How do you maximise the potential of those that you work with? At Astrea we’re often talking about the Trust Dividend, especially in our curriculum development work. For us, this is one of the most important elements of coming together as a Trust. We don’t just have one Head of Department, we have many! The possibilities provided by the scale of an organisation means that there is massive potential. However, realising that full potential is messy and full of possible barriers and pitfalls.

At Astrea Academy Trust we have decided to use Subject Communities to design our new aligned common curriculum. We will rely on the expertise of our brilliant subject teachers and leaders to decide what should be taught and how it should be taught. We’re clear however that it would be cleaner and more clinical to centralise our curriculum. There are many ways to work at scale, but for us we believe that in thinking hard about curriculum we are in fact becoming better teachers and leaders. We mustn’t assume that we all think the same about what should be taught and how it should be taught. However, by thinking hard about these questions and why others may have different opinions is precisely where the learning is hiding.

In the last few weeks, we have held our first Subject Community Meetings of this academic year. They’re a space for our Heads of Department to come together with their National Lead to debate, discuss and share best practice. Although this is a critical space for our teachers and leaders to come together to collaborate, theorise and debate, we also acknowledge that subject communities already existed in our schools and regions. This was an important point for us to be aware of. Although we’re setting off on a new adventure together, there are existing adventures to continue or finish too.

In our Meetings we have started vibrant discussions and begun to identify areas of disagreement which is the fertile ground for curriculum and teacher development. However, we also looked to define what our Subject Communities are and what their scope is. At Astrea, we talk about three important layers of subject communities. Firstly, the school layer. This is at the level of the school team. We might be familiar with this. It’s our HoD and teaching team with an SLT-link providing lines of accountability. We may also be a one-person department and rely on colleagues in similar subjects. Secondly, we have the Trust or federation layer. For us this is where our HoDs come together to work with their National Lead – just as they have done in the last few weeks. A massive benefit for our one-person departments is that now they’re in a much larger team of experts. Thirdly, we have the national layer. This is where our teachers and leaders engage with subject associations such as the Historical Association with Cottenham Village College, or me in the English Association. Each layer is important and adds to the quality and depth of the discourse in the other layers. For example, being part of a subject association means that you’re likely to bring exciting conversations from other parts of the country into a Trust subject meeting, or into your school.

We are also building systems to ensure that our Subject Communities are not working in a vacuum. I knew from experience that it is important to have the right meeting at the right time. Each one building and feeding into the next to ensure that time was used efficiently and effectively. The product of that is captured in the cycle diagram here.

I coordinate with our fantastic secondary principals a regular opportunity to meet and work on vision and strategy for our new common curriculum. This is our Astrea Curriculum and Assessment Group (ACAG). We make decisions about the direction of our curriculum development and ensure that principals and executive leaders are central to the decision-making process. For example, in our first meeting we discussed how we’d want to do common curriculum development at Astrea. We decided on developing Subject Communities. We then run two Partnership Meetings for our SLT leading on curriculum and those on teaching and learning. Here we begin to contextualise the decisions that are made in the ACAG, work together, and share best practice. That is to say, we take a strategic decision and begin to consider the ways that it might begin to take shape in each of our schools. Therefore, we considered how best to leverage the meetings that would happen. We considered interesting questions such as: how can we make the most of the meetings? what is our role in supporting them? These meetings then feed directly into our Subject Community meetings. What we’ve already found helpful with this process is that Subject Community meetings can feed directly into the next ACAG. For example, feeding back what has and hasn’t worked from a central decision.

I hope that this has been useful, or even interesting. I would love to know your thoughts and reflections.

The English language exams are hard to teach. I have always felt frustrated at my perception that the exams attempt to assess a domain of knowledge (the English language) that they do not. We have come to understand that our background knowledge plays a vital role in our comprehension, especially with unseen extracts without any teacher support. Therefore the English Language exams might be considered useful at assessing a student’s knowledge of hamster keeping, or surfboarding. Yet, have questionable usefulness in assessing a student’s grasp of English. However, this blog isn’t about the changes – in my humble opinion – I would suggest. This is a quick blog to reflect some of my thoughts about effective ways of teaching English Language.

