Tradesman to teacher- pipe dream to reality.

There’s a four hour difference between London and Abu Dhabi, but my mate Callum* doesn’t remember that. That’s why Callum called me in a huff the other day at 2am. Callum felt the urgent need to let me know that his PGCE was rubbish, but more importantly he wanted me to help out.

Callum is a former white-van man, who got into audiobooks while at work and decided to do a degree and become an English teacher. He did this because Callum is one of those people who follows his passions fearlessly. You know, the brilliant ones.

He’s one of the most intelligent men I’ve ever met, but he’s not from academia. His PGCE was leaving him cold. He was sick of sitting in lecture halls pontificating and wanted to actually be told how to do the job. When he was training to be a plumber they didn’t spend hours musing about why gas exists; they worked on what to do with it. He wanted that same thing from me.

I explained the time difference but promised to call back with some help. When I woke the next day, I was excited to try to codify what teaching is in a way that Callum would find useful.

I thought carefully about Marzano, Rosenshine and Engelmann’s work. I thought about the best teachers I’d ever seen. I thought about courses I’d taken where the instructors pushed me on. In the end, what I came up with was a post it note of steps. I don’t think they’re revolutionary, but Callum audibly sighed relief when I read them out. After a couple of expletives he cried, “Yeah, well I can do that- why didn’t they just say that and then get us to do dummy runs.”

Here is that list:

Knowledge

Tell them increasingly complicated things not too much at once.

Understanding

Ask them lots of questions – simple ones first then connecting ones later.

Modelling

Show them how to do things using knowledge you’ve given them.

Practice

Allow them to try things they’ve been shown how to do- not too far out of their reach. (Keep the stabilisers on at first- sentence stems, models to imitate etcetera.)

Marking

Mark their books weekly/fortnightly with clear steps to improve – have them retry same or similar tasks.

I told Callum that these steps were pretty much in order and a cycle. I told him that he didn’t need to do all of them every lesson and we talked about retrieval of knowledge before practice. Most of all we spoke about how he’s eventually play with this form. He felt confident and ready to go.

Now, I’m not saying PGCEs don’t teach this. I suspect they might have even said it Callum on his course, albeit in a less direct way. My PGCE, for instance, left me feeling very ready for the classroom, but for Callum the pontificating was distracting him from the actual job.

His take on it, “I reckon they over complicate to prove they’re dead clever.” I doubt it. I think it is more complicated than I’ve made it. However, what I’ve given Callum is enough to get going and isn’t that what you actually need at the start of your career.

N.B- I also provided him with some sample lessons that followed this formula, some half finished sketches of lessons and a couple of learning objectives for him to plan and send me. The lessons I got back were exceptional and I believe he will fly in placement two.

*Callum isn’t his actual name and he was never a plumber, he was in a similar trade.

All views your own?

Recently I sat down to do an episode of the podcast that I sporadically run, with a teacher I won’t name for reasons that will become apparent shortly.

The teacher in question was beautifully articulate about their topic and teaching in general, a real credit to their school. I was really excited about their contribution and the information they shared. However, a few hours later that bubble was burst.

I received an email from the teacher saying the leadership of the school wouldn’t allow them to share it on a public access platform. The reasons weren’t clear and I don’t know enough teachers at that school to check whether any of the staff blog about teaching. This type of censorship felt to me like an affront to everyone good about edutwitter and teachers/teaching in general.

When I first joined edutwitter it was on the advice of Andy Tharby. It was brilliant advice. I found a platform to ask questions and help where I could. When I look back on the time before I joined Twitter, and spoke to Andy, Shaun Allison, and other colleagues at Durrington I realise I wasn’t half as good as I thought I was. I jumped through all the hoops, but I was focused on entertainment and not learning.

I think that’s why I’m so dismayed by this school’s attitude. They have an extremely competent member of staff who is able to share their expertise and yet they are not allowed to add to the dialogue. They aren’t allowed to improve the teaching of others.

Which, I suppose, leads to a rather inevitable question. Why? Well, the school hasn’t given any answers to the teacher in question and I don’t suspect they will given that this teacher seems extremely professional and unlikely to push the issue. So I will allow myself the chance to speculate.

