Questioning, exploring and probing Literature

It is that time of year again. Not Christmas, but mock marking. Interestingly, this time we noticed that students were not getting under the skin of a character. For our Literature mock, we asked students to write about Tybalt and how he is presented in the story. Whilst some students were able to explore the character in detail, the rest resorted to repeating how Tybalt is a catalyst throughout an essay. They remembered the knowledge and forgot to think about the character in any detail. 

Exams want students to think about the characters or themes in the question, yet it is so easy for students to focus on their existing knowledge of a character to frame an argument. In fact, it is their default method. What can I remember about the character? What words can I remember to describe the character? For a large part of the thinking and planning process it is focused on the ‘what’ and there is very little time spent on the ‘why’. For this reason, we always get the one student who describes the plot of the story. When writing an answer, ‘what’ seems to have a greater level of priority than the ‘why’. The ‘what’ is easier because it is about knowledge and knowledge is largely concrete. The ‘why’ is fuzzier, because it is an inference. 

When writing about a text, we are inferring all the time. We make an inference about the writer’s ideas. We make an inference about how the reader reacts. We make an inference about the reasons we think a writer wrote something. As I say to students, we are making an educated guess around what the writer’s intent is, because for most of the time we will need a seance for that to happen. Over the years, I have seen verbs used to help get students to write about the writer’s intent, which like most things makes the writing sound like students are exploring the writer’s intent, but haven't actually engaged with the idea. One verb alone isn’t going to help you explore a writer's intent. Students need to have the thought processes around the intent rather than just a few throwaway verbs.

To address the writer’s intent, it is so easy to link everything to a writer’s history. Therefore, students turn into mini Freuds. This bit here reflects the writer’s troubled relationship with his mother. This bit here reflects his sad childhood. The problem with this level of thinking is it removes the writer’s present. What in the present impelled him or her to write the story in that way? Not everything is about the past. Therefore, to echo something Dickens wrote: students need to be analysing in the present and the future. We are too fixated on the past and filling in gaps when maybe there isn’t a need to fill a gap. The text should always be the source of ideas on the writer’s present and not the student. 

So how do we get students to explore the thought processes better behind a writer’s intent? Well, questioning. Getting students to question texts better. Step away from a nugget of knowledge as the formation of an idea and push towards questioning, reasoning and speculating ideas. 

The problem we have in the exam scenario is that only a slim proportion  of students do that exploratory thinking. The rest go - ‘Pants, what did miss say about Tybalt?’. Therefore, we need students to build up their thinking and we must model how to explore. This is what I did with a class when giving feedback on the Tybalt exam.   

We spent 10 minutes jotting down answers to these questions. I revealed one question at a time and then students wrote down their ideas or thoughts. Then, we feedback our answers. 

1. What is Tybalt's role in the story? ​

2. What does Tybalt teach us about Elizabethan society? ​

3. What does Tybalt teach us about men? Young people? ​

4. Does Shakespeare like or dislike this character? How do you know? ​

5. What can you find to like about the character? ​

6. Shakespeare includes numerous young male characters such Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, so why does Shakespeare add Tybalt to this group? ​

7. Is the character realistic? ​

8. What big idea is Shakespeare using Tybalt to show us?​

9. Tybalt is a symbol of violence and aggression, but what else is he a symbol of?  ​

10. What do you think Shakespeare is trying to do with a character like Tybalt? 

Finally, we decided what we thought about what we all thought Shakespeare wanted and why he needed the audience to feel a particular way. The stacking of questions was really important, for me, because all too often we rely on one big question and, at least, this way if students couldn’t answer a question then they had an alternative question to answer. Plus, we are modelling the questions a student should be asking when approaching a text. Maybe, in our search to get the right answers from students we have forgotten the importance of getting students to ask the right questions about a text. In our attempts to make students’ work look and sound good we have forgotten what underpins that: an exploratory, inquisitive nature towards literature. Texts don’t spark that inquisitive nature without someone to help fan the flames. 

Here is another set of questions I am going to use with ‘An Inspector Calls’. 

1. Does Sheila make the audience think or does she make the audience feel? 

2. Is Priestley telling the audience they should like Sheila more than other characters in the household? 

3. Why does Priestley make Sheila and Mrs Birling so different? 

4. Do you think Sheila is a two-dimensional character? 

5. What, in your opinion, is the reason for Priestley placing Sheila in the story, even though she has very little influence in society? 

6. Why did Priestley not use two sons rather a son and a daughter in the play? 

7. Does the form of a play limit our understanding of the character? What would we understand better if this was a novel? 

8. Is Sheila a stereotype? What is she a stereotype of?

9. Given that Priestley is a man, has he misunderstood anything about how women behave, speak and act? 

10.  Does Priestley have a different message about younger women than older women? 

A love of Literature goes hand in hand with questioning and probing ideas. If we want to seriously improve engagement and uptake in Literature, then we need to look at how we interact with the subject. The exam questions don’t engage the hearts and minds of students, yet the majority of questioning around Literature centres on the presentation of a character and a theme. Compare the following questions: 

[1] Compare how Dickens presents women in the extract. 

[2] Do you think Charles Dickens is a bit creepy in the way he presents women? 

Which one would you rather write or speak about? Engagement comes from a number of different ways. For me, emotional and cerebral engagement go together. The exam questions are the most boring questions in the world. They have to be, because they are exam questions, but that doesn’t mean that every single question we ask or set students in lessons needs to have the same level of boredom. Add opinion questions to engage students on an emotional level. Add tricky questions to engage on a cerebral level. Just don’t, whatever you do, photocopy the exam question. Flavour it. 

Questioning is where we can engage students. The texts are often engaging, but the questioning is what bridges the gap between the student and the text. Get that question right and the student connects with the text. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris 

Ditch the big whiteboard and not the little ones!

If I had to characterise my organisation skills, I’d probably say it was a poltergeist suffering from hay fever who constantly sneezes. Everything is there, but it is just scattered about. I have a messy desk, drawers and life. Thankfully, my brain manages to keep a track of things. I know at least what grid reference that one sheet of paper is located. Yes, it might take me a day to find it, but, at least, I can find it. 

For years, I have tried to organise myself. I used to have cupboards of folders, which gathered dust. I used apps, which metaphorically gathered dust. I used teacher planners, which were as useful as… dust to me. Forever, I struggled with organising work, resources, homework and whatever related to lessons. I am always amazed when I meet a highly organised person. What, you colour coordinate your work? You keep your highlighters in a wallet? You have a pencil case. What wizardry is that? 

Two years ago, I started to use an exercise book alongside each class and it transformed my organisation of lessons, work and students in so many ways. Simply, at the start of each lesson, I get my exercise book (the same colour as the students) and use it instead of a whiteboard or PowerPoint slide. Everything I do is in that exercise book. I have a journey of their learning and a journey of my teaching. Rarely do I write on the whiteboard. The whiteboard is ephemeral work. The exercise book is permanent. All you need is one visualiser and one exercise book. 

Tracking engagement with students 

I use the book to ensure that all students’ work is seen over time. Any student's work I mark or read in the lesson, I write their name in the margin. Next time I look at exercise books in lessons I check the names in the margin to avoid focusing on the same students all the time. This also applies to speaking in lessons too. 

I also track students for not having pens or missing homework in the margin too. It isn’t easy to stop everything you are doing and open the school’s system to log low level things like this. A quick scribble in a lesson and I can pick it up later. Plus, I have got a permanent record of it so I can see patterns around not having a pen or missing homework. 

There is very little time in the school day to log all the interactions and this helps me.  

Tracking work set and given 

Did I give them that poem? Did we annotate it during the last lesson? If you are human, you will probably, at least once, arrive at a lesson confident with what you are doing to be flummoxed to discover that you did it last week. It totally slipped your mind after teaching three full days in a row.  

I now stick all the worksheets / extracts covered in lessons in the exercise book. This is great for me to refer back to. Remember when we looked at that poem with the interesting use of metaphor. Here it is. Before, I used to faff about with folders or search for the PowerPoint related to the idea. Six pages back and there it is. 

For me, having everything in one place allows me to build those connections across units and lessons. Let’s go back to something we did in March. Exercise books are usually a conveyor belt of work. Each lesson churns out some work which is never to be seen again. The benefit of me having an exercise book of work like the students is that I don’t have to rely on memory to build links. I can skip to a month and get them to see the links or repetition of an idea. 

Development of teaching 

After I have marked books, I tend to set three areas for the class to work on. For example, 

[1] Use paragraph structures given 

[2] Avoid comma splices 

[3] Avoid using the most obvious adjective 

I then write around these targets with examples and non-examples to help students. They copy down in their books as I talk about them. 

Then, when we come to a similar task in another week, I start with the targets from last time. They are the starting point. I am not relying on their memory, which on the target and guidance front isn’t so grand. We start where we finished last time. The feedback from the last assessment holds more importance to teachers than students. Therefore, this way I make the process an ongoing loop and a loop that isn’t relying on the student to commit everything to memory. 

I find that I revisit past targets rather than add new ones all the time. Look, we are still making comma splices. Let’s look at where that is a problem. 

The nature of English is that work is often related to a specific domain. Therefore, targets are often related to a domain. The last targets set might not even have any significance on the latest work. That’s why I like having an exercise book with these targets. Let’s have a 

Presentation 

I never went to the lesson on whiteboard writing during my PGCE. I am jealous of others who did, but my whiteboard skills are not great. For a start, I am short so there’s only so far I can reach on the board and don’t get me started on my handwriting. 

The use of an exercise book allows you to model the setting out of a page. When has a whiteboard looked like an exercise book? There’s a level of cognitive dissonance there. We expect students to copy from a board that looks nothing like the thing they are working on. Is there any wonder some students place things in a random way in their exercise book? 

By using an exercise book, I can show them what to underline and where to place things on a page. I would be a rich man if I got a pound for everytime a student didn’t leave a line when I asked them to. Now, I show them. 

