Homework in English

Not only is there the oversimplification of ideas, but there is an oversimplification of expression. In English, we don’t just work with ideas but we work with how we express those ideas. Therefore, there are often two things at play. What is Scrooge feeling at this point in  the story?   Scrooge might be sad, miserable, under the weather, lonely, melancholy and so on. All the same idea, but expressed differently. In fact, the expression adds nuance to the idea and changes it so the idea is the same, but slightly different. Find me a computer algorithm that can pick up on that subtly. It will simply look for words like sad. You didn’t use the word ‘sad’, so you have got it wrong.  

Homework in English tends to be either practising or learning. Practising writing or reading. Or, learning knowledge. Somewhere along the way, maybe, due to pressure and demands, we have lost the exploratory element of English. The thinking. The exploring. Everything starts with ideas in English, yet we don’t put enough stock on idea forming or initial responses.

This term, I have been studying ‘Romeo and Juliet’ with a Year 10 class and ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ with a Year 9 class. Homework around a Shakespeare text is always difficult because students don’t always have the tools to access the text. I wanted, however, to work on the student exploratory relationship with texts and I didn’t want to confine it to the classroom. The best students in English are the students who take a text and run with it. They dig, explore and question things. They naturally explore a text. A lot of time in English lessons, we are presenting students with a poem or extract and reliant on the reaction from the class.

I have been using Microsoft Forms to look at how we can get students to explore the text and the ideas in the text more. Very easily, I take a small part of the text and create four or five questions. The questions are not GCSE exam style questions. They are not even fancy questions, but they are questions around meaning and ideas. Students then have a week to respond to them. We then start a lesson looking at the extract and I share their ideas on the projector. Ummm - no marking.

Here’s one simple example:

 

 

 

 Here are some of the responses:

 

 

As a group, we annotated the extract with these ideas and then built and extended on things further, searching for patterns, trends and connections.

Exploring a text takes time and this was a five minute homework, which students could do at their own pace and leisure but actually increased the level of exploratory talk because they had spent time thinking about things. If I am honest, alongside knowledge homeworks using Carousel, this type of homework is my default homework when studying Shakespeare. None of this deciding what Romeo’s playlist will be in his car or researching the number of lost buttons in duelling incidents in Elizabethan Italy. Homework built around idea forming or expressing ideas. The thinking is happening inside and outside the classroom.

But, also, it creates new avenues for discussion or opportunities for addressing misconceptions. Look at this one for when we explored Romeo meeting Juliet for the first time:

 

 Several things came out of this such as:

# Is the extract really a sonnet?

# Is Romeo ‘lustful’?

# Why is ‘starstruck’ such a good word to describe Romeo at this point?

Every lesson can be a metaphorical ‘blank page’ when teaching English. We start with an extract and build meaning. This approach for me has made me see what opportunities there are for exploring Shakespeare in and outside the classroom using Microsoft Forms. In an ideal world, we want students to be thinking about our subject outside the classroom. This way students are thinking and exploring outside Period 3 on a Wednesday. We are building confidence and at the same time exploring the text studied. Homework is supporting the learning and not being a byproduct of it or simply a process that needs to be done because the powers that be say so.

Homework in English is tricky, but I think exploring texts, whether they be fiction, non-fiction, plays, poems, should always take priority. We need students to be good at forming ideas and working on their expression of those ideas and, if we are honest, 10 minutes in the classroom is not enough practice for them. They need to be regularly forming ideas and expressing them. Why should it be once a lesson? Why not all the time? That, after all, is what they need to do in the exam. Yes, they might need knowledge, but they need to do something with that knowledge. 

Five minutes it takes me to create  this homework task. Twenty minutes or more I use in lessons to feedback on the responses. Zero marking. Hundreds of ideas.

Thanks for reading,

Xris 

Narrowing down revision in English

Revision and revising is such a tricky thing for English. It can, if we are not too careful, be the equivalent of Buckaroo. Here’s another quotation. Now, add these three quotations. Balance these intent words on your head. BUCKAROO! 

We all love a good quotation, but revision can become for literature all about the quotations and not the ideas. It is really hard to find a balance, because quotations are concrete and they can be recalled so they give the students the semblance of effective revision. The problem is that students can often learn quotations that have no link to the question, yet because they have learnt it they are going to crowbar it into their writing. Is the emphasis on quotation knowledge superseding text knowledge? And, more importantly, text understanding? 

I admit my emphasis on quotations has always been around words or one or two key phrases.  ‘Solitary as an oyster’ works on so many levels that it can fit into most essays. Class - the rich are shut off from their problems. Greed - hiding their riches. Charity - the pearl represents that there is some good in Scrooge. Teach them a good quotation and how it fits in a number of contexts and you are preparing students to think on their feet. All too often, we turn quotation learning into some kind of military drill. Drop and give me two quotations on Tiny Tim. What is that? I can’t hear you. For that, you are giving me four quotations on love in ‘Romeo and Juliet’. The retaining of the quotation is more important the malleable nature of ideas and quotations. They are putty to mould and shape into an argument. 

This year, I played around with revision lessons. Instead of the hunt for a needle in a haystack knowledge retrieval, we tried a very simple structure. I simplified the text in several key images, the characters and the structure.  

I gave students a sheet with these on them. Then, I gave them the question. How does Shakespeare present love? Together, we worked on thinking what were the key images in the text related to the idea of love. We discussed the father’s and friar’s view of treating children like plants. We discussed the idea of cupid and the concept of love being unpredictable. Next, we explored the character across the text. Are there characters that show love? We discussed the combination of Lady Capulet and Nurse and their views of love. We then discussed the different attitudes that Mercutio and Romeo have towards love. The group decided that Shakespeare uses Lady Capulet in an unsympathetic light to show how adults have a conditional attitude towards love. Finally, once we had these ideas we considered the structure. We discussed that we see the parents move from unconditional to conditional love. We also discussed how problematic conditional love is with Romeo and Juliet. The overall opinion was that Shakespeare wanted balance and not one or the other. 

From a simple sheet, we had explored images, character and structure to form and argument in response to the question. Then, we were able to check what existing quotations we could use. In fact, as we discussed these ideas, students freely offered their ideas and quotations. The thinking of ideas started the search for quotations rather than the other way round. 

We then drafted a paragraph for one of the ideas. This took us close to thirty minutes to do, but we have revised images, characters and structure alongside themes and quotations.  In fact, in one lesson we covered three texts like this. 

I know revision season is done for this year (almost) but I think we genuinely need to think about the revision process long-term to avoid the Buckaroo effect. All too often, the closer we get to the exams, the more we attempt to cram and pile knowledge and things onto students. If the teaching of the texts is good, then at the end there shouldn’t be a need to fill students up with quotations. Students should with a few key choice morsels be able to create a dish of an essay. More able students will probably have a few more select and subtle morsels, but the majority will have something. 

Maybe our problem with exams and revision is that the default is that there is an absence of something. We add rather than build on what is there. English is probably the one subject where you are often starting with something. Before students revise the texts, they know something of the story. The power of literature is that it lasts long after the experience. They might not remember the quotations but they can remember the story. There is a spark of something to add kindle to. Hopefully, this is one way to start that fire burning. 

A link to the documents I used is here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/dp39pt9cgr91f6n2y4r8y/Year-11-Revision-Helpsheet.docx?dl=0&rlkey=r2jpgkdzwidapb5vi0fwrykw1

Thanks for reading, 

Xris