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