Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. First of all,
I should start by saying that I’m certain that what I’m about to say is nothing
revolutionary or new. In fact, I almost decided not to write about it because
it seems so obvious. However, it wasn’t obvious to me before, so perhaps it
will be of interest to someone.
Last year, we started Year 7 with a great reading scheme of work based on a
fantastic book, “The Graveyard Book”
by Neil Gaiman. Similar to every other year of my teaching career, we got
straight into reading the book, making inferences about the characters and
considering the effects of language and structure. By this time last year, our
pupils were able, with heavy modelling support and sentence starters, to write
about these things. But, round about June, it occurred to me that we’d actually
done them a disservice. In preparation for their end of year exams, we created
a set of revision resources which really went back to basics, starting off with exercises focused
on meaning, writers’ purpose and effects. As we did this, it occurred to me
this is how we should have started at the beginning of Year 7: at the
beginning.
This
might be an issue that is quite specific to our school, but I have realised
that the vast majority of our pupils just don’t understand stories. Many of
them have not been brought up with stories, not had stories read to them as
young children and don’t really understand the point of stories, which makes
developing a genuine understanding of what people are trying to do when they
write difficult. Pupils could diligently learn all the different language and
structural features and sentence starters, and churn out versions of the model
answers we’d worked through, but did not have a real feel for why any of it was
important. As a result, there were often moments when I would ask, “Why
has the writer done that? What effect does it have?”, and be faced with a room
full of blank faces. As a result, I decided to completely change our scheme of
work for Year 7 Term 1 and start with a very basic breakdown of what stories
are, and what the point of it all is.
For no very good reason, other than me getting carried away
with beginnings, I decided to avoid the pressure of trying to get through a
whole novel, and chose to use a range of extracts, also starting at the
beginning with Hesiod and Homer, moving through to Beowulf. The rationale for
this was to try and plug some of the gaps in cultural capital which our pupils
have, while trying to build an awareness of how and why the stories have been
put together. The lessons involved a repeated focus on making sure the pupils
understood the meaning of the texts, borrowing an idea I picked up from Chris
Curtis about getting them to focus on what they don’t understand. We spent a
lot of time insisting that pupils didn’t simply ignore difficult words, but
used a range of techniques to decipher what such words mean. We also repeated
ad naseum the idea that the texts did not appear by magic, but were constructed
deliberately and methodically by the writers (one brilliant teacher in our
department, who is an MFL specialist, had his classes choral chanting, “Because
the writer chose it” in response to any questions about why anything happened
in the stories). We spent time discussing writer’s purpose, explicit and
implicit meaning and considering why the writers made the choices they did, as
opposed to any of the multitude of other choices they could have made. And only
towards the end of half term did we finally start to talk about what effect
these choices had on readers, and what inferences we could make about the
characters.
Being totally honest, it did feel at times like we were
moving very slowly, and having to cover some quite basic concepts several
times. In this regard, I was reassured by Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby’s
brilliant book Making Every Lesson Count
that it was better to persevere with something worth learning until they’ve
learnt it, rather than simply moving on because that is what my Medium Term
Plan dictated. In the end, we’ve moved lessons looking at Chaucer and Milton
and the use of language and structure into Half Term 2, rather than rushing
through them. And I think it has been worth it. I teach two Set 3 classes, and
I am confident that they are all now aware of what stories are and why they are
written, which I believe puts them in a much stronger position for the rest of
their study of literature. I’m also confident that they are now aware of at
least two culturally significant Homers, which is, in itself, no small thing.
The next step is to try and put this awareness to use: in Half Term 2 we are
going to focus more on their own writing, using a similar range of “classic”
extracts to inspire and inform what they write. I believe that, by going back
to the beginning, we’ve given our pupils a better start to KS3 and, ultimately,
a better chance of really engaging with their GCSE texts. Fingers crossed
anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment