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 

It’s all ‘bout that quote, ‘bout that quote, no ideas!

Quotation learning is a poor proxy for literature revision. There, I’ve said it. The problem I have with it is that a quotation can only get you so far with exploration of a text. In fact, it stops the flow of thought and ideas. Students mould the thinking to the quotation rather than the quotation to the thinking. 

Over the years, I have seen quotations, plot (I take no prisoners on this one) and context become the juggernauts of revision. Students feel confident if they know some quotations, they know the plot and they can throw in some contextual facts into an essay. In fact, they have become the markers for revision. But, this is where the rub comes, they generate a level of false confidence. They give the appearance of knowing the text well, when that isn’t the case. 

Revision in English has become very knowledge led. But, the knowledge is limited to quite a narrow field. The knowledge of quotations. The knowledge of plot. The knowledge of context. If we are honest, these are the easiest bits of knowledge related to our subject. They are the things we can easily teach, text, and repeat in lessons. This ‘easy’ knowledge spills into how students revise. They revise these ‘easy’ knowledge elements and because they are more concrete than other types of knowledge there’s a sense of accomplishment. Students feel a sense of achievement in a largely abstract subject because they have learnt something concrete. Teachers feel a sense of accomplishment because they have taught something tangible and concrete - and easily measurable. 

There is some value in learning quotations, plot and context, but in the English classroom these should not be the drivers. Sadly, they are, which in turn converts to the idea that in English, all you need to revise is quotations, plot details and contextual facts. They are foundational things rather than exploratory and cumulative things. If you don’t believe me, then check out the examiner’s reports. I have yet to see one that says that students need to learn quotations. 

The knowledge of ideas. The knowledge of concepts. The knowledge of the writers’ feelings and thoughts. These are generally left behind with this concrete knowledge revision focus. We don’t see revision built around these. The complexity of the subject is the main reason. The plurality of ideas means that you cannot easily mark these sorts of things. You cannot easily tick or cross them. You cannot boil them down to a quick true or false task. You cannot summarise them easily. We don’t factor this complexity into revision and so revision doesn’t focus on the complex. Yet, what we expect students to do is get these complex ideas naturally armed with quotations, plot details and contextual knowledge. 

For this reason, I’ve been playing around with revision with our Year 11s. They are preparing for their first mock in November and I thought I’d explore different ways to build and develop a level of complexity in the revision. So, each Friday, we set the first ten minutes on answering these questions about a character studied. Not a quotation really in sight. 

I wanted them to think big and exploratory but also think like they would under exam conditions. They aren’t writing in full sentences, but bullet points. Then, I reveal what I would reward on an online version of the document.  The idea is to score as many points as you can.

Interestingly, students throw out ideas. I’ve used fatherly, is that ‘parent-like’? If they have an idea that I haven’t included, then I add it and add a score to it. This week I gave one idea 5 marks, because it was so good. The idea that the Friar links to the theme of rebellion. Cue more students trying to outdo that 5 marks. 

What I noticed was a real engagement with ideas and characters. Exploration and ideas were at the heart of the revision. It wasn’t just knowledge recalling, but idea forming… and exploring. It is quite easy to do but the key thing is showing a hierarchy of ideas. That’s where we can help make something abstract seem concrete. The categorising of some words or ideas being better is often something we say but don’t actively work on in lessons. Yes, some words are better to describe a character than others. Some words are precise and some words are general when describing things. 

The texts are massive banks of quotations. Seeing texts as disjointed entities is the problem here. Our obsession on quotations is warping how students interpret texts. They are thinking around the quotations and not thinking around the text. We need to reassert that distinction in lessons. A student that can think around a text writes the best essays.   

Ideas are the interesting things in English and we have a duty to make sure that our subject isn’t all quotations and extracts. If we are not careful, students are interpreting the subject as being all about the quotes and not the ideas. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris 

Putting on those context spectacles

Context is such a tricky aspect of English teaching. Too much emphasis on context causes students to offload spurious facts and details. Too little emphasis on context and students make random statements and lots of misconceptions. How many times have we seen students proclaim that ‘all’ Victorians felt or thought something? The idea that society is just one collective thought and feeling is slightly chilling.   

I don’t deny that contextual knowledge is useful and helps to frame understanding, but its problem in English usually stems from the concrete nature of things. If we are thinking of knowledge in English, then the easiest knowledge students can secure is knowledge around context. The problem for English is that a lot of English is forming inferences. The key inferences we ask of students in English relate to three areas usually: 

• Inferences around the writer’s intent;

• Inferences around the reader’s reaction; 

• Inferences around the characters in the texts. 

Yes, you do need a lot of knowledge to form those inferences, but the thinking isn’t quite ‘concrete’. There’s a lot of supposition, guessing, and relating to past knowledge. A lot of the knowledge surrounding this stems from experience rather than direct teaching. This reminds me of a book I read and in it the character reacted the same way.  Contextual knowledge often sounds good in the students head but doesn’t relate to the inferences needed in most English essays, inferring the writer’s intent, the reader’s reaction or the character’s thoughts and feelings. That’s why we get knowledge dumps in essays. 

The other alternative has been to focus on the text as the source of contextual information. The text is simply a product of its time. This tends to be the way the exam board prefers, but it doesn’t make things so easy. If students are not used to exploring the text as a product of its time, then they don’t see it as that. Put any old show or film before a student and they’ll notice the dated effects, fashion, technology  or language. They don’t really explore the people and how attitudes towards gender or class have changed. Exhibit A: they all remember the word ‘squiffy’ in ‘An Inspector Calls’. Astute students can spot the aspects that reflect the time, but that’s a minority. 

I personally think there is a balance to be had. Students need some knowledge, but not too much and certainly not knowledge that is going to over complicate and problematise understanding. What do I mean by knowledge that problematises understanding? Take, for example, Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Often, students are informed about the contextual history surrounding homosexuality in the Victorian age. This then, for some students, warps their understanding of the text. Instead of it being one possible interpretation of the text, it becomes the glue that links all ideas together. We can do more damage with some pieces of knowledge for some students. I think there should be a greater discussion of problematic knowledge in the same way we talk about misconceptions. They have the power to override all thoughts. 

It is the relationship that this contextual knowledge has with the writer and the text that needs to be at the forefront of the teaching. And, we need to work on making the writer a person and a concrete aspect. More concrete than the knowledge related to context. 

So, how, in theory, do I introduce context and make the writer seem concrete when discussing texts? 

Step 1 - The basics 

Firstly, I get students to watch a video as homework. I ask them to watch it before reading the text. I inform the class that I am going to test them on what they learn from the video. 

An Inspector Calls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fXw8lWWtlA

A Christmas Carol 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xRonangfz0&list=PLQTtyDJWDJDZns579hi1OGlYtktiFwstn&index=6

Then, I start the next lesson with a test. The link is below.  https://www.dropbox.com/s/mehkq1sxgncziiq/11%20Homework%20Questions%20to%20Context%20Video.docx?dl=0

This document is used repeatedly over the course of GCSEs. It forms revision and works as a constant reminder of key threads in the story. Initially, we throw the first copy away as students get quite a few wrong on the first go. The next time we do it, about a week later, I get them to make it neat as it will be the one that stays in their books. 

I start with this approach rather than use lots of exploratory texts, because students need a grounding of knowledge in the first instance. Whilst I think it is lovely and nice to show a few texts related to the period, it is rather ‘pin the tail on the donkey’. I could spend a lesson exploring hoping students would pick up attitudes towards class or I could tell them that attitudes towards class was an issue and then get them to explore how that idea is developed, explored in a painting or text. 

Step 2 - building the writer 

Unless you routinely get students to salute and bow to an image of the writer, the writer is a ghostly presence in the room. Some can see him/her. Others cannot. English teachers need to help students form a construction in their heads of the writer. They need a construction of the writer that makes them seem like a real person. Someone with an active presence in the text and the lesson. We are reading that writer’s manifesto. 

To construct that writer, I use the context sheet. If this was the world you were growing up in, what would you think? What would you want? What would you do in your writing to make society change? 

From this, we are able to construct ‘a construct’ of the writer. Of course, we are making inferences. 

Dickens was… 

• Protective of children and saw children as losing their childhood 

• Lost his childhood and so didn’t want others to lose theirs 

• Angry that there were very few options for the poor 

• Felt that the government wasn’t doing enough to help the weakest 

• Conscious of how money affected society 

• Felt that money controlled all aspects of our lives 

• Angry that the rich were profiteering from the poor 

• Interested in politics and read government reports 

• Aware of how easy and quickly someone could become poor 

• Aware of how people are determined to stay rich

From this, we had constructed an idea of this person. Students had an idea of who Dickens was as a person. They had this mantra for the book: 

Dickens thought Britain was broken and saw that his book could be the message to fix it. 

