Looking at writers - does he ever stop smoking?

Today, I am writing a eulogy for someone very close to me. Like most people, I’ve put things off. For example,  I’ve been tempted to search the history of using ‘a’ instead of ‘an’ when forming the phrase ‘a eulogy’. I won’t bore you with the details. And, of course, writing this blog is another way for me to put off the inevitable. Anyway, a eulogy is about creating a sense of a person and what they mean to you. 

This sense of a person is something I feel we have lost within English. I’ve been part of lots of discussions around how English should change and what’s the problem with its current form, but I’d argue that our sense of humanity and our sense of humans has been lost. Texts have become collections of techniques to find and catalogue. Texts have become things to highlight and pick out things. Texts have become these things that float in nebulous space that have no relevance or currency in the real world. 

Texts in the English classroom cannot escape being picked apart and overly scrutinised. It isn’t the obsession with knowledge that is at the root of the problem. It is this default method that everything we do in English has to be linked or connected to the spotting of something. How many lessons go by without there being a highlight or comment on a technique used? We’ve got to the point where we are our own worst enemy. We only feel comfortable if students are talking about techniques. 

The writer has become a forgotten entity. 

Instead of reading texts to discuss a writer’s ideas, we are seeing things through the prism of techniques. And, to be honest, that is such a narrow view. It strips the person away from the discussion. We are thinking about things rather than people. 

How many times do we show pictures of writers? In fact, how often do students see images of the writer? For most of the time, we don’t show a picture of the writer. We want students to make inferences, assumptions, opinions about the writer about the text, yet we don’t actively show writers. We don’t actively help students co-construct a view of the writer. A person that thinks and feels something. 

For the past year, I have actively made students actively construct a writer in their head. And, the key way to do that is to constantly remind students visually of the writer. Instead of making the writer this shadowing figure that they have to construct like a séance and the techniques are a form of a Ouija board, we’ve put photos against every text. They can see who wrote it and that seeing the writer is important. 

Here is one such poem I recently discussed in lessons. 

The Dunce 

He says no with the head
but he says yes with the heart
he says yes to what he loves
he says no to the teacher
He's standing
we are questioning him
and all the problems are posed
suddenly he felt a crazy laugh come over him
and he erases the whole thing
the numbers and the words
dates and names
The sentences and the traps
and despite the master's threats
under the boos of child prodigies
with chalks of all colors
on the blackboard of misfortune
it draws the face of happiness.

Jacques Prévert

Interestingly, Prévert is never photographed without a cigarette in his mouth. For me, that just typifies the rule breaker he is. 

Once we started introducing photographs alongside writing we saw other interesting things. The building up of an interpretation of the writer. But, also, a personal dimension to the discussion. He must think … He feels … It is interesting that a long time ago one strategy we used was a ‘character on the wall’. On a big sheet, we’d have an outline of a body and we’d write bits about the character as we read a text. It seems a shame that we never did that for writers. Because, by the end of the text, a student should know what a writer thinks or feels about something, yet often they don’t. We’ve placed the emphasis on the character, the plot and the themes. Dickens bludgeons you over the head with ideas. Shakespeare is a bit more subtle. Our obsession with the text means that we work on the students’ understanding of the text and not the students’ understanding of the writer through the text. Just look at how students think in terms of texts and not in terms of writers. That speaks volumes. The text dominates. The writer is hidden. Students will talk about Macbeth and Charge of the Light Brigade,  but they don’t talk about Armitage or Weir. In fact, they barely recall the writer’s names at times. 

One of my favourite activities to build on this is to look at this poem about Rosa Parks. 

Rosa 

How she sat there, 

the time right inside a place 

so wrong it was ready. 

That trim name with 

its dream of a bench 

to rest on. Her sensible coat. 

Doing nothing was the doing: 

the clean flame of her gaze 

carved by a camera flash. 

How she stood up 

when they bent down to retrieve 

her purse. That courtesy. 

Rita Dove 

After reading the poem, I ask students to discuss these things: 

What does Rita Dove think of...

...what happened? 

...how Rosa was treated? 

...the people moving Rosa? 

… the other people on the bus? 

And, then, I flip it with these questions: 

What does Rita Dove feel about ...

...what happened? 

...how Rosa was treated? 

...the people moving Rosa? 

… the other people on the bus?

Students naturally talk about devices and words around the poem, but first and foremost they are talking about the writer. Making inferences about what they think and feel. From the beginning they explore the poem through the writer. The writer is a clear and strong presence. And, not some random faceless unknown. We are getting students to construct an interpretation from the beginning and not as an afterthought or as something that has to be taught as knowledge. 

Every day students are making inferences about the people around them. Their friends. Their teachers. Their parents. We are constantly thinking about what the other person feels or thinks. That’s what English is partly about: understanding people, situations and events. If we don’t work hard to make the subject about people, then it won’t be a subject for people. 

Thank you for reading. I have digressed enough, but you’ll probably be able to make some inferences from reading this about me as a person. 

Xris 

Unseen poetry – developing mental models of writing styles

Some forms of writing come naturally. We are wired to tell stories and that shows itself when students write stories. Other forms of writing are not so natural. Language analysis doesn’t come naturally or automatically and it something  that has confounded many a teacher and, still to this day, we are collectively trying to solve it.

I have discussed before that there are generally two modes of writing in schools. Creative writing. Explanation writing. Students will flip between the two throughout the school day. Explanation writing tends to be the dominant form of writing and largely a student’s default. That’s why when getting students to write something in a different genre the result becomes either a narrative or a very dry explanation. Take a newspaper report. Often, we get a story or a dull explanation of an event.

As English teachers, we continually fight against this type of explanation writing. This beige writing. I can recall my school days and I was an expert in beige writing. I could endlessly write pages without much thought and construction. One reason … Another reason… Therefore… However …. In conclusion. Students become fluent with explanation writing but don’t shape their thoughts or ideas. It is simply plucking an idea from their head and explain it. They ramble and ramble, hoping that some of it might be interest.

The problem with the exams is that, in English, the questions dictate a different style of writing. For example, for question 2 you need to summarise and then question 3 you need to explain choices. For each one there is a different style for writing.  The closest equivalent for this is asking a singer to sing in different styles. German Trance[Q2]. Jazz[Q3]. Folk[Q4]. Heavy Metal [Q5]. I can just imagine Kylie singing a set with all those styles.

The exams don’t rely on simple explanations. And, that is the problem for students and teachers. It is the reason  why students struggle so much with the current GCSE exam papers. They are a messy chimera of writing styles. We are expecting students to go from Disco to Country and Western in seconds. That’s why they default to common mode of writing: explanation.

As teachers, there’s a lot we do to help students get a mental image of a particular style of writing. We give them model examples. We collectively write a response. We give them sentence openings. Even after all that, the first attempt at getting the writing style response is pretty rubbish. In fact, I’d be bold to say that the first time a student attempts something shouldn’t be marked. It goes without saying: it will not be good. We don’t, after all, judge a person’s driving based on their first driving lesson, so why do it for the first piece of writing?  Oh, look you got 2 out of 8. That’s really good. Most people get 1 on their first go.

We are stuck with these messy exams so we have to work with them. That’s why I have been working on establishing a mental model for particular writing styles that aren’t natural, or automatic  for students. This is an example I use. I photocopy a load of these and students complete them in a lesson.

 

The idea is give them a stronger mental picture on how to write rather than default to beige explanation. Each lesson, they are reencounter the model and format with the idea that it is committed to memory. Then, after a fortnight of completing these they have written an independent response. I have been impressed with the quality of responses from students when filling these little sheets. The level of understanding has been great and sadly this has been hidden previously,  in some cases, by a student’s inability to articulate thoughts using ‘beige explanations’. The ideas are there, but the form of writing hindered expression.

I have found the process useful because it helps shape the structure of an idea. All too often, when we give students sentence openings, there is very little cohesion in the writing. The sentences are bolted on rather used to build and develop an idea. This process here works to instil a clear structure beforehand so that when write independently they have the skeleton to work with and then confident to move away from it when necessary.

Practice is a funny concept in English lessons. Practice often amounts to redoing questions. Practice often involves a large amount of marking. Let’s all practise Question 2 everybody. Oh goodie – I now have a massive pile of marking which students will not get for a week and I will be hesitant to give them more because of the amount of marking. What if the practice was practising the thinking and the model image of the writing rather than writing a response? Yes, English is a subject with a massive amount of marking, but writing doesn’t always need to be marked. In fact, I’d say that familiarity and fluency are more important. What can I do improve a student’s familiarity with a writing style? What can I do to improve their fluency? Of course, reading lies at the heart of this; however, the writing in the exam isn’t one that occurs naturally in the wild.  Unless you plan to get students to reading thirty example responses for the exam question, then we need to look for another way. 

We need to help them build a clearer mental model of what they need to write. The writing style of the exam questions are vague and bland so we need to work harder to make sure students have an idea of what the writing we are expecting them to recreate looks like. 

I have added a copy of this sheet to my Dropbox where you will find more of my resources.

Thanks for reading,

Xris

 

 

The first read is the deepest – moving away from spotting and pushing the thinking

 We are currently working with our Year 11s to help them prepare for an assessment on unseen poetry and for me it has, yet again, made me think about how we teach poetry or texts of any kind.

When we first introduce a text to a class, we often don’t let them sniff the wine. We don’t let them experience the bouquet. The aromas. The experience. The flavours. The hints. Instead we attack it. It is red wine. It is from France. It is a Shiraz. There’s much more to the things we enjoy. There is beauty in knowledge, but there is beauty in the experience. That chocolate egg you devoured slowly in front of the telly happened because you enjoyed the experience. It isn’t because you liked the pattern on the egg. It was the experience that gave you pleasure.

I don’t think we put the pleasure in texts enough in lessons. Now, I don’t want to come across as some Children TV presenter and suggest we make everything fun: no, I mean we put pleasure in the driving seat for once and we put what the text does to a person first. All too often, techniques are in the driving seat and lead things in lessons. That’s why Tim can spot seventeen examples of alliteration yet can’t tell you a single thing about what the poet is saying about a beach. Tim, what is the poem saying about the beach? ‘It is saying that alliteration is a really effective way to describe a beach, sir.’

When I read, I enjoy the experience. And, contrary to popular belief, I am not analysing as a I read. I am not. Instead, I am relishing the flavours, the bouquet, the hints, the aromas. I might even like it much that I want me more of it.

Okay, Xris. Cut to the chase. What does this actually mean in the classroom? Well, first of all, it does not mean you have to put a cravat on and start lighting scented candles to create the right ambience to ensure feelings happen. It means putting the impact on the reader at the front of discussions and analysis. Instead of making it an after thought. We’ve all stood there when we’ve asked a student about the effect something has in the poem. They look at you blankly as they search their internal memory cabinet so they can bluff their way through. Ummm – make the reader want to read on.  

To be honest, I have been conditioned to focus on analysis first and then explore the impact. I am not saying that analysis is bad, but I think how we structure the analysis in a lesson is problematic. What came first: the chicken or the egg? In English lessons, what comes first: the impact or the technique? For students, and most readers, it is the impact and not the technique. For English teachers, it is largely the technique and not the impact. This structure is problematic. I hate alliteration for this thing alone. How blooming hard is it to explain the effect of alliteration after you have spotted it? Pretty hard. That’s why students tend to default to an explanation of alliteration. It is much easier after you have spotted the effect to attach the mood to alliteration and a number of different techniques.

That links to another issue we have with this internalised structure of poetry teaching. Writers don’t use one thing to create a particular effect. A poet will use several methods to convey a mood. Yet, when isolating methods and linking to the impact, students miss out the connections and the interconnectivity of things in a poem. Moods are spider webs in poems. They have delicate silken threads to a number of things. Seeing those webs are what good students do. They gentle lift a thread and see all the different ways it is attached to things.

Therefore, we need to put impact in a higher position in the English lesson. Yes, there will be time for analysis and ensuring comprehension, but let’s not neglect our first reaction to any text. The feelings. The thoughts. The connections. The recollections. The questions.  

 As we work through unseen poetry, I start each lesson with me reading the poem and then they underline the bits they like. Yes, a simple question: what bits do you like in the poem?

Here’s a poem we have recently looked at:

Hard Frost

 

Frost called to the water Halt 
And crusted the moist snow with sparkling salt;
Brooks, their one bridges, stop, 
And icicles in long stalactites drop. 
And tench in water-holes 
Lurk under gluey glass like fish in bowls. 

In the hard-rutted lane 
At every footstep breaks a brittle pane, 
And tinkling trees ice-bound, 
Changed into weeping willows, sweep the ground; 
Dead boughs take root in ponds 
And ferns on windows shoot their ghostly fronds. 

But vainly the fierce frost 
Interns poor fish, ranks trees in an armed host, 
Hangs daggers from house-eaves 
And on the windows ferny ambush weaves; 
In the long war grown warmer 
The sun will strike him dead and strip his armour.

 

                                                                                                     Andrew John Young

 

It is interesting to see what students like. I get students to tell me what they like and we annotate a copy of the poem together with those bits. If students are confident enough, they might explain why they like it. I have highlighted on the poem some things students have liked. Unanimously, they all liked the last line. The fact that it was the last line straightaway addresses a structural point. We offered ideas why we all liked it. Some suggested it was the pace. Others suggested it was the fact that it was the sun appearing and how we prefer the sun to the frost. We then analysed the poem in more depth.  Students had a grounded understanding of the personal impact the poem had on them.  They knew how they felt and their reaction to the text at certain points. They pick up on the sounds, effects, patterns and structural things without going near a darn technique. The first reading is always the deepest!

For over a year, I have been really interesting in how we teach impact and effect in texts in the English classroom. For years, I have always been a big believer of teaching effect first in writing (Sexy Sprouts), but more so now am I seeing its relevance to literature. It boosts confidence in students and it enables discussion in lessons far more than narrow questions on techniques or big questions about life. Everybody can tell you whether they like or dislike something. In fact, that is where passion stems a lot of the time. Take Marmite. People can tell me with passion or aggression why they like or dislike Marmite. Why don’t we channel this ability to be passionate with texts we study?

 

Here are some approaches to being more focused on effect / impact in lessons.

[1] Getting students to ground their understanding with a connection to their personal world

What does this remind you of?

What does this make you think about?

[2] Getting students to identify themselves in the text

Whose side am I on?

Who represents me in the text?

Where are you in this situation?

Who is the victim? Who is the villain?

[3] Getting students explore things in terms of positive and negative

Students identify whether the text is positive or negative. Then explore why it is negative or positive. Often texts present different parties in the text differently. They might present a boat positively and the sea negatively. Looking at the relationship between positive and negative elements is really meaningful.

[4] Getting students to how positive or negative something becomes

This is particularly important for AQA Paper 1. Often, the texts start negatively and get even more negative as the text goes on. We look at how the negative effect is amplified through the text. What structural choices add to this negativity?

[5] Getting students to explore what the like and dislike about characters

It’s easy to see texts with a pantomime googles: people are either victims or villains. Seeing that characters have relatable aspects is really key. Students might not like Mrs Birling but they could at least identify with her determination to do what is right for her family. Seeing characters are complex things are relatable is important.

[6] Getting students to articulate their first impression, reaction or feelings

What do you like?

What don’t you like?

What is your opinion of…?

What would you do if it was you?

 

We all like shared experiences. How many of us chat about shared experiences of books, films or TV? Every text we study is a ‘Line of Duty’ watercooler moment. It is a shared experience and not just shared analysis. The two go hand in hand. One is made even better by the other. We enjoy the experience so we analyse it more.   

Let’s help students feel and experience the brilliant literature we study and not just know them. It doesn’t take a lot to do this. No fancy costumes. No special effects. No props. No special guest.

Get your nose in a poem. Swirl it around. Savour it. Spit it out. What do you notice?  

Thanks for reading. I am now off to get myself drunk on poetry. Hiccup. Hiccup.

Xris