Sentenced to six years of APP - APP and reading

I am preparing for my first ever teachmeet in Leeds next week and part of that is talking about sentences. Next week, I will blog about the topic of sentences, but in my preparation for it, I thought I’d talk about APP in English - with a bit about sentences at the end.  

I remember a couple of years ago when APP was introduced as the next best thing in teaching. It was designed to make marking easier and more focused; yet, at the same time it reduced the English language to a series of bullet points. There were a lot of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ at the time it was unveiled. I was quite excited at the time, as it meant that marking could be more focused and you could ditch the usual general marking of things like spelling and accuracy, and focus on word choice and the effect on the reader. Then, schools went mad and everything was obsessed and focused on doing it, and showing evidence in lessons of its use. It is interesting in this age of ‘progress in lessons’ there is very little mention of APP (assessing pupil progress). Obviously, there is a political agenda; it was a Labour initiative and so under a Conservative rule it is neglected, but I think it is still bubbling away in pockets of classrooms.    

Several years on, I am not so positive about it. Don’t get me wrong – it can be used effectively, but is only a part of a successful approach to teaching. From an English point of view, I struggled with the framework because of the assessment focuses (or foci – depending on the attitude of the reader). To get about a level 6, everything becomes vague. Level 7s tend to do things with flair and creativity, which sadly doesn’t really equate to the mark scheme. It almost says ‘does it really, really well and better than others in the class’.  I always felt that the APP grids were focused on the level 5s and how to achieve to a level 5. As soon as you got to a level 5, it read as ‘blah blah yes you do it really well’.

Furthermore, the grids allowed you to have students being proficient in writing for an audience and using superb vocabulary, yet the basics of sentence control and punctuation were often missing from their writing. You ended up with a mixed view of a student’s capabilities. It almost said: yeah, I know you can’t punctuate to save your life, but look... pretty words.  Some people might say that this was great because it gave an idea of the student’s priorities. It directed them and showed them how to improve. Other people might say that this just masked their weaknesses, as naturally most people will ‘upsell’ a student’s skills. I always felt that you shouldn’t be getting to the dizzy heights of a level 6 unless you could punctuate accurately. I recall one teacher insisting that you couldn’t give a level 5 unless they used paragraphs, which has stuck with me to this day.

One major problem: showing evidence of it once means that you are proficient in a skill. I have scored a goal once, by accident. I was standing near a goal, when a ball hit me and bounced into the net. This one event does not make me suitable for the England football team. Just because you do something once, doesn’t mean you are an expert. It just means that you are lucky. I was lucky. Students are lucky too and get it right by accident and fluke. But, does that mean that they are skilled at that particular element?  The APP grids were highlighted, ticked or shaded if a student demonstrated a skill once. As evidence, it looks great. But, it really masks the whole problem: what can they do independently?  Guided by the APP grid, you could probably help students to show a lot of high level skills. Take a lesson for each focus and you can tick them off one by one, but what can they really do without the 'stabilising wheels' of your help and instruction?

It became a reductive process:  Today, we are looking at AF3 and AF5.   Lessons became focused on a very narrow skill and the learning process was reduced to a simple step ladder. This isn’t too much of a problem in small doses, but it can lead to a culture of breaking down each skill one by one and teaching them in isolation. When looking at a poem, you tend to look at one aspect and then bring other aspects in along the journey. I felt that a culture focused on AF1 or AF2 meant that it became stuck on that focus. The beauty of teaching English is that you can start talking about a poem and end up looking at something completely different by the end. To paraphrase a quote from Doctor Who, if we capture a star and put it in a box, we miss the true beauty of the star, for the star is beautiful in relation to other stars in the sky. Boil a lesson down to focusing on sentence structure alone and you miss the relationship between the audience and the purpose of the text. You also miss how the punctuation works with the structure used to create a desired effect. Furthermore, you miss out the use of effective vocabulary that is necessary for a sentence to be really effective.

