12 minute read
knOwLEDGE ORGAnISERS RESEARCH AnD IMPLEMEnTATIOn
PEDAGOGY
BUILDING MOMENTUM
Advertisement
Once the initial framework is being utilised and perhaps even changed by the pupils. You can build momentum in discussions by adding in a simple question, ‘agree, disagree or build’.
After calling upon a student to provide their thoughts you could say ‘agree, disagree or build’. This does a few things for us. It keeps the correct answer from being revealed and encourages participation and leaves the space open for anyone to contribute. A pupil may want to agree with Vanessa or disagree with James or build upon what Angus had to say. When the conditions are ripe it is such a powerful question to ask. Three words from the teacher and a series of hands shoot up.
The real power, however, is hearing the students use and build upon the initial framework. Now, when called upon, a pupil could say ‘I’d like to build on what Jessica said because they said this, and I think that they are right, but they missed out this key point’.
This technique builds a strong classroom culture because it involves pupils making a habit of referring to or revising a previous comment and referencing by name the peer who made the previous point. By doing this we are building belonging and raising the standards of our discussions.
EXPAND YOUR MIND ONE SUBJECT AT A TIME
Donal Hale explores how English teaching might be enhanced by the principles revealed by cognitive science research.
59. The Fiction About Writing Non-fiction
Why has non-fiction writing had such a troubled time and what can be done to teach students how to write excellent non-fiction pieces?
62. 9 Strategies To Enhance Students’ Experience Of Art In Primary Schools
Nine easy-to-implement strategies to raise the profile of Art and to enhance the experiences of the pupils in your school.
SCHEMA BUILDING & CURRICULUM PLANNING IN ENGLISH
There is much debate in education regarding the role of cognitive science and how its principles can be harnessed into e ective pedagogy. This is often quite contentious and polarising – particularly with it comes to the application of cognitive science to the discipline of English. Donal Hale explores this thorny issue and how English teaching might be enhanced by the principles revealed by cognitive science research.
By Donal Hale
Perhaps it’s the reference to science that puts off many an English teacher from fully embracing this in their practice, or perhaps something else. I can only speculate on that. However, I can say that aspects of cognitive science have been revolutionary in my teaching practice in recent years.
One aspect in particular has been revelatory in shaping my approach to curriculum design: schema-
building.
What is schema-building?
Let’s break this down into simplistic terms. A schema is the basic unit of cognition used in learning new information.
In order for a student to retain and understand new information, they need to connect it to information that they already knew. This is called building a schema.
Tom Sherrington (2020) comments on the importance of building a schema as foundational to a teacher’s practice:
‘More and more I feel that it’s really helpful and important for teachers to think in terms of the concept of schema-building: that every student is piecing together ideas, information, experiences and concepts to form a coherent web that constitutes their understanding and fluency with the material in hand.’
(https://teacherhead. com/2020/10/04/teaching-forunderstanding-schema-building-andgenerative-learning)
A well designed curriculum should be driven by the concept of schema-building, and it is every teacher’s responsibility to ensure students are piecing together ideas and concepts to form a coherent web of the core knowledge that underpins their particular subject.
Below are several approaches to schema-building in an English curriculum I will outline below:
1. Core concepts
An English curriculum can be designed and sequenced using a range of core concepts students continually examine through a range of literary texts. Concepts may be built around, for instance, universal themes from literature, such as:
heroism honour masculinity femininity
hierarchy ambition morality inequality
To help build schema, or form a coherent web of core concepts, the teacher should be able to confidently track how a core concept is taught and re-visited through their curriculum, like so:
Year 7: we teach hierarchy in relation to the ‘Great Chain of Being’ in Macbeth.
Hierarchy
Year 8: we teach hierarchy when examining courtship in Much Ado about Nothing. Year 9: we teach hierarchy via the corruption of animalism in Animal Farm.
Year 10: we teach hierarchy through the wealth divide of the Victorian era depicted in A Christmas Carol. Year 11: we teach hierarchy through the class divide of the Edwardian era depicted in An Inspector Calls.
2. Disciplinary knowledge
Disciplinary knowledge is perhaps best described as the action taken within a particular subject to gain knowledge. For example, mastery of English requires students acquiring knowledge of metaphor (the ways in which we use language to create meaning). Again, the concept of schemabuilding is important to signpost to teachers in your department here. Students should build upon prior knowledge, revisit and develop their understanding of metaphor through the curriculum, and how this is taught to do this needs to made explicit too. Here is an example of how I have mapped out the teaching of metaphor across four units of work, bridging Year 7 and 8, as a starting point that could be developed further into later years.
Cirque du Freak/Gothic writing (Y7)
Teaching how to write metaphors within the Gothic genre through the use of ‘tenor’ and ‘vehicle’.
I am Malala (Y7)
Teaching of metaphor again through the use of ‘tenor’ and ‘vehicle’ and ‘ground’ to develop literary analysis. e.g. ‘You have put the first stone in standing water’
Romeo and Juliet (Y7)
Teaching of conceit as a form of metaphor. e.g. the comparison of J to a boat: ‘the bark thy body is/Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs/Who, raging with thy tears, and they with them/ Without a sudden calm, will overset/Thy tempest-tossed body.’ Long Way Down (Y8)
Revisiting conceit in a different literary context with the use of the elevator in the narrative.
3. Explicit vocabulary instruction.
Another way to build schema is by considering how language itself works and connections between words through very clear explicit vocabulary instruction.
One such approach could drawn from Doug Lemov’s Reading Reconsidered (2016) by considering ‘a deep-dive into the meaning and nuances of a word in a lesson, with many opportunities for student practice’.
In any series of lessons that aim to build schema on a grammatical level, I would recommend exploring etymology, common word families, roots and affixes (morphology), as according to Lemov: ‘Teaching students about roots and, prefixes and affixes is another important way to quickly increase the quantity of student vocabulary. Once students have a handle on a relatively small number of roots and affixes, they have significantly boosted their ability to accurately infer meanings of new words, as well as to deeply understand words. Knowing roots and affixes also helps students to grow attentive to a word’s etymology and build a breadth of word knowledge.’ (Lemov, 2016)
Below is an example of how teachers might approach such instruction to help students define the word: ‘wondrously’:
original form of wonder (a feeling of amazement and admiration) adding the suffix-ly to the end of an adjective turns the word into an adverb
define: in a way that is strange, beautiful or impressive.
In this example, ‘wondrously’ is broken down by its root word (‘wondrous’) and its suffix (‘ly’) to show students how language is formed at a grammatical level.
Next, students can consider its usage in a text of study (in this case the poem Still I Rise by Maya Angelou, in the line:
‘Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear’
Students are tasked with examining its usage in the poem in relation, before attempting to use the word in a sentence of their own to display their understanding of how the word works.
Finally, students take the acquired knowledge of how suffixes work and consider other examples of words which use it to shape a word’s meaning. They might do this through the use of a ‘word web’, which looks like this:
Create a word web:
wondrously strangely beautifully impressively _________ly _________ly
Students make the connections between ‘wondrously’ and other words with the ‘ly’ suffix to help build their schema regarding how language works.
Final thoughts
There are countless ways to help students build schema in the discipline of English. I have outlined three examples, which might of interest. You might have other methods to achieve a similar aim – and that’s great. The point is: schema-building in English is essential to deepen students understanding of the subject and to ensure they learn in a truly meaningful way.
THE FICTION ABOUT WRITING NON-FICTION
Over the years, non-fi ction writing has had a bit of a troubled time when being taught in the classroom. Chris Curtis examines why this is and, crucially, what can be done to teach students how to write excellent non-fi ction pieces.
By Chris Curtis
No matter what GCSE English specification you teach, you can guarantee that somewhere there will be some form of non-fiction writing, or, as some like to call it, transactional writing.
Oversimplifying the non-fiction form and reducing it to key, visible features has meant that the art of writing a non-fiction piece has been lost. Instead, students produce texts that look but don’t sound like non-fiction writing. How can we get students to write better speeches, blogs, articles, or letters?
One good idea
One thing students get in their heads from an early stage is the listing of ideas in non-fiction texts. This is a clear lie. When convincing people, we rely on one strong reason or idea to convince them. That good idea is so strong that it is enough to persuade people.
In teaching, we often get students to list possible ideas. Each of those ideas becomes a paragraph. Sadly, when students write like this, there’s no connection between those ideas. Instead, we have loosely linked ideas without any development. And, that is where students fall down: development. By having lots of ideas, it takes quite a bit of skill to weave them together to make a strong argument.
Get students to think of ideas and then narrow those ideas to one ‘killer idea’. That, then, becomes the source of thinking. How do you convince the reader based on this one ‘killer idea’? From that point, students are thinking of shaping the argument and not just listing their ideas.
Structuring the writing
Over the years, students have been trained to list ideas in their writing. That’s why we often see phrases like ‘ One reason is ..’ or ‘Another reason is …’. They become conditioned to write like this because most subjects in school expect them to list reasons in this way. English requires writing to be crafted and, therefore, we need to work against lists of ideas and work towards detailed development of a single idea.
Everything needs an introduction and a conclusion. That’s a given, but students need to know that there are other ways to structure an argument rather than listing one idea after another. We, as a school, use Pathos, Logos and Ethos as a way to shape an argument.
• Pathos: What is the emotional aspect of this idea? Who are the victims? Who are the villains?
• Logos: What is the logical reason behind this idea? What could happen if this isn’t addressed?
• Ethos: What makes you an expert on this issue? Why should you be listened to more than others?
Once students have these aspects in their minds they can think about planning and shaping their one idea. Where can they find emotion? What’s the consequence of inaction? What makes you an expert? Then, they have a way to shape their argument. They have three ways to start. Do you start with emotion? Do you start with consequences? Do you start with your perspective and personal opinion? From that point, students are able to shape their writing and make choices around the impact on the reader.
The students have the same idea all the way through, but through Pathos, Logos and Ethos they are shining different perspectives on that one idea.
Looks are not everything
Non-fiction, unlike other styles of writing, is often seen as being a very visual medium. It is true, but there is also a literary element to it too and that’s always what students always see. They will show off their literary dexterity in a short story, but when it comes to non-fiction they are more obsessed with the look of the text than the quality of their writing.
Students will take more care on the title and pictures than they will with the writing of a paragraph. How many newspaper articles have we read by students that look like newspaper articles but read like something else? The exams are basically looking for an essay with a hint of a magazine article. That’s how I tell my students to write in the exam: write an essay with a hint of a speech. In fact, I don’t draw attention much to the visual style of the text or even the quick visual markers. The tone of the writing is more important than the looks, so that’s why I spend time looking at creating tone.
Examiners don’t have a checklist when it comes to non-fiction and the tone of the writing sells to the marker if the student has the style right or wrong. No amount of headings, subheadings, pictures, columns or stock phrases are going to lift a piece of writing, unless the tone is right.
