What can English learn from Maths? Skills Checks.

Recently, I have been jealous of how Maths have a plethora or targeted resources on specific questions. I have seen endless examples of different types of questions and looked on with envy. The problem with English is that we are often teaching different texts or the needs of our children are different. One teacher might have problems with students learning quotations, when another teacher has a problem with students not explaining things enough in their writing. Therefore, when looking at resources, we are often quick to save or ignore them. That resource will not solve my problem. Nice idea, but it will not help me.

One resource in Maths has inspired me in English. It’s a simple resource and I apologise for not finding the original source. It features either a small A5 sheet of paper or one PowerPoint slide. On it are five or six different mathematical problems. Each one tackles a different skill or thought process. Often, it is used as a starter or as a task on its own.

I liked it because it addresses several things at once. It identifies gaps and it helps to reinforce learning from previous lessons. Furthermore, it allows teachers to address gaps in the learning or address misunderstandings. I kept thinking: why don’t we have something like this in English?

Often our problem in English is that our teaching is dependent on identified needs rather than routine learning. We set a task and then on the back of that task we adapted our teaching to address the weaknesses. Their spelling is terrible, so let’s spend a few weeks on spelling. Their grammar is weak, so let’s have a weekly grammar lesson. Their comma usage is terrible, so let’s have a lesson on commas. They are quick course corrections, but do they fundamentally change the students approach to learning?  One lesson. One week. That one term has a lot of pressure on it to be a magical cure for misunderstandings. 

The problem isn’t necessary when we teach the aspect but how often and how regularly we visit the area. We teach when there is a need and not with an expectation that it is a need or a basic foundation in English that needs constant revision, reminding and reteaching.

We know students are going to spell words incorrectly. We know students are going to use commas incorrectly. We know students will struggle with apostrophes. Why are we not looking at them weekly?

Therefore, I have adapted the grid for English and used it with several groups with success. It takes ten minutes to make and I can use it with every year group.  I don’t need to photocopy it sometimes and simply use a PowerPoint slide and students complete the work in their books. In fact, if one person in the department makes one sheet, you’d have enough for a whole term.

I tend to start the lesson with these sheets. Students spend five minutes completing the different tasks and then we work through the answers as a class. So far, I have done this once a week and it has been quite effective and helpful. I can easily tailor the boxes so that I can put emphasis on things, but also go to areas that haven’t been explored for some time.

It is also great for reinforcing rules. We have, like others, a problem with comma splices so I’ve made sure that I am working weekly on comma splices. Reminding students of rules to spot and fix a comma splice. Rather than spend one lesson on comma splices, I am spending 3 minutes a week all year.  I am revisiting and reteaching all the time. Why spend a whole lesson planning and teaching on it if you can do it weekly?  

Our newfound emphasis on curriculum has made us re-evaluate things. The SPaG or grammar lesson always troubled me as a concepts as it was viewed separately from the core of English learning. This approach allows for grammar to be integrated and common within lessons. It doesn’t have to be a distant cousin.

What if each teacher made one of these and shared it?

Thanks for reading,

Xris

We need to talk about Brian’s work!

Ok, I have been using the ‘200 Word Challenge’ for over two years now and in that time I have seen a lot of writing. And, I mean a lot. On average, I look at about forty five pieces a week. Roughly, fifteen pieces a class at KS3. And, in that time I have spotted trends, patterns and interesting things with writing and how students write as I am constantly looking at the writing. I am not doing a termly plough through books, but instead I am measuring the temperature of their writing. Too cold. Too hot. This piece of writing is just right.

Recently, I was working with a student called ‘Brian’. I use that name specifically to hide his identity; I have never taught a Brian. Brian is interesting with his writing, because he is a student who works hard. Brian listens and behaves well in lessons. However, there is a problem with Brian’s work. His writing. He uses paragraphs, punctuation and vocabulary with some proficiency. However, he tends to produce ‘beige’ pieces of writing. They have some value and the content is appropriate, but they often lack variety, interest and enthusiasm. They are just such bland pieces of working. Therefore, they are ‘beige’.

You see Brian isn’t alone in this. And, I think that Brian represents a lot of boys and possibly a lot of girls. I was a Brian at school. I did what Brian did. I ‘phoned-in’ a performance with my work. If there was one thing I can do well, it is to write meaningless waffle. I could do it for hours. Give me a question and I could write ten pages on crop rotation or the benefits of pesticides. You see that ‘phoned-in’ writing doesn’t engage the full brain and so I was able to be in a ‘semi-state of working’. I was neither working really hard nor doing nothing. I was in a trance state. I suppose the nearest thing I can link it to is the state of mind you have when completing a colouring book or reading Facebook comments. You are active and doing the process, but you heart, mind and soul are not fully engaged.

In fact, I’d say that a lot of my education was spent in this trance state. You do just enough to keep the teacher off your back, but not enough to progress further. It was a great place to be, if I was honest. It was a safe place to be. I didn’t get the attention from the teacher for being great at a task (I never thought for a second I’d get that) and the negative attention for not completing the work. So for years I produced drivel and boy did I produce pages of drivel. In fact, I produced so much drivel that I’d rarely be picked up for my lack of work in a lesson. I’d write and write. I’d write with half a brain on the task and the other half on thinking about what I’d have for tea. I’d do this for every subject and every task.