It became the default response when reading the text.  

Why does Dickens make the setting cold and foggy? Because Britain was broken, Dickens wanted to suggest how cold society was. The fog symbolises how they couldn’t see the problem and so there was no sense of things improving.  

By securing an initial understanding of the writer, we have something to frame ideas around. Therefore, their inferences developed and extended throughout the reading of the text. They’d start understanding that Dickens cared for the poor, but notice how he wasn’t really against the rich. But, what they had was a starting point to build inferences around the writer’s intent, which they can use to build and create their own. If students have knowledge of the primary intent, then they can explore secondary intentions. 

We spend so much time on character construction that we fail to address the biggest thing we want students to talk about - the writer. 

Step 3 - exploring the text 

Now that we have some threads to work with, I return back to this sheet and the construct of the writer routinely when looking at the text. They have a compass to guide their thinking and to work with. We put a lot of stock on their memory, but whilst reading a text we need to keep working on building connections. After reading a section, I will get students to link to the context or construct somehow. Or, I will start the reading with the idea from the construct: We know Dickens was political and supportive of the poor so what is he trying to do in this section? Politically? Socially? 

We talk about the writer as a person we are familiar with. As if he has just stepped out of the classroom and we are talking on his behalf. There is a presence in discussion. He isn’t an afterthought, which the teacher has to keep returning to when analysing the text. He is a fully rounded person to them. 

How we use knowledge is important in English. However, I think we need to use it carefully. Knowledge can build more knowledge, but we need to think more about how that knowledge builds. We need to work on demystifying the writer and we need to help students to form and create inferences on their thoughts, feelings, ideas and perspective. The biggest problem students have is talking about the writer’s intent. That’s because they have no concept of writers as real people. Let’s start helping students to see writers as real people, even if they might have been dead for a few years. Inference works on knowledge and we have to work on the two aspects in lessons.

Thanks for reading,  

Xris 

Let’s talk about effect, baby!

The relationship people have with a text is a really fruitful one for English lessons, yet it is an area that students struggle to articulate in their writing. They can easily spot a linguistic device. They can easily chuck in a quotation or two. They can easily spout off about the historical background to the text. Yet, when it comes to discussing texts, students are pretty bad when explaining their relationship with a text and ultimately its impact on them. We get ‘the reader reads on’ or ‘it stands out’ as a default. 

We’ve lost that loving feeling…when it comes to texts. And, probably, more importantly, we’ve lost that hating feeling. There’s a tricky thing in the English classroom. We are there to promote literature, but we are not car salesmen. This ‘Pride and Prejudice’ is a beaut. Reads like a dream. Nought to page 70 in an hour. Love it.  What I loved about literature was that I could have an opinion and I could talk about that opinion. But, my opinion could be positive and negative. In fact, where I enjoyed it most was when I was critical. Texts are not sacrosanct. They invite us to think, imagine and feel. I am forever moaning how I cannot stand Tiny Tim, Romeo and the entire cast of ‘An Inspector Calls’ in lessons. I show them how to engage emotionally with texts. They can hate and love different bits. That’s what grounds students to a text. 

Recently, I have been working on helping students to mine their emotions when talking about a text and exploring how it impacts them. With my work, I have noticed several points when it comes to discussing how a text affects a person. 

# Students struggle to match a word to a feeling. 

# Students don’t ‘see’ the effect immediately when reading a text.  

# Students simplify or condense the experience to a word or a bitesize phrase. 

# Students make no connection to the writer’s intent. 

I hate that bloody emotion wheel that is trotted out every so often by teachers. For me it is the equivalent of pin the tail on the donkey or a Year 7 let loose with a thesaurus for the first time. Pow - you’d got a sentence which looks like it is written in the English language, but doesn’t make one bit of sense. The emotion wheel overcomplicates emotions to teenagers who are in that stage of life where they are trying to understand their own emotions and feelings. If you plonked the emotion wheel in front of me now, I couldn’t tell you what I am feeling. I might be able to do that later, but I am in the eye of the storm at that moment. It is hard to articulate feelings and even harder when you have a bazillion options to pick. 

