Cognitive Buckaroo with Non-fiction

As we get closer to the end for our Year 11s, it is so common for us to throw (metaphorically)  everything and the kitchen sink at them. As they leave classrooms, we pile them up with different sheets to help. Each lesson tries to cover large feats such as the whole of a Shakespeare play in an hour. All fifteen poems in two lessons. Whole language papers in an hour. When we treat students like educational versions of Buckaroo, then there’s no wonder some students struggle. We are piling things on top of things. Cognitive overload is generally common sense. If I give too much to students, it isn’t effective. 

The problem in English teaching is that we have this strange relationship with cognitive overload. We see nothing wrong with spending a whole lesson exploring a line in poetry or even seven words in a line from soliloquy, but for non-fiction we treat it like something different. In fact, ‘exploding a quote’ is almost a standard lesson for literature lessons, yet for non-fiction we teach at speed  like there is no tomorrow. 

 

There are two things students need to generally know about non-fiction: 

[1] Writers openly say what they think and feel in non-fiction unlike in most fiction. Therefore, they need to actively work harder to spot the implied thoughts and feelings. 

[2] A writer’s attitude towards a topic will often change in a piece of writing. They might grow to like or dislike something. Or, they may even change their perspective on things. 

[3] Unlike fiction, non-fiction texts often have many narrative threads. 

When reading a piece of fiction, you are generally building up a jigsaw of the story, but this is quite different for non-fiction because you are building up more jigsaws. What the writer thinks/feels? What is the situation the writer is in? What is the topic? These contrasting threads are hard to piece together, because there isn’t a clear narrative to hold them together. You can see how exam boards pick mostly ‘narrative’ style pieces of non-fiction to help students. At least, if there is a narrative of a boat breaking down, then a student can follow a text logically. 

Students have a problem with pinpointing things in non-fiction because of cognitive overload. Fiction usually has some clear things in it that clearly standout. We usually rely quite accurately with students to spot in a poem or a story what is interesting. That’s not so easy with non-fiction. In non-fiction there is a massive amount of cognitive overload because so much is competing for attention. A feeling in the first paragraph is of equal importance to a feeling in the second paragraph. That’s why it is so important to help students to work on reducing cognitive overload of a text. 

I am indebted to the fantastic Laura Webb and her resources for this. I’ve tweaked it a little to help model things to students. I’ve included the worksheet here. We model to students how you can take three sentences from the text to form a good idea of what is going on in the text. This one from Laura is about begging. 

First, we take three lines from the text. One from the beginning. One from the middle. One from the end. 

Source A

I come now to speak of the other class of begging impostors.

I am sure the number has not diminished since then; my impression is, that it has, on the contrary, considerably increased.  

This will give the immense sum of 7,5001. per week, or 350,0001. per year, which these persons levy on a charitable public. 

 

Source B

And we are using a 200-year-old law to lock up homeless addicts for begging, in some cases sending them to already overcrowded prisons.

I met a guy in Brighton who makes about a fiver a day – the most he has ever made is £30.

Luke, a homeless man I met there, a former chef, is now an addict with mental health issues. The sergeant had little sympathy.

We explore the tone. What is the tone of each line? What causes the tone? Why do you think the writer uses that tone? 

From the example, students might pick up the snobbery and disgust of the phrase ‘other class’ or the adverb 'considerably’ reflecting the writer’s fears that this problem is out of hand in the first source. Students might pick up the varying examples of pity towards beggars by making things personal with a name or how little they make in the day. 

From this, students can actually make a reasonable comparison in terms of feelings. Both texts hate something. Source A hates the beggars as he feels they are criminals. Source B hates the attitude to the police and how the judicial system treats them. We could also make a connection about pity too. Source A pities the ‘charitable’ people who give money because it is wasted. Source B pities the beggars for they have some deep seated mental health issues.  

From three lines alone, students can form clear ideas and can develop explanations around language choices. They can look at the rest of the text for ideas and technique,  but they have a starting point with non-fiction. And that is where the rub is. Students cannot tackle a whole text. They don’t do it for poetry or fiction, but yet when it comes to non-fiction they feel they need to. Half their time is spent searching for the bits to write about rather than thinking about the text. All non-fiction is seen as a block of text. We need to help them break it down. If we lighten the load a bit, the horse won’t buck and will get to where he / she needs to go. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris 

Symbolism, structure and chat

It is that annual time of year where I teach Question 3, the structure question, to students. The more I teach this question, the more I think we need to work more on symbolism in English. And, to an extent teach them the background knowledge to identify those symbols. Symbolism is what we think we do a lot in lessons. We look at poems and explore the symbols through similes, metaphors and personification in them. Yet, when we take out metaphorical language, students find it really hard to spot and discuss them. 

Every play studied has lots of symbolism embedded in it yet symbolism tends to be isolated to the language. A character giving a soliloquy on stage on their own is a symbol of isolation. A scene set inside can be a symbol of secrecy and a lack of transparency. A scene set at night symbolises something bad, sinister or that something is ending. An Inspector Calls being set at night is symbolic. It is all leading to a new ‘dawn’. There’s a reason it is set at night. The end of the old ideology.   

The problem we have is that students can’t get their head around the idea that symbolism is often not linguistic or figurative. It is structural. I think over the years we have become too focused on identifying techniques to the point that we have missed something powerful within our subject. The meaning around all choices a writer makes.  Over time, we have subconsciously created a hierarchy around choices that sensible choices around structure, positioning or content are neglected for something with a name. Something easily nameable. Something easily tested. Something easily taught. In fairness, something that is easily explained, but not something that is easily explored. 

Symbolism is fuzzy. In one context, an object can symbolise and then in another it can symbolise something completely different. Take the colour red. It can symbolise paradoxically positive and negative things. It can represent love and passion, but also it can symbolise death and danger. Our job is to help students see that duality and how it fits in the context of things at the moment. 

The reason Question 3 is such a difficult question is that you cannot explain it fully, because it is a question about exploring. It is why we see so many people tripping up on it. Let’s teach them about cyclic structures because we can explain that. That generates lots of students explaining a cyclic but not of them explore it.  

Let’s have a look at things in one of the past papers. The following images are from the ‘Labyrinth’ paper. 

The bottle of water is often skipped when students read this paper. However, structurally the bottle symbolises so much about the character. Water is a symbol of life. Here we see that character’s full potential and her hope at the beginning. At the end of the extract, we see how that hope and potential is running and at risk. One last drop represents her one last hope that she has in the situation. Yes, there is a cyclic structure, but in terms of storytelling there is so much going on here. The bottle is a symbol of her hope. The story is structured around her lack of hope or the slow dwindling hope she had. 

We can take that further in looking at other things described. 

Each one connects to the character’s personal journey. Usually students focus on the reader and how the reader feels, when actually they’ve missed the character and forgotten about the reader’s interaction with the character. The images above are all about lots of big things. They symbolise how things are against Alice. She is looking for something small and the odds are stacked against her. The plane is a symbol of her imminent journey home. The mountain is a symbol of the challenge before her. The flowers are a symbol of her but also her hope: small, delicate and time-sensitive. The boulders are a symbol of another obstacle, like the mountain, that is in her way. 

Then, we can see how the whole thing is put together. She starts with optimism, but that is slowly dwindling as the story progresses. 

That exploration is really important, but we aren’t allowing students to do it enough. Here is another example I used with students. This goes alongside the ‘Silk Factory’ paper. Here what is interesting is the use of domestic imagery and symbolism. It is used in the story to convey a sense of safety. We have repeated references to domesticity which provides us with comfort and a level of expectation. That is contrasted with the dangerous elements in the garden. 

I think we need to get exploration back into the classroom. We’ve become too obsessed with explaining that we’ve got ourselves in knots over it. Look at how our analysis has become knotted with paragraph structures. PEEL. PEE. PEETAL. What/How/ Why. Our discussion in the lessons has placed emphasis on the concrete. What technique does the writer use? Why has the writer used it? We’ve moved away from abstract thinking and that’s where symbolism comes in. You can teach explanations, but the student independently explores in English - with a little direction from the teacher. 

Building confidence in exploration starts with talking. Getting students to talk about images amongst themselves and exploring what they could mean is paramount. That talk gives them experience and confidence. The melting pot of ideas. Here’s a little discussion sheet I have created for Year 10 as we explore this question.

It isn’t a writing frame, but a discussion tool for them to articulate what they notice about images, symbolism and storytelling. It isn’t  perfect. It isn’t definitive. But, it is something to latch ideas onto. Let’s take a break from explaining and let’s open our lessons to exploring. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris 

Being precise around the writer’s intention

One of the biggest areas for English teachers is the ‘why’ aspect of analysis. Why does the writer do this? Over the years, we have seen paragraph structures to address this and we even seen lists of verbs to address this issue. The problem is that whatever way we approach things we are using a pneumatic drill to open a flower. Things are usually more subtle, nuanced and complex than seems on appearance. Take the verb ‘challenges’. Yes, Dickens does challenge quite a few things in ‘A Christmas Carol’, but a word like challenge is such a blunt word to describe a complex situation. 

‘A Christmas Carol’ was written to be sold as a book. The people who could afford it would be rich. The book was in a funny place. If it insults or attacks (or overtly challenges) the rich, then not many people would buy it. Therefore, the book doesn’t attack the rich in general. If we are honest, the book is designed to provoke emotions in the Victorian reader to feel good about themselves when they are kinder and charitable towards other people. If we look at the book, it isn’t ‘anti-rich’. Scrooge at the end of the story doesn’t stop being rich. He stays rich, but shares some of his money, time and company with others. So, in effect, the book is flattering the rich who behave like this, but at the same time subtly guilt tripping those that don’t behave like this. We often place a lot of effort on the redemption arc of Scrooge when, in fact, Scrooge represents varying parts of the readership. Of course, we boil this down to a simple soundbite like: Dickens challenges how the rich treated the poor. 

When we look at analysis of texts, there are four main areas of inferences we make: 

• Character inferences - Scrooge feels X

• Reader inferences  - The reader feels X towards Y 

• Writer’s inferences  - The writer wants to X

• Context inferences  - The attitude to Y at that time was X 

Of course, there are loads more, but these are the general ones that students need some understanding to write a decent analysis paragraph. Character inferences are often the easiest for students because that skill is very much what they have done their whole life: reading tone and body language to work out what a person thinks or feels. The other three areas are the tricky ones.They are the ones that, often or not, we provide set statements /facts to form those inferences. Or, we provide them with words or phrases that imitates the act of making an inference. Throw in the word ‘challenge’ and you get something that sounds like a student making an inference around the writer’s intention. 

So, how do we get students better at making inferences around the writer and his /her intentions? Well, for a start, we move away from presenting the writer’s intention ideas as fact and as something to be taught rather than found. All inferences around a writer’s thoughts and feelings are guesswork and conjecture. The best ones are rationalised inferences based on several points in the text. This is where I think we have a large problem. We expect students to be able to find and explore a writer’s thoughts and feelings in non-fiction texts, yet in Literature texts we expect the opposite. Let me tell you what Shakespeare is thinking here. Things are disjointed. We tell students a writer’s attitude towards themes, ideas, people and characters in a novel or play yet in non-fiction we are frustrated when students can’t find these inferences themselves. 

The key thing then is our relationship with a text. Yes, exams have warped the curriculum, but so too have we to the extent that the text is secondary to the learning process. We teach the plot, characters, quotations and techniques and yet the key thing in all this is the text. The vehicle for the ideas. We need students to get better at finding those inferences themselves and that involves them exploring texts better. 

Recently, I’ve been studying ‘A Christmas Carol’ with a Year 10 class. We had finished reading the text and were pulling things together. Together, we looked at the character of Bob Cratchit and I gave the class the following table:

The result was a heated debate about whether Dickens likes or dislikes Bob Cratchit. Some were saying that Dickens likes his ability to be happy in the face of adversity. Others said that Dickens dislikes how much a pushover he is. A few said he was too good to be true that they thought Dickens was taking the mick with him. All comments, however, were grounded with evidence in the text. Then, we related it to the context. Why should Dickens be taking the mick out of him at that time? 

We repeated this again with several characters including Scrooge, Mrs Dilbur, Tiny Tim and so on. Each discussion built up ideas about the writer and what he was intending to do. Students were making comments about how Dickens likes Mrs Dilbur’s strength and ability to survive but dislikes her lack of respect to the dead. From it, students were exploring in detail what the writer is doing and why he is doing it. A character’s behaviour and background were separated because Dickens liked one and not the other and so on.  

We need to help students co-construct a mental image of the writer when reading. We present writers as behemoths when they are thinking and feeling people (regardless if they are alive or not). In most, analysis structures the writer’s thoughts and feelings are an afterthought. They are the last E in PEE. They are the Why in the ‘What How Why’. And, if we are honest, they are the last thought when it comes to explanations. 

It is almost like we need to treat the writer like we treat characters in a story. In the same way we co-construct inferences around a character in a story, such as Scrooge’s redemption, we need to do the same for the writer. What is the writer’s arc across the text? You only get to that by talking about the writer throughout the reading and through exploring what the writer thinks or feels. There needs to be an ongoing lesson narrative around this co-construction of the writer’s views and perspective. Working together to build that understanding. 

If we want students to get better about talking about the writer’s intention, we need to start at the beginning and focus on helping students make inferences about the writer from the start. Who does Dickens like on page 1? How do you know?  

Thanks for reading, 

Xris 

A question of tone and not techniques

In the time I have been teaching, I have seen the teaching of English compartmentalised in so many different ways. And, dear reader, you cannot put it solely at the hands of the GCSE exams. We’ve had the National Curriculum and APP grids along the way. They all attempt to make the subject an easily digestible tick list. When you do that, you see the general focus is one making the abstract concrete. You see limiting writing structures for analysis. You see an emphasis on concrete knowledge like facts around historical context and identification of techniques. We see students able to repeat facts and spot techniques, but they cannot explain why they are used. This then leads to the teacher having to explicitly teach why a technique is used. And, this repeats on and on. 

Tone is the single biggest thing that improves writing and reading across all levels. It is everywhere in our subject yet it is nowhere at the same time. Tone is something that glues words, sentences, techniques and paragraphs together. It is something that connects the reader to the writer. It is something that links the context to the writer’s purpose. It is hidden below the subject of a text and it is the seam of gold that helps students unlock meaning and understanding. Yet, it is something so hard to compartmentalise. Yes, you can name it for sure, but you can’t really define it fully because it sits across so many domains and processes.  

Look at how tone is everywhere in the AQA English exams: 

English Language

Reading 

Paper 1 - the narrator’s tone, the individual tone of characters, the writer’s own tone 

Paper 2 - the tone of the writer is both extracts 

Writing 

Paper 1 - the tone of their characters, the tone of their writing 

Paper 2 - the tone of their writing 

English Literature 

Shakespeare 

The tone of the extract, the tone of the character, the tone of the writer. 

Pre1914 Novel 

The tone of the extract, the tone of the character, the tone of the writer. 

Modern Text 

The tone of the extract, the tone of the character, the tone of the writer. 

Poetry Anthology 

The tone of the extract, the tone of the voice,  the tone of the writer. 

Repeat for the other poem 

Unseen poetry 

The tone of the extract, the tone of the voice,  the tone of the writer. 

Tone is everywhere in English, because it is literally everywhere in life. If students are receptive to the concept of tone, we have a seam of gold to mine in the English classroom. 

The problem in English lessons is that the questions become focused on the microdetails. Specific words. Specific techniques. Why did Dickens describe Scrooge as an ‘oyster’? When exploring that question, we are exploring quite precise knowledge. What is an oyster? What is the symbolism of oysters? If you know nothing about oysters, then you are stuck. Not many students know what an oyster is, so you are on a losing foot from the start.  

When we move the questioning away from microdetail, we focus more on the interconnectivity within a text. Take the following question: How does Dickens create a sympathetic tone in Stave 1? To respond to that question, you have to join parts of the text together, whether they be plot detail or writer’s methods. But, there’s also a personal aspect. The evidence to support the point can vary from student to student. The questioning can then be layered up. Why is Dickens so sympathetic here? What isn’t he sympathetic about? Interestingly, what is empathic about? 

Teaching tone in literature texts is paramount, but it isn’t a concrete thing. There’s more than one technique to show pity. More than one technique to show anger. And so. I’d argue that instead of using pretty empty verbs around the writer when exploring intent, there’s more legs in talking about tone. Instead of talking of what Dickens is challenging in the story, talk about what makes him angry. Anger, of course,  leads to ‘challenging’.  

From a language analysis perspective, starting with tone means you are already joining up parts of the text. How is this extract comical? The use of exaggeration. The word ‘blubber’. The repetition of ‘again’. Then, analysis starts with what makes the exaggeration comical, rather than the tumbleweed moment of ‘What is the reader supposed to feel with this exaggeration?.  

From a writing perspective, teaching students about the subtle types of tone they can use is highly beneficial. The default tone for transactional writing is usually Facebook rant or end of the world apocalypse. The better writers have a breezy and light tone that knows when to pack a punch and when to understate things. 

The starting point is to talk about tone. Talk about awe, frustration, sarcasm, irony, bitterness and so on. Talk about when tone changes. Talk about why tone changes. Talk about why that tone then. Don’t just give a wordbank of tone words. Actually, talk about tone and teach about tone. 

You’d think we’d give tone the same level of respect as full stops and capital letters given that they are in every piece of writing, but we don’t. There’s so much time given to techniques with the hope that students can spot it in the rare occurrence of it appearing in an exam. I can guarantee the text will have a tone. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris 

Problem solving in creative writing

Over the past term, I have been working on quite a bit of creative writing with students. And, I always find with each year that there’s something different I notice or explore with students. As I ease back into blogging, after taking a bit of a holiday, here are some problems I’ve faced and some possible solutions. 

Problem 1: Too much action and not a lot of description 

We’ve all had it. A student feels the need to write the equivalent of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy on two sides of A4. Every sentence is an explosion, a death or a plot twist. And, everything is so dramatic. You could model the balance of description till you are blue in the face, but still within two sentences a man has discovered his long lost mother, divorced his wife and robbed a bank. 

Solution: class stories 

This does push students out of their comfort zone, but it does help to get students listening to one another when telling a story. Simple start the story with a small bit of context. Tom is walking back from the football game when he notices something strange. Then, I allocate students a letter - A or B. Each letter represents if they are focusing on action or description. We go student by student and line by line telling a story. 

Student 1: He noticed that the pitch was empty and while he was focusing on tying his laces everyone had gone home. [Action] 

Student 2: The pitch was surrounded by inky darkness. [Description]  

Student 3: White light shone down from the pylons above. [Description] 

Student 4: Tom moved quicker and scooped up his bag and coat. [Action] 

Depending on your classroom layout, you can place emphasis on the start and end being about description and so on. I love it as an approach because it forces them to work on problem solving on storytelling and looking at how things connect together. Why would he be the last one there? What has he got in his bag? 

I do this often because the students love it and it builds their confidence around storytelling. Starting with nothing is daunting, but this approach models to them how to build action and description into their writing and how to use the two elements for impact. If for example I am working on a horror or ghost story, I’d purposefully have more description students than actions students. 

The beauty of this is that you can question the effectiveness of choices. One action we had in the story above was a strange sound. Another student revealed it was a donkey. Now that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it spoiled the effectiveness of the ending when this donkey moment happened. It punctured the tension.  We then discussed where best it would go. 

Problem 2: Marvel movie storytelling 

We do seem to have a glut of identikit films. The fact that the sequel is more popular than ever shows us how rigid the storytelling has become. If students see endless ‘Fast and Furious’ films, then they see that rigidity in their writing. There’s none of the exploration or nuance we like to see. I want cars. I want fast cars. I want them to race.  Like the phrase ‘you are what you eat’, in storytelling ‘you write what you see.’ 

Solution: The Repair Workshop 

That show is a mastermind in storytelling and weaving the past and present narratives. I watched a clip of the show to see how they repair a piano. Then, pull out the narratives. There’s the narrative about the fixing of the object. There’s the narrative of the person wanting it fixed. There’s the narrative surrounding the person who used the object in the past. For example, granddaughter wants the piano fixed because she has no grandparents left and she wants the piano so she can teach her daughter to play it like her grandmother did when she was a child. 

The beauty of ‘The Repair Workshop’ narrative is that it is usually so precise, personal and emotive. You can start anywhere in the story. Past, present or the moment where the object is fixed. Plus, the narrative has a fixed core: the object. 

I’ve seen students really play around with ‘The Repair Workshop’ narrative.Starting in the past and then showing the ageing of the object. I’ve had students look at the object in the present and then tell the story of why it is in that person’s hands. It forces students to think about narrative structure and emotion in quite a precise way. They are not looking for hundreds of characters and plot points, but simply two people linked over time by one object. 

Problem 3:  Pace 

We live in a fast world and sadly writing seems to be influenced by that.Storytelling is always fast with students. They are in the rush to get to the next bit. For this reason, description disappears. Speed. Reading creative writing pieces can be like Sandra Bullock on a bus. If one bit of this story is not tense, then the paper will explode.  

Solution : Music 

Well, this is a cheat. There’s more than one solution to this. For a start, I ask them to write for an old codger like me. My heart can’t take anything dramatic or racy. I need sedate and slightly slow pieces of writing, which say something clever in one event. I use the exam texts as an example. My heart can cope with things like that. 

I get students to write a piece inspired by some music. I use incidental music from movies and avoid the Spice Girls. To get the idea across to students, I play the Jaws music and then show them an extract from Jaws so that students can see how the two work together. How does the writing match the style of music? 

Then, I get students to write a story around a piece of music.  It is best to use music that isn’t familiar. You can give the context, if necessary. They change their emphasis in writing, matching the pace of the music structurally. 

Problem 4: Dialogue 

Dialogue is lazy writing. Students know that. We know that. Yet, there will alway be one student that insists on writing something along the lines of … 

“Hello,” said Tom. 

“Hello,” said Roger. 

“How are you?,” said Tom. 

“I am fine. You?” said Roger. 

“Good thanks. How is the wife?” said Tom. 

“Good. ,” said Roger.

Solution: Get students to use body language to reveal what has been said. 

I love this because, again students are working on problem solving in narratives. I give students a small context for the story. Two people meet in a shop. One person says one of the following lines:  

“I am pregnant.” 

"I can't believe you said that!" 

"It's not what it looks like, I swear!" 

"I never thought this day would come." 

“I am sorry.” 

"How can you just walk away from us?" 

"I saw you." 

"Please, just stay with me." 

“The test result has come back positive.”

The students cannot use the line of dialogue in their writing. They have to use body language to show it. We know the people are speaking in real life, but we are silent observers working out what is being said. For me, this is great because it gets students to work on forming their own inferences around things and work on making explicit narrative implicit in the text. Automatically, it forces students to describe actions, eye movements, facial expressions or hand gestures. 

Problem 5: Purple Prose 

I have Purple Prose with a passion. It is the worst thing about English teaching.The chuck everything at the teacher kind of writing. My favourite writers all use crisp prose. Not a word is wasted, yet there’s an expectation that we are producing mini Charles Dickenses all the time. 

Solution: Focus on one word changing the meaning of a line 

The best creative writers are quite precise with their writing. They will use one word to add so much meaning to a story. A student wrote about a child receiving a present from his father. The child has not seen his father since his parents divorced.  

 

What does the word highlighted do to the sentence?  

1. Each present he unwrapped lazily as he realised who had sent it.  

2. His face was blank.  

3. His mother gave a pained smile as she looked on.  

4.The last present looked like it had been wrapped in a rush.  

5. His mother’s eyes were cold.  

6. The boy’s eyes lit up when he discovered who had sent the present. 

 

We then work on the following lines. We look at change or add one word in each line to add more meaning. 

 

[1] She sat eating her packed lunch.  

[2] The boy sat opposite her and greeted her as he usually did.  

[3] She smiled.  

[4] He opted for a cooked dinner instead of the sandwich prepared by his mother.  

[5] She felt jealous. Her sandwich was nothing compared to the meal on his plate.  

That construction of stories is often neglected by students. This simple approach gets them to look at how one word can add meaning. We are working on constructing inferences, clues about relationships and subtext with just one word. That means that when they do use a simile it is one good one that sings. 

I hope that helps and, of course, there’s more than one way to cook an egg, but I hope that has given you some ideas or some inspiration. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris