Questioning, exploring and probing Literature

It is that time of year again. Not Christmas, but mock marking. Interestingly, this time we noticed that students were not getting under the skin of a character. For our Literature mock, we asked students to write about Tybalt and how he is presented in the story. Whilst some students were able to explore the character in detail, the rest resorted to repeating how Tybalt is a catalyst throughout an essay. They remembered the knowledge and forgot to think about the character in any detail. 

Exams want students to think about the characters or themes in the question, yet it is so easy for students to focus on their existing knowledge of a character to frame an argument. In fact, it is their default method. What can I remember about the character? What words can I remember to describe the character? For a large part of the thinking and planning process it is focused on the ‘what’ and there is very little time spent on the ‘why’. For this reason, we always get the one student who describes the plot of the story. When writing an answer, ‘what’ seems to have a greater level of priority than the ‘why’. The ‘what’ is easier because it is about knowledge and knowledge is largely concrete. The ‘why’ is fuzzier, because it is an inference. 

When writing about a text, we are inferring all the time. We make an inference about the writer’s ideas. We make an inference about how the reader reacts. We make an inference about the reasons we think a writer wrote something. As I say to students, we are making an educated guess around what the writer’s intent is, because for most of the time we will need a seance for that to happen. Over the years, I have seen verbs used to help get students to write about the writer’s intent, which like most things makes the writing sound like students are exploring the writer’s intent, but haven't actually engaged with the idea. One verb alone isn’t going to help you explore a writer's intent. Students need to have the thought processes around the intent rather than just a few throwaway verbs.

To address the writer’s intent, it is so easy to link everything to a writer’s history. Therefore, students turn into mini Freuds. This bit here reflects the writer’s troubled relationship with his mother. This bit here reflects his sad childhood. The problem with this level of thinking is it removes the writer’s present. What in the present impelled him or her to write the story in that way? Not everything is about the past. Therefore, to echo something Dickens wrote: students need to be analysing in the present and the future. We are too fixated on the past and filling in gaps when maybe there isn’t a need to fill a gap. The text should always be the source of ideas on the writer’s present and not the student. 

So how do we get students to explore the thought processes better behind a writer’s intent? Well, questioning. Getting students to question texts better. Step away from a nugget of knowledge as the formation of an idea and push towards questioning, reasoning and speculating ideas. 

The problem we have in the exam scenario is that only a slim proportion  of students do that exploratory thinking. The rest go - ‘Pants, what did miss say about Tybalt?’. Therefore, we need students to build up their thinking and we must model how to explore. This is what I did with a class when giving feedback on the Tybalt exam.   

We spent 10 minutes jotting down answers to these questions. I revealed one question at a time and then students wrote down their ideas or thoughts. Then, we feedback our answers. 

1. What is Tybalt's role in the story? ​

2. What does Tybalt teach us about Elizabethan society? ​

3. What does Tybalt teach us about men? Young people? ​

4. Does Shakespeare like or dislike this character? How do you know? ​

5. What can you find to like about the character? ​

6. Shakespeare includes numerous young male characters such Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, so why does Shakespeare add Tybalt to this group? ​

7. Is the character realistic? ​

8. What big idea is Shakespeare using Tybalt to show us?​

9. Tybalt is a symbol of violence and aggression, but what else is he a symbol of?  ​

10. What do you think Shakespeare is trying to do with a character like Tybalt? 

Finally, we decided what we thought about what we all thought Shakespeare wanted and why he needed the audience to feel a particular way. The stacking of questions was really important, for me, because all too often we rely on one big question and, at least, this way if students couldn’t answer a question then they had an alternative question to answer. Plus, we are modelling the questions a student should be asking when approaching a text. Maybe, in our search to get the right answers from students we have forgotten the importance of getting students to ask the right questions about a text. In our attempts to make students’ work look and sound good we have forgotten what underpins that: an exploratory, inquisitive nature towards literature. Texts don’t spark that inquisitive nature without someone to help fan the flames. 

Here is another set of questions I am going to use with ‘An Inspector Calls’. 

1. Does Sheila make the audience think or does she make the audience feel? 

2. Is Priestley telling the audience they should like Sheila more than other characters in the household? 

3. Why does Priestley make Sheila and Mrs Birling so different? 

4. Do you think Sheila is a two-dimensional character? 

5. What, in your opinion, is the reason for Priestley placing Sheila in the story, even though she has very little influence in society? 

6. Why did Priestley not use two sons rather a son and a daughter in the play? 

7. Does the form of a play limit our understanding of the character? What would we understand better if this was a novel? 

8. Is Sheila a stereotype? What is she a stereotype of?

9. Given that Priestley is a man, has he misunderstood anything about how women behave, speak and act? 

10.  Does Priestley have a different message about younger women than older women? 

A love of Literature goes hand in hand with questioning and probing ideas. If we want to seriously improve engagement and uptake in Literature, then we need to look at how we interact with the subject. The exam questions don’t engage the hearts and minds of students, yet the majority of questioning around Literature centres on the presentation of a character and a theme. Compare the following questions: 

[1] Compare how Dickens presents women in the extract. 

[2] Do you think Charles Dickens is a bit creepy in the way he presents women? 

Which one would you rather write or speak about? Engagement comes from a number of different ways. For me, emotional and cerebral engagement go together. The exam questions are the most boring questions in the world. They have to be, because they are exam questions, but that doesn’t mean that every single question we ask or set students in lessons needs to have the same level of boredom. Add opinion questions to engage students on an emotional level. Add tricky questions to engage on a cerebral level. Just don’t, whatever you do, photocopy the exam question. Flavour it. 

Questioning is where we can engage students. The texts are often engaging, but the questioning is what bridges the gap between the student and the text. Get that question right and the student connects with the text. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris 

When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me and started reading non-fiction

 ‘When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.’

Corrithians 13:11

Fiction is the domain of childhood, freedom and creativity. From an early age, we engage with stories. In fact, our childhood is one big storytelling event. There is story time every day. There is a bedtime story. There are stories, thanks to Disney and Pixar, that can be consumed in 90 minutes, allowing parents a break. 

Non-fiction is the domain of adulthood, responsibility, duty and compliance. The older we get the more we discover that our reading comprises reading for information and process rather than enjoyment. There is the mortgage application I have to read. There are the terms and conditions I have to read about the new washing machine I have bought. There is a letter from the council about how they are spending my council tax payment I have to read. 

If we are honest, schools have a real issue with non-fiction teaching. You can just see the yawns on people’s faces when dealing with non-fiction. Can’t I teach a poem? I think some teachers would be happy to spend a week on Alcatraz than prepare students for the non-fiction paper on the exams. On previous exam specs, there was a media element so the non-fiction reading text element was downplayed as teachers explored the use of imagery, headings and subheadings.  

The problem, for me, is to do with inference. We don’t see non-fiction in the same way we see fiction and that’s down to inference. From an early age, we build students to search for inferences in fiction texts. Why is the baby bear sad? Why is Goldilocks so tired? Why are Goldilock’s parents so neglectful? We channel students into this submissive role of fiction. You know this bit here; well, it means something else. By the time students leave primary school, they know how facial actions, physical actions, objects and setting can convey a level of meaning. They can help us understand a character’s thoughts, feelings, motives, relationships,dreams and fears. Can the same be said for non-fiction? What can students do with non-fiction?

In secondary school, we had a problem with non-fiction. The preference has always been about writing it rather than reading it, so rarely has it been about exploring texts. Usually, the reading of texts has been boiled down to finding facts and opinions or treating them as literary texts and searching for techniques. We’ve never really treated them with the same level of engagement as we do fiction texts. Even the non-fiction texts selected have a whiff of literature about them and most would fit in an Ian McEwan novel. The texts usually highlight how clever the writer is.  

Inference is a factor, I think ,that is missing from non-fiction. We don’t use inference to explore non-fiction texts. In fact, there is a lack of understanding behind non-fiction texts. They are purely seen in literal terms. They are not seen in terms of subtext, nuance and hidden meaning. Instead, they are read through literal glasses. Find fact 1. Good. Now, find fact 2. 

The problem with non-fiction is like real life. A person can say one thing and mean something entirely different. That dual meaning in non-fiction is what some of the best students pick up on and the weaker students totally miss. Students need to make inferences yet we don’t place inference at the forefront of non-fiction. 

For years, I have found the way we teach the writing of non-fiction dull, uninspiring and flat. That is largely the way that we view it in terms of ‘literal writing’. We don’t coach it in terms of building meaning with the use of hints, clues and suggestions of something else. We’ve become more focused on using a rhetorical device that sounds like an infection of the genitals than building meaning. Getting students to think purposefully behind non-fiction writing is key. Them being in the driver’s seat. Them understanding that they should imply meaning. That they should build inferences consciously and subconsciously through their writing. Creative writing is all about inference and non-fiction writing should be too. 