“We don’t want other schools stealing our good ideas.” Surely it can’t be this. I know schools are against each other in exams and league tables but when we say we want the best for students, I think we mean all students not just the ones we teach. I’ve never heard a teacher say I want all the kids at my school to do well and the ones at the other local secondaries to fail miserably. Maybe I’ve failed to surround myself with bitter and miserable self-serving teachers, but I honestly can’t say I’ve heard this sentiment before.

“We don’t want to risk our reputation.” Now that would be sensible, but only if you didn’t trust your staff with that reputation. And let’s not forget it’s the staff of a school that build that reputation. I struggle to see that as a legitimate argument.

“We are doing things that we don’t want the council/trust to know about.” It can’t be this. The world of teaching is so open and everything comes out in the wash. I’ve read too many Ofsted reports where a school gets found out for off-rolling to believe any SLT team believe they could hide something long term. Plus, as I’ve said the podcast went well the ideas are brilliant. You wouldn’t want to hide them. The same goes for parents.

“We want to do an in house podcast.” Brilliant, have the content. It’s yours. Remove me from it if you like. I really don’t care just share good ideas and improve the lives of as many children as possible. State your intentions and let me get out of the way.

I suppose the reason, I’m upset by this is that the content could open the mind of many teachers. I’m upset because I can’t understand it. I think of the openness of a school like Michaela, despite the slings and arrows, and what a great impact they had. I think of Research Schools and my former employers at Durrington who continue to help schools both locally and nationally, often for no charge. In fact, the reputation of those two schools is almost built on their sharing of best practice. I worry about silencing teachers, especially the brilliant ones and I hope they change their minds.

Mark E Smith & The Value of Context

No, I’m afraid this isn’t a super-group from beyond the grave, but rather a little thought I’ve been having about context.

Several exam boards do not include context in their rubrics, this could lead us to believe that the exam bodies are taking a New Critical line. Whenever we study a text we bring our understanding of what literary criticism should be to the table, that much is certain. However, we probably do not stop and think about which critical reading theory we are most aligned with, which is a shame because it clearly has an influence on how we teach, and arguably more importantly what we teach.

Movements like ‘New Criticism’, The Prague School and ‘Russian Formalism’ refused to deal with context, they believed that focusing on such things was an obfuscation and removed ‘the making strange of language’ which they saw as the essentially literary element. My limited understanding of the logic of this, is that basically speaking they believed that because literature used language in a way which was distinct from everyday language it must be removed from anything attached to the everyday of its author or era. They all forwarded an essentially scientific approach to the study of literature and suggested that any personal interpretation was based on reader emotion and experience, which they felt was pointless.

In many ways what they attempt to remove is the ambiguity of literature, which previously was seen as the beauty of the work in most forms of criticism. Take for instance, Mark E Smith’s strange lyric from The Fall’s ‘Mountain Energei,’ Dolly Parton and Lord Byron/They said “patriotism/ is the last refuge/But now it’s me.”  There are several ways we could begin to look at this lyric alone.

Firstly, we could take an historical fact checking approach- i.e Is the statement factually accurate? Did both of these cultural figures refer to patriotism in this way, or at least express the same sentiment? Logically that leads us to question why they expressed this sentiment? What was the situation in which they expressed this sentiment? But notice already I’ve started to break the rules of New Criticism etc.

Next we may begin to examine Mark E Smith’s relationship with this view point and these figures. Why is it important to Mark E Smith that these figures expressed this sentiment? Are there other figures that expressed this sentiment who he ignored? How does he himself feel about patriotism?

However, a Russian Formalist might argue that we don’t need to know any of this information. We have as yet ignored what sentence itself actually means. It appears to mean initially that the speaker has become patriotic, however on closer examination we can see that he might be saying that he himself is the last refuge. We could break this down linguistically and be scientific, the speaker of the lyrics does not in fact say that he is now feeling patriotism, despite it being the last refuge, that is our inference. He says that he is the last refuge, people, he seems to suggest, have given up on patriotism and instead invested in the mythology of the diminutive Mancunian at the mic. However, even this is unscientific – the speaker does not say that patriotism is the last refuge of people. That again is my ‘logical interpretation.’ I also need to forget who Dolly Parton and Lord Byron are, that is completely irrelevant, their cultural significance and any contrast artistically is not important (to a reader ignoring context.) In fact, the line may as well read Female A and Male A, even the reference to Byron’s title is not to be considered – the patriarchal and feudalistic suggestion of this title is not helpful context after all! The fact these are two speakers are the only significant feature to the line.