So, how can we prepare students for GCSE English Language?

1. I think the first thing to recognise is that we can’t do everything. It would be inefficient to prepare students with the domain specific knowledge they need to make sense of the range of topics that might come up in the exam. Additionally, I would argue that it would be inefficient and ineffective to have students approach the exam questions over and over again. That is to say, the skills required for the exam questions cannot easily be separated from the domain specific knowledge needed to make sense of the extracts. Therefore I have advocated a different approach which I outline here.

2. We should teach explicitly the following ‘big 6’: metaphor, personification, simile, symbolism, contrast and structure. By focusing on only six elements we can teach them explicitly, explaining how each of them work and modelling approaches to unpicking their meaning. For example, through tenor, vehicle and ground for understanding metaphor. The ultimate aim is that students learn and understand these concepts through a range of carefully selected examples. That is to say, we cannot expect a student to make sense of the complexity of metaphor by sharing one or two examples from a few texts. We must layer examples in such a way that they can develop their understanding of the different ways writers might use them. Therefore, I would argue, the most efficient way of ensuring students understand the ‘big 6’ methods is via a sequencing of examples which increase in complexity, followed by a range of deliberate practise – you can see my example here.

3. I hope that you can already begin to see how this approach to the English Language GCSE deviates from a typical approach of: read the extract and then answer the exam questions. This brings me to the third point: writing. I don’t have too much time to go into detail about this, but I have blogged in more detail about this here. Lemov, in his book Reading Reconsidered, argues that having students complete exam question answers is summative writing. That means that students need to engage with a text and have a ‘final thought’. This type of high-stakes writing is performative and, although useful, should not be the only type of writing we should do in the English classroom. To paraphrase my earlier blog, I would encourage students to write formatively (writing that develops their thinking) and developmentally (writing that develops students’ control and craft).

4. My most recent approach to teaching English Language has begun to address my frustration at how separate teaching English Language can feel to teaching the English Literature texts. Having already carefully considered the sequence of extracts to build our students’ understanding of the ‘big 6’, I began to think about vocabulary.

I came to the realisation that I had been teaching vocabulary rigorously and purposefully, informed by Beck’s brilliant Bringing Words to Life. However, I hadn’t thought about doing this in Language lessons. I therefore set out to see if I could map vocabulary that I could teach when introducing particular extracts and then linking this to literature texts for revision. The beginnings of my thinking on this can be found here. What I have found is that I can utilise my approach to teaching English Language while also revising the English Literature content and strengthening the students’ understanding of the ‘big 6’ and of the key vocabulary I wanted them to know and apply.

An example of this approach can be seen in the image below. In an English Language lesson my students would read the extract from Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. We would explore the writer’s use of personification and undertake some formative and developmental writing, depending on the needs of the class. In this lesson I would explicitly teach them the word ‘oppressive’. We would explore the word, its meaning and the various ways we could apply it to this text. We move from this example to begin to consider the word more widely. For example, we consider oppression in London, Exposure, Checking out me History and in the guilt Lady Macbeth feels.

The result of this approach has been very interesting. Students are making greater sense of the ‘big 6’ and are learning, applying and understanding a range of vocabulary that speaks to both Language, Literature and the wider world and curriculum. Furthermore, by consistently linking vocabulary between fiction extracts, non-fiction extracts and the literature texts students are regularly retrieving knowledge from their long term memory, which as we know builds retrieval strength.

I would love your thoughts and feedback on this. Especially where you think this might work with additional extracts / vocabulary / links to literature texts.

Last academic year I wrote about English Language and the knowledge-rich dilemma. I was/am fascinated by the exam. The main question I worked towards answering last year was: how can I improve my students’ writing about unseen extracts? 

As part of my trust-wide role I work with Year 11 students who should be achieving a good pass at GCSE, however due to a number of different reasons are not close to this. Last year I took a class from Christmas and began my reflections by utilising the teaching of metaphor and using one word summaries (I talk about this in the blog above). I was thrilled by the results the students achieved in the summer and intended to be more radical next time.