The exercise book also allows me to work at a pace that suits students. Often, I do tasks I have asked students to complete. This allows me to work at a pace that’s realistic. How many times have we asked students to do something and realised that we haven’t given them enough time? 

Modelling 

Modelling was the main reason for me having an exercise book in the first place. A place to store my live marking. Too many times have I done an example on the board and it has disappeared into the ether never to be read again. 

I keep each exercise book as a record of modelled examples. That way I have a bank of examples to refer to and use in future lessons. If I am feeling luxurious, I might even type them up. 

I have loads of examples to call upon when the need arises. 

Preparation 

Before each lesson, I open my exercise book and see where I am. Depending on time, I might even prepare some work or questions for students to complete. 

The great thing for me is that I have something physical and ready to work with. In the switch between lessons, there is often a big brush to clear the decks ready for the next class. I simply close the exercise book and put it in a box by my desk. Spare sheets or work collected is scooped up and placed at the back of the book. I then open the next exercise book ready to start. 

Yes, you might have snazzy PowerPoints but a simple ‘do now’ under the visualiser is enough. In fact, it is needed sometimes as you get yourself ready or mark the register.    

Missing students 

We often get students missing and that does come with its own problems. If I need to, I can simply photocopy the work missed. Talk them through it quickly and help them easily catch up with things. 

Everything you write on the whiteboard is lost to be never read again. Some of the best thinking and learning is done around a whiteboard, yet it is like breathing on a mirror. That brilliance is fleeting. There for one lesson only. 

I say ditch the whiteboard and write it down in an exercise book. Explain things using an exercise book. Model things using an exercise book. Teach things using an exercise book. It is more than a book. It is a record, a plan, a library, a tool for learning.   

I started using an exercise book in lessons to model work. Little did I know that those exercise books would help organise me. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris  

 

When did knowledge become such a dirty word?

When did knowledge become such a dirty word? For some subjects, it isn’t a dirty word. In fact, it is the bread and butter of lessons. Go to any Science or Maths lesson and you’ll see what I mean. Yet, for creative subjects, like English, it has become a word associated around Gradgrind principles and sucking out the fun out of lessons and learning. Oh, you are one of those knowledgy teachers: I bet students hate your subject. Popular belief would have it that knowledge is one arm of Hydra’s plot to take over the world. Other conspiracy theories are available.

A teacher’s job is to teach knowledge with the aim to improve the student. That might be knowledge behind a skill. That might be content knowledge. That might be subject domain knowledge. Like sand from a beach, knowledge is everywhere. You can’t escape it. Like sand from a beach. I might be wearing my creativity speedos, but you can guarantee there will be a grain of sand somewhere.

My first year of teaching was awful. I meandered from topic to topic and the knowledge in English I was teaching wasn’t focused and, at best, it can be described as meandering. I meandered through writing to persuade and I meandered through some poems. Yes, I might have done some interesting things with the topic and I taught them some interesting things about pikes, but I meandered. When I started teaching English, there was a lot of freedom, but also a lack of clarity about what knowledge was important and what wasn’t so important. That is also the problem we have with new teachers today. It is so difficult to work out the knowledge needed. And the hierarchy of knowledge.

English does work differently in terms of knowledge compared to other subjects. Its fuzziness is one its flaws but also its source of beauty and delight. Maths can hone their knowledge into 100 key facts. English can’t do that so easily. I could give you a 100 key facts about A Christmas Carol. Or, I could give you 100 key facts about Romeo and Juliet. But, what I cannot give you, is 100 key facts that students need to know for English. That’s because English is such a fuzzy subject. We are doing so many things that we cannot limit knowledge, because English is the limitless knowledge subject. It has no limits. In lessons, I could be talking about a text and then I have to break out into some teaching about Science, History, Geography or another subjects. I might teach English, but I have to be prepared to teach aspects of History at any given moment. Only this week, I had a lesson broken by a student’s train of thought about animals. They wanted to know what prevents animals getting tooth decay if they eat lots of fruit. English lessons are a delta of knowledge. We go anywhere in a lesson and we are taken on that path. It is also why English lessons get changed and adapted so quickly and often. No two lessons are ever the same in English, because students bring something of their own to lessons. That might either be a lack of knowledge or their own knowledge. Either way dictates the direction of the lesson.

English is the one subject that doesn’t work like others in terms of knowledge. I will scream from the top of the mountains that last sentence. I don’t mean it in terms of ‘look at us; aren’t we special’ but in terms that our subject has a real problem with adopting knowledge models from other subjects. We could easily simplify English to 100 key facts, but that wouldn’t help them in exams. In fact, it would be so damaging, because students, in English, need 100( to the power of 100) number of facts to address the unseen elements of exam. They need world knowledge. They need spelling knowledge. They need sentence knowledge. They need grammar knowledge. They need past reading knowledge. They need situation knowledge. They need word knowledge. You get the drift. A student brings so much to a text in English. They are suitcases of knowledge and with the suitcases’  contents they formulate an idea, an opinion, a judgement or an inference.

