In terms of metacognition, cognitive load and cognitive load theory is one of the biggest concerns of any English teacher. We might not dress it up with a fancy term, but we know that how much or how little we present of text can make or break a student’s understanding of a text. Too much of a text and you can overwhelm them with too much information. Too little text and you can strip the meaning away from a text.
For me, the key to building knowledge around texts is not death by a thousand quotations or endless DVDs of varying quality filmed versions of the play or novel. It is about building interesting ways to read the text in different ways. That might be through a number of different ways. Images. Clips. Extracts. Drawings.
One of my favourite ways is to do a reduced version of the text. A ten minute version of An Inspector Calls. Here’s a copy. Simply, I take a text and reduce it down. Thank a colleague from a previous school for the idea. Now before you start chucking copies of the text at me, this is after the class has read the play twice through already. Then, we simply read it when we have a spare ten minutes.
Holidays are always a problem for memory. At the end of last term, students could be well versed in reciting sections of the play, but after two weeks they can barely remember character’s name unless prompted heavily. That’s why I like to start the term off with this quick ten minute read. It will never have the flair of the original text, but it is a great reminder and way to recall what is hidden in the recesses of their mind.
Familiarity breeds confidence. Unless we look at ways to make texts more familiar, then we are always going to struggle. A weak student’s natural default is to retell the plot in an essay. They lack confidence in relation to the text so assert they are confident in it they retell the story. One reading of a text is never enough.
Thanks for reading,
Xris
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