In reading this, I hope you’re being swayed to see the importance of context. The method described above seems completely silly to me. Context is king. Yes, Shakespeare includes themes related to the human condition but he was very much writing to an audience. If you’re not convinced look at the humour used after the prologue in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ – fierce smut of the worst/best kind! Talk of pushing maids to the wall and ‘standing’ so ladies can feel ‘it’ is humour for after the watershed by modern standards and not meant to appease polite society. It’s written for a ‘Carry On’ audience and can’t exist in a vacuum just because some people find it funny now.

In ‘Macbeth,’ you really do need a sense of ‘The Great Chain of Being’ in order to understand what has been transgressed and knowing that James I believed himself a descendant of Banquo explains the reference to a long line of kings. Furthermore, knowing that the historical Banquo has been somewhat whitewashed in Macbeth is clearly useful. So why would anyone study without context? Are exam boards afraid we don’t know enough? Are they afraid the students can’t learn enough? Are they formalists from a bygone age? It’s hard to say, but whatever the rubric says I feel we have a moral imperative to help our students understand the culture significance of the time the writer was writing in.

The language may be the vessel, but the context is king. If the water flowing down the mountain is blocked by a tree, then we will just have to shift it to paraphrase/butcher Mark E Smith.

Distance learning – We’ll meet again…

Whether you call it distant learning, remote learning or independent learning or any variation on that theme, the one thing that is clear is that the learning mustn’t go anywhere.

Virtually all of the research that I’m aware of says that this remote learning stuff isn’t as effective as classroom based instruction, but we are left with little choice other than to embrace remote learning. Which means that all that is left to do is decide which way is best for teachers, parents and students.

As a Head of Department one of my main considerations was how what we set up will benefit not just our current students but students we have in the future. Therefore remote resources that supported only our current units exams went out of the window. Instead I decided to ask my team to focus on the evergreen grammar instruction and classic texts, high in cultural capital for comprehension. Much in line with this excellent blog by Joe Kirby . Both of which will be followed by a low stakes retrieval quiz. The quizzes will be done on google forms, more on that later.

I started by decided which elements to focus on and then mapped out a schedule that meant each teacher only planned 6 lessons for the fortnight. This made sure that what each teacher planned was their absolute best work and worth everyone’s time.

In order to ensure the lessons were quality assured in a timely manner, I produced two PowerPoint templates that set out the structure of the lessons. This is a tight but loose approach of the sort Shaun Allison champions here. Teachers are of course allowed to use professional judgement to change the template, but it meant that all lessons had a clear framework that teachers could use to save time and be successful.

To check for student understanding, I then produced a google form template featuring a drop down register of student names so that we could see who completed the work. The questions start from simple factual retrieval to more challenging application. All of which are multiple choice to make the marking easier for staff. I showed my team how to ramp up challenge with good quality distractors earlier in the year and remind them of the need to do this with google forms.

I’m not sure how any of this will work. I’m not sure any of it is perfect. I’m not sure students will engage fully, but I’m confident we’ve done what is best for the students now and in the future.

If you’d like an explanation of the techy side of this, I’m probably not the best guy but I know a few people who and could try to convince them to blog about this… if there’s a need.

I’ll write about PowerPoint template lessons again soon as I feel they’re a fantastic way to lead departmental improvement.

Erasmus sentences

There is no reason why you should be familiar with Erasmus of Rotterdam or the book ‘De Copia.’ However, after reading a book about Shakespeare’s education discovering this book led me to think very carefully about how I teach students to craft sentences. The book essential shows the importance of being able to produce a wide variety of styles in our writing. A key aspect being sentence variety.