Knowledge in English isn’t a dirty word in English, but our relationship with knowledge needs some work. We need a healthy relationship with knowledge and a realistic view of it in our subject. English tests all knowledge regularly but how do we support that in lessons?

We have been trying something to build that healthy attitude towards knowledge. Last year, we had a disaster of introducing knowledge retrieval in KS3. In my naivety, I thought it would be great to do three low impact knowledge tests in a unit. It wasn’t great. One at the start. One in the middle. One at the end. What could go wrong? Everything. We are testing too much and without meaning. The logic behind was to show improvement in knowledge retention, but it was soulless, meaningless and vapid.

This year, we’ve thought about how we can use knowledge assessments meaningfully that works with the subject and not against it. We have separated them into three elements – memory sparks, memory makers, memory tests. Each one takes a lesson but there is a clear purpose behind the phases.

 

Memory Spark

At the start of all units, we have a small quiz which focuses on some of the knowledge taught in previous years we think it relevant to the topic in some way. Our curriculum has a through line for topics and they link back to previous years. For Year 7, we make connections to primary content and the primary curriculum.

The great thing about this is that builds the message that all learning is important. The new topic doesn’t negate all the things taught previously. The new topic isn’t starting with a blank slate. The knowledge is connected from the start. Remember when you explored character types, well, that links to this bit.  

There’s no collection of scores or even test element. We’ll assume that some things will be forgotten, but it gives us a chance to review what’s be retained, what’s be forgotten and what’s been corrupted and misinterpreted over time.

 

Memory Maker

In the middle of the unit, we have another quiz, but this time it about building more links across domains. At this point in the unit, students have got a grasp of the key ideas and so it is perfect time to build on those connections.

Building connections is an important aspect of English. We are expecting students to build connections between factual knowledge in an exam so we need to get students searching for meaningful connections. Experts do this naturally and novices don’t. We had such an interesting discussion with Year 7 about the portrayal of the warden in ‘Holes’ and the various books they read when exploring character types in our ‘Heroes and Villains’ unit. That built up their understanding and showed that their previous knowledge and experience is redundant. In English, all knowledge and experience is valuable; you just don’t know when it will be called into action. And, there lies our biggest problem.

This, for me, was the most interesting and fun aspect, building connections. We rarely do it, but it was fun for me. Getting them to make and build connections across subjects. All too often, it is relying on me making connections or the odd student offering a connection.

 

 

Test

The final aspect was a multiple choice quiz. Using a PowerPoint and a sheet, students had to answer the questions on a grid. Yes, we marked it and students had a score, but the most important thing was where students got things wrong. So, for the bits they didn’t get right, the wrote down the key thing they needed to know. That will be their starting point for their end of year test. After each topic, they have a list of things they need to work on.

The great thing about using PowerPoints for MCQ is that I am able to use the slides for hinge questions later in the year. Also, I am able to build them into the topic next year – especially the parts that they struggled with.

The test becomes more of a diagnostic tool and we identify the knowledge they need to work on.

 

 

We, of course, do other things with knowledge but this is what we’ve done in KS3 to help structure knowledge focus. We do knowledge retrieval on a regular basis, but this is how we use systems to support and raise the profile of knowledge in the subject. It works on three main principles:

[1] Past knowledge is equally as important as the present knowledge;

[2] Connecting knowledge is an important aspect of English;

[3] Quizzing and testing help to revise forgotten knowledge and identify areas to focus on.

 

For the rest of the lessons, we are reading novels, plays and poems and writing creatively. The natural flow of creativity and knowledge attrition through reading and experiencing texts continues to happen. We just have a visible discussion about knowledge every so often. Knowledge is part of the discussion and learning. It isn’t about learning things by rote or cramming students with hundreds of spurious facts. It is about having a academic, thoughtful and humane approach to English. Each lesson has knowledge. We just do it a little bit differently than how others do it in their subject.

In English, we teach students to think and read how others think. That sadly is hard for the rest of the world to quantify and clarify. English is the subject with endless knowledge. Be my guest, try to quantify and clarify English as a subject, but there’s a reason why there are hundreds of novels and books written a year. There’s a reason why dictionaries are updated yearly. You cannot pin down language, thoughts, feelings and experiences. You can pin a few down, but you cannot pin every single one down and fit it on a knowledge organiser.

Thank you for reading,

Xris

High stakes exams and mocks – let’s go low, low, low, low

I am surprised that we don’t talk enough about mental health on Twitter and through blogs – especially given that we’d just been through a pandemic. We’ve all been through a challenging experience that even most adults have struggled with. Contrary to media stories, it hasn’t been an extended holiday for teachers. I crave routines and patterns in my life. Only this week, a colleague joked how I love a system. It is true – I love routines and systems in school, and life. Occasionally, I might throw chaos in there by catching an illness or doing something different. We all love routine, secretly. That’s why moving schools is so difficult. Adjusting to a whole new set of systems and rules.  