The ‘200 Word Challenge’ has made me see this phenomenon up close. You see Brian turns up the quality of work for final assessments, but by then it is too late. The day-to-day work is phoned in. Brian switches on the automatic pilot and feels comfortable and safe with his work. When you do it so much, it becomes a normal process of working. And, a hard process to break, especially when, physically, Brian is doing nothing wrong. He writes enough and he completes the task set. He is completing the task and the teacher has nothing to complain about. It is a safe place for the student and a safe place for the teacher.    

So, how would I describe this type of writing? Well, I say that it is just average. Average words. Average sentences. Average ideas.  Nothing flashy. Nothing exciting. Nothing impressive.

For an eternity we have had an issue with borderline students. We are constantly feel like we are going to lose our minds over these borderline students. Could there be something in our eyes that’s making such fools pushing us over the borderline? Could it be the fact that these student have adopted this way of working? It isn’t malicious. It isn’t really lazy. It is just safe. A safe place to be. A place to hide. Not every child wants positive or negative attention. They just want to get on through the lesson or day with the least amount of resistance and resilience. Yes, they will add a word to their writing, because the teacher instructed them to. Yes, they will add a simile to their writing, because the teacher instructed them to. No, they will not change the way they write, because it will cause attention and doesn’t feel comfortable.

Boys are often tarnished as being lazy. I’d argue they are not. I’d argue that they often find, like everybody, a formula that works and stick with it and repeat it. From what I have seen over two years is this pattern. Boys writing being appropriate to the task and being neither really good nor really bad. They have been somewhere in the middle. Average. Beige. Bland. Phoned in.

In the classroom, we need to speak about this ‘phoned in’ performance. You see I think boys (and some girls) are not aware of what they are doing. It is a fixed pattern of behaviour that they can’t see, because they are doing nothing wrong. I think we need to talk to the students. We need to talk about it and highlight it and put a spotlight on it. You see extra lessons, extra interventions or a different strategy will not change this child. The behaviour needs to change and not the teaching.

Brian, we need to talk about your writing.

Thanks for reading,

Xris

200 Word Challenge Tasks 2016/2017

I am currently organising resources for next year and given how popular the 200 Word Challenge has been I though I'd share my tasks for next year. The original blog is here for more details.

I am grateful to my department for coming up with some of the tasks. As before, I am happy to share the tasks, but I will not share PowerPoints. That bit is up to you.

Thanks for reading,

Xris

Term 1

	Task	Area of focus
Week 1	Describe an object in great detail without naming it	Perspective
Week 2	Write a love ballad for a popular musician	Poetry
Week 3	Write the open speech in a debate entitled – We have become so selfish and greedy that we have forgotten to care about others	Speech
Week 4	Application letter explaining why you should be head girl/boy	Persuasive writing
Week 5	Describe the events leading up to car crash	Creativity
Week 6	Invent a 5th season – describe a typical day for that season	Creativity

Term 2

	Task	Area of focus
Week 1	Rewrite a religious story and make it suitable for young children	Audience
Week 2	Is there a generation gap? Are young people always misunderstood?	Extended thinking
Week 3	Write a letter to a parent subtly implying that the student is naughty  and the naughtiest student in the school – cannot explicitly say he/she naughty	Tone
Week 4	Describe a typical day from the perspective of a raindrop	Perspective
Week 5	Write the opening of a thriller – use a picture as a stimulus	Creativity
Week 6	Write a magazine article on the joys of colouring in	Style

Term 3

	Task	Area of focus
Week 1	Letter of complaint about an item you have bought	Tone /Audience
Week 2	Describe what God would have for his breakfast	Creativity
Week 3	Describe a journey through the eyes of an animal	Perspective
Week 4	Write an AOW based on the following question: is happiness based on wealth, health and family?	Extended thinking
Week 5	Write a diary entry of a historical figure – comical (Horrible Histories) or serious	Perspective

Term 4

	Task	Area of focus
Week 1	Describe a person’s personality based on a photograph	Creativity
Week 2	Write the opening to a charity leaflet persuading teachers to give students less English lessons.	Tone
Week 3	Write a short story based on a line of dialogue; ‘I’ll be back.’	Creativity
Week 4	Using a picture, describe a setting in a way nobody has done before.	Creativity
Week 5	Write a thank you letter to one teacher in the school – your English teacher is optional	Tone
Week 6	Girls are better than boys. Discuss.	Extended thinking
Week 7	Persuade a head teacher to revise the school uniform in a speech.	Tone

Term 5

	Task	Area of focus
Week 1	Describe a setting from the point of view of a plant.	Perspective
Week 2	Explain the beauty of your favourite word. Say why it is better than other words.	Tone
Week 3	Write a short story entitled the lonely walk home	Creative writing
Week 4	Write a letter as if you were somebody else. You must get the sense of the person through your writing.	Style
Week 5	Write a text book entry for a topic you have learnt this week in a different subject.	Tone

Term 6

	Task	Area of focus
Week 1	There are too many people in the world. Discuss.	Extended thinking
Week 2	Take a part from a famous book and describe it as it would be seen in a movie.	Perspective.
Week 3	Write a small sketch for a comedy show.	Style
Week 4	Response to a picture. Write the life story of this man.	Creativity
Week 5	Design your own 200 Word Challenge and persuade a teacher why it should be used for the next challenge.	Tone
Week 6	Describe a world with no colour.	Creativity
Week 7	Pick a time in history. Imagine you have a time machine and go back there. Describe what it is like there.	Extended thinking

A year of writing creatively, independently and silently

Next week, I am off to the ResearchEd event and this is the second one focused on English. Yesterday, I thought, what did I have to offer? What would I impart if I was speaking at the event?

Well, since the start of the academic year I have made all Year 7, 8 and 9 students write every week for a lesson. People familiar withthe blog will know about the 200 Word Challenge. Students are given a different writing task each week and there are certain ingredients students must include and those ingredients vary each week.

As a result of all this, I have read hundreds of examples of work over the last few terms. The same task has been used with each year group and that has produced some interesting results.

Findings

1.  Year 7s default mode is narrative writing.

With several modes of writing, the Year 7s turned everything into a story. I had some ‘interesting’ pieces of writing about the ‘dangers of smoking’ told as a story. In fact, when a student decided to use one of them as an assessment piece, it took us three drafts to get the student to realise that it wouldn’t work for a whole text.

2.  Year 7s struggled conceptually with speech writing.

We asked students to write a speech from the head teacher persuading students to work harder. Boy, did they struggle with this. Here’s a typical approach:

The head teacher walked to the stage. “Now, the reason I have called you together is…

3. Dramatic monologues produced the greatest level of creativity in students.

This was really interesting because we hadn’t explicitly taught dramatic monologues, but the detail, creativity on this style was phenomenal. Their attempts to recreate natural speech was much better than their scripts – another 200 task. Plus, naturally, they played around with holding back information from the audience. The task was to write a dramatic monologue based on someone committing a crime.

4. Some very able boys struggled with humour and audience.  

These boys saw the tasks as an opportunity to show me their wit, but sadly their attempts weren’t very witty. They took every writing task as an opportunity to have a laugh. One student tried to include Bob Marley in every piece and another student used absurd humour. What is interesting is that they were writing for themselves? When, they discovered they were writing for an unknown reader, their writing got better. The Bob Marley student is writing the best in the class at the moment.

5. Boys tended to demonstrate a clear, opinionated voice than girls.

Comparing hundreds of students together, it seemed that, in terms of writing, the boys had more to say in their writing. Plus, their voices were a lot more distinct and clear. They had an opinion and their writing. The girls were often vague and lacked perspective when it came to opinionated when conveying a point. Boys, after a while, took really pleasure from being bombastic and controversial. We’ll explore how we can get girls to do this.

6. Students struggled the most with changing perspective.

We asked students to describe a character from three different perspectives. They really struggled with this one, suggesting that maybe our students aren’t forced into writing from different perspectives enough. They are limited by the narrow first person and third person and are unaware of the variations within and between those two.

7. Quiet girls have responded very positively to the weekly writing.  

Parents and students alike of very quiet students have commented on how much they have enjoyed the weekly experience. Some said that this was a result of the extra creativity, whilst I think it might also be a result of them having a lesson without the risk of attention.

8. All students struggled when the writing did not follow a linear order.

We asked student to write a story at the end and then describe how you got to the end. There was much head scratching. In fact, to get the gist of the task, we had to repeat the instructions and provide an example.  

9. Writing inspired by a picture was problematic.

It seems that students need a number of structures to approach this task. There clearly needs to be a way in.

10. Non-fiction writing always produced the shortest paragraphs compared to fiction.

On all pieces of non-fiction, it was common to see that students wrote brief and glib paragraphs. Their writing was often very general and vague. There seems to be a real problem with students writing directly and precisely with non-fiction.

11. Overtime, the writing fed in to other lessons.

Last week, I student make a connection between a writing task and a scene in Macbeth. ‘Shakespeare has structured this scene like the writing task we did about a change of mood in the middle.’ Ideas from lessons surrounding the writing task also fed into the writing.

12. Girls used more figurative writing in their texts than boys. The boys were always literal with their ideas and writing.

13. When given a choice, the boys selected a non-fiction task instead of the fiction tasks.

The girls would pick a non-fiction task if it was on a topic they could choose. However, they gravitated to the narrative tasks.

14. Boys used more humour in their writing.

 In fact, the girls’ writing was devoid of humour. There was none. The boys relished the opportunity to use humour. The girls didn’t.

There will be more findings in time. Some of these points will change. But, they do make some interesting points. I have never really been in this position before. A position where I can see trends across year groups. As a teacher, I can see the differences and similarities across the years. The above finds are based on all three year groups.

I will continue to explore are watch the trends and adapt my teaching as a result.

Thanks for reading,

Xris

P.S. Technically, it hasn’t been a full year.