Teaching poetry at KS3 – why we need more chat in the classroom.

 When did written assessments become the sole way to mark a student’s understanding of a text, idea or concept? The sad thing is that in an attempt to develop students and praise the God of Progress, we have ditched some useful, handy, and relatively easy, ways to judge an assessment. Instead of getting students to explore texts in depth we are stuck on a pretty limited way of analysis.

Three years ago we ditched all written analysis of poetry at KS3. When students were writing essays about Shakespeare and essays about novels, it becomes tedious when you add another essay or essay style writing. We stopped completely. We, well I, felt that all we were doing was repeating the assessing stage and not repeating the idea forming stage. We were obsessed on the marking rather than the thinking. Were we getting students to think of interesting ideas in the poem? No, we were rewarding those interesting ideas in writing, but were we working heavily students learning the ideas and not necessarily coming up with their own interpretations.

There was another important reason for ditching a written assessment on poetry was the workload problem. At different points in the academic year we have Year 7, 8 and 9 not having a written assessment for a term. This alleviates the pressure points of mock marking. The time when teachers mark mocks is a real pressure point, because suddenly a normal workload is increased by 100%. You’ve not just got a pile of work to mark for each class, but now added to that, because it is the educational equivalent of the Easter Bunny leaving a brown treat, you are left with not just one piece of work to mark but the work like bunnies has replicated themselves several times. So, you are left with four essays per student, because it is ‘fun-time mock season’. That’s why we place the spoken assessments at this point. The last thing you want hanging over your heads is another set of marking, when you have thirty Year 7 essays hanging over your head.

So, how do we use poetry? We have an anthology of poems selected from various times, poets and styles and we link them thematically. Then, we work through the poems one at a time. At the end, we get students to compare two poems and make an interesting comparison. Usually, the talk will comprise of the student selecting two lines from the poems and exploring their ideas and their observations. Finally, we assess the talk for performance (pass / merit / distinction) and then for quality of ideas. We have two levels of assessment. The key thing for us is getting students to talk about poems and explore. And, if I am honest this unit involves lots of annotating and lots of talking. Talking is good. Talking is great. Talking is easy. We talk about relationships in Year 7. We talk about voices in Year 8. We talk about setting in Year 9.

For me, the emphasis on raising the quality of discussion is far more productive than the identikit written analysis we were doing before and I talking too of the awful APP units too. We talk before we write. And boy isn’t that the problem with KS3. We write before we talk. ‘Write down your idea before we share it,’ is a phrase often said. Our emphasis is on the written communication. The forming of sentences. The capturing of thoughts on a page. How many teachers fear having a blank page in exercise books at the end of the lesson? 

Ideas need space to form, develop and grown and that happens verbally. One of the things I often say to students is the need to talk in English. Argue. Chat. Disagree. Question. Challenge. Persuade. If a student can talk about something, they can sure as hell write about it. I love being challenged. I had a lengthy debate with one student over the colour of the lighting in An Inspector Calls. He was challenging me and I loved it. I even went to Twitter to seek support. He apparently did a poll with the students on another social media platform. Some might call it a ‘spark of interest’. Another might call it ‘engagement’. I’d call it the exploration of an idea.    

Boys can cope with challenging and complex texts, but has the process of how we do things had a negative impact?  I was that loud mouthed boy at secondary school. I’d talk about anything and everything. Get me involved in a conversation and I was hooked. Give me something at that age and ask me to write about it and I would struggle. I’d struggle because I hadn’t bounced the idea around in my mouth and in the air around me. I hadn’t heard the sound of ideas and heard that one thing sound better than another thing else I had said.  

Again, the problem is the nasty loathsome GCSEs spoiling everything. Because there is a large unseen element of the exams, we have internalised that exam process in planning ideas for lessons. We give students a task and expect them to treat it like an unseen text. Think of an idea on your own and write it down. We don’t go and get them to talk about it first. This process is repeated endlessly in lessons and classrooms. We know boy’s engagement is an issue, but is that engagement something simple like the use of communication skills? Is it our emphasis on writing that is hindering boys’ ability to communicate? We talk about looking for the quick fixes, but could it be as simple case of us using the writing process as the dominant way in rather than the spoken process. We spend half our time telling boys to be quiet, when maybe that should be the thing that we promote. Talk boys, but make sure it is about what we are focusing on in lessons.

Now, I am not advocating people get debates and formal discussions in lessons. In fact, far from it. A debate is probably the last thing we need. I do, however, think we need to explore how we use chat and discussion in lessons. How could we use it to engage students with the ideas, content and texts? Are we turning everything into writing? Do we want English to be the subject that is solely known for writing? Wouldn’t it be better if English was the subject where students felt they thought about things?

Right, here is one such thing I did with some poetry. I revealed the poem ‘Stealing’ by Carol Ann Duffy one line at a time. I then gave students this grid. 

Deeper meaning ·         I think the poem is really saying… ·         For me, the poem is teaching us… ·         On the surface the poem is about … but under the surface it is about…	Comparing to the other poems ·         This poem is a bit like …because…  ·         The poem is the opposite of … because .. ·         I think this poem shows an alternative perspective to … ·         This poem focuses more on … than	Pick on a word and explore ·         The word ‘…’makes me imagine… ·         The word ‘…’ makes me think of … ·         The word ‘...’ reminds me of... ·         The word ‘…’ make me feel …
Feelings ·         To make us feel _________, the writer shows us… ·         To make us feel _________, the writer uses the image of … ·         To make us feel _________, the writer uses the combination of …. and …	Symbols ·         The writer uses …. to be a symbol of... ·         …. is usually a symbol of … but here it is used as a symbol of… ·         … is symbolic of the relationship between … and …	Connections between aspects in the text ·         The use of … and … makes us… ·         There is a pattern of … across the text… ·         The writer seems to be repeating…
An alternative way of looking at things ·         Another way to look it is … ·         It could also suggest… ·         Someone else might think that…	Developing / Increasing / Decreasing ·         As the poem develops, the …. increases because ….  ·         There’s a marked decrease in … as the poem progresses ·         I notice that … develops in the poem	Changes ·         The mood changes when… ·         The writer changes the tone of the voice when... ·         The turning point in the pome is when…

Students had to share ideas and explore the poem using the sentence openings. Each time they shared one with the class they ticked it off. I didn’t get through the poem. In fact, I only made it to the second stanza with them. The discussion was relentless. I had boys exploring how the snowman might be a metaphor for a man dehumanising a body after killing a person. Another, kept seeing patterns in the words. Another spotted subtle changes in the tone. We, together, explored the choice of taking the head first, exploring the fear of eyes looking at the stealer / murderer.

Did all the boys contribute? No. Did all the girls contribute? No. The majority did. A few didn’t. And that’s simply because not everybody is the same. These students, and I know them to, would prefer to write their ideas down rather than share them with the class. Some of these students like to absorb the ideas and then come to their own idea as result of hearing the others talk. Next lesson, we’ll see what they come up with.

There is no one model that fits and suits all students, but do we have a model for teaching that hinders a part of the school population. Balance is key. Maybe the balance has been shifted too far one way. If I asked those students to write about the poem, they’d do so with aplomb. That process is needed to help them get to a point of independence. KS3 isn’t the wasted years. It is the idea forming years. We need it to be a time for forming ideas. And that starts with talk.

In the beginning, I learnt to talk and I did that before I started to learn to write. Before all writing, there comes talk.

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