[1]  Positive or Negative?

A common question I ask in lessons is ‘positive or negative?’. Students never stumble over an answer for it. We’ve just read this description about Scrooge - positive or negative?  For me this is much better than a Yodaish question like ‘Feelings, what are you experiencing?’. Instead of having to search your brain for a word and then match that word with feeling experienced, they work on a simple option. Identifying if it is positive or negative then helps with the words they can use to define the feeling, but it starts with a concrete starting point. 

Positive  - warm - magical - special 

Feelings are hard to articulate and we have to acknowledge that in the way we teach things. Use emotion wheels like you do a thesaurus. Sparingly. Cautiously.  

[2] Dehumanising or Humanising?

 

I have just taught A Christmas Carol around the concept, and lens, of dehumanising and humanising. Throughout the reading of the text, we’ve explored whether Dickens is dehumanising or humanising an aspect, which is a bit of speciality of Dickens. 

We explored how Scrooge is initially dehumanised in his opening description, yet by the end of Stave 1 Dickens has done quite a bit to humanise him. We explored how the poor were humanised in the Cratchits and dehumanised in Mrs Dilbur.  

Underpinning all this is the reason why. Dickens wanted the rich and poor to live symbiotically. Dickens needed the rich, the buyers of his novella, to see the poor as worthy of their respect. Dickens didn’t want to insult the rich and so throughout the book there is a movement to humanise the rich and the poor. 

Having a clear dichotomy helped to build understanding of the effect for students but also a 

greater level of cohesion with the writer’s intent. They knew why Dickens dehumanised aspects and what he hoped to do by doing that. Therefore, they were able to articulate the effect and intent in their writing. We now have an angle to look at other texts. 

This works with non-fiction texts and using ‘personalise and depersonalise’. 

[3] Magical

There isn’t enough teaching of specific effects. Sometimes, you cannot rely on two opposing feelings. Magical and not magical? Therefore, I feel there is a need to explore a particular effect. With ‘A Christmas Carol’ we explored the magical effect. How does Dickens create a sense of magic in ‘A Christmas Carol’? 

There’s a magical glow on certain characters like Fred and Belle. They are so magical they sparkle. Why does Dickens make them magical? Why are the Ghost of Christmas Past and Ghost of Christmas Present twinkling too? Once you put the effect at the front of the discussion it raises some interesting ideas. The magical things are beautiful. 

But, there’s a throughline with effects. A narrative we can build when we talk about effects. When Rosabel sits on the bus and looks out at the sparkling and twinkling shops she sees, we can build that connection. How did Dickens create a sense of magic? How does the writer do it here? 

Build a bank of effects. Teach students specific effects and help them to spot effects. Good examples to use are inferior, superior and boredom. 

 

[4] Structure

Like emotion wheels, I cannot stand tension graphs. They look pretty and take up lesson time, but they rarely support learning. Instead, we should be looking at how our feelings change across the course of the text and not ‘ooh things are tense now and they are going to get tense’. Do we grow to like a character? 

[1] What’s our first impression of the character? 

[2] When did our impression of the character change? 

[3 ]What is our last impression of the character? 

Or, even simpler. 

Do we like them? 

Do we still like them? 

Do we like them after everything has happened? 

The feelings across the text are important. Take Scrooge in ‘A Christmas Carol’. We are made to dislike them at the start, yet as the story progresses we see him become likeable. Why does Dickens make a rich man likeable? 

The structure around liking a character is really important in texts. It happens again and again. Once students can see that our relationship towards a character changes they can then start interrogating how that warmth is created. Look at how we grow to like Sheila in ‘An Inspector Calls’ and at the same time grow to dislike practically every other character in the play. 

Talk about liking characters and how the writer makes us like or dislike them. This isn’t solely related to the main characters. Shakespeare is great for this. Look at what he does with the Nurse and Mercutio in ‘Romeo and Juliet’. 

[5] Complexity and Plurality

I can be both happy and sad at the same time. Students need to understand that you can often have two opposing feelings at the same time. A character can be feeling inferior in one way and superior in another. 

Rosabel on her bus is both hopeful and hopeless. Emotions can contradict one another and that’s fine. 

I find that focusing on one effect and then introducing a second, seemingly contrasting one, afterwards helps.  