For the last few years, there hasn’t been any regular routines for students. Instead, they’ve had to live in a world of vagaries. Will they have to go to school? Will school revert to online lessons? Will they have to sit exams? Will the work they do be included in their portfolio for grading? Uncertainty is natural part of life, but it is only a small part of life. The pandemic has made uncertainty a big part of everyone’s life. Instead of the uncertainty of Uncle Ben turning up at the weekend or not, we have the uncertainty of the structure of the week, month, year and our future. Tomorrow is always an uncertainty, but the options for what is going to happen are usually narrowed to a few options. Well, if X happens, we will do Y. If Z happens, then will just do nothing. Therefore, even with uncertain events like the future, there’s still a level of certainty in uncertainty.

 

When the future lacks a level of predictability, then we become anxious, unsettled and stressed. Take this equation:

stressed teacher + stressed student =  failure

 

Please be clear: I am not advocating a ‘smile as you teach policy’.  Instead, I am highlighting how we are building towards a toxic situation and we, and I mean all of us, have to do something about. Leaders are anxious because of the uncertainty of things. Teachers are anxious because of the uncertainty of the GCSES. Students are anxious because they don’t know what is and what isn’t important now. Feelings are absorbed. Like energy, they don’t disappear, but are transformed to another feeling or absorbed by someone else. A stressed student looks at the teacher and sees their stress and automatically that heightens their own stress. If the teacher is stressed about things, then it really must be bad. Teachers must be ‘loco parentis’. They must be the stability in situations. The physical stability. The emotional stability.

 

Teachers can have an impact on the feelings of students and now, more than ever, that’s important. We can orchestrate a sense of achievement, motivation and momentum or we can orchestrate the opposite in what we say and do. I know how I respond to things can have such an impact on what happens in the minds of students. Take these two responses to a class doing badly in an assessment:

[1] I am really disappointed. We spent ages on learning the structure to the question and only two of you remembered to use it in the mock exam.

[2] I get that some of you might be disappointed with your results, but I am not. A few tweaks and you’ll be there. We just need to make sure we remember the structure of the question.

 

Two ways of address and feeding back to students. One plays on emotional manipulation. The adult is disappointed and then forcing the students to feel disappointed. Then, apportioning the blame to the students. It is the students’ fault for the underperformance and not the teacher.  The other response doesn’t dismiss the feelings of the students but reframes it. Structures the ideas into something positive.

We remember how people made us feel rather than what they say, but in teaching we have to be so careful how we frame things. Yes, we might be disappointed with an assessment, but will sharing my feelings of this improve things?  Once, I worked for a boss who constantly shouted at staff. Not once did that make me work harder or better. Instead, it just made me avoid them. Later, I had a boss who did the opposite: they praised you when you did something really good. That motivated me more. Interestingly, I worked harder for that second boss, because I wanted more praise, than the other boss. I work harder and better with positivity than the negativity. That’s true in the classroom. Students are far more responsive with ‘meaningful positivity’ than negativity. Meaningful because it needs to have some value. Be positive about everything and then you devalue what is truly good. Like most things, it needs to be measured.

I don’t think the teachers are the only things to be mindful this year. I think mock exams are problematic, yet nobody is talking about it.

(stressed teacher + stressed student) x (mock exam x frequency)  =  failure

We have an assessment system that is built around the ‘do or die’ principle. Mocks are not only a depressing thing for teachers to mark, but they are depressing for students. They are either ‘yes, I got the grade I want’ or ‘no, I didn’t get the grade I want’. As much as we work on feedback, mocks highlight if a student is a success or a failure in their eyes. We like to think the students see them as a opportunity to learn, but a few do, but the rest don’t. Most of the problem is the fact that the mocks attempt to replicate the process of the final exams. Instead of the process being about preparation, it becomes replication in all manner of things. We replicate the emphasis, stress and impact of the final exams. Oh, and we do it in a two or three week block. So, in fact, we don’t just replicate the process, we turn it into something worse. The GCSE exams in a fortnight. The final exams are spread over months, yet we ‘in our attempt to help and replicate the experience’ condense it all into a fortnight. We are not replicating here, but creating a different monster.

We need to change the perspective of the mocks in everyone’s heads. Rarely, is it seen as a positive learning experience. No students uses the phrase ‘I learnt from the mocks…’. Students don’t really articulate that idea. Occasionally, teacher will learn from them, but given how many papers are set it is lucky if a teacher can recall their name after the process of marking a bazillion papers. Largely, they are viewed in negative terms. Every mock highlights what they cannot do. We produce lists of what the papers tell us they can’t do. We then build that into our teaching. The whole emphasis is on the negative. We dwell on the negative aspects. In fact, we don’t just dwell, we soak ourselves in the negative parts for months.

A mock is not the final exam. The more we treat it as one, the more problematic they become. Mocks are too high stakes for my liking. The final exam is where they need to be at their best. Everything before then is building to the final exam. A mock, in my opinion, should be centred around what a student can do, rather than what they can’t do. They should be an opportunity to highlight the green shoots. The seeds of success. The buds of brilliance. A student needs to know that they can succeed, yet instead we have mocks geared around high stakes and mistakes. Ideally, what I want students to see is that they need to replicate what they did in these green shoots and apply them to other areas where they are not so successful. A sense of achievement is so powerful. Students, if they do something well, they will repeat it again and again. Why are we not using this element more in education?  Replicating the successes is as equally important as learning from mistakes; otherwise, students learn from mistakes but don’t repeat the early successes.