So, how can we start building students to make inferences in non-fiction? For a start, show them how inferences can be built. 

I like to show how subtly changes can shift the whole meaning. These are from the opening sentence of a letter. What is each one trying to suggest? How do they suggest it? 

[1] I am angry that you didn’t invite me to the party. 

[2] I am disappointed that you chose not to invite me to the party.

[3] Words cannot describe how I feel about not being invited to the party.  

I love talking about the difference between ‘angry’ and ‘disappointed’ and what they convey. I also like how the accusing ‘you chose’ holds a lot of blame and how the third one removes the other person entirely. 

Another task I use is to use a real example. What can we infer from each line about his mother’s cooking? 

This is not an occasional occurrence, a once-in-a-while hiccup in a busy mother’s day. 

My mother burns the toast as surely as the sun rises each morning. 

In fact, I doubt if she has ever made a round of toast in her life that failed to fill the kitchen with plumes of throat-catching smoke. 

Toast – Nigel Slater (autobiography) 

Hopefully, they will pick up some of these things. 

 

This is not an occasional occurrence, a once-in-a-while hiccup in a busy mother’s day. 

I am not surprised that my mother burnt the toast. 

My mother burns the toast as surely as the sun rises each morning. 

My mother always burns the toast. 

In fact, I doubt if she has ever made a round of toast in her life that failed to fill the kitchen with plumes of throat-catching smoke. 

My mother is a terrible cook. 

Toast – Nigel Slater (autobiography) 

The great thing about this little extract is there is another inference we can make which kind of contradicts what is being said: he clearly loves his mother deeply. The fact that this text works on several levels. Understanding the multiple levels is key. Focus on a literal sense and this is a text showing how bad she is as a mother. 

We can, and should, get students to build inferences into their non-fiction writing. Here is one I do it. I give the students a loose framework to work with and get them to focus on creating the inference rather than obsess on the writing style. 

NEWS REPORT – Teacher’s Mug Stolen 

The police arrived at the scene.  [They were not worried about the event] 

The headteacher refused to comment. [They thought the whole thing was silly] 

The stolen mug was blue.  [The mug wasn’t valuable but it meant a lot to the teacher]  

Like the Toast example, the language is being used to convey meaning beyond the literal meaning. We could say things like ‘The police added the crime to the bottom of their very long list of things to do that week’. All too often students would explicitly say something like the sentences in red. They’d happily build inferences around  a complex backstory in a short story yet in non-fiction it is all about stating everything. 

Inference is the bridge between most aspects in English. For me, it is a key component in all that we do. In reading, we are looking for inferences about content, characters, the reader and the writer. In writing, we are building inferences so people see them if they look carefully enough.  

Non-fiction needs to be viewed in the same way as we view fiction. It isn’t a separate thing with separate rules and approaches. It is the same. You need to make inferences in both types of text; we just need students to understand that. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris 

Can’t use a simile without using two

I detest purple prose. Nothing grates when you’ve read your fifteenth example of personification by the third sentence. Especially when the setting is full of people already. The problem is that students haven’t learnt about the versatility of a technique. They haven’t reached a stage of proficiency to use a technique in a variety of contexts and purposes. By the time students reach Year 7, they can spot similes and use them freely. In fact, most of the issue stems from stopping them using more than one. 

What are the main problems students have with similes? 

• Resorting to tired similes or cliches 

• Stacking similes on top of each other

• Extreme effects and over exaggeration - His anger was like a volcano going off. 

• Similes sitting alone without any further development 

• Lack of cohesion with the rest of the writing    

Recently I read an interesting simile in Ann Sei Lin’s ‘Rebel Skies’. 

‘Despite its name, the building was neither blue nor did it look anything like a peacock. It stood in the middle of a narrow street on the outskirts of Tomuri like a sagging cake. The raising blocks had cracked on one side so that the inn stood at a tilt, the doors were battered by the wind and the clay tiles on the roof slipped dangerously, splitting onto the ground…’ 

We can see how a simile can be constructed for impact very simply and it seems effortless. 