This year I took a class from September and wanted to build on the approaches I had started last year. The two most important things that I have changed are:

1. Increase the number of times the students read and encounter each unseen text
2. Reduce the amount of writing that the students do in class

The second of these two approaches seems completely counterintuitive and, to be honest, more than a little risky. Every year that I have prepared Year 11 students to be successful when taking the English Language exam I have encouraged them to do MORE writing. Lots of opportunities for extended writing in class and at home. I’m an enormous fan of a visualiser and kept a book with the students where I would model, using the ‘me, we, you’ approach to guide students. The niggling question I was always left with was: are my students actually getting better at writing with this approach? I think that in some elements of writing the students did improve. However, I was still left feeling underwhelmed with their independent attempts. They were missing something.

I recently attended CPD with Lemov on his book Reading Reconsidered I realised something that is now obvious. Something that has enabled my students to write coherently, independently and thoughtfully. Students do not get better at writing by doing lots of writing. Students get better at writing by practising certain elements of writing. This is where I think the nuance is with the ‘me, we, you’ approach. I had been using it to simply have students writing summative pieces. Lemov argues, rightly in my opinion, that you do not get better at summative writing by doing lots of summative writing. This is exactly what I had been doing before – lots and lots of summative writing. This is exactly what Christodoulou talks about in her marathon metaphor (here). You don’t get better at marathon running by running marathons, you get better by practising different elements of marathon running. In writing, Lemov refers to three types of writing: summative, formative and developmental. Rather than attempt to define them (check out his Reading Reconsidered) for how he does this, I will attempt to exemplify them in the lesson below.

Example Lesson:

I have attached a hand out to the lesson here.

This lesson focuses on the opening of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. In this lesson I hope to encourage students to consider how Steinbeck creates a picturesque setting. 

Task 1: The lesson began with the students solo reading the extract and writing a single sentence. I have developed the students’ independence to do this through shared reading and lots of modelling and scaffolding. This is an example of formative writing. Here it encouraged students to think while writing. Its primary purpose was to allow students to engage with the meaning of the extract and reflect on it in a low threat manner.

Task 2: The lesson then continued through questioning and discussion. I collated the students’ thoughts on the whiteboard, so that we could refer to them later. We then read through the extract together, for a second time. This time I paused on vocabulary to help students, but only on vocabulary that would be key to the students’ understanding.

Task 3: Now I wanted the students to understand the word picturesque. I have enjoyed picking tier two vocabulary for the students this year. I have, where possible, chosen words that will benefit the students. For example, we have covered: trepidation, abhorrent and ephemeral. These words are equally useful for their literature texts as they are for the language exams. I tend to give a student friendly definition that the students copy. Then some tasks for the students to follow to gain an understanding of the word.

Task 4: A step that I kept from my work last year is to encourage students to think of which of the words I had listed best matches with the setting of the extract. This encourages students to continue thinking about meaning, rather than method. This is about framing the extract for the students. Again, this is a scaffold that I will reduce and then remove through the next few weeks. When the children have selected a word, such as picturesque, the students then read the text for a third time. This time they’re looking for quotations from which they can infer that the setting is picturesque. This third read the students don’t need to worry about what is happening, or about particular vocabulary because we have covered this already.

Task 5: The penultimate stage of this session was to utilise an element of developmental writing. Developmental writing is a type of writing that develops a students syntactic control (However, you can probably see an obvious cross-over between formative and developmental). This is a classic sentence expansion activity from The Writing Revolution. On the one hand it is formative because the students are thinking about justification, contrast and consequence. However, it is also developmental as it is going to allow students to grow their explanations and write about the unseen texts more deeply.

Task 6: Finally, I had the students revisit their single sentence summary. What has changed in their understanding? This time they had to use the vocabulary that I have taught them too. This is a revisit of their formative writing. Here they’re reviewing their ideas from the whiteboard at the beginning of the lesson. Following this I could have the students write an exam response. However, more often than not this year I have moved on to another extract, or another element of the same extract.

Task 7 & 8: Are fairly standard ways that I have scaffolded language analysis questions for students.

What have I noticed?