If we are to help students in these uncertain times, we need to change our perspective on mocks. They should be an opportunity for us to praise and reward the green shoots. They should be an opportunity for us to show students that there are green shoots in their work and with a bit of watering and feeding they could be truly successful in the final exam.

This term, I have started saying the following in class:

Mistakes are good. I need you to make mistakes in mocks, assessments and lessons, because that’s where you’ll learn not to make them again. The only time we don’t want those mistakes are in the final exam and that’s why we are working to learn from them now. We are building to perfection. I want to see some green shoots.

 What teachers say and do changes the stakes for students? What SLT do with mocks changes the stakes for students? The only time we need high stakes is the final exam. That’s where it matters. Everything else is building to that point.

Come on people: search for those green shoots and praise the students for them!

Thanks for reading,

Xris

 

The first lesson is the deepest – getting to know you

I read an interesting discussion on Twitter recently. It was exploring how there is a difference in the relationship between student and teacher in primary schools and secondary schools. You can imagine where the discussion went. To be honest, it is far harder to build relationships in secondary schools when you see a student for one or two hours a week. Yes, you can have a personalised individual handshake for when they enter a room for that one hour a day, but you’ll not have much of a connection with the student. It is not impossible, but just very hard. You could spend a whole lesson asking students about they football team, band or pet, but in that time you have not covered a jot of your curriculum. Time is not a commodity that secondary schools have. Relationship building happens in the cracks and in the tiny micro connections in the term, but they are not the thrust of what we do. The relationship builds over time.

The first few lessons of the new academic year are problematic for me. For a start, they never laugh when I crack a joke in the first lesson. It will always be something witty, so the quality of the joke is not the problem, I can assure you. They often don’t laugh, because they don’t know if they can or not. Am I with a teacher who likes to laugh? They are in that strange phase of not knowing what they can and cannot do. Every teacher starting a new school knows this. Let’s just call it Term 1. A heightened state of awareness. Rabbit caught in the headlights. You don’t know what to do for fear of getting it wrong. That’s often the first lesson for students. And, that’s why they don’t laugh at my jokes.

Over the years, I have done and seen numerous approaches to the first few lessons. The trad way: list the rules of a lesson and get students to write the rules in the front of their books so it hangs around their neck like and albatross. The prog way: get the students to decide on what the rules should be and get them to write them down in their book so they can feel they own them. Or, the plain bribery: give all students a chocolate bar or cake. They haven’t worked. And, they often mean you have to placate students with promises of more chocolate or cake.

The default first lesson is always teaching. Teach a lesson and get students to do some work. From that experience you can understand and see what the students are capable of doing and their attitude. Students often feel safer with because it asserting what is normal. This is normal. As soon as we move away from the normal, it is quite scary and stressful for students. I had a delivery from company this year, and ,instead of the usual surly nod and hand-over, I was greeted by a man who had ingested four jars of coffee and three gallons of Monster. The man said he wanted to talk to me about Covid and that he had a choir in the lorry, ready to sing to me. He didn’t; he just needed to deliver a bath.  I felt uncomfortable and didn’t know how to react. Nice man, but clearly in the wrong job.  

For me, the first lesson should be about building and establishing normal routines. How do respond to questions? How to complete work? How to listen when the teacher is explaining something? Covid caused us so many problems with routines that many of us crave normality and routine. That’s why I think now, above all else, we should be working on those routines. We need the patterns. We need to help students adjust to those patterns of behaviour and expectations. First lessons should be about the pattern of lessons.

I’ve seen enough speed-dating to know that a meaningful relationship is not formed in any first meeting. For that reason alone, I think using the first lesson to ‘build relationships’ is dangerous. Relationships take time and they are largely based on your reactions, as a teacher. Your reactions to events, actions and comments all form part of the relationship. Your interaction with the class. You having one lesson to tell students your ‘orrible childhood’ and how you connect to the youth of today because you couldn’t have you ear pierced as child isn’t effective relationship building. There’s a level of narcissism in teaching which I think is very dangerous. Teaching is about the students in your class and not you. You are there to do the best for the students and not the best for you. I do think, as teachers, we have to reign in the narcissism. A class of young people need a responsible adult and not a presenter trying to get audience figures. There’s a distinction that I think we all need to get right.

We all need to be liked, but I think there comes a point when our desire to be liked can be detrimental to the students and their progress. Like all things, there needs to be a balance. There’s nothing wrong giving chocolates to reward, but if there is another motive behind it then there is something wrong.