[1] The simile is used to change the mood. We know something isn’t right about ‘The Peacock’ but the simile identifies what makes it wrong. The simile is a pivot in the structure of the writing. 

[2] The simile itself contrasts with the original image we are presented with. The place is called ‘The Peacock’ and it would, for most of us, make narrative sense and provide an alternative avian simile. A plucked turkey. A dumpey cuckoo. A fat hen. Yet, we are given a simile related to food and not birds. 

[3] The simile is extended and clarified in the sentence after. The ‘sagging’ connects to the ‘cracked on one side’ and the ‘tilt’.  

For students, a simile is just a simile and that’s where the problem lies. They don’t see it as a structural choice. A pivot to change the mood. A cohesive device that connects elsewhere. A simile simply exists on its own and in isolation in a student’s mind. Instead we need students to see the impact and how like a hydra a simple simile can be. 

I think we need to do more on the structural position of a simile in a paragraph. Students throw similes like confetti into their writing so that they stick to everything and appear when you least expect them. They need to be used like an engagement proposal instead. Carefully measured ensuring that the moment is perfect. Of course, you can throw a simile wherever you want, but having a simile hold the structure together is much more effective. Better writers structure their writing around anchors. Why not make the anchor a simile? 

[1] A simile at the start 

Simile 

Sentence 1 

Sentence 2 

Sentence 3

Like a cold winter’s day, the classroom was lifeless and lacked any colour. Grey walls waited for work to be keenly stuck to them with staples, pins or blue-tac. The windows stared impassively at row and row of empty desks and chairs. Coldness slowly seeped in.  

[2] A simile in the middle 

Sentence 1 

Simile 

Sentence 2

Sentence 3 

The garden’s greeness boasted itself to the rest of the street. Bright, bulging flowers thrust themselves forward like an ageing actor fearful of being replaced by a much younger, and cheaper, model. They were in the autumn of their existence. The colours were not as colourful as they once were in spring. They were not as tall as they once were in the summer. Their time was close to the end, but they would not give up without some kind of fight. 

[3] A simile at the end

Sentence 1

Sentence 2

Sentence 3

Simile 

As the garage door opened, light gently woke up the room. Piles of long forgotten boxes and cartons slept silently, hoping not to be disturbed. Dust blanketed everything and anything it could. The room held its secret like a murder hides his intent behind a smile.    

Now I don’t think I will win any awards for writing these examples, but they serve to prove a point: how a simile can be used to structure writing and have an impact. Able students often use devices to structure their writing while other students simply throw in similes without thought on how they can aid meaning. Students need to see and learn the versatility of a device. Too often we focus on the construction and not the use of a device. The fact a student can use the device in the first place shouldn’t be a source of amazement. How a student uses the device should be. 

Of course, simile usage isn’t simply the domain of fiction. In fact, the use of simile to turn the flow of the discourse is common in non-fiction. A serious article can flip into pantomime with one simile. Where to put the simile is the real  skill.  Where should I put the simile  ‘like some inflated sausage made of more sinew and fat than meat’ to describe the supposedly returning Prime Minister?  

Thanks for reading, 

Xris

Ditch the big whiteboard and not the little ones!

If I had to characterise my organisation skills, I’d probably say it was a poltergeist suffering from hay fever who constantly sneezes. Everything is there, but it is just scattered about. I have a messy desk, drawers and life. Thankfully, my brain manages to keep a track of things. I know at least what grid reference that one sheet of paper is located. Yes, it might take me a day to find it, but, at least, I can find it. 

For years, I have tried to organise myself. I used to have cupboards of folders, which gathered dust. I used apps, which metaphorically gathered dust. I used teacher planners, which were as useful as… dust to me. Forever, I struggled with organising work, resources, homework and whatever related to lessons. I am always amazed when I meet a highly organised person. What, you colour coordinate your work? You keep your highlighters in a wallet? You have a pencil case. What wizardry is that? 

Two years ago, I started to use an exercise book alongside each class and it transformed my organisation of lessons, work and students in so many ways. Simply, at the start of each lesson, I get my exercise book (the same colour as the students) and use it instead of a whiteboard or PowerPoint slide. Everything I do is in that exercise book. I have a journey of their learning and a journey of my teaching. Rarely do I write on the whiteboard. The whiteboard is ephemeral work. The exercise book is permanent. All you need is one visualiser and one exercise book. 

