Unseen poetry – developing mental models of writing styles

Some forms of writing come naturally. We are wired to tell stories and that shows itself when students write stories. Other forms of writing are not so natural. Language analysis doesn’t come naturally or automatically and it something  that has confounded many a teacher and, still to this day, we are collectively trying to solve it.

I have discussed before that there are generally two modes of writing in schools. Creative writing. Explanation writing. Students will flip between the two throughout the school day. Explanation writing tends to be the dominant form of writing and largely a student’s default. That’s why when getting students to write something in a different genre the result becomes either a narrative or a very dry explanation. Take a newspaper report. Often, we get a story or a dull explanation of an event.

As English teachers, we continually fight against this type of explanation writing. This beige writing. I can recall my school days and I was an expert in beige writing. I could endlessly write pages without much thought and construction. One reason … Another reason… Therefore… However …. In conclusion. Students become fluent with explanation writing but don’t shape their thoughts or ideas. It is simply plucking an idea from their head and explain it. They ramble and ramble, hoping that some of it might be interest.

The problem with the exams is that, in English, the questions dictate a different style of writing. For example, for question 2 you need to summarise and then question 3 you need to explain choices. For each one there is a different style for writing.  The closest equivalent for this is asking a singer to sing in different styles. German Trance[Q2]. Jazz[Q3]. Folk[Q4]. Heavy Metal [Q5]. I can just imagine Kylie singing a set with all those styles.

The exams don’t rely on simple explanations. And, that is the problem for students and teachers. It is the reason  why students struggle so much with the current GCSE exam papers. They are a messy chimera of writing styles. We are expecting students to go from Disco to Country and Western in seconds. That’s why they default to common mode of writing: explanation.

As teachers, there’s a lot we do to help students get a mental image of a particular style of writing. We give them model examples. We collectively write a response. We give them sentence openings. Even after all that, the first attempt at getting the writing style response is pretty rubbish. In fact, I’d be bold to say that the first time a student attempts something shouldn’t be marked. It goes without saying: it will not be good. We don’t, after all, judge a person’s driving based on their first driving lesson, so why do it for the first piece of writing?  Oh, look you got 2 out of 8. That’s really good. Most people get 1 on their first go.

We are stuck with these messy exams so we have to work with them. That’s why I have been working on establishing a mental model for particular writing styles that aren’t natural, or automatic  for students. This is an example I use. I photocopy a load of these and students complete them in a lesson.

 

The idea is give them a stronger mental picture on how to write rather than default to beige explanation. Each lesson, they are reencounter the model and format with the idea that it is committed to memory. Then, after a fortnight of completing these they have written an independent response. I have been impressed with the quality of responses from students when filling these little sheets. The level of understanding has been great and sadly this has been hidden previously,  in some cases, by a student’s inability to articulate thoughts using ‘beige explanations’. The ideas are there, but the form of writing hindered expression.

I have found the process useful because it helps shape the structure of an idea. All too often, when we give students sentence openings, there is very little cohesion in the writing. The sentences are bolted on rather used to build and develop an idea. This process here works to instil a clear structure beforehand so that when write independently they have the skeleton to work with and then confident to move away from it when necessary.

Practice is a funny concept in English lessons. Practice often amounts to redoing questions. Practice often involves a large amount of marking. Let’s all practise Question 2 everybody. Oh goodie – I now have a massive pile of marking which students will not get for a week and I will be hesitant to give them more because of the amount of marking. What if the practice was practising the thinking and the model image of the writing rather than writing a response? Yes, English is a subject with a massive amount of marking, but writing doesn’t always need to be marked. In fact, I’d say that familiarity and fluency are more important. What can I do improve a student’s familiarity with a writing style? What can I do to improve their fluency? Of course, reading lies at the heart of this; however, the writing in the exam isn’t one that occurs naturally in the wild.  Unless you plan to get students to reading thirty example responses for the exam question, then we need to look for another way. 

We need to help them build a clearer mental model of what they need to write. The writing style of the exam questions are vague and bland so we need to work harder to make sure students have an idea of what the writing we are expecting them to recreate looks like. 

I have added a copy of this sheet to my Dropbox where you will find more of my resources.

Thanks for reading,

Xris

 

 

No. No. Na. Na. No. No. Na. Na. No More Marking

I have been asked a few times about my experience of using No More Marking, so I thought I’d share my current experiences of it as a teacher and a head of a department.