So, what am I doing in my first lessons to support and build relationships? Well, I am going to give a questionnaire. A questionnaire about what works and what doesn’t work with them. The relationship between student and teacher is one largely based on inferences and trial and error. By the time we get around to parents’ evening, the parents will feel that we know their son / daughter well. This takes a lot of time to see what works and what doesn’t work. It can take terms with some quiet students. Therefore, I am going to engage students with this process from the start. But, also, I have include some questions to make students understand that a relationship is a two-way thing. I will do stuff, but they too have some agency.

A lot of the questions are inferences I will make about a student in the first term. At least, this way I can see if they have a good understanding of how they work in lessons. 

The whole purpose is so that I have a better understanding of the person so when teaching I know how to engage and support them. I get to know them a bit better without having to resort to making a connection over their favourite football team or love of guinea pigs. It is about understanding the person sooner rather than later. A deeper understanding of them. From much earlier, I will know, hopefully, what works and doesn’t work with them.

Thanks for reading,

Xris

Being a rudder in exam season

Stress is a bit like energy. It cannot be destroyed. Only changed from one state to another.

I had the joy many years ago of working in a call centre for a year. And, it was an interesting year. A year of selling car and home insurance. A year of breaks timed to the second. A year of having my life controlled by a flashing box.  I didn’t enjoy the experience.

The whole call centre experience made me see people in a different light. I had people being rude and vile towards me. I had phones slammed down on me. I had people be snide to me. I had people talk down to me. The funny thing is that the people called the telephone line to get a quote for insurance. I didn’t call them. They called me (well, the company), yet they still treated me as if I was the verbal equivalent of being a punch bag.  

The telephone conversation was something else. It was an opportunity to take their stress and convert it to something else. Anger at someone on the end of the line. I’d say, in the modern age, we become used to this idea of transferring our anger and stress to the person on the other side of the line.  

We all get stressed at some point, but it is how we deal with stress that’s important.

We are now, for me, entering a difficult period for teachers. The time with Year 11s is dwindling and our fear for their results is rising. At this point of the year, I think it’s important that we ask ourselves: am I transferring my stress to my students? It’s a simple question, but one we need to ask occasionally to keep things at bay.   

Year 11s are generally stressed and worried about their exams and future. They might not show it in the ways we expect them to show stress, because they are teenagers and they are still working out how things work in their minds. They mess about. They are rude. They don’t listen to instructions. All because they don’t know what is going on in their minds.

At a time when they need order, calmness and reassurance, we often create more stress, because we are stressed. Stress cannot be destroyed. Only changed. We transform our stress to the students’ stress. And they absorb some of it. They listen to their friends and possibly absorb some of their stress. Then, go home and listen to more stress from their parents.

In the call centre, I had to take a lot of this stress from people. I knew it wasn’t me that was the problem and I also knew that I didn’t have the time to explore their deeply rooted psychological problems. I let them get it out of their system verbally and then spoke to them quietly and calmly. Often, by the end of the conversation they were calm and pleasant.

We’ve all been in a difficult situation and it is the voice of authority, calm and reason that helps us in a situation. A doctor in medical emergency. A paramedic in an accident. Not the people panicking.

We need to be the rudder for students at the moment. Our fears must be our fears. We can convey our concerns and highlight issues, but our fears are our emotional baggage to deal with and not something we should share with students. They need a rudder. Something solid, reliable and reassuring to guide them. Our job at the moment is to point them in the right direction. Add our emotions and we can guarantee that the line isn’t so straight.

So, whether it is SATs, GCSEs or A-levels, we need to be mindful of our fears and worries. We need to be careful about what we convey to the students. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris 

Precision and patterns thanks to dual coding

I have never been a fan of turning a poem, novel or play into a story board. The results have always been underwhelming and slightly disappointing. We are often led to believe that ‘visualising’ is a key part of reading, yet what is usually ‘visualised’ on paper is nothing like the original text. Not even something that would pass off as a cheap carboot sale copy. Story boards had always been a nice filler for a lesson. From a learning point of view, the teacher learnt who could draw and who couldn’t. The teacher could also work out who read the text and who only read the opening. But, sadly, you didn’t get much else than that. You did, however, get some display material to get somebody off your back.

Last year, I decided to draw and use ‘dual coding’ to cope with the demands of the new exams. To successfully discuss the examined texts, a student needs to really know the text. And, I mean really know the text. Really, really, really know the books. I wanted to see if I could use ‘dual coding’ to address this issue. ‘Dual coding’ is simply using more than one channel to process and recall information. These two channels are often referred to as ‘visual’ and ‘verbal’ channels. Other people can explain it better than me, so I won’t go through it in too much detail. Anyway, I wanted to look at what I could do to support the learning of the texts using visual cues as well as reading the text and so I started drawing. I broke down each of the texts into components and created a pictorial map of the story. See below for an example. Warning: I am not an artist.

My key thinking behind some of the ‘artistic’ choices are:

·         Use of letters to signify the names of character so that students would have a visual cue but they’d have to recall the name.

·         Use of one item of clothing or hair style to signify a difference between characters. Or in some cases a connection between characters.

·         Setting wasn’t important unless it was a change of setting, which I signified by a building.

·         All scenes must be included and all events in some capacity.

