What have the Maths Department ever done for English?

This week, I had the pleasure of covering a Maths lesson period 5 on Friday.

With my pile of mocking marking under my arm, I arrived to find the cover work on the desk. Hoping for an hour’s worth of marking, I instructed students to complete the work from the sheets provided. Then, I took it upon myself to have a go at the task. I was hooked. As a result of this, I nabbed a visualiser from another classroom and started to teach the lesson on increasing and decreasing numbers with percentages.  Not one single mock question was marked. Instead, I challenged the class to beat me in answering the questions and used the visualiser to feedback the answers. 


I don’t deny it, but I am envious of Maths. They had one sheet and it covered a whole lesson and it contained numerous examples of practice and numerous chances to spot errors and clarify misunderstandings. I am slightly envious of how easy and systematic it was. I am a big, big, big fan of systems and having an approach that is used consistently in subjects. If you have some aspects of English lessons systematic, it gives you a whole big space of room in lessons to be creativity and unsystematic. Have a system for spellings, vocabulary, knowledge learning and you can have a whole lesson spent being creative with ideas or stories.


Personally, I think being systematic in English lessons is like swear word. Any desire to be systematic is beaten down with a poet’s silk cravat or an author’s frilly bonnet. It usually takes about four seconds maximum for the opposition to refer to Gradgrind and start quoting him to you. Then, tears form in their misty eyes as they start emoting and thinking of the poor ‘ickle children, bless their hearts, who don’t have any enjoyment in their lives. That one lesson where the teacher lets them have boiled sweet to describe something will be the lesson that will transform their lives far more, in their misty tearful eyes, than any systematic approach to learning. The big bad meany teacher is stealing all the funny wunny from the, bless their hearts, poor ‘ickle children.’ 


Students love Maths. They love it for many reasons and I can see why as I go through Friday’s cover lesson. Mainly, it is the systematic approach to work.



Task  1: Increase the number by 10%.

Students had 15 numbers and they had to increase the number by 10%.  

The students first had to work out what ten percent of the figure was and then added it.

This was mirrored in the next two tasks.



Task 2: Decrease the number by 10%



Task 3: Increase the number by 5%, 15% or 20%.



As a teacher, I timed them and we feedback the answers after the allocated time.



From an English position, I found the whole process really interesting, because I was doing it with the students. It was interesting because I was watching the development of a system. After fifteen goes the students had trained themselves with an approach to solving the problem. Usually, when we get students to do something like this in English we usually get them to do a maximum of ten. I’d say we rarely go for more than ten because it seems like too much. Here I could see why it is so important that a student does a large number of attempts otherwise how do you embed it. I have hundreds of texts books for English and none of them make students go beyond five or ten questions on one subject. You see – it is ingrained in our thinking. The ‘ickle child, bless their hearts, can’t cope in English with ten of those pesky questions. Make it five, God bless them.



By number fifteen you have the pattern formed in your head. By number fourteen, I knew what to do and I was securing my knowledge of the system for getting the answer. Task 2 was interesting because it is a slight change in the system. Instead of increasing we are decreasing. Interestingly, students made a mistake. They continued to increase instead of decrease. Once they discovered this mistake they could easily rectify it. However, it showed that students made assumptions based on the pattern for Task 1. Then, they repeated the process fifteen times again, allowing them to build up the knowledge of how to decrease a number by ten percent. Both tasks were working on the same system but working on slight variations.



The final task added an extra layer of complexity by changing the percentage number which meant a further calculation. Therefore, they were repeating the same calculation from Task 1, but this time they had another step to do before they reached the answer.  



So, what is the relevance to English? I think we are missing out something huge in terms of teaching and it fits in with Direct Instruction in English. We don’t get students to practise enough in lessons. We, in my opinion, place too much emphasis on the explanation rather than the development of systems. Take commas. We’ll bring out the comma lesson occasionally to address a problem. The lesson will feature lots of explanation and a bit of practice. Then, with the next piece of writing we do with them we question our ability to teach as it seems the class have forgotten that lesson you did on commas that involved a boiled sweet. Simply we don’t do practice like Maths and that is our downfall. We view practice as boring. Boring for the students as they are doing the same thing again and again - bless their poor ‘ickle hearts. Boring for the teacher because they have got to mark the work. 


Practice isn’t a dirty word when it comes to creative writing but it is a filthy word when you place it anywhere near grammar and construction of sentences. People yawn when they refer to a SPAG lesson. It has been ingrained in our brains that it is devoid of fun, interest and excitement. We often apologise for the lesson, yet these lessons could be some of the biggest deal breakers for students. Look, you can have a boiled sweet if you do this work in the grammar lesson.


The Period 5 cover lesson on a Friday has made me review how I use practice in lessons and specifically from a grammar position. Therefore, I have created a resource, which will need a bit more polish, to help build this practice element in lessons. For fun, I have based it on commas and decided that students need to work on commas. They need to work on where to place commas in a sentence. The structure of the resource models the Maths one. You set the system up and students have to repeat the system fifteen times. Each task slightly modifies the original system. However, repeated practice is key. I have attached the resource here for people to see here. 


https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_Dfni6beeNMEZVaG7j4d7kBR9CBnS3wM/view?usp=sharing

Rather than spent time explaining, I am going to get students to do the task and then correct if they have it wrong. After all, these students will have had numerous explanations of how to use a comma. This is about learning through practice rather than through explanations. We want it to be an automatic process and this takes practice – something we don’t give enough time to, because it stifles creativity. Are we really developing the system? Are we committing a system to memory? 


We’ve all seen videos of the Mathematical gifted children who can do a billion sums a minute. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had something similar in English? A child who can quickly add a comma. I think we can, but first we need a massive overhaul of how we practise things in lessons. MFL and Maths are experts on this and I think English teachers need to visit their lessons to see what we can steal from them. And, umm, maybe save us some time with planning and marking. 


Thanks for reading,

Xris  

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

Death to sentence stems! Long live the sentence structures!

Before I start writing this blog, I need to thank Anne Williams and Kerry Pulleyn for allowing me to put these sentences on here. Plus, I need to thank all the other teachers who have added a sentence to this little project. This whole thing couldn’t have been done without their help. A big thank you from me!

Last year, I was inspired by Alan Peat and his great little book, ‘Writing Exciting Sentences’. He inspired me, and a lot of other people, with a very clear approach: teach students to write better by teaching explicit grammar structures and identifying different structures with a different name. I didn’t just blog about it once, but about several times. I was amazed at how much it transformed the writing of students for me. It gave some of my students the push above others in creativity and variety.

The problem with English is the misconception of what the subject is. Most people, outside education, think English teaching is simply about teaching about reading and writing skills. However, the more I teach, the more I realise it something more. For me at the moment, it is about teaching students to think. To solidify a thought. To develop an idea. To express a point of view. Aside, from the usual guff (necessary of course) of reminding students of proofreading, checking spelling and making work neat, I now ask students to show me their thinking in their writing. I want them to show me original thought and how clever they are. The autonomy of some aspects of teaching has meant that students are brilliant at repeating things parrot-fashion, but try to get them to come up with a thought of their own and it can be like searching for Wally in a party full of people dressed as  ‘Where’s Wally?’. It becomes hard to distinguish original thought with thoughts gained from others. For me, what makes an A* is somebody that has thought about something. In depth. In detail. Made their head hurts a bit with the thinking. And then a bit more.

The reason why I think David Didau’s ‘Slow Writing’ is so popular, and effective, is that it is based on the notion of crafting and thinking. When did writing become an autonomous process? Is technology to blame? Or, more importantly, when did we stop thinking when we write? This autonomy is at the heart of some aspects of literacy teaching. Yes, we want them to make some skills autonomous, like proofreading and making sure apostrophes are in the right place, but when did it become acceptable that all pieces of writing have AFOREST in them?

I was at a meeting for Heads of English this week. We were shown some examples from AQA of the writing questions on the Unit 1 exam paper – exciting stuff! Anyway, each one started with a rhetorical question. Yes, each one. Even the one with full marks. And the one with only a few marks. All of them blooming started with a rhetorical question. I was even tempted to start this blog with a rhetorical question; it is so infectious. But, where is the original thought? Where is the expression of a person’s ideas? It is writing like dot-to-dot. It makes ‘beige writing’. I want my students to be colourful. In fact, one student this week wrote my favourite opening to a question.


