Blogsync: The Klingon Phonics Test

This is my response to this month’s blogsync:  

What is the best place for testing in schools?

Testing is a key aspect of formal education, but can this be taken too far? Are our current tests fit for purpose? Should progress testing alone be used to define school performance?


There are more responses to this topic here.

My daughters are in that lovely pre-test stage. They are awaiting to do their phonics test. The test that has fuelled several ASBOs on Twitter. Their school has sent home some flashcards of words to help them. So, most nights I come home and I work through the Klingon list of colours, I mean, these words that are absolute nonsense. My daughters are good, but I can’t see the point of it all. It is just a funny measuring stick to judge students.

In discussion with other primary teachers, they have told me that the testing and preparation for the phonics test doesn’t help able readers. In fact, according to them, it forces good readers to go backwards. My daughters generally sight read words, yet the phonics test is focused on blending sounds, which is something my daughters do if they don’t recognise a word. Whilst I have been reading most nights with my daughters and helping them increase their reading speed and word recognition, I find that now they are preparing for an assessment that is regressive. One teacher even said that the most able students do badly because of this sight reading and blended sound issue.

The problem I find with this testing is one that occurs across most schools. It is the form of testing that follows this mantra: We all know it’s silly, but we have to do as the government has told us to do it. I admit that I have said that to students, meetings and parents. The test process is not for the teacher’s benefit, but for a politician’s benefit to show improvement.

I love tests. I adore them. In fact, test me on tests – I’d love you to. I think testing is an important part of my life as a teacher. I test. I am tested. I comment on tests. I advise on tests. I predict tests. Everywhere I look, there are tests. Yet, what I don’t like is a test that has no value at all to the students or the process of learning.

Step forward the KS3 English test. Oh the joys of that test. There may be NQTs reading this thinking how lucky they are that they don’t even have to consider this assessment. But, it was a hilarious experience. Students were prepared for the test. They worked hard. They sweated within an inch of their life. They were told the assessment will really ‘help’ them in life. They then got the results in the next academic year, when they were using a new grading system and working on the GCSE. For them, the value of the SATs had disappeared overnight. It became meaningless. Why the KS3 SATs never started a riot I’ll never know. The realisation that the test was not for their benefit. They got nothing out of it.

It is only right that a maker of things should test the produce they make. A baker should taste or check his bread to see if it meets to a high standard. But, should a baker check the bounciness of his bread by throwing it on the floor? What value has this to the consumer? They never throw their bread around the room. It has no value to them at all. Yet, it is something that they must do, as their Head Office has instructed them to do it. But, at the same time, I baker will not take the bread out of the oven during the cooking stage. They might peak through the window, but they don’t cut a bit off and taste it. They wait for the bread to be ready.  

But, the testing that goes on in schools is dictated by a system outside of education: politics. I test students all the time. At the beginning. In the middle. At the end of learning. However, the testing structures we have are assessing at the end of the learning - KS2 and GCSE.  That timing warps learning and education. It is seen as a ‘do or die’ moment. Students, teachers and schools ramp up the pressure because everything rides on this. This one single measure. This one single test makes a school a good one or a bad one.

What if a school was allowed to enter a student when they wanted to for the KS2 test? What if our system for assessment and testing was based on the child? The child takes the test when they are ready. After all, when a child is ready they are ready. Politicians want to see progress, yet the systems hinder those making progress. What if a child is ready before Year 6? The same goes with GCSE. I am not talking about modular exams – yuk! I am talking about terminal examinations. If a student is ready, surely they should do the exam. Having students tread water is not a sign of an effective education system.

Visitor: So, what have you been doing in Year 11?

Student: Well, I have been doing stuff that I have been doing in Year 10 because some students didn’t get it, so we had to do it all again.

Visitor: Interesting, but you did get some revision out of it?

Student: Yes, I did, but it was pretty boring.

Because, we have years and years of data, using the current model of assessment, we are never going to change the exam structure. There will always be a KS2 test. But, what would be nice is if the child, rather than the government and the school, were factored into the process. A politician wants students to leave school with a certain level of proficiency. Let’s assess them when they are proficient and not when it convenient for a statistic. You take a driving test when your driving instructor thinks you are ready. Not, at the same day every year across the land.

Hopefully, a model like this would avoid the dreaded teaching to the exam that exists for several terms a year. Because, we all know it happens. Real teaching goes out the window and drilling the students for the exams take place.

Right, must dash, I have bread to test and some more Klingon words to go through. Splage. Crooge. Brack.

Thanks for reading,

Xris

 

P.S. This blog contains 40% fairy dust and it is purely a hypothetical exploration of something that will never happen.

Demystifying Shakespeare

One of the questions I use again and again (and again and again) in English lessons is: Why do you think the writer did that? The ‘that’ could be a technique, a plot point or some clever thing. But, we constantly ask students in lessons the question. We disguise it many different ways, but it is still the same question. The recent English GCSE exams showed the same question but disguised it in a number of different ways. Compare how the writers use language for effect. Explain how the picture is effective. They all, in a nutshell, ask the same thing. They just wrap it up in a nice little phrase that make students think before they answer the questions they always answer. But still, they are answer the questions:

What did the writer do?

Why did the writer do it?

Over the last year, I have experimented with this in a number of different ways, thinking how I could get students to answer these questions in an effective and interesting way.

I would be a rich man if I got a pound every time a student asked me: ‘Do you really think that the writer thought that when he was writing the text?’ A lot of what we do is guessing work. In fact, it is guessing work. Unless, I conveniently, by a massive stroke of luck, have the writer and the group of kids in the same room, we will never know the answer. Unless, I start conducting séances in the room. That would make a great lesson. Starter: get the Ouija board out. Main: Request a conversation with Charles Dickens in the spiritual world and ask him questions that students had already prepared. Plenary: Students write up the answers given. The more I think about it, the more that idea has legs (fairly translucent legs) – I joke, dear reader.

We all know the phrase: write like a reader and read like a writer. I have taken that phrase to heart and started working on making students read like writers. So, often, I give students a context for writing rather than dive straight in with the analysis.

How would you write a death scene of two lovers in a bedroom? The man thinks the woman is having an affair. However, he still loves her but feels driven to murder her.

Students then offer their suggestions. Strangle her. Poison her. Wait for her to sleep. They reason with their choices. Strangling is too aggressive maybe. Poisoning might not be dramatic enough. He might kill her when she is asleep, so she doesn’t know the ultimate betrayal. The discussion is great – loaded with ideas, thoughts and opinions. If I have time, I will get the class to write the script for it. If not, we then speed on to the scene.

We look at the specific scene and compare our ideas with the writer’s choices. Why did the writer do this? Why did the writer do that? This for me, is far better, than looking at the text and working it out that way. Use the imagination first. What would you do? Then link in the text. All too often, we expect the imagination to come second. Imagining what someone else is done is far harder than what we would do. I know what I would do; I don’t know what my mate Steve would do. I could guess, but you know I would have more to say about my ideas than someone else’s.

I give students a context for writing and they discuss what they would do in that situation. Then, we compare to what the writer would actually do. By doing this they go through the thought processes a writer would in this situation. They evaluate the possibilities, the inconsistencies, the flaws and other things.   

 

I have done with Years 7 to 11. Recently, I have done it with a Year 7 introduction to Shakespeare’s language. In the past, I have always done the decoding of Shakespeare’s language. Again, I have employed the imagination after the text. What do you think this means? What is he saying? This year I changed it:

At the start of the lesson, I showed students an extract from ‘Romeo and Juliet’. Students tried working it out. I told them that in a nutshell it said: ‘I think she is hot.’ Then, before we started analysing an extract from one of the plays, I got students to write like Shakespeare.

1: Each table was given a phrase to work on.

I love you.

They are dead.
I do not want to be your friend.
You are an idiot.
Will you marry me?

2: Students were told to improve the verbs used.

Example: I hate you.

I loath you.

I despise you.

3: Add an unusual simile.

I loathe you like an oil slick cannot be near water.

 

4: Add a list somewhere in the line.

Foul smelling, bad breathed idiot, I loathe you like an oil slick cannot be near water.

 

5: Add a metaphor linked to animals to the line.

Foul smelling, bad breathed idiot, I loathe you like an oil slick cannot be near water and my hatred is a dangerous wolf.

6: Add a connection to a well-known story.

Foul smelling, bad breathed idiot, I loathe you like an oil slick cannot be near water and my hatred is a dangerous wolf in Twilight.

7: Add some words of the time.

Foul smelling, bad breathed idiot, I loathe thee like an oil slick cannot be near water and my hatred is a dangerous wolf or werewolf. 

There were so many more things I could have added, such as repetition or a question. Here’s some that the students came up with:

Beautiful being, I adore thee like I adore the summer weather. My love for you is stronger than a monkey eating a banana. Even stronger than Shrek.

You beautiful, sweet smelling woman. Will thou be my wedded wife? Can you be the piece to my puzzle? One’s love for you is more powerful than thou’s love for chocolate or like Romeo’s love for Juliet.

The great thing about this was that students started to see what makes Shakespeare’s writing so good. The density of ideas and thoughts can hinder our understanding as novice readers but the more we unpick it the more we understand it. At the end of this lesson, students were able to see why and how it works – by doing it on their own! By understanding how it is written, students will hopefully feel more confident in their analysis.

Imagination first then analysis!

Thanks for reading,

 Xris32