·         If the positioning of a character in stage was important, then I’d add some detail to help reinforce this point (balcony)

·         Thoughts were always signified with thought bubble and dialogue with a speech bubble.

·         Where possible, entrances and exits were marked on the map. However, some texts it is too much.

·         Words would be used, but only to a minimum and often one word.

·         Symbols were used rather than words.

Then, I started to use it in my teaching. I scanned my drawing and gave a copy to all students as we worked through ‘Romeo and Juliet’. They had it at the start of the reading of the act so as we read they could follow and link visually to what is going on. It also made retrieval practice easier. Instead of a list of questions at the start of a lesson, I’d put the scan up on a PowerPoint and ask students to tell me what happened at each point. We’d keep going back to the pictures throughout a lesson. I’d get to the point that students could recall events without having to consult their notes. The great thing about this is that it kept the knowledge of the text at the forefront of the student’s thinking and it supported the weaker students.

Initially, I wanted ‘dual coding’ to just make the students know the text better; however, as things progressed, I discovered it did far more than that and it actually supported and developed the understanding of how the texts is structured and written.

[1] Precision

The difference between the top and bottom answers in literature is precision. The best answers use precise evidence to support a point. The use of these story maps allowed students to build up that precision. How many characters do students forget? How many events do students forget to recall? Usually, I make a sheet of the ‘easily forgotten characters and events’ to combat this. Every student remembers the balcony scene but not every student remembers the scene where the Friar tends his plants.  

When mapped out like this, all events are equal. No stone is left unturned. But, as a teacher, I could keep going back to those ‘easily forgotten characters and events’.

[2] Structure

The structure of texts is a funny aspect to cover. We tend to refer to tension graphs and the odd question here to address it. This approach put the structure at the foreground and put it in people’s faces. If you couldn’t see how Act 1 and Act 2 both start with a prologue, then you need to get your eyes checked. It also allowed students to see how the acts where structured and how characters were used in the plot. They’d see how Act 1 starts with Romeo and then ends with Juliet.

How do we show the structure of the story? I found presenting it visually allowed for more meaningful discussions than when I approach structure with a summary of the text. Structure is a visual dimension of a text. It needs to be presented visually. Here the story maps do just that.

[3] Patterns

Another benefit of this approach was the increase chance of finding patterns. When you have the whole text mapped out before you, there is a better chance of seeing threads and patterns rather than when in isolation. One such pattern students discovered was how the character of Juliet and Romeo are introduced. There is a pattern of characters talking about them before they are seen on stage. Another spotted how two characters talking on stage was incredibly common in the play.

[4] Themes

Themes tend to be taught as discrete lessons. This lesson we will explore the theme of conflict. When you have the whole text before you, you can pinpoint the cogs that make the theme. A highlighter is a thing of beauty. Highlight all the things related to the theme of conflict. Students saw how a theme develops and changes across the play. They see how a theme is pushed to the foreground in the opening and then how it is in the background until Act 3.

The new GCSEs could be about anything and we need students to have a more immersive experience of the texts and to really know them.  

[5] Decluttering and links

I have mentioned this before. There is an issue with the number of images we use from different versions of the play or novel, which can confuse things. I found that using my simplistic images generated more relevant discussion of ideas, than photographs of lavish productions. My simple drawing of Juliet on a balcony engaged students to think about the use of positioning on stage. Why is she higher than Romeo? Why is she closer to the stars? There was no obsession of clothes and facial expressions, but serious choices about what Shakespeare would have a control of.

For this year, I have placed all our story maps in the various booklets we use to teach students. They are there for revision, retrieval practice and as an aide memoir. They are going to be the pillars for the teaching of the text. The students are going to really know the text, so they can be precise in their ideas. There has been a reduction of sifting through what students can recall from the text this year. I am not doing so much of the old ‘can you remember….?’ as I used to.

For KS3, I am going to get classes to create their own. I had much fun with a Year 8 class and we, together as a class, created our own story map as we read Macbeth. A visualizer and blank sheet in an exercise book is all you need. The great thing with story mapping live is that students can see how each event connects to the other, or doesn’t as the case may be.

We are endlessly surrounded by stories. Students will probably experience numerous stories in the course of a week. Our frustration centres around students remember the key bits of the story and the less memorable ones. Is there any wonder they forget things when they have watched a film, or followed a soap daily? Another story with another set of characters and easily forgettable characters and events. We don’t want to be teaching ‘A Christmas Carol’ every year from Year 7 onwards, so we need to be thoughtful in how we teach the story. Rereading a text alone doesn’t secure memory. It just uncovers the forgettable stuff.

I was surprised how much discussion my rubbish pictures generated. It shows you how much can be gained from very little. And, not all the discussion was based on whether my attempt to draw a leg on a character was dodgy or possibly phallic.  

Thanks for reading,

Xris

I have included some of my drawings. They are not perfect, but they give you sense of what I did with each text. It took me hours – what do you mean you can’t tell?- to do, but I recommend, as with all things, you try to do it yourself. 

Romeo and Juliet 

A Christmas Carol 

An Inspector Calls