The question was a ultra-bland-exam-type question: write a persuasive magazine article persuading teenagers that eating healthy is important. 

He wrote: Young people are going to die.

I loved it because it was so simple but effective, and because it did not go anywhere near a rhetorical question. It showed me more thought in that one sentence than fifty questions put together. It was the right thing for doing the job at that moment.

Look at ‘sentence stems’. I like them. I use them. I teach around them, but they are quite limiting to the most able. They are limiting to the able as well. The writer shows…. The reader feels… The experiment shows… Will we ever progress to real thinking if we rely on these starting blocks of ideas? Don’t get me wrong: I think they are invaluable at times, but do we rely on them too much? Teaching other ways of expressing a thought is surely much better than a rigid form of writing? Look at an A* piece of writing and you will notice that they will use a range of structures in their writing and not just rely on the simple few obvious ones. They experiment and play around with the sentences. In fact, the only thing that is autonomous is their ability to vary and play around with ideas.      

So, what am I saying? Sorry – started with a rhetorical question: it is ‘really’ infectious. Sentence stems or openers should be lower down on our arsenal of tools to develop writing. The grammar structures we use should be paramount. The stems just help students to get going, but the sentence structures enable students to think and make concrete an idea or thought. I don’t want to be too negative about sentence stems, but they are the writing equivalent of a cloze exercise: writing by filling the gaps in. We want students to engage with the writing and the ideas. Filling the gaps is a nice starter, but it doesn’t have the meat and bones to develop things further.

Therefore, I am sharing the project with you to help other students think better in the classroom. The sentences below are from a variety of sources and they have been kindly been shared by other teachers. You can use them in a number of different ways

The sentences here can be taught explicitly as a starter or plenary. Or, the students could be given the sentence and they work out the structure on their own.

• Use as a poster for students to go to for inspiration.
• Print it out and stick on your desk and point to a sentence, when you want a student to include a particular structure.
• Print out and cut up sentences. Stick a sentence on a table and get students to move around a room and write a sentence at each table.  

We, Kerry, Anne and I, are aiming to create a resource for teachers to use when teaching writing in lessons. The teaching of sentence structure is often underrated by teachers and this document will hopefully address this issue.  We are searching for new and interesting sentences. As you find one, add it to our list. Variations on a theme are allowed.

Please feel free to add another one in the comments. Anne and Kerry will add some more sentences to their blogs at a later stage.  

Thanks for reading,

Xris

P.S. Please leave a sentence at the end.  

The Sentences

Comma sandwich : a sentence with an embedded clause (which is surrounded by commas).

The sun, which had been absent for days, shone steadily in the sky.

The more, more, more sentence

The more he worried, the more he felt uncomfortable, the more he wanted to leave the room.

The less, less, less sentence

The less I tried, the less I cared, the less I got.

Sentence, comma and list of verbs ending in –ing

The road unspooled on and on, rising, falling, rising, turning, falling.

A list of prepositions after a verb

I look outside, down, away, beneath, near the dazzling presents under the table

Comparative (-er), more, more sentence

Every day, Kitty felt smaller, more ugly, more useless.

Sentences with a semi-colon in the middle to connect two clauses.

Spider-Man was in trouble; he was surrounded by his enemies.

No but sentence

True, he had no calm, but she shattered whatever calm there was to look forward to in the future.

Three adjective ‘of’ sentence  

I felt full, full of food, full of bad television, full of incessant chat.

Colons to clarify

A strange hint of something filled his nostrils and made his stomach lurch: it was blood.

Two similes sentence

It could have been Esther’s, as black as jet, as dark as the night.

It’s hard to describe how I felt - like an object no longer of use, like a parcel packed up in string and brown paper.

Distance (closer, nearer, further) / More sentence

The further we went, the more anxious I felt.

The size, the (blank) sentence

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

The doubting sentence (end with an if clause)  

I had finished the essay, if the teacher was happy with it.  

The three verb sentence

The monster pushed, crashed, smashed its way through.  

Not, nor, nor sentences

Nobody, not the postman, nor the housekeeper, nor Jim himself knew how the letter had got onto the doormat.

Fortunately / Unfortunately paired sentences    

Unfortunately, the door was locked. Fortunately, there was a catflap just big enough for him to fit through.

Start with a prepositional (position word - under, by, near, beneath, over) phrase

Under the moon, the river snaked its way to the sea.  

Never did... ,than...  

Never did the sun go down with a brighter glory in the quiet corner in Soho, than one memorable evening when the Doctor and his daughter sat under the plane-tree together.

The writer’s aside sentence

The computer, as you know, is quite slow.

I think, to be honest, it will never work.

Two -ings at the start sentence

Raising a hand to my brow, shielding my eyes from the rain once more, I saw no monster.

So so sentence

There was one item, so small, so unrecognisable, it didn’t register.

Subject first sentence

Lamp posts and trees reared up at him, splintering his shins.

The Big Bad Because sentence

Because it was the last day of term, Martin felt relieved.

But none more than sentence

But none more than Tom would agree that smoking is bad for you.

Verb  -ed opening

Wracked with fear, Tommy crept slowly towards the door.

Scared for her life, Anna searched frantically for the key.

Whoever/ Whenever/ Whichever two of these...

Whoever had been at the scene, whenever they had been there, it was clear something very sinister had taken place.

x wasn’t/isn’t the word

Disgusting wasn’t the word. There were no words to describe what lay before her.

Riveting just isn’t the word. There’s nothing to say that can do this thing justice.

Adjectives at the start sentence

Cold and hungry, Martin waited for someone to take pity on him.

End loaded sentence - dramatic ending

After working every day of his life and saving lots of money for his retirement, Tom died suddenly.

Not only but also sentence

Not only was he cold, hungry and tired, but the chance of him being discovered would also increase.

The deliberation sentence

Sandwich, hot dog, salad - which would he choose?

‘It was’ semi colon ‘it was’ sentence

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.

Verb followed by detail sentence

He shrugged, heavy shouldered.

-ing clause before the main sentence

Having no choice about it, Chris decided to agree with her.

However after the first word sentence  

People, however, were watching gobsmacked

Second Conditional Sentence:  It’s still possible   If I were to......

If I were to win the lottery, I would buy a Lamborghini Gallardo.

Third Conditional Sentence :  Also known as the ‘Too late’ sentence   If I had.....  I would have.....

If I had left the house earlier, I would have been on time for registration

The ‘as if verb’ sentence

He pulled absently at some grass, as if searching for memories.

The as if and three verb sentence

It was as if the cold was pulling at Tansey, breaking her up, trying to take her away from them, back somewhere.

Three adjectives at the start sentence

Ruthless, dangerous, lethal, the animal leaps for its prey.

It was one of those, one of those when sentence

It was one of those days, one of those when the air was cold and crisp and the birds’ melodious singing pierced the air.

Almost, almost, when sentence

I was almost there, almost asleep, when I heard footsteps coming, then the sound of someone breathing close by.

One simile and three evers sentence

The silhouette standing on the hill, looking out, keeping watch like the North Star at night, ever present, ever caring, ever there.

Shakespearean I wish I was.... sentence  Would that I were....

Would that I were a glove upon that hand.

Repeat and develop ideas sentence

The teacher’s decision to set double homework was both surprising and distressing - surprising in that she had never set homework before, distressing in that it was to be completed in one day.

I did something twice sentence

I was born twice: first as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960;and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.

The Loose Sentence (an independent clause followed by a series of phrases)

It was a happy summer at the zoo, the zebras romping, the giraffes grazing, the elephants trumpeting, and the lure of a drippy popsicle on a hot day beckoning me to the snack bar.

The personification, 5 commas and 3 tos sentence:

Harsh white walls frown at the monotone uniformed prisoners, men with bleached faces and no eyes threaten, guns hoover, thunderously muted, waiting for someone to move, to think,

Start with a simile sentence

Like a ghost caught in a fan, he spun round and round on the roundabout.

Using dashes instead of brackets sentence

The roof - the straw thatch - was gone.

Or, and, or sentence

They flew in circles, or else there were many of them, and the whole group passed in and our of the light on their way to settle on a rooftop, or on some tree that asked to have its branches filled, at least until winter was as far away as it could be.

Without a, without a sentence

Without a how, without a why, Sid fell up towards the sky.