We started using No More Marking as a department last year and we are no means experts on using the system, but we are probably far more down the line than some schools. If you want an explanation of the process, my best advice is to go to the actual website. There you will find a complete explanation of the system and process. This blog is more about the practical aspect of running No More Marking within a department and some of, what I perceive to be, the benefits of the process.  

 

[1] Changed the attitude of students

One of the problems we have in English is the amount of marking for mocks. It kills us. I know of some schools that set four English mock exams before Christmas and then another four after Easter. Therefore, teachers end up marking eight papers over the read and that’s not including any day-to-day marking.

We set up to use the GCSE component with our current Year 10s and Year 11s. The component then has a set question each term. Term 1 – Q5 Paper 1. Term 2 – Q4 Paper 1. You get the idea. We’d teach as normal and then for each term we’d set a few lessons preparing students for the assessments. Then, we’d do the assessment in a lesson.

We noticed that students treated the NMM assessments differently. They were more focused and determined to do well. The whole process for us changed the way students viewed assessments in English. We were transparent from the start that their own teachers were not forming a judgement and marking their work. That somehow transformed how the students viewed the work. It wasn’t their own teacher they had do convince, but an unknow entity – just like an examiner. It de-personalised the process and became a bit more formal.  

It also changed the structure of the year for us. Students were regularly completing mock elements rather than big mock exams. The pressure was spread over the year for teachers and for students. It meant that for mocks we were able to put emphasis on reading sections or particular questions rather than do a full exam. We’d still do some full papers for the experience, but not all the time.

Oh and the fact that the paper has their name printed on it makes them treat it differently. Amazing what a bit of paper can do.

 

[2] It gave us a wider picture of responses

Exam marking is largely one of the best CPD processes you can complete. The main reason for that is that you see the full spread of responses. You do not get that when you mark thirty exam papers. You see what the spread of responses for thirty students is like, but you do not scratch the surface of what a whole cohort achieves. When marking, you only know your top student is good based on your narrow field of 30. That is largely problematic. That understanding of the wider picture is really hard to share with a department. Moderation helps with this, but we don’t have time or the resources to do this.

The No More Marking process really helps build this understanding. When judging, teachers were looking all levels of responses and they were making judgements on the whole cohort rather than their class. And, it is eye opening. It is far easier to see what is good, bad and average. Plus, you get a more nuanced understanding of all the different ways to get really good.   

After the process, I am able to go back to the class and be quite clear what makes a response good, bad or average. My understanding is based on 140 or more responses rather than the 30 responses in a class. We’ve all been there where we have struggled to explain what a student needs to do to improve. That is often because we haven’t had enough experience of the level to accurately say what a student needs to do.

 

[3] Bye bye bias

Interestingly, as the process continued we noticed that boys were scoring higher than normal. As a school, we often have some boys ‘pull it out of the bag’ in the final GCSE exams, but the process showed us that actually the boys were producing far better than expected. Therefore, if we are honest, there may have been some bias in the way we have marked. Further investigation showed us that these boys tended to be very direct with explanation rather than very detailed, which could have been one of the factors for the bias.

Bias is something we must actively work to address, but the process anonymises the students and so builds that protection against bias. It stops teachers being generous for a student who doesn’t normally write that much and they have written pages for this one assessment. It stops teachers being cautious and harsher on the marking of a student because they expect more from them.

Admittedly, we can still have bias based on handwriting and that’s something we have to work on.    

 

[4] Rank orders

The No More Marking Process generates a lot of data for schools, but, more importantly for me, it helps you to rank order whole cohorts. We don’t share the rank order with students for obvious reasons, but they help you understand where a student is in relation to their peers. You then understand where they are on a continuum. You can even allocate grades to specific percentages of the rank order. Or, you can see what is average, above average and below average.

We have decided to use the free No More Marking system to assessment a piece of writing in each year group in KS3. That rank order will then be used for comparisons year on year. We’ll be using it then to see who has improved or declined from year to year. It will also highlight to us the students not in a position we’d expect them to be. If they are position 102, yet they should be in the top 5% we can see there’s an issue. That needs investigating.

For too long, we have fudged things up with GCSE grades at KS3. The rank order for me is the most important piece of data. It is a relational piece of data. It shows you where a student is in relation to their peers.  That is important data. Are they where they should be? That’s much better than saying students are aiming for a 4. A grade 4 that can change from year to year and from exam paper to exam paper.

 

[5] Marking

I think sometimes teacher equate marking to love. The more the mark a class’s work, the more they love that class. The ‘no marking’ bit of No More Marking is the bit that some teachers struggle with. In some bizarre way they want to mark the work. They want to write a mini letter at the end of the assessment.

We use No More Marking for some Year 10, all Year 11 and a writing tasks in Year 7,8 and 9. We don’t give specific feedback for those pieces of work. We produce, thanks to a mail merge, a document with their grade, the score, their previous grades and scores, and in Year 11 we tell them if their rank position has changed or not. That’s what they get. A bit like an exam. You don’t get a little note from the examiner about how they really liked your story idea even though you scored a Grade 2 overall on the paper.

We put too much stock in marking. If a student acted on every comment I wrote on a piece of marking, I’d be convinced it works. It doesn’t. A lot of marking is nice relationship building stuff and not acted on advice.

Each assessment we give students a feedback sheet. We point out the things that students need to do next time and the things they need to avoid. We also share two good examples with the class for us to analyse and explore why they were the best.  If a student wants specific advice, then we can share a link to their work and discuss what they need to do.   

Initially, I was a bit worried or reducing the amount of feedback, thinking parents would complain. They haven’t and, actually, the way we’ve structured it in Year 11 has helped students. Each question completed they have a grade, good examples and advice on what to do and what not to do. If the exams did go ahead this year, then they’d be in quite a good position.

 

[6] CPD  

The CPD element of No More Marking has a lot of potential and I think it is something curriculum leaders can work on.

On each assessment, you can see the pieces of work that teachers didn’t all agree with. That for me is brilliant to see the problem points in marking. Why don’t all the teachers agree with the judgement of this piece? Are they all looking for the same things? That’s what I am going to use the summer term to look at. The problem pieces. Print them out and use them as a discussion piece. Get to the heart of disagreements.

The other interesting thing is about teacher accuracy. Of course, this needs to be handled sensitively and appropriately, but what the system tells you is about the accuracy of teachers’ marking for each question. Therefore, it shows you, as a curriculum leader, who needs support on the marking of Q5 or who needs support on Q4. It could be something simple like the teacher is looking for something different to other teachers. That’s where the problem pieces come in. They are your starting point for discussions. What are you looking for when you mark this question?

Furthermore, the system gives you exemplar answers for each question, which gives you ample materials to work through.

 

Hopefully, that gives you an overview of how we are using No More Marking in our department. I assure you that I am not on commission for this blog. I thought it would be useful for some to see how we are using it and some of the approaches we have take. My last thing would be to give some key questions to ask any head of department or leader:

·       How is it going to be structured in the curriculum? It isn’t an add-on. Something must go!

·       Who is going to take ownership? Someone will need to deal with the feedback process.

·       How will the department adapt their teaching based on the process?

There is a big danger of doing No More Marking for everything. We thought we’d do the GCSE component for both Year 10 and 11. Marking all the 10s and 11s at the same time was tough. So, we opted for Year 11 for Terms 1 to 5. Then, we start Year 10 with the process in Term 6. The only other NMM we are doing are a written piece in Year 7,8 and 9. Remember: we need to teach students so endless assessments are not going to help. We are doing one writing assessment a year so that can track their development over the years rather than in a year.

Feel free to message me on Twitter if you have any further questions.

Thanks for reading,

Xris

The first read is the deepest – moving away from spotting and pushing the thinking

 We are currently working with our Year 11s to help them prepare for an assessment on unseen poetry and for me it has, yet again, made me think about how we teach poetry or texts of any kind.

When we first introduce a text to a class, we often don’t let them sniff the wine. We don’t let them experience the bouquet. The aromas. The experience. The flavours. The hints. Instead we attack it. It is red wine. It is from France. It is a Shiraz. There’s much more to the things we enjoy. There is beauty in knowledge, but there is beauty in the experience. That chocolate egg you devoured slowly in front of the telly happened because you enjoyed the experience. It isn’t because you liked the pattern on the egg. It was the experience that gave you pleasure.