I use APP occasionally, when the task is appropriate, but it isn’t the focus for all assessments. It is a tool. A tool for helping students improve, but it is not a hammer to hammer in learning. It can help with AFL, but it isn’t the miracle cure that we were led to believe. Recently, I was preparing students for writing about a novel and I was faced with the grid of doom again. Looking at a huge grid and colouring different bits doesn’t help them or me, so I came up with these sentence to help them unlock that skill. In the past, I have given them bullet points or a list of questions, but my new strategy helped them better:  I gave each student a set of structures for them to articulate the skill I was assessing. Too many times have I talked about a skill for students to repeat bland statements like: ‘The writer uses structure to show us the theme of loneliness’.

I warned students that this wasn’t a case of a Woolworths' pick and mix. They had to find one that best fits what they were trying to say. I know they are quite dull and boring, but they are a starting point for them to articulate the complex ideas. They are much more effective than looking at a grid and saying to get a level 5 you must link the structure to the meaning and take several quotes from across the text to support your ideas. The students that used them demonstrated effective evidence of the skill assessed.

AF2 – Retrieve information from texts and use quotations 

·         We see this when ‘___________________’.

·         An example is when _________ says: ‘________________’.

·         The best example of this is when _______ says ‘___________’

·         POINT: ‘___________________’.

 

AF3 – Infer or interpret information or ideas

·         This suggests that …

·         He could also be hinting that ________

·         Although it seems that he is saying ____________, he really means_______ .

·         The fact that he ____________ and ___________ shows that he means ______

·         On the outside it looks like he _____________________. However, on the inside he is _________ because he says_______

 

AF4 – Comment on the structure of the text

·         At the start, you notice that_________

·         The second half of the books shows a change in the way that __________________

·         As the book progresses, we see_______________.

·         The more ______________, the more__________________.

·         As the story progresses, we see that_____________________ .

·         By the end of the book, we see ________________ .

·         The last chapters explain __________________.

 

AF5 – Comment on the writer’s use of language

·         The writer uses _____________ to show / highlight / suggest ______________________ .

·         The character tends to use ____________ when ___________________.

·         When the character uses___________, it shows us that_________________ .

·         The use of ___________ suggests that _____________________.

·         By using ______________, the writer shows us that._____________ .

 

AF6 – Comment on the writer’s purposes and viewpoints

·         It would seem that the writer is ________________________ towards___________.

·         The writer suggests that ________________ .

·         The writer uses __________________ to show us that ______________________.

·         The writer wants the reader to feel _________________ so that _________________ .

·         The novel demonstrates the writer’s view that _______________________________.

 

Thanks for reading. I think I have been let off early for good behaviour.

 

Xris32

Why use two words when one will just do? Pushing a Level 6 and 7 student's writing

This week I am going to cheat a bit and use something I have already prepared for a meeting with a primary head teacher.  It has been, for me, a week of meeting after meeting, endless mock marking and a wedding – oh, and the Christmas staff party! Hardly surprising that I am more tired than a dozy grandfather who falls asleep through conversations and snores regularly through most television programmes.

I have always had a problem with some aspects of teaching writing. Namely, purple prose. Or, flowery prose, as I like to call it. You could, for example, have a crap garden, but you insist it is still a  ‘nice garden’ by using loads of flowers in plant pots. The pots look nice, but the garden is still crap. The same, I feel, happens with writing. Put X, Y, Z and another X, Y and Z into your short story - there, you have a wonderful piece of writing. Umm, no you don’t. You might have some features of good writing, but there rest is incoherent and it is a little over the top.

Recently, I have taught David Almond’s ‘Skellig’ and I casually asked the class about level of the writing that Almond had produced. The class simply replied that it was a low Level 5 (sorry, Almond). There, I think, lies the problem. Their understanding of writing was based on writing that is crammed with every technique under the sun. Furthermore, there was no hope that it would get a Level 6, as Almond hadn’t even used a semicolon on the pages were studying.

 

Good writing is not about using every tool in the box. It’s about using the right tool for the job. One of my favourite writers is Susan Hill. She is a fantastic and her writing is deceptively simple as each sentence is precise and the writing is so concise. Techniques aren’t wasted and the language is carefully crafted and selected for the maximum effect. On the other hand, there are writers like Alan Hollinghurst who have pages and pages of detailed and evocative writing. Now, I like Hill, and I like Hollinghurst, but which one is best? There is only one way to find out: fight!

But, I do think this contrast lies at the heart of English teaching.  Flowery or sparse? As teachers, we have to be aware of this. Chucking everything in the melting pot doesn’t make the best kind of writing. Maybe, we should spend more and more time on looking at selecting the best techniques for the job, rather than introducing new and obscure techniques for the sake of teaching something new.  I have sat there planning, scratching my head, trying to think of something new, when I should have been focusing on what they knew and developing that further. That is where Level 6s are going. They can do stuff and do it well. Now, they need to work on doing it exceptionally well by being subtle and discreet.

Most Level 5 writers are always asking, ‘What can I add to make this better?’, so maybe, we should explicitly teach Level 6s the following questions:

 

• What can be removed which doesn’t affect the overall effect of the writing?
• Are there any techniques that have the same effect as each other in a paragraph?
• Have you made sure that a technique is only used once in the writing?
• Do you need to show or tell in this paragraph?
• Are we writing for clarity? Or are you writing for detail?

Tips

The following is a list is cribbed from my talk with a primary school. It was aimed at helping teachers build some ways into their teaching, which help students achieve or secure a Level 6/7. At this level we are dealing with the subtleties of language, so it is quite hard to separate things down to a single aspect, but I have tried.  

• Humour  - satire, parody, irony

Teach students about the different types of humour, or show them examples, so that they can use bits of them in their own writing. These kinds of writing involve students being playful and creative with language.

• Structure – cohesion / cohesive devices across a text

Look at how the whole text is structured. Is there cohesion between parts of the texts? Are there ideas that are linked between paragraphs?

• Flair /Style  

Students at Levels 6 and 7 are starting to develop a particular voice in their writing. It is quite hard to teach this explicitly, but getting students to emulate another writer’s style may help them with their own choices. For example, write in the style of Phillip Pullman or J.K. Rowling.

• Original sentence construction – over reliance of the same structures

Students can lack flair if their sentences are repetitive. Get them to use a particular sentence construction only once in their writing, unless it is to create a particular effect. Or, get them to steal some sentences (change a few words, of course) from a writer and adapt them to their own writing.

• Sophisticated level of use of punctuation

The ‘Punctuation Pyramids’ are great, but some Level 6s and 7s need guidance to use colons and semicolons effectively. Usually, a colon can introduce an idea, but it can also be used to create tension. Show them how it can be used to create tension.

• Variety

 A piece of writing that varies pace, tone, detail, punctuation usage or perspective throughout will achieve a higher level. A Level 5 will tend to keep their tone constant throughout the piece of writing.

• Being concise and precise

Good writing isn’t always the most detailed and descriptive writing. Students need to explore their choice of words. Why use that word? Sometimes, a simple word is much more effective than a polysyllabic word.

• Looking at natural speech

I have noticed that Level 6s and 7s often demonstrate writing that naturally emulates natural speech in the use of pauses, emphasis, tone and other aspects. If we explored these explicitly in writing more, students may pick these up. However, it is knowing when to follow the rules of speech and when to ignore the rules of writing that is really the skill here.

 

Conclusion
Most English teachers will agree with me when I say that you cannot teach a writer to be an outstanding writer. It is something writers learn to be, by themselves. Most writers will read, read and read to pick up ideas, skills and techniques. Part of becoming a Level 6 or Level 7 is absorbing some of the subtle complexities of language through the reading of good writing. They copy, mirror or adapt these and use them in their own work. This isn’t always something that you can directly teach. They just do it.

Thanks for reading,

Xris32