When did knowledge become such a dirty word?

When did knowledge become such a dirty word? For some subjects, it isn’t a dirty word. In fact, it is the bread and butter of lessons. Go to any Science or Maths lesson and you’ll see what I mean. Yet, for creative subjects, like English, it has become a word associated around Gradgrind principles and sucking out the fun out of lessons and learning. Oh, you are one of those knowledgy teachers: I bet students hate your subject. Popular belief would have it that knowledge is one arm of Hydra’s plot to take over the world. Other conspiracy theories are available.

A teacher’s job is to teach knowledge with the aim to improve the student. That might be knowledge behind a skill. That might be content knowledge. That might be subject domain knowledge. Like sand from a beach, knowledge is everywhere. You can’t escape it. Like sand from a beach. I might be wearing my creativity speedos, but you can guarantee there will be a grain of sand somewhere.

My first year of teaching was awful. I meandered from topic to topic and the knowledge in English I was teaching wasn’t focused and, at best, it can be described as meandering. I meandered through writing to persuade and I meandered through some poems. Yes, I might have done some interesting things with the topic and I taught them some interesting things about pikes, but I meandered. When I started teaching English, there was a lot of freedom, but also a lack of clarity about what knowledge was important and what wasn’t so important. That is also the problem we have with new teachers today. It is so difficult to work out the knowledge needed. And the hierarchy of knowledge.

English does work differently in terms of knowledge compared to other subjects. Its fuzziness is one its flaws but also its source of beauty and delight. Maths can hone their knowledge into 100 key facts. English can’t do that so easily. I could give you a 100 key facts about A Christmas Carol. Or, I could give you 100 key facts about Romeo and Juliet. But, what I cannot give you, is 100 key facts that students need to know for English. That’s because English is such a fuzzy subject. We are doing so many things that we cannot limit knowledge, because English is the limitless knowledge subject. It has no limits. In lessons, I could be talking about a text and then I have to break out into some teaching about Science, History, Geography or another subjects. I might teach English, but I have to be prepared to teach aspects of History at any given moment. Only this week, I had a lesson broken by a student’s train of thought about animals. They wanted to know what prevents animals getting tooth decay if they eat lots of fruit. English lessons are a delta of knowledge. We go anywhere in a lesson and we are taken on that path. It is also why English lessons get changed and adapted so quickly and often. No two lessons are ever the same in English, because students bring something of their own to lessons. That might either be a lack of knowledge or their own knowledge. Either way dictates the direction of the lesson.

English is the one subject that doesn’t work like others in terms of knowledge. I will scream from the top of the mountains that last sentence. I don’t mean it in terms of ‘look at us; aren’t we special’ but in terms that our subject has a real problem with adopting knowledge models from other subjects. We could easily simplify English to 100 key facts, but that wouldn’t help them in exams. In fact, it would be so damaging, because students, in English, need 100( to the power of 100) number of facts to address the unseen elements of exam. They need world knowledge. They need spelling knowledge. They need sentence knowledge. They need grammar knowledge. They need past reading knowledge. They need situation knowledge. They need word knowledge. You get the drift. A student brings so much to a text in English. They are suitcases of knowledge and with the suitcases’  contents they formulate an idea, an opinion, a judgement or an inference.

Knowledge in English isn’t a dirty word in English, but our relationship with knowledge needs some work. We need a healthy relationship with knowledge and a realistic view of it in our subject. English tests all knowledge regularly but how do we support that in lessons?

We have been trying something to build that healthy attitude towards knowledge. Last year, we had a disaster of introducing knowledge retrieval in KS3. In my naivety, I thought it would be great to do three low impact knowledge tests in a unit. It wasn’t great. One at the start. One in the middle. One at the end. What could go wrong? Everything. We are testing too much and without meaning. The logic behind was to show improvement in knowledge retention, but it was soulless, meaningless and vapid.

This year, we’ve thought about how we can use knowledge assessments meaningfully that works with the subject and not against it. We have separated them into three elements – memory sparks, memory makers, memory tests. Each one takes a lesson but there is a clear purpose behind the phases.

 

Memory Spark

At the start of all units, we have a small quiz which focuses on some of the knowledge taught in previous years we think it relevant to the topic in some way. Our curriculum has a through line for topics and they link back to previous years. For Year 7, we make connections to primary content and the primary curriculum.

The great thing about this is that builds the message that all learning is important. The new topic doesn’t negate all the things taught previously. The new topic isn’t starting with a blank slate. The knowledge is connected from the start. Remember when you explored character types, well, that links to this bit.  

There’s no collection of scores or even test element. We’ll assume that some things will be forgotten, but it gives us a chance to review what’s be retained, what’s be forgotten and what’s been corrupted and misinterpreted over time.

 

Memory Maker

In the middle of the unit, we have another quiz, but this time it about building more links across domains. At this point in the unit, students have got a grasp of the key ideas and so it is perfect time to build on those connections.

Building connections is an important aspect of English. We are expecting students to build connections between factual knowledge in an exam so we need to get students searching for meaningful connections. Experts do this naturally and novices don’t. We had such an interesting discussion with Year 7 about the portrayal of the warden in ‘Holes’ and the various books they read when exploring character types in our ‘Heroes and Villains’ unit. That built up their understanding and showed that their previous knowledge and experience is redundant. In English, all knowledge and experience is valuable; you just don’t know when it will be called into action. And, there lies our biggest problem.

This, for me, was the most interesting and fun aspect, building connections. We rarely do it, but it was fun for me. Getting them to make and build connections across subjects. All too often, it is relying on me making connections or the odd student offering a connection.

 

 

Test

The final aspect was a multiple choice quiz. Using a PowerPoint and a sheet, students had to answer the questions on a grid. Yes, we marked it and students had a score, but the most important thing was where students got things wrong. So, for the bits they didn’t get right, the wrote down the key thing they needed to know. That will be their starting point for their end of year test. After each topic, they have a list of things they need to work on.

The great thing about using PowerPoints for MCQ is that I am able to use the slides for hinge questions later in the year. Also, I am able to build them into the topic next year – especially the parts that they struggled with.

The test becomes more of a diagnostic tool and we identify the knowledge they need to work on.

 

 

We, of course, do other things with knowledge but this is what we’ve done in KS3 to help structure knowledge focus. We do knowledge retrieval on a regular basis, but this is how we use systems to support and raise the profile of knowledge in the subject. It works on three main principles:

[1] Past knowledge is equally as important as the present knowledge;

[2] Connecting knowledge is an important aspect of English;

[3] Quizzing and testing help to revise forgotten knowledge and identify areas to focus on.

 

For the rest of the lessons, we are reading novels, plays and poems and writing creatively. The natural flow of creativity and knowledge attrition through reading and experiencing texts continues to happen. We just have a visible discussion about knowledge every so often. Knowledge is part of the discussion and learning. It isn’t about learning things by rote or cramming students with hundreds of spurious facts. It is about having a academic, thoughtful and humane approach to English. Each lesson has knowledge. We just do it a little bit differently than how others do it in their subject.

In English, we teach students to think and read how others think. That sadly is hard for the rest of the world to quantify and clarify. English is the subject with endless knowledge. Be my guest, try to quantify and clarify English as a subject, but there’s a reason why there are hundreds of novels and books written a year. There’s a reason why dictionaries are updated yearly. You cannot pin down language, thoughts, feelings and experiences. You can pin a few down, but you cannot pin every single one down and fit it on a knowledge organiser.

Thank you for reading,

Xris

High stakes exams and mocks – let’s go low, low, low, low

I am surprised that we don’t talk enough about mental health on Twitter and through blogs – especially given that we’d just been through a pandemic. We’ve all been through a challenging experience that even most adults have struggled with. Contrary to media stories, it hasn’t been an extended holiday for teachers. I crave routines and patterns in my life. Only this week, a colleague joked how I love a system. It is true – I love routines and systems in school, and life. Occasionally, I might throw chaos in there by catching an illness or doing something different. We all love routine, secretly. That’s why moving schools is so difficult. Adjusting to a whole new set of systems and rules.  

For the last few years, there hasn’t been any regular routines for students. Instead, they’ve had to live in a world of vagaries. Will they have to go to school? Will school revert to online lessons? Will they have to sit exams? Will the work they do be included in their portfolio for grading? Uncertainty is natural part of life, but it is only a small part of life. The pandemic has made uncertainty a big part of everyone’s life. Instead of the uncertainty of Uncle Ben turning up at the weekend or not, we have the uncertainty of the structure of the week, month, year and our future. Tomorrow is always an uncertainty, but the options for what is going to happen are usually narrowed to a few options. Well, if X happens, we will do Y. If Z happens, then will just do nothing. Therefore, even with uncertain events like the future, there’s still a level of certainty in uncertainty.

 

When the future lacks a level of predictability, then we become anxious, unsettled and stressed. Take this equation:

stressed teacher + stressed student =  failure

 

Please be clear: I am not advocating a ‘smile as you teach policy’.  Instead, I am highlighting how we are building towards a toxic situation and we, and I mean all of us, have to do something about. Leaders are anxious because of the uncertainty of things. Teachers are anxious because of the uncertainty of the GCSES. Students are anxious because they don’t know what is and what isn’t important now. Feelings are absorbed. Like energy, they don’t disappear, but are transformed to another feeling or absorbed by someone else. A stressed student looks at the teacher and sees their stress and automatically that heightens their own stress. If the teacher is stressed about things, then it really must be bad. Teachers must be ‘loco parentis’. They must be the stability in situations. The physical stability. The emotional stability.

 

Teachers can have an impact on the feelings of students and now, more than ever, that’s important. We can orchestrate a sense of achievement, motivation and momentum or we can orchestrate the opposite in what we say and do. I know how I respond to things can have such an impact on what happens in the minds of students. Take these two responses to a class doing badly in an assessment:

[1] I am really disappointed. We spent ages on learning the structure to the question and only two of you remembered to use it in the mock exam.

[2] I get that some of you might be disappointed with your results, but I am not. A few tweaks and you’ll be there. We just need to make sure we remember the structure of the question.

 

Two ways of address and feeding back to students. One plays on emotional manipulation. The adult is disappointed and then forcing the students to feel disappointed. Then, apportioning the blame to the students. It is the students’ fault for the underperformance and not the teacher.  The other response doesn’t dismiss the feelings of the students but reframes it. Structures the ideas into something positive.

We remember how people made us feel rather than what they say, but in teaching we have to be so careful how we frame things. Yes, we might be disappointed with an assessment, but will sharing my feelings of this improve things?  Once, I worked for a boss who constantly shouted at staff. Not once did that make me work harder or better. Instead, it just made me avoid them. Later, I had a boss who did the opposite: they praised you when you did something really good. That motivated me more. Interestingly, I worked harder for that second boss, because I wanted more praise, than the other boss. I work harder and better with positivity than the negativity. That’s true in the classroom. Students are far more responsive with ‘meaningful positivity’ than negativity. Meaningful because it needs to have some value. Be positive about everything and then you devalue what is truly good. Like most things, it needs to be measured.

I don’t think the teachers are the only things to be mindful this year. I think mock exams are problematic, yet nobody is talking about it.

(stressed teacher + stressed student) x (mock exam x frequency)  =  failure

We have an assessment system that is built around the ‘do or die’ principle. Mocks are not only a depressing thing for teachers to mark, but they are depressing for students. They are either ‘yes, I got the grade I want’ or ‘no, I didn’t get the grade I want’. As much as we work on feedback, mocks highlight if a student is a success or a failure in their eyes. We like to think the students see them as a opportunity to learn, but a few do, but the rest don’t. Most of the problem is the fact that the mocks attempt to replicate the process of the final exams. Instead of the process being about preparation, it becomes replication in all manner of things. We replicate the emphasis, stress and impact of the final exams. Oh, and we do it in a two or three week block. So, in fact, we don’t just replicate the process, we turn it into something worse. The GCSE exams in a fortnight. The final exams are spread over months, yet we ‘in our attempt to help and replicate the experience’ condense it all into a fortnight. We are not replicating here, but creating a different monster.

We need to change the perspective of the mocks in everyone’s heads. Rarely, is it seen as a positive learning experience. No students uses the phrase ‘I learnt from the mocks…’. Students don’t really articulate that idea. Occasionally, teacher will learn from them, but given how many papers are set it is lucky if a teacher can recall their name after the process of marking a bazillion papers. Largely, they are viewed in negative terms. Every mock highlights what they cannot do. We produce lists of what the papers tell us they can’t do. We then build that into our teaching. The whole emphasis is on the negative. We dwell on the negative aspects. In fact, we don’t just dwell, we soak ourselves in the negative parts for months.

A mock is not the final exam. The more we treat it as one, the more problematic they become. Mocks are too high stakes for my liking. The final exam is where they need to be at their best. Everything before then is building to the final exam. A mock, in my opinion, should be centred around what a student can do, rather than what they can’t do. They should be an opportunity to highlight the green shoots. The seeds of success. The buds of brilliance. A student needs to know that they can succeed, yet instead we have mocks geared around high stakes and mistakes. Ideally, what I want students to see is that they need to replicate what they did in these green shoots and apply them to other areas where they are not so successful. A sense of achievement is so powerful. Students, if they do something well, they will repeat it again and again. Why are we not using this element more in education?  Replicating the successes is as equally important as learning from mistakes; otherwise, students learn from mistakes but don’t repeat the early successes.

If we are to help students in these uncertain times, we need to change our perspective on mocks. They should be an opportunity for us to praise and reward the green shoots. They should be an opportunity for us to show students that there are green shoots in their work and with a bit of watering and feeding they could be truly successful in the final exam.

This term, I have started saying the following in class:

Mistakes are good. I need you to make mistakes in mocks, assessments and lessons, because that’s where you’ll learn not to make them again. The only time we don’t want those mistakes are in the final exam and that’s why we are working to learn from them now. We are building to perfection. I want to see some green shoots.

 What teachers say and do changes the stakes for students? What SLT do with mocks changes the stakes for students? The only time we need high stakes is the final exam. That’s where it matters. Everything else is building to that point.

Come on people: search for those green shoots and praise the students for them!

Thanks for reading,

Xris

 

Consciously crafting controlled and concise writing on a granular level

The reading extract on Paper 1 wouldn’t get a 9, would it? 

I admit I have a style of writing I prefer. A crisp, concise style of writing that doesn’t throw the kitchen sink at you when you are reading it. Each word is thoughtfully placed and positioned in a sentence and nothing is superfluous. The problem is that students don’t automatically write like that. It is only a few students that write with such precision. Often they are the  diligent readers in KS3. Through regular reading they have absorbed a style that seems effortless, yet is so measured and controlled. These students are usually at the top in terms in attainment and outcomes. But, they don’t write like Raymond Chandler or Charles Dickens, yet we insist on a verbose style that is the lovechild of these and several authors when it comes to writing. Oh go on add another adjective.  

There are a few writers that optimise this style for me. Jon McGregor is one such author. He can be detailed with his prose, but largely it is concise and I love it. Look at this example from his latest novel ‘Lean Fall Stand’.

When the storm came in it was unexpected and Thomas Myers was dropped to his knees.

The air darkened in the distance. There was a roar and everything went white against him. It had a kind of violence he was prepared for. He wrapped his arms around his head and lay flat on the ice to keep from being hurled away.

This takes place in the opening chapter and you could image this in the hands of a student would be swamped in adjectives, similes and personification. We wouldn’t just have a storm, but instead a ‘violent storm attacking its prey’ and we’d have a ‘roar of primal hunger’. Holding back, and knowing when to hold back, is a skills that takes time.  Dickens would have endless lists and repetition. Chandler would have a simile every other line. Be measured with writing is never on our agenda.

Crafting is hard and the granular aspect of writing isn’t focused on enough in lessons. We like to use a granular approach to writing literature essays, but we shy away from it with creative writing, because we think creative writing is hindered by a granular approach to teaching. With that in mind, a lot of what we do with students is post-writing or pre-writing and never during writing. We wants students to pause and explore options, yet our focus on teaching always focuses on the preparation and planning or the damage control and proofreading. Instead, we need to look at the point of the writing process. That’s why modelling the process is so important. But, I think there needs to be something more in the process. Even more granular.

The following is a small sequence of events I use with students to develop the skill of crafting. To start off, I explore how simple sentences can be used to structure a story.

[1]

Tom had everything he wanted for his birthday.

However, the one thing he really wanted was a telephone call.

A call from his father.

It is easy, when exploring writing, to start with a complex sentence structure, but clarity in the first instance is key. We look at how, with three simple sentences, we can structure a story or an event. I like this example because it shifts the mood and each sentence changes the mood. There is a build up of information, which could easily be squeezed into one sentence. It becomes one type of model for them. I then show them some others and look at how sentences and how they are structured and ordered can control the meaning.

[2]

A smile covered his face.

It hid the darkness of his thoughts.

Only one thing was on his mind: murder.

 

This example helps them to see the same process again, but with a different story and slight changes. The great thing about this is the economy of words and sentences. It forces them to look at how the writing can be crafted. It is too easy to neglect simple sentences, but in doing this you can help students to build a range of structures, because concise writers depend on simple and compound sentences. They don’t use a complex sentence all the time.

Next, I show them one final one which we use as a template for more crafting.

[3]

Light flickered through the trees.

Joy could be heard in the distance.

This was her safe place.

This example helps to show how you can craft ambiguity and use that for effect. The joy in the second sentence could be happiness from a park or it could be the name of someone called Joy. It isn’t until the last sentence that we understand which one. At this level, you can show students how you can be playful and purposefully vague with things such as ‘it’, to hide the identity.

 

[4]

Light flickered through the trees.

As the darkness leaked across the grass, the stream trickled.

Joy could be heard in the distance.

Birds scattered away, hiding from the girl who tortured insects.

This was her safe place.

The next stage is to show how to expand on things. This is where I consider when to use complex or compound sentences. At this stage, I limit the amount I use. I do this so that students can see how the sentences interact and work with each other. These now add contrast and build a level of foreshadowing in the writing. The darkness hints at Joy’s hobby of torturing animals.  Furthermore, the meaning of ‘her safe place’ is transformed with the knowledge that girl tortures insects. This place is now the place where she supposedly mistreats them and she is hidden away from the world. The lovely, positive piece of writing is transformed with two sentences and there was no need to mention zombies or creepy houses.

Using complex sentence effectively takes time and we, all to often, insist on them being used but don’t explore the crafting of them. We’ll teach a sentence construction, but we don’t always interrogate them in action. I like doing this here to show how they fit together and how students can flip between simple and complex sentence. Furthermore, they don’t need them everywhere, but used sparingly and appropriately.

 

[5]

As the darkness…

                             Leaked

                             Poured

                             Dribbled

                             Spreads

                             Oozed

                             Trickled

                             Filtered

                             Seeped              

 

When I am showing the complex sentences, I use it as an example to show how I work with selecting words. Largely students pick the first word that comes to mind and they rarely stop and reflect on their choice. The instance of writing being a fluent and fluid process means that students don’t pause to think. They select the idea and convert to a sentence quickly. I like, at this point, to show them how to ponder a word choice. We do this a lot with analysis, yet with writing this process isn’t explicit or instructed. We want students in the final assessments to self-select words, but they don’t do it internally so I address this here. We talk about the different impact of each word and which one works best in the context.

Pausing is a regular thing writings do and I don’t think we articulate this enough. Students largely pause at sentences and not with words. That pause can add so much meaning to a sentence.

 

[6]

As the darkness leaked across the grass

What kind of grass?

Is it important, at this time, to describe the grass?

Is it necessary?

The next stage for me is then adding some meat to the bones of the writing. Or maybe not. Adjectives are useful but, my goodness me, they get everywhere. A bit like sand. The default is to use an adjective every time there is a noun in a sentence. Yet, the question of its effectiveness is never questioned. It is just assumed that an adjective is great so put them in all the time. That’s why I like this stage. Asking a question like ‘Is putting an adjective in here really necessary?’ helps them to evaluate their choices. Do we need to know what the grass looks like specifically? Would it add anything to the writing?

At this stage, I employ the CLiC Dickens concordance and explore how Dickens uses the noun ‘grass’ in his writing. This is a great tool for not only exploring a text, but also modelling how writers place words in a sentence. They are usually shocked when they see that Dickens hasn’t used the cliché of ‘green grass’ at all.

 

I also use this website to help students to see different phrases and syntax in sentences to mirror. Like Google, students have an algorithm in their heads. An algorithm that resorts to the most popular search when using a noun, verb, adjective or piece of figurative language. That’s why grass is always green. The algorithm says so. That’s why the haunted house is always creepy. The algorithm says so. That’s why the speeding object is like a rocket. The algorithm says so.

Big readers in KS3 are usually the students to have outwitted the algorithm, but the students who read fewer books are held back by the algorithm. That’s why at most stages we should offer alternatives. I live showing a page of the concordance and letting students weave some phrases or word combination. I even promote song lyrics. If they are writing about love, then they have a bank of phrases already in their brain to use. We just need to remind them of it.

 

 [7]

Light flickered through the trees.

As the darkness leaked across the grass, the stream trickled.

Joy could be heard in the distance.

Birds scattered away, hiding from the girl who tortured insects.

This was her safe place.

A prison for animals. 

 

 

The next stage is to add figurative language, but I only insist on one piece. However, there is a condition. The figurative language must lift the writing in some way. It must add to the meaning or the effect. Too often similes, personification and metaphors are thrown into a piece of writing without thought. I like this stage, because it really challenges the thinking process. Not a case of what, but why. Why use that metaphor? Why there? Why not?

We force students to be lazy with figurative language by insisting it is there. That’s why we can a disorientating and dizzy collection of examples in a text. One simile used well is much better than twelve metaphors and six examples of personification.

 

[8]

Light flickered through the trees.

As the darkness leaked across the grass like an unforgiveable thought, the stream trickled.

Joy could be heard in the distance.

Birds scattered away, hiding from the girl who tortured insects.

This was her safe place.

 

If we look at the texts used in the GCSE exams, they often only have one simile and a few metaphors. Good writing isn’t about lots of similes and metaphors, but about using the right one at the right time.

Seeing how one in the right place lifts and adds to the meaning is key for the writer’s craft.

 

 

[9]

 

Light flickered through the trees.

Like an unforgiveable thought, the darkness leaked across the grass as the stream trickled.

In the distance, Joy could be heard.

Hiding from the girl who tortured insects, birds scattered away. 

This was her safe place.

 

Light flickered through the trees.

As the darkness leaked across the grass like an unforgiveable thought, the stream trickled.

Joy could be heard in the distance.

Birds scattered away, hiding from the girl who tortured insects.

This was her safe place.

 

 

Next, I look at sentence manipulation and syntax. Together, we explore how the sentences can be restructured and how the meaning is impacted. We explore how moving the position of Joy in a sentence hides the ambiguity of the original. We also explore how positioning ‘birds scatted away’ at the end of sentence builds up the surprise. Using a small section of writing like this really helps to show the finer elements of crafting.

 

[10]

Light flickered through the trees.  Like an unforgiveable thought, the darkness leaked across the grass as the stream trickled. In the distance, Joy could be heard. Hiding from the girl who tortured insects, birds scattered away. 

This was her safe place.

But, it wasn’t theirs. 

Finally, I get students to think about how it is placed on the page and exploring how paragraphing can be used to support meaning. For further effect, we added the last touch ‘But, it wasn’t theirs’ to place emphasis more on the victims of her cruelty rather than her.

 

Our focus on writing is dominated by the addition of something. You see that obsession with checklists. Never once have I seen the removal of adjectives on a checklist. Good writing is crafted and that crafting isn’t something we can simplify to a checklist. We need to be explicit all the time about the granular decisions in writing. Never assume anything with writing. If we take our time with the simple steps, then we get to heart of the problems.

I always liked 'slow writing' but I think we need to be even slower with the writing still.  

Thanks for reading,

Xris 

Oh, they didn’t get it: Misconceptions in English

It is interesting how my approach to teaching has varied over the years. At the start, I was more interested in teaching stuff – regardless of whether that was useful and meaningful. Towards the middle, I tended to focus on stuff that would have a meaningful impact on what students could do. Now, the more I think about things the more I think we need to spend more time on misconceptions in English. For all the talk about what students need to know, there isn’t enough talk around misconceptions for my liking.

The question we tend to apply to English is:

What do students need to do or know to be to succeed in this task?

Then, we go away and plan a series of lessons building up to the final task. Each lesson will, in part, focus on one of these nuggets a student needs to supposedly achieve or master. We might practise a task to see if they have mastered some elements. The problem with this is that you largely don’t understand the issues until after the event. The post task analysis highlights all the problems they had made and what didn’t and what did stick. Wouldn’t this level of understanding be valuable in the first week of teaching or planning? Yet, we don’t formalise or build on it. Instead it is saved for next time the class do a similar task.

Let’s add another question and a question that is possibly more important for success:

Where do students go wrong with this task?

We all address mistakes on a microlevel, but we rarely look at mistakes on a macrolevel in English. When given a text to teach for the first time, we buzz with excitement over the things we can do and things we can teach. We are joyful about what they could learn from it, yet we never engage on the danger zones or the areas of misconception. Any thought of those are not concerned until we reach that bridge. Precision is what makes students better in their reading and writing, yet we don’t always have that level of precision when approaching texts. We don’t start with the mistakes. We don’t go here are the major mistakes with this question.

Take the novel ‘A Christmas Carol’. There are a number of areas for misconception such as context, plot, analysis and writing. Each one brings with it it’s own set of issues. Let’s just take the plot as an example. Look at these points:

·       Scrooge is evil.

·       Bob Cratchit is an example of the poor.

Whatever text you study there are a number of these plot misconceptions that students pick up somehow when reading the text. When you identify these misconceptions, you can explicitly teach them alongside the text. As you read the Stave 1, you question students about Scrooge’s evilness. Is Dickens presenting him as evil? No. Building misconceptions into teaching English, helps informs and makes learning precise. You address the misconception and attack it in tandem with what you would normally teach. Some misconceptions are collected well before the students read a text. Take ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde’. They need addressing and challenging at the start. For these two texts, I’d always check and address a student’s prior knowledge of the text. It is amazing how many students think Hyde is bigger than Jekyll.

So, how does this apply across the rest of English and exams? Well, I think misconceptions should be part and parcel of what we teach. Take the Paper 2 GCSE English Language paper for AQA and the summary question (Question 2). The following are misconceptions around answering the question:

·       You just reword the text in your own words

·       You spot differences between the texts

·       You need techniques to support you ideas

·       There is a set number of things to find so it is best if you can spot everything you can

 

Once you understand the problem areas you can address these in your teaching. We are teaching X because Y is wrong.

 

You just reword the text in your own words  - no, you must make an inference

You spot differences between the texts – the difference needs to be an inference

You need techniques to support you ideas – only need a quotation so wasted time talking about techniques

There is a set number of things to find so it is best if you can spot everything you can – about the quality of explanation and not the number of things spotted

 

At KS3, we have more of a collective emphasis. Misconceptions around aspects that affect all year groups. Two things I am working on this holiday are comma splices and inferences. Both areas that affect a large population of students and need finetuning if students are to improve. The key thing, however, is making the misconceptions visible and talking about them. Other subjects do misconceptions so much better. They spend large chunks of time on addressing them or repeatedly revisit them. I think English teachers can learn a lot from other subjects on how they deal with mistakes. Unless we adapt our teaching around mistakes, then students are going to endlessly make the same mistakes again and again.

Mistakes, errors and misconceptions shouldn’t be the post assessment discussion they should be the grammar of lessons. Students need forewarning of the traps, the tricks, the slipups and the confusions. Without them, how do we expect them to get better? An assessment or task should be an opportunity to shine and show off and we need to do more than give them the skills and the knowledge. We need to give them the common mistakes. Firstly, we need to tell them the mistakes.

There’s a sense of irony about the name of this blog. Learning from my mistakes. If we don’t build structures around the learning gained from mistakes, then we will continue to keep making them. The better teacher is always one that can pre-empt problem areas. That’s what we should be building up in staff at all levels. What are the problem areas? Pre-empt them.

Here's a question to take back to departments:

Does your department list the common mistakes students make in a topic and area?   

Thanks for reading,

Xris

 

 

Diet poetry and the problems with the poetry anthology

 I enjoy teaching poetry but I do find the idea of an anthology of fifteen poems for GCSE such an overwhelming prospect for students. I have been around long enough to seen how the various poetry anthologies are used. Rather than have students engage with poetry and exploring how language is used, we end up, largely, having poetry translation and memorisation of random facts in the hope they can be strung together.

The obsession becomes about ‘knowing the poem’. What ever ‘knowing the poem’ means? Single poems are studied over several lessons until the teacher feels the students know the poem, which usually means the teacher has informed student about everything in the poem. We aren’t happy unless the student has an highlight annotated copy of the poem in their book and twenty spurious facts about the poem, like Duffy has an aversion to the colour red, in their brains.

The cognitive load of the anthology is massive and it is a worrying aspect for us as practitioner. For novels and plays, you have narrative framework which holds knowledge together or at least structures it in some way. Fifteen poems loosely linked together by a theme lacks this structure and this natural cohesion that plays and novels naturally have. Then, let’s look at the poems themselves. Densely packed texts with a multitude of ideas, messages, themes and techniques. The richness of poetry for some is the cognitive overload for others.

When you marks essays based on the anthologies, you get a clear divide. Those that can remember everything a teacher said about a poem. Those that can form their own opinion on the poems. Those that just repeat parts of the text. Sadly, even after spending weeks looking at the poems, some students are not able to form their own opinions. Part of the beauty of poetry is that anybody should be able to offer an opinion on a poem, spot some interesting things about the poem and offer some reasons about why they think a poet wrote it. Poetry should be the one thing students should be able to do easily without understanding  Shakespeare’s language or without knowing the plot of a 350 paged Victorian novel.  The way the anthologies are taught I’d argue add to the cognitive load of students. We are adding to the load rather than supporting and helping with the load. We have a large number of our students who are overburdened with poetry that when it comes to assessment that freeze-up and write waffle.

We need to look at the process of how we teach these poems. We need to be aware of the cognitive load related to the learning the poems. Students think they need to know everything about the poems. That in itself if problematic but it is something we need hit head on. We need to aim for confidence about a poem and not complete knowledge of the poem. Now, don’t you go thinking this is  knowledge rant; it isn’t. But, I feel that the relationship between knowledge and confidence needs exploring. Knowledge does give you confidence, but confidence in poetry can come from very little knowledge and from the personal knowledge of the student. Ideally, we want confident and knowledgeable students, but at the moment we do have students who lack confidence because the knowledge is overwhelming. They need the knowledge is a way that helps them build their confidence. We need to address the extraneous load so that students get more confident.

So, where is this going? Well, we, like others, had a problem with lockdowns and students isolating. We had studied several of the poems during lockdown, but when it came to revisiting them the students struggled to recall or discuss the poems they had previously studied with confidence. Therefore, we needed to revisit the poems in a way that ensured knowledge retention and confidence, so I did something a bit controversial. For this, I know I am going to visited by the ghosts of Blake, Plath and Tennyson begging me to change my ways. Bah, humbug! I presented a diet version of the poems in the anthology. This is how we started ‘War Photographer’.

 

In his darkroom he is finally alone

With spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.

 

Home again

To ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,

To fields which don’t explode beneath the feet

Of running children in a nightmare heat.

 

He remembers the cries

Of this man’s wife, how he sought approval

Without words to do what someone must

 

From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where

He earns his living and they do not care. 

 

Students copied the diet version in their books and then together we explored the meaning behind the poem. Students spotted patterns in the language and together we explored their ideas about the poem and the poet’s message. The great thing was that students felt they knew the poem and they readily offered ideas about the meaning of lines and phrases. All annotated on their handwritten copy of the poem. The beauty of writing is down was that spotted things in the writing which are largely hidden from sight unless you write things down. Word order. Structure.

But, you’ve taken some of the best bits of the poem out? Yes. I had. On purpose. The problem often with poetry – and the beauty of it – is that you have lots of images that add to the overall mood and tone, but detract from the overall meaning. We get it, because we are attuned to dealing with a collection of images, yet students don’t. They overload the student. Why is it a Mass in a dark room? The concept of the darkroom isn’t clear in the student’s head when another image is thrown into the mix. That’s why a lot of poetry teaching is working through the poem line by line. Decluttering.

We hadn’t even read the whole poem yet students had a confident grasp of what the poem was about, the choices made relating to language and structure and some understanding of the poet’s message. Confidently, they could talk about the poem. We did this repeatedly with five of the other poems and their confidence increased. They had a grounded understanding of the poem which was a mixture of exploration and discussion, rather than us go line by line through the poem.

Then, when we looked at the poem, we were able to look at how other components worked.

The only light is red and softly glows,
as though this were a church and he
a priest preparing to intone a Mass.

 

This next bit became incredibly fruitful in terms of discussion. We were able to look at what this sentence added to the meaning of the poem. What was the effect now of comparing it to a church and a Mass? How did the mood change? Why at this point? We did this repeatedly with the poem. Seeing how each element missing from the diet version slots in. Building their knowledge when they were confident to start with at the beginning.

All too often we look at the whole and zoom in on a word or a line, but this changed things for us. We were looking at the cohesion between parts of the poem. How things fitted together? Exploring the reasons and the ideas. Bringing new elements to the poem helped increase their knowledge of the poem, but with a real sense of confidence. We could even throw Yygotsky in there and say that I was working on the concrete and building up to the abstract elements.

Confidence in talking about poetry is something we need to actively work on. Yes, there’s a lot of poems to get through and so little time, but if we can get students more confident about talking about a poem in their first lesson with the poem, then that will only add to their confidence when they write about the poems later down the line. All it too was a little unburdening of the cognitive load when faced with the poem for the first time.

Thanks for reading,

Xris

It started with one blank page…paragraphing

 A long, long, long time ago I wrote a blog about using readymade structures for creative writing. It was something that grew in popularity and this continued when I wrote my book.

Structuring writing is probably one of the hardest aspects of writing. It isn’t the first thing a student thinks of and it is definitely one of the things that holds students back. That and commas, but that is for another blog.

When students write, there is so much going on in their head. What to write? What words should I use? What has the teacher asked me to include? What did I get wrong last time? There’s so much to think about in the early stages of writing that it is easy to drop a few important things. Commas get forgotten. And structure is forgotten. There are so many things to think about that the page of whiteness becomes alienating. Scary. Horrifying.

The first ‘write’ is always the hardest. It’s easy to forget this. Come on: you’ve been writing for years. Every year, I get students struggling to write initially. Putting thoughts on a blank page is totally natural for English teachers because we have automated the process. Yet, for any student in school, it isn’t an automated process. Instead it is an manual process. That manual aspect is what we forget. We forget the blood and sweat it takes. We have a fully functioning automated writing brain. We have automated structuring, paragraphing, self-correction and so many other things. Years of reading endless Mill’s and Booms has given you so ready off the peg structures.

A teacher’s job is to help build to automaticity, but isn’t a fast and quick process. Admittedly, we don’t do enough to build this. We don’t make some aspects automatic while the student develops the manual aspects. Building ‘automacy’ or whatever you want to call it is probably easier with some aspects of writing. Paragraph structure is one of those areas, but it is slightly underdeveloped.   

I build students by offering them some automatic structures for writing paragraphs. I am including some new ones here today and you can see some old ones here. I often start with paragraphs when doing creative writing with Year 10 and Year 11. It is easy to start with words and techniques, but, sorry, structure and paragraphing are paramount in the early planning stages. I give them a structure so that they can focus on the words and techniques. If you focus first on words and techniques, it is very hard, but not impossible, to build a structure.  It often takes quite a sophisticated reader to build a structure with words and techniques first. When you focus on structure, ideas and meaning often follow. So too does the confidence.

 The following are some paragraph structures. I tend to use a simple paragraph as a model. I don’t use fancy paragraphs for the simple reason that the structure is the most important thing. Students must be able to see the structure. If they have to wade through purple prose and the teacher’s attempt to break into publishing world, then they aren’t going to see the wood for the trees or the structure from the techniques. Then, I show them how you can add digression. The structure is there to hang idea on. They can add a bit more to the idea or they can add an aside. Regardless of this, the structure is there.

 

[1] Was it …? Was it…? Was it …? Was it… that…?

Was it the gentle lapping of the waves? Was it the endless trees circling the lake? Was it the soothing chirping of the birds amongst the dense trees? Was it the fact that there wasn’t a human being for miles that made this place perfect?

[2] The three thread paragraph

Quiet, peaceful and calm was what made this place so unique and special. Quiet leaves gently swayed in the wind. Peaceful animals searched and scrounged amongst the trees. Calmness was everywhere.

[3] The same adjective followed by the opposite paragraph

Twisted were the branches as they snaked up into the sky. Twisted was the path between the lifeless bones of the trees. Twisted were the leaves on the ground. Straight was my path out of here.

[4] Adjective, comparative and superlative paragraph

Cold was the lake and all the stones around it. Colder were the metallic coloured fish swimming and twirling in the lifeless water. Coldest was the bottom of the lake where nothing moved. 

[5] Sometimes…  Somewhere…. Somehow/ Someway….  paragraph

Sometimes he was invisible. Somewhere near people were cheering and singing. Somehow he was  trapped.

[6] Never … Never … Never … Never had I … paragraph

Never had the sea felt so cold. Never had the world looked so empty. Never had the sky looked so cruel. Never had I felt so content.

[7] Preposition X3 and then something profound paragraph

Under the moon, a man stood silent. Under his eyes a tear snaked down his cheek. Under the tear, his mouth was a single line. The letter, spelling out his divorce, sat at his feet.    

[8] Before, now , soon paragraph  

Before, the garden was an oasis of calm. Now, it stands forgotten and neglected. Soon, it will a jungle of brambles hidden under rubble.

[9] Light, shadows, darkness paragraph  

Light sprinkled itself on the carpet. Shadows slowly sneaked behind the furniture. Darkness was on its way

[10] He, she, it paragraph*

He smiled at her. She lowered her eyes. It began in that one single moment.

* You need to emphasise the comma with this one otherwise you sound like you are saying something rude.

[11] Verb, verb, verb paragraph

Smiling to herself, the woman sipped her coffee. Savouring every moment of it was her plan. Forgetting what had happened yesterday like it wasn’t even a big deal.  

[12] Abstract, concrete noun paragraph

Hope filled the room. The man had opened the window. Happiness could be heard outside. Children were playing and chanting a song on the green garden. Depression still sat in the room. The woman held on to the photograph as sat silently in the room.

 

As a rule for the structures, I tend have a triplet. Then, there is a mood change. That can be either a gradual change or a change in the last sentence. Through these examples and over time, I am helping to show students how they can structure a paragraph. What it entails. What it looks like. What components you could use. What connects things. You cannot teach paragraphing in one or two lessons. It is one of those skills that comes with time and exposure. These structures start the journey. Getting students to use them and adapt them is part of the process.

 

See that blank page there. It isn’t really a blank page, because you can use this structure. Now see what you can do with it…

Thanks for reading,

Xris

The first lesson is the deepest – getting to know you

I read an interesting discussion on Twitter recently. It was exploring how there is a difference in the relationship between student and teacher in primary schools and secondary schools. You can imagine where the discussion went. To be honest, it is far harder to build relationships in secondary schools when you see a student for one or two hours a week. Yes, you can have a personalised individual handshake for when they enter a room for that one hour a day, but you’ll not have much of a connection with the student. It is not impossible, but just very hard. You could spend a whole lesson asking students about they football team, band or pet, but in that time you have not covered a jot of your curriculum. Time is not a commodity that secondary schools have. Relationship building happens in the cracks and in the tiny micro connections in the term, but they are not the thrust of what we do. The relationship builds over time.

The first few lessons of the new academic year are problematic for me. For a start, they never laugh when I crack a joke in the first lesson. It will always be something witty, so the quality of the joke is not the problem, I can assure you. They often don’t laugh, because they don’t know if they can or not. Am I with a teacher who likes to laugh? They are in that strange phase of not knowing what they can and cannot do. Every teacher starting a new school knows this. Let’s just call it Term 1. A heightened state of awareness. Rabbit caught in the headlights. You don’t know what to do for fear of getting it wrong. That’s often the first lesson for students. And, that’s why they don’t laugh at my jokes.

Over the years, I have done and seen numerous approaches to the first few lessons. The trad way: list the rules of a lesson and get students to write the rules in the front of their books so it hangs around their neck like and albatross. The prog way: get the students to decide on what the rules should be and get them to write them down in their book so they can feel they own them. Or, the plain bribery: give all students a chocolate bar or cake. They haven’t worked. And, they often mean you have to placate students with promises of more chocolate or cake.

The default first lesson is always teaching. Teach a lesson and get students to do some work. From that experience you can understand and see what the students are capable of doing and their attitude. Students often feel safer with because it asserting what is normal. This is normal. As soon as we move away from the normal, it is quite scary and stressful for students. I had a delivery from company this year, and ,instead of the usual surly nod and hand-over, I was greeted by a man who had ingested four jars of coffee and three gallons of Monster. The man said he wanted to talk to me about Covid and that he had a choir in the lorry, ready to sing to me. He didn’t; he just needed to deliver a bath.  I felt uncomfortable and didn’t know how to react. Nice man, but clearly in the wrong job.  

For me, the first lesson should be about building and establishing normal routines. How do respond to questions? How to complete work? How to listen when the teacher is explaining something? Covid caused us so many problems with routines that many of us crave normality and routine. That’s why I think now, above all else, we should be working on those routines. We need the patterns. We need to help students adjust to those patterns of behaviour and expectations. First lessons should be about the pattern of lessons.

I’ve seen enough speed-dating to know that a meaningful relationship is not formed in any first meeting. For that reason alone, I think using the first lesson to ‘build relationships’ is dangerous. Relationships take time and they are largely based on your reactions, as a teacher. Your reactions to events, actions and comments all form part of the relationship. Your interaction with the class. You having one lesson to tell students your ‘orrible childhood’ and how you connect to the youth of today because you couldn’t have you ear pierced as child isn’t effective relationship building. There’s a level of narcissism in teaching which I think is very dangerous. Teaching is about the students in your class and not you. You are there to do the best for the students and not the best for you. I do think, as teachers, we have to reign in the narcissism. A class of young people need a responsible adult and not a presenter trying to get audience figures. There’s a distinction that I think we all need to get right.

We all need to be liked, but I think there comes a point when our desire to be liked can be detrimental to the students and their progress. Like all things, there needs to be a balance. There’s nothing wrong giving chocolates to reward, but if there is another motive behind it then there is something wrong.

So, what am I doing in my first lessons to support and build relationships? Well, I am going to give a questionnaire. A questionnaire about what works and what doesn’t work with them. The relationship between student and teacher is one largely based on inferences and trial and error. By the time we get around to parents’ evening, the parents will feel that we know their son / daughter well. This takes a lot of time to see what works and what doesn’t work. It can take terms with some quiet students. Therefore, I am going to engage students with this process from the start. But, also, I have include some questions to make students understand that a relationship is a two-way thing. I will do stuff, but they too have some agency.

A lot of the questions are inferences I will make about a student in the first term. At least, this way I can see if they have a good understanding of how they work in lessons. 

The whole purpose is so that I have a better understanding of the person so when teaching I know how to engage and support them. I get to know them a bit better without having to resort to making a connection over their favourite football team or love of guinea pigs. It is about understanding the person sooner rather than later. A deeper understanding of them. From much earlier, I will know, hopefully, what works and doesn’t work with them.

Thanks for reading,

Xris

Breaking the exam’s hold on us

The problem we have in teaching is the exam system’s hold on us. The GCSE years could, if we are not careful about it, be littered with constant exam papers. Let’s look at Paper 1 Question 4 this lesson and we will look at Question 5, tomorrow. We could easily go through the year as a constant rotation of past exam papers. We know students need to be familiar with the exam paper, but, seriously, do they need to be constantly working through them? They are monsters to mark and to respond to. They take hours to teach to. Hours that we could easily be working on something more meaningful.

As a result of Covid and lockdowns, I wanted try something different with Year 10: how to approach the exam papers differently. Instead of doing the typical lesson where I introduced the exam paper, I just approached it as if we weren’t doing an exam paper. We were reading extracts and exploring them in detail. I just said to students they were building up their skills an stamina for the papers next year. We spent two lessons a term looking at one extract, so that students had in effect covered six papers. However, the emphasis was on the reading and exploring rather than the doing and writing. That’s what Year 11 will be about. Without having the freedom to explore and discuss, student will see our subject as an endless conveyor belt of exam questions. For this year, we looked at six different Paper 1 extracts. All were not past papers. They were extracts to cover a range of voices, styles and genres.

The first one I did was based on the opening of Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton. I shared a copy of the opening page with the following sets of questions on A3 sheet. As a class, we read the extracts using the Reciprocal Reading strategy and then simply we discuss the text one task at a time.

Task 1 – Checking you understand what is going on

1.       Where is the story set?

2.       How long does the attack take place?

3.       What is the time at the start of the story?

4.       Who is injured as a result of the gunshot?

5.       What must students learn in Year 12?

6.       How many adults are there in that area?

7.       List the places where there are other students in the school.

8.       What do the two students do to help in this situation?

9.       In what year group are the two students in?

10.   How long has the school been open for?

  

Task 2 – What is going on in the reader’s head – our reaction to the text

Part 1	Part 2	Part 3	Part 4
Then the subtle press of a fingertip, whorled skin against cool metal, starts it beating again and the bullet moves faster than sound.	Their medals turn into shrapnel; hitting the headmaster's soft brown hair, breaking the arm of his glasses, piercing through the bone that protects the part of him that thinks, loves, dreams and fears; as if pieces of metal are travelling through the who of him and the why of him.	His pupils' faces look ghostly in the dim light, eyes gleaming, dark clothes invisible	His damaged brain tells him the answer lies here, in this day, but the thoughts that have brought him to this point have dissolved.
The question in my head:	The question in my head:	The question in my head:	The question in my head:
What makes me think this?	What makes me think this?	What makes me think this?	What makes me think this?

 

 Task 3 – How is the extract structured?

How does the writer introduce us to the characters?

 

How does the writer introduce us to the place/setting?

 

How does the writer connect us to the characters/events ?

 

How does the writer introduce a conflict?

 

Task 4 – Explore how the writer uses language in one of the following phrases

[a]Their medals turn into shrapnel

[b]hitting the headmaster's soft brown hair

[c] piercing through the bone that protects the part of him that thinks, loves, dreams and fears

[d] tearing apart any sense he'd once had of a benevolent order of things.

 

I have chosen the following phrase:

 

The word I am going to pick out in the phrase is:

 

The word means:

 

When the reader reads this word in the phrase, I think they are meant to feel:

 

The reader feels this because:

 

I think it is important that the reader feels this because the writer wants:

 

 

 

Task 5 –  What is really going on in the story? What is the subtext?

Which of these statements explains what is really going on in the story?

Decide on which statement you agree with most and explain why.

[1]The duty a teacher has for the children in his care.

[2]The frustration men have in not being strong enough to fight.

[3]The selfishness of people who want to protect themselves rather than other people.

[4]Teachers treat their students like they are family.

Your explanation

 

 Task 6 – Exploring an interpretation of the text

A student read the extract and said the following: ‘ I think their opening is powerful yet confusing. It is like you are there and seeing things for real.’

 

What evidence do you have that it is confusing?

The story

The way it is written

 

What evidence do you have the reader feels like they are there and things are realistic?

The story

The way it is written

 

 Yes, there are elements and  components of the exams in there, but we didn’t even have a sniff of an exam paper. All targeted discussion around the text, building their confidence around facing extracts like this.

Our obsession around the exam paper dominates our thinking. We drag out the exam paper too soon and don’t give space for students to develop their ideas and understanding of key concepts. It ends up being all about how the paper looks, what you must write, how you must write, what you mustn’t write and what you mustn’t do. These last bits are important, but do we get students to run before than can walk? The key answer to that will probably lie in when you introduce students to the exam paper and how you introduce them to it. What if students had a whole year of reading texts and exploring concepts before they event write a Question 2 response for Paper 1? Year 11 can be the time to refine the writing, but it would have more impact if students had the core understanding and principles in place. Then, Year 11 is the time to work on explanation and clarity in their explanations.

I have uploaded an Oliver Twist example for people to use here.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/7drsx3g19um1gp7uf2egd/10-Paper-1-Oliver-Twist-Charles-Dickens-exam-prep.docx?dl=0&rlkey=vo1jkptck92t21l23ce7jdpnw

I genuinely think  we have to fight the way the exams dominate the way we teach.  We are often led by the exam rather than the thinking. This way the emphasis is on the thinking and the idea, and  not solely on answering the question in timed conditions. Thinking before writing.

As I read more about Cognitive Load Theory, the more I think that some of the things we do don’t support students. How many times have we give students an exam paper and they have left it blank? Or they totally got the wrong end of the stick? That’s because we have overloaded things too much and the writing is at odds with the thinking. We need to get students better at the thinking so that when we get to the writing the thinking isn’t the onerous and dominant process. Writing anything is hard, but add to it the strange hoops to have to intelligently jump through and you make the process even more challenging. It isn’t high expectations expecting students to write a decent exam question response from the beginning of Year 10. That’s crazy expectations. The end point of Year 11 is when they should be doing that. That’s why I think we need to look at Year 10 more in the way we structure things and support students. They need the thinking time. The thought space.

 

Thanks for reading

 Xris