I don’t think we put the pleasure in texts enough in lessons. Now, I don’t want to come across as some Children TV presenter and suggest we make everything fun: no, I mean we put pleasure in the driving seat for once and we put what the text does to a person first. All too often, techniques are in the driving seat and lead things in lessons. That’s why Tim can spot seventeen examples of alliteration yet can’t tell you a single thing about what the poet is saying about a beach. Tim, what is the poem saying about the beach? ‘It is saying that alliteration is a really effective way to describe a beach, sir.’

When I read, I enjoy the experience. And, contrary to popular belief, I am not analysing as a I read. I am not. Instead, I am relishing the flavours, the bouquet, the hints, the aromas. I might even like it much that I want me more of it.

Okay, Xris. Cut to the chase. What does this actually mean in the classroom? Well, first of all, it does not mean you have to put a cravat on and start lighting scented candles to create the right ambience to ensure feelings happen. It means putting the impact on the reader at the front of discussions and analysis. Instead of making it an after thought. We’ve all stood there when we’ve asked a student about the effect something has in the poem. They look at you blankly as they search their internal memory cabinet so they can bluff their way through. Ummm – make the reader want to read on.  

To be honest, I have been conditioned to focus on analysis first and then explore the impact. I am not saying that analysis is bad, but I think how we structure the analysis in a lesson is problematic. What came first: the chicken or the egg? In English lessons, what comes first: the impact or the technique? For students, and most readers, it is the impact and not the technique. For English teachers, it is largely the technique and not the impact. This structure is problematic. I hate alliteration for this thing alone. How blooming hard is it to explain the effect of alliteration after you have spotted it? Pretty hard. That’s why students tend to default to an explanation of alliteration. It is much easier after you have spotted the effect to attach the mood to alliteration and a number of different techniques.

That links to another issue we have with this internalised structure of poetry teaching. Writers don’t use one thing to create a particular effect. A poet will use several methods to convey a mood. Yet, when isolating methods and linking to the impact, students miss out the connections and the interconnectivity of things in a poem. Moods are spider webs in poems. They have delicate silken threads to a number of things. Seeing those webs are what good students do. They gentle lift a thread and see all the different ways it is attached to things.

Therefore, we need to put impact in a higher position in the English lesson. Yes, there will be time for analysis and ensuring comprehension, but let’s not neglect our first reaction to any text. The feelings. The thoughts. The connections. The recollections. The questions.  

 As we work through unseen poetry, I start each lesson with me reading the poem and then they underline the bits they like. Yes, a simple question: what bits do you like in the poem?

Here’s a poem we have recently looked at:

Hard Frost

 

Frost called to the water Halt 
And crusted the moist snow with sparkling salt;
Brooks, their one bridges, stop, 
And icicles in long stalactites drop. 
And tench in water-holes 
Lurk under gluey glass like fish in bowls. 

In the hard-rutted lane 
At every footstep breaks a brittle pane, 
And tinkling trees ice-bound, 
Changed into weeping willows, sweep the ground; 
Dead boughs take root in ponds 
And ferns on windows shoot their ghostly fronds. 

But vainly the fierce frost 
Interns poor fish, ranks trees in an armed host, 
Hangs daggers from house-eaves 
And on the windows ferny ambush weaves; 
In the long war grown warmer 
The sun will strike him dead and strip his armour.

 

                                                                                                     Andrew John Young

 

It is interesting to see what students like. I get students to tell me what they like and we annotate a copy of the poem together with those bits. If students are confident enough, they might explain why they like it. I have highlighted on the poem some things students have liked. Unanimously, they all liked the last line. The fact that it was the last line straightaway addresses a structural point. We offered ideas why we all liked it. Some suggested it was the pace. Others suggested it was the fact that it was the sun appearing and how we prefer the sun to the frost. We then analysed the poem in more depth.  Students had a grounded understanding of the personal impact the poem had on them.  They knew how they felt and their reaction to the text at certain points. They pick up on the sounds, effects, patterns and structural things without going near a darn technique. The first reading is always the deepest!

For over a year, I have been really interesting in how we teach impact and effect in texts in the English classroom. For years, I have always been a big believer of teaching effect first in writing (Sexy Sprouts), but more so now am I seeing its relevance to literature. It boosts confidence in students and it enables discussion in lessons far more than narrow questions on techniques or big questions about life. Everybody can tell you whether they like or dislike something. In fact, that is where passion stems a lot of the time. Take Marmite. People can tell me with passion or aggression why they like or dislike Marmite. Why don’t we channel this ability to be passionate with texts we study?