This led to me producing this document : https://www.dropbox.com/s/7tp6lcrw1ypxtd7/Erasmus%20Sentence%20Variety.docx?dl=0

I have used this document in many different ways, most commonly it operates as a reference point for me and my students, much like a knowledge organiser. It shows them the huge amount of colours available to the writer as he attempts to create his narrative, speech or whatever.

On occasions, I have given it over to students and asked them to try to transform a single sentence of their own. Mainly, I look back at it and teach four or five explicitly. I will ask them to copy a sentence, complete an example and create an example of their own. I may even ask for a certain quota of several types in an extended piece of writing.

In my current context it works to use a simple scoring system. The first use of one type of sentence gets you 3 points, but the second only 1. This stops students over relying on the sentences they feel comfortable with and forces them to expand their horizons. This wouldn’t work in my previous context because students would likely see the pursuit of points/merits as futile, and so it’s important to know your own context.

The sentences are from a variety of sources and I don’t claim to have been the origin of all or many of them. Some I found in excellent examples share by other teachers, others I noticed recurring in novels I enjoyed and some came from a book I have on sentence variety.

I would add a word of caution, which is that being able to write all of these sentences doesn’t make you a great writer and so think carefully about how many minutes you want to give over to something like this.

It is, however, a fairly self explanatory document and so it might work well as homework or possibly even cover. I’m interested to know what the people who’ve requested it will do with it, so please comment below.

Enjoy.

 

IQ and Growth Mindset

IQ is a fairly stable and effective predictor of outcomes. We can use it to roughly predict what sort of occupation someone might suit. That’s because jobs come with built in complexity and the level of that complexity must be matched by the individual’s ability to understand it. This is not particularly surprising, however what is surprising is the amount of crossover between professions.

Several studies have found that the most intellectual plumber is easily smart enough to be a doctor. Most notably Robert Hauser (2012.) Equally the least intelligent doctor would have a middling IQ were he to switch careers and become a plumber. What that means for our students is that life is rife with possibility and perhaps the only things holding them back are their imagination and expectations.

So, why don’t we tell kids that? Why do people continue to tell children about growth mindset even after it’s been proven to have very little impact. Well, I think it’s because it’s more comforting. If we told students you could be a smart plumber or a dumb doctor, they’d rightly pick plumber. It sounds better and frankly who wants to be the thickest anything. It probably makes good financial sense too, being the smartest in a field probably gives you more opportunities to exploit that market. It’s definitely possible for a clever plumber to our earn a doctor.

Which leads me to think about educational research in general. Would we be better telling children the things that will make them work harder, listen more in class and respond to feedback with a little more intensity. As an extension of that do we actually need educational research. Should we just decide what the most productive thing to believe is and go with that. The pursuit of thought as utility not truth.

Teacher retention and performance management

We are currently in a recruitment crisis, which is, in a way, another way of saying we are in a retention crisis. Many people dream of being teachers, but for many the reality is hard to cope with. Recently, I saw a post on twitter which revealed someone from a very competitive industry had found teaching too tough. He’d come from an unpopular private sector and failed to cope with the hours and demands of teaching.

What surprised me most about it, other than the glee with which existing teachers met another person’s struggle to cope, was that this person had already been in an incredibly stressful line of work. It set me off wondering what it was that kept people going and made them feel passionate about their work. This search led me to the research of Dr. Amy Wrzesniewski, an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Yale University’s School of Management. Dr. Wrzesniewski and other researchers have been studying a classification system which can help you recognize your orientation toward your work and find ways to attain greater job satisfaction. Their work seems to suggest that how you approach your work directly affects your level of satisfaction and your desire to pursue this work to mastery.

In her work Dr Wrzesniewski defines three approaches, or orientations towards work:

• Job Orientation is where individuals who fall into this category live for their weekends, and to pay their bills. Their work is a means to an end.
• Career Orientation is a state in which you pursue success or prestige. This individual will be interested in moving up the “ladder” as their key orientation.
• Calling Orientation focussed individuals often describe their work as integral to their lives and their identity. They view their career as a form of self-expression and personal fulfilment.

Wrzesniewski and colleagues have found that individuals with a calling orientation are more likely to find their work fulfilling and so head towards mastery and development of their capabilities and indeed their role. Perhaps most importantly, they are more satisfied in their working lives.

Many teachers go into the profession with intrinsic motivation to improve and get better. Yet, those that are leaving are clearly not happy and maybe even not ‘Calling’ orientated (more on that later.) What is curious about the research is that it found that you cannot necessarily predict someone’s orientation based on their job title or how they entered the profession (did they fall into it, or self select.)

For example they found that an administrative assistant might approach his/her work with the attitude: : “I enjoy solving problems before they ever reach my supervisor’s desk. I am integral to the success of our company and I face the companies challenges head on.” Yet when asked why they applied for the role they would state, “it was the best paid job that I could get an interview for!”

So why do teachers, who come in with a calling orientation disappear from the profession altogether. Well Wrzesniewski points to a type of autonomy that she refers to as ‘job crafting’ essentially, how do they define their own development, learning and how their existing skills fit with what they are doing.   Of course at the start of your N.Q.T year it may not be appropriate to be told define your route to excellent teaching, but Wrzesniewski suggests being involved in the discussion in a meaningful way is far more likely to result in autonomy, which their studies linked to intrinsic work satisfaction. Perhaps more importantly she states that over years as your skill level approaches expert you must have this sense of autonomy otherwise you will almost certainly leave your current role and seek a sense of fulfilment of purpose elsewhere. When they are given autonomy they commit to not only their role, but more importantly they commit to their community and employer. How could anyone leave teaching when they are committed even to the teaching community!

The practical implications.

I think the most practical and immediate adjustment we could make to schools is to adjust the way in which we perform appraisal. I’m fortunate enough to work in a school that allows you to set your own targets, for schools that don’t currently have a similar system in place you are likely limiting autonomy and as discussed above this can result in lower retention rates. This will impact on those who are experienced the most.

The research suggests a small project based model, to encourage the crafting mentally. This could include, but doesn’t need to limited to, recording a small part of teaching performance (referred to as ‘decompostion,’ Grossman et al, 2009) and then recording this practice before reviewing with a trusted second person. Next, the individual would investigate effective practice in this micro-practice by examining the literature before recording a similar moment of teaching. For instance, they may like to focus on their explanation and having researched narrative explanations, attempt to deliver similar content to a similar class.

I’m not the biggest fan of Steve Jobs, but the famous quote of his about hiring seems pertinent here, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” I’d say that this underpins everything Wrzesniewski is saying. The question for leaders is how do you create this environment and for teachers, how do we create this mindset for ourselves.

Her research does not zoom in on ideas of stress, and I won’t touch on that here because I feel that the autonomy I’m discussing is about a development of resilience. When you feel you own your journey, the stress becomes a challenge or a key focus. I personally want to be the best teacher I can be, that’s my orientation and the idea of leaving teaching terrifies me. To me being a teacher is not a dirty word, it is the most vital craft of humanity. Even the confines can’t buffer me, because I love my work and I believe the confinements can’t stop my focus on this. The question is how do we create an environment where many people feel like this, and one where those who don’t can at least survive well enough to enjoy their weekend!

 

Referenced: Wrzesniewski, A., McCauley, C. R., Rozin, P., & Schwartz, B. (1997).

Critical thinking lessons, or ‘Oh gosh what’s happening to me!?’

Recently I marked a tonne of examples of speech writing. I’ve always enjoyed teaching speech writing until it comes to the actual marking and then you realise that you STILL haven’t cracked teaching this form of persuasive writing. Again, I opened the papers to find myself a little disappointed. Though I noticed significant improvements using some of the techniques Matt Pinkett suggested at Team English ’18, I still wasn’t happy.

Then as if by magic the solution hit me. “They can’t think!” It felt a cruel at first but I think it’s true. They had excellent subject knowledge, I’d taught them a few techniques that are generally seen as useful, though I stopped short of DAFOREST. I even gave the students some sentence stems that I’m a big fan of. For instance I love, “I believe _____ and it is because of this that I want to do _____”, which I think I stole from a Simon Armitage documentary and paralipsis, which is ” I’m not going to talk about _____ , I’m just going to say_____.) I used this one in a best man’s speech a few years ago “I’m not going to talk about Simon’s adventures in Ibiza, or the incident with the pogo stick, I’m just going to say what a transformation ….” However, the speeches my students created lacked a real sense of clarity of thought. To be frank, as I’m typing this…I’m not bloody surprised. It seems so obvious now. I hadn’t actually taught them how to think!

What do I mean by this? Well, take for example this sentence from a speech about the importance of learning a foreign language, “People who learn a language have a 12% higher IQ.” Now, I gave students carte blanche to make up facts (yes, I regret that but getting them writing is tough in my context.) Anyway, let’s imagine that this young man’s statistic is true, what has he actually proved? He has proven that smart people learn languages better than other people. He thinks he has proven that learning a language makes you smarter, but that isn’t the case. He has fallen into the cognitive bias of causation. Well, great so that’s one mistake fixed but no…there’s much more to this if I simply tell him how to correct his paralipsis, I haven’t really solved his issue. His long term issue could almost be seen as his inability to use the scientific method or to think logically.

So what do I do about this? Well, I’m going to try something different. I’m going to teach my students about several cognitive biases (biasi?) before we break up. I’m going to start with the ones that contain logical errors and then work outwards from there.

I will show them this example of the ‘Attentional Bias’

“Imagine you regularly go sea fishing with your friends, and you tend to see the same seal. Your friend says:

“That seal with a white neck only appears in this bay when we’re fishing.” 

Then I will ask them, is this person correct and how do we know? The aim here is to unpick that correlation does not mean causation.  I will do this with many other examples.

After this I will ask them to think of the silliest example they can think of. For me this would be the classic ‘Lion Rock’ which I think is from a Simpsons episode where Homer buys a rock to keep lions away. Almost everything has happened in ‘The Simpsons’ now so I feel pretty confident this is at least partially correct. As no lions appear Homer assumes the rock was a solid investment.

Once we’ve unpicked some examples, I intend to ask them to come up with some examples where correlation does equal causation. My intention with this will be to see if we can create a criteria for checking causation by comparing examples and non-examples.

Of course this is not a long term strategy, I will need to keep revisiting their thinking. I need to ask them deeper questions and force them to think for themselves. I need to get them debating and I may even return to ‘Socrative Circles’, which is a discussion based lesson that I’ve used in the past. However, at this moment in time I think I need to spend a greater deal of time helping them to think and hopefully modelling logic conclusions. I know I can’t read another persuasive essay that simply launches personal attacks at those who believe something different.

I might start teaching critical thinking lessons, Christ on a bike what’s happened to me!

 

Month 3- Leading a department

I came into middle leadership knowing that it wasn’t all going to be about my vision. I wasn’t naive and I feel that’s an important point to make. However, a lot more of it has been about building a clear vision for this context than I realised. I felt I was ready to deliver a vision and yet quickly realised the vision I had in my mind was, in fact,  solutions to problems that I felt existed in my previous school. So my vision has changed and adapted. For one, I’ve had to consider how the units we create as a department, and to a lesser extent how we teach those units, actually builds the character of our students. I inherited a curriculum that largely didn’t achieve the schools moral principles and so I had to adapt.

Another thing I’ve learnt is the importance of building a consensus amongst my colleagues. Even though I have a very clear vision of how things should look and where we should be heading, actually getting my team to buy into that vision is a fairly challenging task.  Sitting down with them one on one and unpicking their vision and edging it towards mine is one option, but actually listening to them and questioning their beliefs develops both of us. So far, it’s made for a much more cohesive department. I had pictured leadership as being a lot more about aggressive, dare I say it, macho powering through of resistance and creating change. However, this way is much more enjoyable for me and my team.

Which leads me to my final revelation of the month….Managing a department is administrative. God is it administrative! But, it is managing humans. Humans who have pre-conceived ideas of what their jobs are and how they are perceived within the school. They arrive with their own hang-ups, about themselves and you, and managing those is a mixture of interpersonal skills and honesty. How we alter those beliefs is a complete mystery to me at the moment and one that I hope the management course i’m about to undertake will help me with. I’ve always felt that management courses were pure snake oil, but as I now begin to reflect on my management of adults, I must admit I am interested to start a leadership course.

I am excited by this new role, and really enjoying the challenges as I meet them.

 

 

 

 

Month 2: Leading a department.

Below is the start of my thinking for a department policy.

As you will tell, we are on a journey and probably, in truth, we are a little behind where we should be. However, this is what I feel we need to form a solid base to move forward.

Criticism/comment welcome. I’m new to this leading a department stuff!

 

English Department Policy (draft.)

 

Teaching policy.

In English we utilize six key principles of teaching (Rosenshine) and ensure that our lessons adhere to these principles so that pupils make good progress.

 

1. Challenge

We select challenging texts and tasks so that students have high expectations of what they can achieve. This means placing the learning just out of reach and expecting students to achieve it.

 

2. Explanation

We use metaphors, images and carefully considered language so that students can acquire new knowledge (both procedural and declarative.)

 

3. Modelling

We use carefully planned modelling sequences so that students know how to apply their knowledge (including explicit modelling of procedural knowledge in action and talk through our thinking processes so that students are able to gain insight into the thinking of the expert.) We aim to remove this and all scaffolding over time so that students become independent learners.

 

4. Questioning

We use questioning so that students are made to think hard with breadth, depth and accuracy.  Students are taught how to store and retrieve knowledge using learning strategies such as retrieval practice and spaced practice. But also, to consider deeper meanings of texts taught and the impact of literature on the reader.

 

5. Purposeful practice

We provide opportunities for students to write in the three styles of the subject (analytical, creative and transactional) so that students improve their use of these styles. We aim for students to think deeply analytically and eventually achieve fluency in the language. We also aim for them to be able to express themselves in the world through narrative and transactional means.

 

6. Feedback

We provide students with fortnightly responses to their extended writing so that students can improve on previous performance and deepen learning. We also utilize tick marking to check declarative knowledge and live marking to deal with common problems within lessons.

English Lessons.

Our lessons are structured and patterned so that students grow to recognize the likely learning sequence.

 

Reading Lessons

Reading lessons serve one of several purposes: to check comprehension of a piece of text, to use a piece of text as a model, to increase vocabulary or grammatical understanding, to inform future analytical writing or to open a wider thematic discussion. All of this will support long-term reading for pleasure and some lessons may well be dedicated to reading for pleasure, however this is not the primary purpose of English teaching.

 

• Reading lesson structure one.

 

1. Prime students about the text to help understand.
2. Give students vocabulary support.
3. Read the text.
4. Respond to some questions about the text in writing.

 

• Reading lesson structure two.

 

1. Recap key events of a previously read text.
2. Break down the text and begin to analyse it.
3. Annotate the texts in books (whole class/groups/paired/individual.)
4. Use these annotations to form a part of analysis.

 

Writing Lessons.

Writing lessons are those in which students practice writing analytical writing, creative writing or transactional writing.

 

• Analytical lesson structure.

 

1. Students make/use annotations about quote(s) from an extract.
2. Students are presented with an essay question which these quotes could be used to answer.
3. Teacher models paragraph writing in the way that they see fit.
4. Paragraph writing- Support may come from scaffolding, paired work and/or modelling but every students book must have evidence of extended writing.

 

• Creative Writing & Transactional writing (careful consideration of genre must be made.)

 

1. Students are told about an explicit writing technique, often at sentence level.
2. Teachers model that writing technique.
3. Students attempt the writing technique and receive feedback.
4. Teachers provide stimulus and scaffolding for student to use that technique in an extending piece of writing.

 

 

Grammar.

 

Grammar lessons happen on a Sunday and are tested on a Thursday. All students are to be taught these lessons and tested on the material. This year we will centralise the tests on an online assessment so that students’ results can be tracked over time.

 

Feedback policy.

 

 

Student work	Extended writing based on final assessment.	Other class work.	Grammar quizzes	Low stakes quizzes on previous learning.	Verbal ideas in lessons	End of unit assessment
Method of feedback	T Targets- WWW & EBI	Live marking and verbal feedback.	Peer assessment (guided) or Teacher ticking – as decided by teacher	Verbal feedback and/or tick marking	Verbal feedback	T Targets- WWW & EBI
Time period	Once every two weeks for every class.	Every lesson.	Weekly	Most lessons	Every lesson.	End of unit.