Tracking engagement with students 

I use the book to ensure that all students’ work is seen over time. Any student's work I mark or read in the lesson, I write their name in the margin. Next time I look at exercise books in lessons I check the names in the margin to avoid focusing on the same students all the time. This also applies to speaking in lessons too. 

I also track students for not having pens or missing homework in the margin too. It isn’t easy to stop everything you are doing and open the school’s system to log low level things like this. A quick scribble in a lesson and I can pick it up later. Plus, I have got a permanent record of it so I can see patterns around not having a pen or missing homework. 

There is very little time in the school day to log all the interactions and this helps me.  

Tracking work set and given 

Did I give them that poem? Did we annotate it during the last lesson? If you are human, you will probably, at least once, arrive at a lesson confident with what you are doing to be flummoxed to discover that you did it last week. It totally slipped your mind after teaching three full days in a row.  

I now stick all the worksheets / extracts covered in lessons in the exercise book. This is great for me to refer back to. Remember when we looked at that poem with the interesting use of metaphor. Here it is. Before, I used to faff about with folders or search for the PowerPoint related to the idea. Six pages back and there it is. 

For me, having everything in one place allows me to build those connections across units and lessons. Let’s go back to something we did in March. Exercise books are usually a conveyor belt of work. Each lesson churns out some work which is never to be seen again. The benefit of me having an exercise book of work like the students is that I don’t have to rely on memory to build links. I can skip to a month and get them to see the links or repetition of an idea. 

Development of teaching 

After I have marked books, I tend to set three areas for the class to work on. For example, 

[1] Use paragraph structures given 

[2] Avoid comma splices 

[3] Avoid using the most obvious adjective 

I then write around these targets with examples and non-examples to help students. They copy down in their books as I talk about them. 

Then, when we come to a similar task in another week, I start with the targets from last time. They are the starting point. I am not relying on their memory, which on the target and guidance front isn’t so grand. We start where we finished last time. The feedback from the last assessment holds more importance to teachers than students. Therefore, this way I make the process an ongoing loop and a loop that isn’t relying on the student to commit everything to memory. 

I find that I revisit past targets rather than add new ones all the time. Look, we are still making comma splices. Let’s look at where that is a problem. 

The nature of English is that work is often related to a specific domain. Therefore, targets are often related to a domain. The last targets set might not even have any significance on the latest work. That’s why I like having an exercise book with these targets. Let’s have a 

Presentation 

I never went to the lesson on whiteboard writing during my PGCE. I am jealous of others who did, but my whiteboard skills are not great. For a start, I am short so there’s only so far I can reach on the board and don’t get me started on my handwriting. 

The use of an exercise book allows you to model the setting out of a page. When has a whiteboard looked like an exercise book? There’s a level of cognitive dissonance there. We expect students to copy from a board that looks nothing like the thing they are working on. Is there any wonder some students place things in a random way in their exercise book? 

By using an exercise book, I can show them what to underline and where to place things on a page. I would be a rich man if I got a pound for everytime a student didn’t leave a line when I asked them to. Now, I show them. 

The exercise book also allows me to work at a pace that suits students. Often, I do tasks I have asked students to complete. This allows me to work at a pace that’s realistic. How many times have we asked students to do something and realised that we haven’t given them enough time? 

Modelling 

Modelling was the main reason for me having an exercise book in the first place. A place to store my live marking. Too many times have I done an example on the board and it has disappeared into the ether never to be read again. 

I keep each exercise book as a record of modelled examples. That way I have a bank of examples to refer to and use in future lessons. If I am feeling luxurious, I might even type them up. 

I have loads of examples to call upon when the need arises. 

Preparation 

Before each lesson, I open my exercise book and see where I am. Depending on time, I might even prepare some work or questions for students to complete. 

The great thing for me is that I have something physical and ready to work with. In the switch between lessons, there is often a big brush to clear the decks ready for the next class. I simply close the exercise book and put it in a box by my desk. Spare sheets or work collected is scooped up and placed at the back of the book. I then open the next exercise book ready to start. 

Yes, you might have snazzy PowerPoints but a simple ‘do now’ under the visualiser is enough. In fact, it is needed sometimes as you get yourself ready or mark the register.    

Missing students 

We often get students missing and that does come with its own problems. If I need to, I can simply photocopy the work missed. Talk them through it quickly and help them easily catch up with things. 

Everything you write on the whiteboard is lost to be never read again. Some of the best thinking and learning is done around a whiteboard, yet it is like breathing on a mirror. That brilliance is fleeting. There for one lesson only. 

I say ditch the whiteboard and write it down in an exercise book. Explain things using an exercise book. Model things using an exercise book. Teach things using an exercise book. It is more than a book. It is a record, a plan, a library, a tool for learning.   

I started using an exercise book in lessons to model work. Little did I know that those exercise books would help organise me. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris  

 

Poetry: Thanks for the Annotations

Annotating things in English is the equivalent of breathing. We do it all the time and it is almost second nature to what we do when teaching. It even bites us on the bum when the copy of a short story we want to use again and again with classes is stribbled with annotations because a student thought that was what we’d be doing.

Annotations on a text are not a good proxy for learning. I can tell you of loads of examples of students who had brilliantly annotated copies of the texts, but that didn’t translate into grades. Equally, I have seen students with slim annotations exceeding my expectations. Just because a student has a page full of scribbles, it doesn’t mean they know or understand the poem. Annotation gives us false security and hope. Phew, I have done my job because I have evidence of it. Nobody can criticise my teaching, because look - it is all there for you to see it.  

Overteaching is something we need to be mindful about with English teaching. The beauty of English Literature is you can study a novel over a term or for months. Yet, we often have a worry of letting go of texts. I just need another week with the poem and then I will be satisfied that they have learnt it well. Poetry is the one area where I think there’s a lot of overteaching of the poems. Why spend two lessons looking at the poem when you can spend two weeks on it and ensure they really know the poem. 

When you look at any GCSE or A Level essay, the amount of techniques and terminology needed to form a strong essay is quite small, yet when teaching we ensure that students are aware of every technique or device employed by the writer. The cognitive load for each poem, then, is phenomenal. Students focus on learning the techniques rather than focus on ideas and meaning behind the poem. That is why students continuously write and crowbar techniques into their essays. Not because of a weakness on their part, but because when teaching a poem we have placed emphasis on this knowledge. Yes, we might have done some lovely stuff about context and intent, but that space in their brains is eaten up by the knowledge of seven similes and something interesting about the volta. 

The problem is poetry. Now before you start throwing poems at me. Hear me out. A poem is a dense piece of writing. Like a fine piece of art, you can look at a small aspect and spend ages exploring how it relates to the rest. When looking at art, you don’t pick up on every brushstroke. You spot interestings things and explore them further. Yet, for poetry, we obsess about every brushstroke. In fact, annotating is ‘brushstroke thinking’. It isn’t meaningful exploration, but an obsession of the components rather than the ideas. When we are asking students to explore the idea of glory in war, they can tell me about some techniques, but they can’t tell me why and what the poet is saying. Without the key idea of the poem, techniques are just brushstrokes. They don’t relate to the whole. Or what’s hidden behind. 

I think we have to be realistic about what we want students to learn from and about a poem. If we want students to learn the fifteen named poems in the anthology, then we need to think about it in a clever way and think about the cognitive overload. The mental entropy of knowledge happens so quickly with poetry. How many times have we heard - ‘which poem was that one, again’’?  Newsflash, I have to remind myself of the fifteen poems before I teach them and I have taught them for years. Why do we think a student can retain those fifteen techniques you highlighted in the first stanza in Term 1 of Year 10 at the end of Year 11? What is the benefit over annotating every line and stanza when they only need four or five techniques to form a strong discussion? 

Over the years, I have withdrawn from annotating poems heavily and focused on a few key devices in the poems. Enough to form ideas but not too many to drown their own thinking, which is a tough one to gauge. Instead, I have worked on developing key ideas and explanations of the writer’s choices. I’d rather have a student explain why a poem uses repetition effectively than seven techniques spotted and not explained. 

Explanation of devices is what students need more knowledge of and that’s what I have been doing recently. With each poem, I pick one device to explore the reason for using said device alongside some examples from the poem. Therefore, the knowledge worked on is beneficial to more than one text and I am not spending two weeks on knowledge that might or might not be used once in a 45 minute essay in the final exam. We are working on knowledge that connects to other texts.  