I have noticed something exciting begin to happen with my students writing. The students’ current mock papers are showing a much larger uplift than I had expected, or that I have seen before. Even though students are not practising traditional summative extended writing, they are becoming more articulate. Their explanation is driven by their understanding of meaning and supported by methods. Most importantly though, the students are more confident. They are keen to approach texts as unseen and independently. It appears as though the formative & developmental writing opportunities are allowing students to grow their ability to explain their understanding more than the way I had utilised summative writing previously.

I will continue to avoid over-using summative writing. Although clearly not an ‘evil’ type of writing, it has its place and that is not every lesson. I will focus on developing my students through formative & developmental writing opportunities.

A knowledge organiser is a useful tool in an English classroom. It allows students to review the knowledge that needs to be at their fingertips throughout a unit. However, it can also be seen as representative of the knowledge a student needs to be able to recall in future study. This is potentially problematic. It is useful to be aware that some knowledge should be drilled, whereas other knowledge needs to be experienced.

If a student was to study Oliver Twist in their curriculum during Year 7, they would probably learn what the word ‘malicious’ means. They might learn that Bill Sikes is a malicious character because of his treatment of Nancy and his dog, Bullseye. In an English classroom we could drill this factual knowledge. We would hope that students would remember what the word malicious means and the fact that Bill Sikes is malicious.

Later in Year 7 the students might encounter the word malicious again in their study of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. However, this time the word does not describe Bill Sikes’ treatment of Nancy and his dog. This time the word describes Demetrius’ treatment of Helena when he is attempting to avoid her unwanted attention. We would be missing a trick though if we drilled this new factual knowledge in the same way. We wouldn’t necessarily want students to simply remember what the word malicious means and the fact that Demetrius is malicious. Instead we would hope that the second encounter with the word would begin to build a conceptual understanding that the word malicious is a characteristic and a part of somebody’s personality.

Here is the difference then: we wouldn’t wish to prioritise recalling the definition of the word malicious. However, we might want to give priority to allowing students’ the opportunity to encounter and use the word malicious a number of times.

Let us look at a slightly different example. In the Inspiration Trust curriculum we study The Romantic Period. During this study we learn that the Romantic poets often wrote about the power and beauty of nature through a number of different examples. In this unit we might prioritise recalling particular examples of nature in I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud or To Autumn. However, these are only really examples of a much wider, larger concept. We wouldn’t want to limit a student’s exposure to this concept by only sharing one or two examples because we risk limiting their understanding. So we do want students to recall specific facts, but for the purpose of illustrating the concept. Therefore, moving forward we might not prioritise recalling specific quotations from the poems, but rather refer to some of the imagery of the natural world when introducing new knowledge, such as ‘The Prelude’ in Y10.

Here is the difference then: with concepts it is arguably better to build your understanding through a range of examples. Consideration can then be given to how one exemplification is similar or different to the next. With this approach students are equipped with the knowledge necessary to interrogate new knowledge and place it within their understanding. By isolating the beauty of nature during the Romantic period to the quotation ‘A host, of golden daffodils;’ in Wordsworth’s I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud we inadvertently simplify the concept. I do not mean to suggest that there is no merit in a student memorising an example, but we should ensure that the examples illustrate the wider concept and avoid trying to encapsulate it. We might instead aim to develop a students’ conceptual understanding of Romantic poetry with more examples such as Keats’ To Autumn ‘To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells’. 

I have come from the teaching tradition of ‘whatever is in the cupboard’ is what you’re teaching. However, since joining the Inspiration Trust, I have been on a rapid and sustained learning curve in terms of knowledge-rich curriculum planning and pedagogy. I suppose, like a lot of teachers, I actually was naturally teaching in a knowledge-rich way. Although, this was purely accidental or through trial and error in my own practise. My undergraduate study was mostly English, but part cognitive and developmental psychology.I always knew that this psychological background helped me as a teacher, but the application often felt coincidental. Now though, with research around memory and how students learn at the forefront of educational thinking, my prior knowledge is becoming explicitly useful in my practise.