 

Here are some approaches to being more focused on effect / impact in lessons.

[1] Getting students to ground their understanding with a connection to their personal world

What does this remind you of?

What does this make you think about?

[2] Getting students to identify themselves in the text

Whose side am I on?

Who represents me in the text?

Where are you in this situation?

Who is the victim? Who is the villain?

[3] Getting students explore things in terms of positive and negative

Students identify whether the text is positive or negative. Then explore why it is negative or positive. Often texts present different parties in the text differently. They might present a boat positively and the sea negatively. Looking at the relationship between positive and negative elements is really meaningful.

[4] Getting students to how positive or negative something becomes

This is particularly important for AQA Paper 1. Often, the texts start negatively and get even more negative as the text goes on. We look at how the negative effect is amplified through the text. What structural choices add to this negativity?

[5] Getting students to explore what the like and dislike about characters

It’s easy to see texts with a pantomime googles: people are either victims or villains. Seeing that characters have relatable aspects is really key. Students might not like Mrs Birling but they could at least identify with her determination to do what is right for her family. Seeing characters are complex things are relatable is important.

[6] Getting students to articulate their first impression, reaction or feelings

What do you like?

What don’t you like?

What is your opinion of…?

What would you do if it was you?

 

We all like shared experiences. How many of us chat about shared experiences of books, films or TV? Every text we study is a ‘Line of Duty’ watercooler moment. It is a shared experience and not just shared analysis. The two go hand in hand. One is made even better by the other. We enjoy the experience so we analyse it more.   

Let’s help students feel and experience the brilliant literature we study and not just know them. It doesn’t take a lot to do this. No fancy costumes. No special effects. No props. No special guest.

Get your nose in a poem. Swirl it around. Savour it. Spit it out. What do you notice?  

Thanks for reading. I am now off to get myself drunk on poetry. Hiccup. Hiccup.

Xris

Lessons on a page

The current situation has really honed my thinking about how I teach some aspects. Time is short and there is only so much that you can do. For several years now, we have been using booklets. Each year we adapt, change and shape the booklets to be what we want them to cover. However, there arises occasions where something else is needed. That’s why we created lessons on a page.

A lesson on a page is simply a double-sided A3 sheet. It takes students through a sequence of activities building to some form of  writing. Mainly we use them for KS4 and largely they are used with Year 11. They usually take two lessons to complete. The focus is usually quite streamlined and, umm, very direct. 

The great thing about them is that they save time and we can use them again and again. My big problem with resource making is that a single resource is used only once. If you use the resource next year is largely based on where you store it and if you remember you have it saved.

We’ve got these LOAP for the poems and they will be used next year. Without a doubt. I hate little bits of paper and folders of stuff. I want to rock up to a lesson with the minimal amount of materials. We now have a department style for these LOAPs and we are adding to them each year. We can now pull off the peg lessons on several things.  

Here are just some ways we have used them for different parts of the course.

Poetry Revision

 Comparison of two poems – including annotation and analysis

 

Drafting a response to include some prepared vocabulary and phrases

   

Shakespeare Revision

   Defining a theme

2.       Linking a theme to characters

3.       Exploring how language reflects a theme

4.       Planning an essay

 Exploring some aspect to add depth

6.       Drafting a paragraph

 

Non-fiction reading

1.       Gather ideas

2.       Analyse a typical answer

3.       Explore grading criteria

 

    Plan a response

5.       Turn into a paragraph

6.       Compare the two texts

 

Non-fiction writing

   Decide perspective

2.       Generate ideas

3.       Select idea and link to Pathos, Logos and Ethos

4.       Draft writing

 

Don’t get me wrong. I love messy, rough around the edges, teaching too, but when you have three lessons to prepare students for an assessment on Shakespeare. You need to streamline things down. These have certainly helped us this year as we became nomadic teachers, but they have helped to narrow the focus down and be a bit precise with things.

We have found this approach invaluable as we guide Year 11 in this difficult phase. After two years of sporadic teaching with them, we needed something focused and direct. Oh, and fast! 

As an Easter gift, I am sharing the LOAPs I have already made. Feel free to steal, use and adapt for your own use.

The link to the Dropbox folder is here. 

 

Thanks for reading,

 Xris