Emotions are complex things and we, as adults, need to help students to articulate, read and explain them. The teenage and adult me struggled to manage my emotions. We experience so many emotions in a day that it becomes hard to see the wood for the trees. Let’s provide a bit more clarity.

Thanks for reading, 

Xris   

What a teacher wants, what a writer needs

Like others, I have been working on getting students to balance ideas, discussion on language choices and the writer’s message or intent. For some, this comes easily and for others no so. The one thing that is quite elusive, for most, is the writer’s intent.  

A lot of the time, when we are talking about intent, we use stock statements. Dickens was challenging the status quo. Shakespeare is highlighting the different types if love. Those statements are handy and helpful in terms of joining the dots. But, I find the jump to the end point and conclusion. We force feed students these writer’s messages. We teach texts around these messages. We even punctuate lessons with socialism and equality when discussing texts like ‘An Inspector Calls’. We force this end point in terms of discussing the writer’s intent. We even add words around this to help jumpstart the process. The writer is either challenging, highlighting, questioning, or some other suitable verb, the idea.  We might even give them little titbits like ‘inequality’, ‘differences’ or ‘the relationship between x and y’ to help them form sentences that sound impressive but at the same time they are hollow and meaningless.

Student become obsessed with this kind of benign writer’s intent statements. They pepper their writing with them and rarely move beyond the superficial level of understanding. We see this when they struggled with the GCSE English Language papers. Exam papers where the focus is clearly on the intent. Yes, it does look at meaning and choices, but largely it is about the writer’s intent. Paper 2 has even got the word ‘perspectives’ in its title. Umm. That just means the writer’s intent. It’s just dressed up in a fancy word.  This where the problem lies. Because we have a simplistic approach to intent with literature, we then have this process fed across other elements. That’s why we get crazy statements from students when they look at the texts. The writer presents the boat in the way he does because he wants to challenge the inequality in society and the patriarchal superiority of the existing social structures. It is a boat. A thing that sits in the water. A big boaty thing. The poor thing just wants to be a boat. And play like the other boats in the wild.

The problem is counterfeit intellectualism. We saw something similar with wow words and vocabulary. They were the trappings of good writing, but that’s all they were…trappings. The idea that showing a few clever words and ideas in a paragraph is the instant key to successful writing. Added to this is the notion that there’s a set structure or even a check list that all Grade 9 students to is damaging to what we teach and how we teach it. We see this counterfeit intellectualism played again and again in English and I think it is largely damaging. Look at the obscure use of terminology in analysis. Some, if we are honest, that didn’t even appear in any of our undergraduate courses. There is a good argument for teaching some of these techniques, but it is the way that they are used that I have a problem with. I’d rather have a student who can tell me a detailed why Shakespeare did something rather than the student who can fit catharsis, hamartia, hubris, anagnorisis and peripeteia in one sentence and spell it correctly. For me it is the depth of understanding and I think we have to challenge this counterfeit intellectualism for what it is. Counterfeit intellectualism is about quick fixes, easy answers, quickly recalled things and shiny bauble things that looks good to a complete stranger. The more the better with counterfeit intellectualism.

This counterfeit intellectualism has a drawback. Engagement. We are not teaching students to engage with a writer’s ideas. We are not allowing that level of depth to grow naturally and in an explorative way. Students need to engage with texts on a number of levels and even more importantly on a personal level. I don’t think the new (can I still call them new?) GCSE have created the situation, but I think people have created this situation around the new GCSE. They’ve created elements of counterfeit intellectualism around what they perceive the examiner wants to see.

A really good answer sings in the ears of a teacher or examiner. There is a level of subtly and depth that you cannot mimic, copy or even bottle up. The melody comes from years of teaching and not just a simple ingredient added to the mix.  

Right, back to the writer’s intent. We have over complicated the writer’s intent to such an extend it is hard for students to engage in texts. That’s why this term I have, in my COVID regulation lessons, been focusing on building and securing my Year 10s knowledge and skills with poetry. Two simple questions have really helped and supported students when looking at the texts:

What does the writer want?

What does the writer need the reader to think / feel /question?  

They are rubbish questions, Chris! My ferret can produce much better questions than that when it sits on my laptop and does a dance blindfolded whilst listening to the Vengaboys!

In fact, I be bold to say that technical students only need the words ‘want’ and ‘need’. Why?

‘Want’ is a pure and simple way of addressing the writer’s purpose. It is a way of putting it simply to the students. What does the writer want? Dickens wants the poor and rich to work together.

‘Need’ is a something that students get easily. If you want something, you need something else to happen for this to occur. Dickens wants the poor and rich to work together so he needs the reader to understand that world where the rich and poor work together is much better than a world with them working against each other.

‘Need’ can incorporate feelings or thoughts or even questions. Dickens wants the public to understand the difficulties the poor face so he needs them to care for Oliver Twist and feel genuine concern for his plight.

I have been using ‘want’ and ‘need’ with my Year 10s and it has made a marked difference in how they explain poetry. Instead of trying to recall what the bloke at the front of the class, they are now forming more of their own ideas about the texts. They are talking about what Tennyson wants and want he needs the reader to think or feel. They have a much better understanding of the writer than they have done before. Plus, they are writing much better about it by just using the words ‘want’ and ‘need’. The interrogation of the want and needs allows for the depth, but they have a way in to exploring the writer’s intent without the need of those silly triplets (to argue, to advise, blah, blah) or prepared comments from the statement bank.

If we can get students to think about the want and needs in literature texts, then when it comes to non-fiction and boats they can discuss the writer’s purpose easily. They can say the writer presents the boat in the way because he wants to show how prepared they were as he needs the reader to understand they were delusional and overly confident.  The same applies to Paper 1 and the creative writer. The writer starts the opening this way because she wants… and so she needs the reader to feel…

So, let’s work on depth in English by working on how students interact with texts. Let’s make them interact with them. Let’s make them connect with them. After all, we all have wants and needs. Seeing a text from a want and a need perspective, makes the texts relatable. Students have wants and needs too. Those wants and needs unite us.

Thanks for reading,

Xris

Painting the writer's presentation of a character clearly

At the moment, I am thinking, like most of us, on how we can use KS3 to empower students at KS4. On this area, I thought I’d share something I did in a lesson this week and its interesting results.

This term, I am exploring the presentation of characters in ‘Treasure Island’ with Year 7s and we were looking at how Robert Louis Stevenson presents Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins. Usually, I provide students with a range of quotations and we analyse those in detail. Or, I get students to select appropriate quotes. This time, I added an extra stage.

There is often a large leap between an idea and a precise language point. Some students can infer an idea from one simple word and others need so much guidance that I may as well write the answer myself, as I have given the point to them and I am praising them for repeating my idea. This gulf between ideas and language points is huge. It is often a struggle for a student to make a decent idea and find the appropriate language point. The melding of idea and language is a problem.   

During one lesson, we looked at the idea of how writers present characters in stories. I simply spelled out that writers use the following to present characters:

Actions

Relationships

Decisions

Dialogue

Of course, there’s clothes too but there is only really the opening, where clothes are used to show us a character’s personality.

So, with this, I changed my questioning. Instead of asking students to find a quote where Stevenson shows us how brave and mature he’s become, I asked question about how does Stevenson present Jim’s maturity and bravery. At this point students, were able to pinpoint, his actions and one specific decision.

As a group, we continued this with looking at different strands of how Jim and Long John Silver are presented in the book. The emphasis, however, was on these four elements: actions, relationships, decisions and dialogue. It gave students quite a concrete starting point for their analysis and helped them with the next phase: drilling down into the language.

If it is an action, I need to look at the verbs or the way the action is described.

If it is a decision, I need to explore the choice and the consequences of the choice.

If it is the dialogue, I need to explore the tone, level of politeness/formality or words used in the speech.

If it is relationships, I need to find moments in the story what symbolise the relationship.  

What this did for me was helped to develop the logical thinking of analysis? The knowledge of the specific approaches to presentation helped students to see things rather than rely on the old see what jumps out at you.

From a lesson perspective, I wrote on the board the following headings.

Jim is …                                 Stevenson uses…..                                          Because….

And, students filled out the table easily and quickly. Then, when I was able to get students to write paragraphs about the characters, they were able to structure their analysis around the key idea. A student focusing on a decision would then introduce the decision at the start of their point and then explore the decision instead of use benign sentence starters forcing students to look at word regardless of the fact that the way the writer is presenting a character is something embedded in the writing and not easily amounted to one word.

I think the GCSEs now are really helping to make us see that students need a background in understanding the complexities and simplicities of storytelling. We, as English teachers, need to spell out the basics of storytelling and not just graphs to show where a climax or a resolution is. We need to teach students that writers have these tools in their arsenals.

Let’s take ‘A Christmas Carol’. Do we really focus on the decisions made by Scrooge throughout the story? We probably emphasise the way he is presented at the start and end, but do we look at the decisions he makes. In fact, do we list the decisions he makes or has to make? Do we even explore the decisions?

Here’s a few decisions:

The decision to give the Bob Christmas Day off without pay.

The decision to not attend Fred’s house at Christmas.

The decision to not give money to charity.

The decision not to paint Marley’s name out.      

Each and every decision helps us understand the character more.  I’ll be honest: I have tended to focus dialogue and relationships when talking about presentation of a character. Oh and clothes is a given. But, do we look closer enough at the decision making of characters. Do we place emphasis on them and I don’t mean an impromptu drama lesson with a decision alley. In fact, I am sure decision alley was a torture device employed by several dictators in the past. A love drama, but my love does not spill out to lining students in a line and getting them to spout brain dibblings. It’s your decision to make. Feel free to judge me on my decision not to use it in my teaching.

The decision not to paint Marley’s name out.      

A decision that on face value could look like laziness or penny pinching. Or a decision that could indicate an inability to change. A sign that points to the notion that Scrooge doesn’t like change and doesn’t want to change. This is ‘signposted’ at the start of the story to indicate the battle we are going to have convincing Scrooge of changing his ways. If he can’t be bothered to change a sign, then how will he change his mind, when that is free?  

What was the decision? To paint or not to paint - that is the question? What if he does paint out the sign? It would mean he has visual reminder of his loneliness. It is just Scrooge. No, and Marley. The sign would be a reminder that he is on his own. It could also be the chink in his armour. For all the negativity surrounding him, this could be the one glimpse of hope.  Maybe he doesn’t want to be lonely. Maybe that sign is the symbol he wants to be part of something. He wants connection. He isn’t totally on his own. Like most of us, he just doesn’t know how to change himself for the better.

Then, we can look at when that decision took place. Seven years ago, presumably. A decision that hasn’t changed in seven years. That then highlights the rigid nature of his decision. He’s made a decision and he doesn’t go back on it. Let’s assume that in those seven years he has been asked by numerous people or has been reminded about it, yet still he hasn’t changed.

Decisions are everywhere in the texts we study and they are a choice made by the writer. To give a character a decision, helps us to understand a character. What decisions did Eric make prior to ‘An Inspector Calls’? What decisions does Juliet make in ‘Romeo and Juliet’?

If students can understand, learn and recall that characters are presented in a number of ways in Year 7 and remind them of this annually, then we will have students that understand better the way writers present characters in a range of texts. The group I was teaching had a detailed discussion about the decision making of Jim Hawkins towards the end of the novel and it was fruitful, meaningful and detailed. Giving students these four words helped the student to explore the text more than they would have done without them.

Thanks for reading,

Xris

Keep calm and keep teaching ideas (A01)

Teaching is a strange thing and it is hard to define what makes things stick in a student’s head when other ideas leave the brain as quickly as someone drinking Sambuca shots - or the even faster way that vomit leaves the body after drinking all of those Sambuca shots.  What do we do with those ideas that really stick?

You can always guarantee that there is one student who tries to crowbar something you taught them once into everything they study. There are students who will direct every lesson discussion to oxymorons or relate everything studied to pathetic fallacy. It is like they cannot let go of that idea. You might be debating Brexit and still the student would pipe up and describe the Brexit as an oxymoron and cite that the change in weather is clearly pathetic fallacy suggesting out changeable nature.

It just so happened that I had one student who obsessed on an idea I had taught them. But, the idea carried on into every single text we taught at GCSE with quite a lot of success. She had developed an interpretation to all of the texts using this idea.

So, what was the seed? Well, the seed was the stiff upper lip. As a class, we were exploring Wilfred Owen’s ‘Exposure’ and I was exploring how the way soldiers were supposed to be stoic and not let events affect them emotionally and mentally. We were discussing the title and how it referred to the soldier’s exposure to the elements, but also the exposing of the reality of fighting in war, revealing what is behind the stiff upper lip. We explored as a class how the stiff upper lip has ingrained itself in our culture and how we compare with other countries. This in turn led to a discussion of Facebook and how we are more open to spill our emotions and feelings to others and how this contrasts to the Victorian attitude that was still ingrained in the soldiers fighting in WW1. We ended the lesson by exploring the significance of the war poets: they weren’t just attacking war, but attacking how society approaches dealing with things. They challenged and attacked the lies.

The lesson ended and so had, I thought, the idea. Then, we started to look at ‘A Christmas Carol’ and within the first lesson a student made a link to Scrooge and the stiff upper lip. She made the point that the imagery associated with Scrooge embodies the Victorian attitude to emotion: hard, sharp, closed and cold. The ‘solitary as an oyster’ got some battering by the symbolism bus too. The oyster’s shells are like the lips of the Victorian person: closed and hard to open. The student then went on to explore the significance of the ending. The cold Scrooge thaws and becomes a warmer, emotional character man. He transforms from businessman to friend. Work represents the place where we see the stiff upper lip regularly. The work and the money is more important than feelings and emotions. That’s why Dickens juxtaposes Scrooge’s business with the home of the Cratchits. Scrooge highlights what happens when we are stoical all the time. It isolates us. It makes us miserable. In fact, the whole story is about making Scrooge’s lips do something.     

We love a connection in English and this connection of ideas between ‘Exposure’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’ was incredibly fruitful. But, we didn’t stop there. The student would pipe up during the teaching of these texts:

The Charge of the Light Brigade  - typifies the stiff upper lip

Remains – the damaging effect of the stiff upper lip on us and how it is still a way of thinking today

War Photographer – how we struggle to feel emotions for others because of our obsession on our own lives

Poppies – how it is more acceptable for a woman to express emotion

Kamikaze – how stoicism is part of other cultures

Bayonet Charge -  how we aren’t certain what to think and feel because we just follow orders or the common majority

London – the blind acceptance of a way of thinking

Ozymandias – how the ability to empathise and connect with people caused self-destruction

My Last Duchess – the fear of looking bad and presenting positive outlook on something bad

But, it wouldn’t stop there. When reading ‘Rosabel’ paper, the student would highlight how Rosabel’s behaviour at the start of the extract reflects her following the stiff upper lip attitude. Her journey on the bus with people reflects the common mind-set of the population. KBO. Yet, her desire to throw the hat at the red-haired woman is about her stiff upper lip wobbling. Her emotions are coming to the surface. She can’t repress what she is feeling any more.

We’d then got to ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and then there it was again. The way the young people behave in the play reflect that the stiff upper lip is something that is learnt and we are conditioned to think that way. The young people are so spontaneous and forthcoming with their emotions – they gush over everything. This compares to the adults who tend to be a bit measured with their emotion. In fact, Lady Montague is so British she dies off stage. Talk about stiff upper lip. Every part of her body becomes stiff and she politely does it off stage. She doesn’t show emotion. Lady Capulet is another example of this. The men are slightly more different, suggesting that men could show emotion but women couldn’t.

Finally, we got on to ‘An Inspector Calls’. A play which is a whole metaphor for the stiff upper lip. It is telling that the play is set in the dining room. A place that is private and not visible. They can show their secrets, lies, true feelings and thoughts in that room, but they cannot show them outside the house. They must put on a façade that everything is good – great – superb. They must show a stiff upper lip and present a façade to the rest of the world. It is interesting to note that the most emotional characters in the play are Eric and Shelia. Two of the youngest characters. In fact, Eric is struggling to keep the façade up he is resorting to alcohol (Remains).  A connection with ‘Romeo and Juliet’. Young people struggle to be stoical, suggesting age and experience teaches people to control emotions, yet this is seen as a negative in the texts.

Through serendipity we discovered a thread through the majority of texts and, more interestingly, we had a readymade interpretation of the texts. Yes, there is a danger of a student crowbarring the idea in every text, but this made quite an interesting starting point when discussing ideas about the text. There are obvious themes across the GCSE texts we study, but what are the concepts that would help lift up their understanding of the texts. Some are obvious like ‘The American Dream’ for American texts but maybe there are some that we are not so clear and explicit when teaching a text. The stiff upper lip was just something I thought that would be a one lesson idea. However, it spiralled and thanks to a plucky student it kept coming back. It makes me think what concepts that aren’t so obvious that would help a student’s understanding of a text.  

I give it 5 minutes before the student mentions the stiff upper lip in a Year 11 lesson this week.

Thanks for reading,

Xris