Schema in education is an interesting concept. Firstly, the understanding that students have ‘webs’ or ‘maps’ of knowledge organised semantically. The most useful definition I think of is: frameworks which allow us to organise and interpret information. This information could be new, or it could be a shortcut to help us out in a world that is full of information. 

For those uncertain of this term, let me give you an example that I will return to later. I have a three year old son. He is building schemata all of the time. For example, he is obsessed with cars. He knows that a car has four wheels, makes a ‘brum’ noise and moves on the ground. He has lots of these as toys and knows that we drive in one to nursery. However, when he first experienced a tractor with its much larger wheels at the back and a different noise he became confused (and excited). He hadn’t had any experience of this and struggled to interpret and organise this new information easily. This can be extremely uncomfortable, especially when it’s disciplinary knowledge. Now imagine that for my son, this is happening lots. He is learning and building schemata at the fastest rate that he ever will do. Our students do a similar thing, but not on a general level, but a disciplinary level.

For my three year old, his schemata are flexible and adaptable. The older we get, the more rigid and difficult they become to change. In fact, for the more stubborn among us, sometimes schema will not adapt even when presented with the most powerful of evidence which contradicts our existing knowledge (Padesky, 1994). Here we can see that we could have a mixture of students who adapt schemata at different speeds.

There are two ways in which Schemata change:

• Assimilation: taking new information and adding it to an existing schema (quantitative change).
• Accommodation: the changing of a schema to accommodate new information (qualitative change).

Let us return to the tractor vs car example. My son’s schema of a car (that it has four wheels, makes a ‘brum’ noise and moves on the ground) can have new information added through assimilation. For example, if when he saw a racing car for the first time, with its large spoiler, four wheels and low seating position he is likely to have found it tricky to interpret and organise this, but not impossible. There are lots of similarities. However, when he experiences the tractor (big wheels at the back, much different sound, used in fields, etc) he has much more difficulty. Why? Simply, because he needs to accommodate this new information. He needs a new schema in which to understand tractors. He can assimilate the new information about racing cars, because they are similar in many ways.

How might this be applicable in a classroom practise?

• Be aware that assimilation and accommodation is difficult

Assimilating or accommodating new information makes students feel uneasy as they mentally attempt to organise and interpret new information. The students who we most need to interpret and organise new knowledge are exactly the ones that will avoid attending it if it is difficult. Therefore we must ensure that we scaffold and sequence new knowledge carefully and thoughtfully so that students can attend and accommodate or assimilate. 

For example, if we deem that it is important for students to understand how texts have developed through time, this will require us to help the student build an appropriate schema. We could, therefore, have a curriculum that is ordered chronologically, as this would most assist a student assimilating this new knowledge.

• Do not give too much new information at any one time

Giving too much information to assimilate or accommodate will ensure that students stop attending to knowledge that you wish them to gain. General good practise ensures that we scaffold for students, but scaffolding with an understanding of how students interpret and organise is important too. 

We know, for example that every student (and adult) has a certain cognitive load, but what about the impact of interpreting and organising? I think the most effective example of this in my practise has been my teaching of metaphor for the English Language GCSE. I used to teach metaphor and simile side-by-side. My thinking being that, as they are similar techniques and often confused, I should teach both at the same time in the hope of making the differences clear. However, by focusing on the particular elements of metaphor, and not confusing them with throwing the idea of simile in too, I have seen a much higher percentage of my students grasp this concept successfully and consider the meaning of more complex metaphors.

• Be explicit with your definitions

Be explicit and clear in your definitions and examples that you use to help students learn new knowledge. A failure to do this carefully is, arguably, worse than not doing it at all. Remember that a student will draw on their schema to interpret and make decisions on how to approach specific tasks and questions in your subject. Therefore, a schema that is full of misunderstanding is worse than no schema for that concept at all. Be clear when a student is wrong. Say that they’re wrong and explain how. Help them assimilate or accommodate.

It’s extraordinary to think that Year 11 are only a few final exams away from leaving our schools. In terms of the English GCSEs the dust is beginning to settle and our focus shifts to reflection and excitement (dread) of what the summer holds. In my last post I explored the identity crisis that English Language, as a subject, was having; in this post I hope to sketch out some of the approaches I have taken to remedy some of those challenges.

