produce endless glossaries and the promoted, indirectly, the inability to cope with unfamiliar words. I was reducing the cognitive process to a simple and select find process. As a teacher, I have to model what the reading process is and be explicit about what it is. And, I will stop and ask myself questions about words in the reading process. Yes, I might be a bit of cheat and I’ll skip over a word, but most of the time I will check the filing cabinets in my brain. We’ve largely neglected the thought processes involved in understanding words. We’ve often simplified it to the extent of glossing over the meaning of words. We don’t give that important space to talk about words. Ironic, when we expect students to talk about words for the responses in exams. We don’t need to talk about, Kevin. Instead we need Kevin to talk about words. 

I use cold calling especially with vocabulary to develop the use and understanding of vocabulary. Students in my class will expect me to ask them for a definition of word. I do it all the time. Some times it is for a relatively simple word like ‘dazzled’ so that students can be clear about the image the poet is creating in a particular line. Or, I do it for vocabulary that I feel will be a stumbling block. For new, vocabulary I might try a different thought path and not necessarily go down to the definition route. 

Me: The writer has used the word clod here. Is it a positive or negative word? 

Student: Negative. 

Me: What makes it sound negative?  

Student: Makes me think of clump and plod. 

Me: If I said, ‘the man was digging until found a clod of earth that couldn’t be broken down’, what do you think clod means?   

Of course, it takes confidence and knowledge of the students to orchestrate the classroom dictionary. I know the students to go to if I get stuck with pushing for an explanation. I know the students who need reassurance and support and I will do that with my questioning. ‘Is it a positive or a negative word?’ really helps with that. Plus, there’s always me, if necessary and there’s the dictionary if I am desperate. But, I have team approach to exploring and understanding  vocabulary. Call us the A-Team! I find students rise to the challenge when making a classroom a dictionary. Students with niche knowledge will volunteer without a request when definition links to Harry Potter, military history or Dungeons and Dragons. 

I am jealous of Mathematics because they have their timetables. Their equivalent of push-ups in PE. I think word definitions is just that. The short activity that needs repetition and constant use to help the whole. Defining words is what we don’t do enough of. Defining the easy words. Defining the difficult words. Defining the unfamiliar words. Defining the familiar words. Those words are units of meaning. We are usually defying definitions and defining. 

What essay wouldn’t be improved if a student defined a word? What quotation wouldn’t be improved if a student defined a word? In fact, in all the support I have seen given to students I haven’t really seen any of it refer to getting students to define words. I’ve seen lots of spurious interpretations. Not enough defining. Students will define what a simile or technique they’ve spotted in a text, yet they will forget to define a key word. 

Bin the worksheet on writing the definitions to words. Bin the worksheets matching up the definitions of words. Bin those glossary sheets. Pick a kid in the class and ask them to define a word. See what you get. A student’s definition of a word give you more than if you give them the definition. It’s more personal. Make your classroom the dictionary. Cold calling vocabulary helps to do that. 

Discuss words. Chat about them. Be that person who talks about words. I fear we are losing sight on vocabulary. Be the class that talks about words. There’s lots of talk about Tier 2 and Tier 3 words. There’s lots of cramming. Let’s just talk about words. I dare you: pick a student and ask them to give you a definition. 

Cold calling vocabulary and it isn’t cold! It certainly not hot. Be away with you! More like cosy. Comfy. Yeah, that’s it. Comfy calling. Comfy calling vocabulary. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris