Do it now or do it when you’ve thought about it a bit more?

I have written at length about knowledge and its use in English, and this isn’t going to be one of those blogs, but it is about mapping out the thought processes in English lessons. 

We don’t spell out the internalised thought process in English. To the outsider, or an average student, the processes must look magical and effortless. They see a student coming up with a great idea and within seconds of looking at something. They don’t actually know what is going on in that student's head. All they see is someone come up with ideas, quickly. 

To mimic the speed of idea forming, we see students throw out random ideas or pick pure speculation. How many times have we had to gently let a student down when their idea is beyond barmy? The speed of the idea is more important than the process to them. That is why they go for stock answers like ‘the reader reads on’ because they emulate completeness. 

A lot of the time in lessons replicate exam conditions and so we try to replicate the speed of thinking needed in lessons. That is the end point and not the guidance for the norm. We need to give time in lessons so they can process things and work things out in their head. Yes , they will need to do it quickly, but not now and not yet. 

One area our department is working on is unpicking images and techniques for meaning. It is not that we have an issue as a department, but as noted in the exam reports we feel our students can do it better in this area. I’ve liked David Didau’s discussion on metaphor and the use of terms like tenor, vehicle and ground, and I will touch upon some of his thinking here. Read his ‘Making Meaning in English’ for more on it. Anyway, a lot of our time when analysing texts can be spent on spotting rather than exploring. Hence why students can spot every technique in an extract but say very little meaningful about them. We started picking out the techniques for students so stop the emphasis being on spotting.Note: we haven’t removed it completely but shifted the focus. Below is an example sheet: 

Initially, we ask students to explain why a choice has been made in the extract. That question alone has missed a few steps. 

• What do we know about the thing? 

• What do we know about the character? 

• How do these two things link? 

• Why do you think the writer made this choice? 

One of the biggest problems we have with students in English is activating prior knowledge. They see English as a subject where you have to repeat what a teacher has told you on a topic. That’s why they are often silent with a new text or exam question. I have nothing to repeat from before. They are happier calling what a teacher said rather than thinking about their wider knowledge. The best students are those that are constantly activating prior knowledge when doing things. This reminds me of… This links to … Weaker students tend to think of work in terms of a Magic Eye picture. The answer must jump out if you look at it long enough. They are passive rather than active thinkers. To address this problem, we have to work on moving their thinking away from passivity. 

Therefore, the starting point with this Rosabel metaphor is the vehicle. The thing. What do they know about fairy palaces? Here are some recent answers to that exact question. 

• Big 

• Grand 

• Magical 

• Not real 

• Fragile 

• Colourful 

• Life changing 

• Fantasy 

• A different world 

• Full of fairies 

• Royalty 

• Femininity 

The beauty of this question is that all students can answer and there’s a range of answers. Plus, it is safe as there’s no danger. We are just collectively trying to recall. 

The next stage is thinking about the character / situation. What is going on with Rosabel?  

• She hates her job 

• She is poor 

• She is jealous of the woman with red hair

• She has to deal with rude people 

• She doesn’t like people on the bus 

• She doesn’t like the bus journey 

Then comes in the connection - Which of these ideas about the palaces links to what is going on with Rosabel? 

• Her dream is fragile like the palace 

• She wants to be better - royalty / life changing 

• She hates her life and so another life seems colourful, bright, magic 

• She knows her dream is never going to happen - fantasy / magic 

Finally, it is pulling everything together - Why has the writer chosen that choice? 

From these questions, we have scaffolded the thinking behind an extract. We are helping students to unpick a simile, metaphor or personification by unpicking the thinking processes. Below is the next step we have used. 

	What do you know?	How does this link to Roland?
Verb – exhumed
List – black, thick, tenacious Victorian dust
Personification – spine is missing
Verb – bandaged
Noun – tied in a neat bow
Simile – sprang apart, like a box

We have seen a real improvement in engagement in ideas and thinking with this. Not only is it demystifying an element of English, but it is quite a collective process. Plus, it stops the subject as being a ready prepared answer subject. There are no quick answers in English. 

SLTs obsession with enforcing ‘Do it Now’s or knowledge retrieval has benefits for subjects, but it has the worrying issue that there is a quick easy recall answer in English. There isn’t! In fact, English is about snowballs. We have some knowledge and then we link and connect it to something else and make something bigger. We do something with that knowledge. We make something new. 

If we are going to challenge domineering ways of teaching, we need to spell out how English does knowledge, but it doesn’t do it in just the way others do it. We don’t want parrots; instead we want thinkers! Active thinkers. 

Thanks for reading