Resources and Sequencing

Resources and planning were not always a pair of things that I enjoyed doing early in my career. I do not mean to suggest that I resented doing them, but I would have preferred to be in my classroom. After all, I worked in departments that had been fully resourced for years. What did I need to do? (I feel as though that is another post). When I did make resources the focus was on what the students were going to do. Now, however, I have come to understand that a carefully considered and sequenced set of resources is an efficient and effective way of developing my students’ knowledge.

In English Language the resources that I have been using are extracts from novels such as: Seethaler’s The Tobacconist, Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath & Of Mice and Men, Zusack’s The Book Thief, McEwan’s The Child in Time and more. The reason for using these extracts is because they have been carefully selected to develop the knowledge that I want my students to have.

I have written before that knowledge in English Language is tricky to nail down. In my last post I wrote about metaphor and the notion that you can teach a student the definition of metaphor. However, this doesn’t mean that they now know all of the nuance that is metaphor. It simply means that they know a definition of a word. In Literature this is easier to remedy because you can root their knowledge of the definition with a specific example. This isn’t the case in Language. You can look at an example of a metaphor in a Language extract from The Book Thief, but that metaphor won’t ever be repeated. The image that is created won’t be copied in the same way. It is therefore necessary for students to be exposed to a range of metaphors in a considered sequence so that they build up a better image in their minds of what metaphor is.

Let me talk you through the sequencing I have used for language analysis questions. I focused on five main features: metaphor, simile, personification, symbolism and contrast. My reasoning for these five is that these are what I would want my students to know because they are going to encounter these more often, they’re high leverage. Furthermore, following interesting discussions with my colleagues, I have focused on symbolism as an umbrella term. We discussed that this approach forces students to explain their understanding and how the meaning has been created, rather than just go ‘feature spotting’ something like pathetic fallacy and then fail to comment on it effectively. For each, I explored the device’s definition and explored a range of examples out of context. This allows students to gain familiarity with the way that the device works and some of the different meanings that can be created.

Notice how obviously different this knowledge is from knowledge in Literature. This is not knowing a specific example, but it is gaining a clearer image of how it works by exposure to a range of examples. This is then developed by looking at a specific extract, such as The Book Thief which contains the beautiful metaphor: ‘the guilt was already there. It was moist. The seed was already bursting into a dark-leafed flower.’. Students can now approach this example with more confidence and, crucially, a reduced cognitive load. When I revisit metaphor with Y11 I do a similar process, regularly reviewing their understanding. I hope by using this approach to sequencing will secure the knowledge of the key devices in the long term memories of my students. Having seen some of my students approaching unseen extracts there is definitely more confidence and the analysis is more considered. Time will tell.

The Importance of Context

The last thought I wanted to share was inspired by a blog that I read a few weeks ago (I have searched for ages in an attempt to find a reference: it is most certainly not my idea!). In it the blogger spoke of the importance of the context ‘bit’ at the top of the English Language extracts. I hadn’t really considered the importance of them before. I had read them, digested them and shared them with the class. However, I had shared them with the implicit knowledge of an expert reader. One that has a huge amount of knowledge to draw on. One that finds things that a student would find impossible to understand properly, obvious. Take this example from an extract from Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black:

‘Arthur Kipps, a lawyer from London, has been sent to Eel Marsh House to settle the affairs of Alice Drablow. In this extract Kipps is exploring the burial ground close to the house.’

I have now had students highlight, during their pre-reading, the context at the beginning of the extract. This ensures that when the read the extract, they are informed readers. For example, I might expect students to highlight the word ‘burial’. From this I would expect students to read this with certain expectations of what they might expect. This is good for two reasons. The first is that they can then notice if conventions are broken and this forms an interesting point to write about. Secondly, it means that they are less likely to make errors in their reading and understanding. For example, a writer’s use of the symbolism of the colour black is less likely to be misunderstood as a reference to sophistication and elegance. It will most likely be understood accurately as fear and death. Although a simple example, I hope you understand my meaning.

Knowledge is power. I like to think that in the last few years I have shifted naturally to teach in a ‘knowledge-rich’ manner. The truth is, however, that I hadn’t known that it was ‘knowledge-rich’; I had stumbled blindly on it because it just seemed to work for my students.

English appears to be having an identity crisis (see Michael Fordham’s post here). On the one hand we have English Literature where knowledge seems fairly straightforward to define. However, the more time I have spent thinking about English Language, the more that I see it as a challenge for ‘knowledge-rich’. When discussing English Literature with colleagues it is clear what we mean by knowledge. However, is that the case with English Language? At one end of the spectrum I hear of teachers who regard English Language as a non-subject. That, actually, English Literature is the only ‘English’ subject. At the other end are teachers who believe strongly that English Language has its place. This focus, on knowledge, especially in English Language, causes a lot of concern with staff I speak with.

Context:

I would like to put this, and following blogs, into some context. I have been working with groups of students who were achieving Level 2 or 3 in English Language. Therefore lots of this work might not be appropriate for students aiming for the higher levels.

Knowledge and Metaphor:

Maybe it would be useful to explore  an example. Let us take the example of metaphor. In English Literature, arguably, this is more straightforward. For example, in the opening of Romeo and Juliet where the Prince is quelling the conflict between the Capulets and Montagues he exclaims that the citizens of Verona have ‘purple fountains issuing from your veins,’. A metaphor, such as this, can be unpicked, recalled, tested and learned. However, due to the nature of the English Language exam a student does not have the same opportunity to develop this knowledge. Instead, a student in English Language might be able to spot a metaphor, but might struggle to understand and explain it fully.

How then can we equip our students to approach this problem? A strong argument can be made then that a student needs to understand, deeply, how metaphor works. Not just a specific example: which I have been very guilty of doing in the past. A student needs to understand the difference between symbolic and literal meanings. I have found Diadu’s idea of ‘comparison alleys’ (in his The Secret of Literacy) useful for getting students to think this way. Take the example of: ‘Tom’s eyes were icy’. Here we separate the idea of ‘Tom’s eyes’ with the fact that they were ‘icy’. Every time that I have done this with students they explore the idea that eyes are symbolic, that it isn’t just about sight, but about the soul. Further, they always comment that the idea of icy suggests being cold, but also distant. When they have developed this way of thinking they can then apply their understanding of metaphor, with its literal and symbolic meanings, to more complicated examples.

One Word Summaries:

A further challenge appears to be the constant hunt for techniques and students that write analytical circles (The characters is afraid. I know this because it says: ‘the character is afraid’. This suggests the character is afraid.’) It’s almost as though students have forgotten, when it comes to Language study, that the extracts do contain meaning too. I have found real success in forcing students to consider the meaning of an extract before rushing to highlight everything. For example, when asked to explore a writer’s use of language to present the weather, I ask the students first to consider what the weather is like. This example is from Seethaler’s The Tobacconist:

As soon as he heard the first distant rumble of thunder, Franz ran inside the little fisherman’s cottage where he lived with his mother in the village of Nussdorf am Attersee and crawled into bed to listen to the unearthly racket from the safety of his warm and downy cave. The weather shook the hut on every side. The beams groaned, the shutters banged outside, and the wooden roof shingles, thickly overgrown with moss, flapped in the storm. Rain pelted against the windowpanes, driven by gusts of wind, and on the sills a few decapitated geraniums drowned in their tubs.

In the example above I have seen students jump straight to highlight the fact that the ‘weather shook the hut’. This isn’t necessarily a bad example, but is it the best? To get students to focus on meaning, I would give students a range of words: calm, unseasonable, loud, violent, ferocious. Students would then need to summarise which word that they would use to describe the weather in the extract. I have found that these one word summaries seem to guide students to think about meaning before technique. You can naturally see how a student then just needs to identify the examples which support their word choice. Clearly, when students are happy with this approach you take away the suggested words to force them to be more independent. Finally, a low-stakes approach like this which focuses on a personal opinion does seem to remove the initial blank expressions I have had from some of the students I have worked with.