Effect is something we, as teachers, need to put higher in the student’s minds and in our teaching, yet it is largely overly simplified or rushed. That’s why I have created a few PowerPoints around the choice of certain literary devices. I am using them with a poem, when teaching, but when we, later, spot the device used in another text I will have the slide to hand, reminding them of the reasons behind a writer using a device with a timely reminder of where else they have seen the device before. I’d rather have a student see that Dickens, Shakespeare and Tennyson use repetition, but with differing effects, so that, when faced with repetition in other texts, they have that bank of knowledge to recall rather than disparate bits of knowledge. 

All the talk about knowledge has meant that we have largely focused on the what and not the how. How are we going to support and build knowledge in English? For a start, rethink how we annotate texts. Yes, annotate a poem, but not so you pindown every part of it. After all, nobody is asking students to reconstruct a poem line by line in an exam, so why do we insist on deconstructing a poem line by line.   

Thanks for reading, 

Xris 

P.S. This is a work in progress and I am slowly tweaking and creating as I go along. 

Models for reading - supporting vocabulary knowledge and building inferences

Last year, I was part of a project with a research school on reading. We were looking at transition from primary to secondary school with a focus on developing reading. For the project, we decided to focus on Geography. How could we support reading in Geography? 

Two things we felt needed building on were vocabulary and inferences. Students lacked these, at times, and we wanted something that would support them in both areas. Therefore, we came up with a model for approaching things. It followed a clear structure: 

[1] Step 1 - Stimulus 

We decided to focus on an image, for Geography, because it helped to start the thinking for the lesson. At this point, we just wanted the student to think about the picture and, internally, see if it jogged their memory of something.   

[2] Step 2 - Vocabulary 

Often, when it comes to vocabulary, we often ask students to generate the words to describe the text. However, rarely is there a level of precision in the language used and even more rare is the use of precise subject specific terminology. It's a beach! Often, the teacher uses questions to draw that terminology out. We wanted to build a model for students to use when faced with a stimulus. Rather than a random ‘pin the donkey’ approach of word retrieval, we build precision in the words to be used. By providing students with binary options, we helped students to be precise in their description of the topic. What we noticed was that students were quicker and more articulate with their explanations.

In one example, we have the option of flora or fauna, which then led to some interesting discussions on plant and animal life. The pair of words became a lense to focus the thinking. From the beginning, students were making inferences around the topic and these words were the source. 

[3] Step 3 - Elaborating inferences 

The problem often isn’t the attachment of words to describe an aspect, but elaboration. Therefore, we decided to share a small text to work as a springboard for thinking. Students would then expand on the word / inference by using possible reasons in the text. There’s lots of flora because …. It is urban because… One thing students don’t often use are cohesive inferences which refer to the whole text (Global Inferences). Largely, students focus on local inferences in one word or phrase. So, we used the combination of text and image to help build those elaborating inferences.   

[4] Step 4 - Rationalising 

The next step involved rationalising. This is an area that can really lift an explanation. What are the causes, the consequences or reasons behind it? Working out the cause of something takes knowledge from outside the text  and inference from the text. What has caused the area to be urban? We used the ‘The Writing Revolutions’ use of ‘because / so / as’ to frame this level of the explanation.  

Overall, this is how it looked. We revealed the sections one step at a time. 

We also explored how it could be used in other subjects, such as English. 

In English, we used a text rather than a picture for the initial stimulus. What we noticed with the English is that we could frame the words around opinions or interpretations of the text. This allowed us to channel the exploration of the text to where we wanted to go. 

Overall, we found the level of vocabulary and inferences improved with the groups because they were building familiarity with the words but building an internalised model for reading a text. When faced with another picture or text, they were using those internalised words. Questioning is always cited as an aspect of reading that good readers do, but that relies on students asking the right questions. All too often, the emphasis is placed on Who / What / Where / When / How. The questions in the head when reading need to be stronger questions. Think about how we read a novel. There is a lot of orienting in the initial stages of reading. Male or female? Present or past? Honest narrator or secretive narrator? That’s what good readers do.    

Vocabulary is really important, but I do feel we are getting to the stage where we are getting vocabulary bloat. We found that working on a few select words to help create inferences was much more effective than providing glossaries of words. By selecting a few words, you are looking at the relationship between words and ideas. It is all about connections and relationships. Words need anchoring, connecting and sticking to ideas and thoughts. Otherwise, teaching would be simply reading through the dictionary every lesson. 

Below are the models we played around with and developed over time. Feel free to adapt and share any adaptations you make. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris 

Model 1 

Model 2 

Model 3