Teaching students with ASD - some practical tips that might help. Part One

I am coming at this purely from an angle of experience - please bear that in mind.  However, I have always had considerable success in helping students with ASD make the most of their time in school, and now I find myself on the Spectrum I am more able to identify why this may be the case.  What follows are possible methods that have the potential to help.  Of course, every child (and adult) with ASD is quite different, so there will be a requirement for lashings of professional judgement too!

1. Empathy for the student

This is probably pretty much a given, but I feel all neuro-typical teachers could gain some insight into the mind-processes of those with ASD if they knew a little more about how it affects everyday interaction with the world.  The thing to bear in mind for all ASD students is that they are doing pretty well just by being in school.  I don't mean they should be congratulated for this - that would be patronising and wouldn't help the general attitude towards ASD one bit.  Rather that this should be taken into consideration when dealing with them.  Students with ASD are so much closer to breaking point that most other students; they are one or two straws closer to having their metaphorical back broken.  Everything that school comprises of (with the possible exception of the safe, repetitive routine) can be anathema to any student on the spectrum, from the shouting children, lack of safe, quiet spaces, loud and sudden bells to the hard-to-read teachers and hidden, unknown expectations of them.  As such, it is worth pausing to remember this.  Imagine taking in nearly every single sight, sound, smell, taste, touch around you, unable to block it out, all layering over one another over and over again creating a white noise that you can only escape from if allowed to do one of your coping strategies, which are probably not entirely suited to the classroom environment.  This video, from the National Autistic's Society, does a pretty good job of simulating this - can you blame the child for getting upset at the end? 

The child that you are trying to get the best out of is dealing with this all the time, and the younger they are, the less expert they will be at handling it.  Take a moment.  If the student is struggling to get started on a piece of work, or is extremely distracted, then it is possible they are close to melt-down or over-stimulation.  Give them a break, allow them to take a brief time out or indulge in some doodling or reading for a moment to ground them.  See if your SENCO knows what the student's strategies to calm themselves are and make sure you allow the student to utilise them.

2. Keep the environment routine and calm at all times.

A calm environment (that crazy red sun from a month or so back)

There is a benefit to this generally, let's face it.  Having strong routines and a calm but friendly and safe atmosphere in the classroom is a real boon for behaviour management with all students, but it will transform your room from a mad carnival/zoo arena into a pleasant place to be for a child on the spectrum.  Make sure lessons begin and end in the same way every day if you have an ASD student in the group.  Ideally let them know what they will be doing at the start of the lesson, if you have a good relationship with them.  Minimise surprises, especially surprise tests (are they ever a good idea for anyone??) and make sure that if a routine will change (a school trip, say), that the child is spoken to and made to feel aware AND considered by the teachers and other staff - often I feel just the fact that time has been taken to remember that a student may have difficulties is enough to help them through, as they feel more secure (I know I do).  I have found that even a quiet glance and a reassuring nod of the head can help a student cope with whatever new challenge is approaching - it shows them that you understand, and with ASD it helps so, so much if other people understand.  See my blog post here for some insight into the stresses that environment and people can bring.

3. Be clear in your instruction.

Make nothing ambiguous when setting work.  Again, all students will tend to benefit from this, but I cannot state enough how vital it is that a student with ASD knows what you expect of them.  Modelling is a great tool here, of course - showing the students work that is successful will work wonders with many students on the spectrum, and especially those with Asperger's, as it will remove a major source of debilitating procrastination - the fear of not doing the job correctly.

Even clarifying exactly how much should be written (an admittedly annoying task at times, but I ALWAYS let a student with ASD know what is needed) can boost the effort and motivation in class, as can any other clear expectation ("complete all four questions before you move on to the next task in 5 minutes", for example).  I think this is one of the greatest kindnesses you can show to a student on the spectrum, as it will make the task clearer and crystalised, a possible end goal rather than a vague and misty 'something'.  For English teachers, Slow Writing (thanks to David Didau) can be an excellent technique to employ, for the same reasons - it allows students to explore their creativity (and they may be startlingly creative) within safe and clear boundaries.

Behaviour Management will be the focus of the next post - this is a tricky one!

I hope this helps both teachers and students and please let me know if you think I've made an error - as I said, this is mostly from personal, long experience.

Teaching with Asperger's - a paradox to ponder (Part One)

Asperger's syndrome, being on the autistic spectrum, is a combination of three key areas of daily difficulty: social interaction, social communication and social imagination

See this handy diagram for how they operate and interact:

As you can see, there are whole worlds of problems here, all of which are concerned with dealing with other human beings.  Some are quite extreme, such as "inappropriate touching of other people", whereas most are fairly straightforward.  None of them, I think, would be associated with quality teaching.

The fact I am a relatively successful teacher who has managed to rise to middle management and still get good results was always in the way of me thinking I really had some kind of autistic condition.  No matter how miserable I was, trying to operate like everyone else, my successful career always stood out as a veto to the concept of my being ASD.  How could I teach the way I do with autism?  How would that even work?  It is something that I have given a lot of thought to, and I believe I now have some understanding of how it works.

As I have noted before in this blog, I have managed to develop, over the years, lots and lots of coping mechanisms and little tricks to help keep all of this at bay and hopefully invisible to the naked eye.  I believe this started very young, to the point where there was never any concern for my psychological well being as a child.  I was thought shy, a little awkward and something of a loner, but little more than that.  I had picked up at an early age how to avoid stressing myself out and how to act with people so they were comfortable and happy, and this skill got more sharply honed as I grew up.  As such my repetitive movements that help keep me relaxed (stims, as they are known in the Aspie community) are very subtle (clenching and unclenching toes, rubbing feet together, basically stuff you can do without anyone noticing) as I hated the thought of standing out or appearing to be 'weird' in any way.

Masks. From Skyrim, obviously.

By the time I was doing my PGCE and was in schools teaching for the first time, I had been managing my symptoms for nearly 20 years and as such was pretty good at it.  I was also very confident as I had been successful at university and was hugely buoyed by how natural teaching felt for me.  I think everyone who teaches can agree that there is an element of acting involved - whether this is a means of holding the class's interest or to hide true feelings (or hangovers), and this is exactly how it felt for me.  Teaching a class was going on stage.  Now bear with me - I'm not suggesting that I set out to be some kind of comedian-teacher (imagine how that would go down on Twitter!) - more that I found wearing a 'teacher mask' and being something of an exaggerated persona made teaching not only possible for me, but even successful.  Students tended to be happy with my passion for the subject and my slightly intense humour making imaginative links between topics and ideas.  I could teach precisely because I wasn't myself in the classroom, and all my discomforts and issues with social interaction were hidden behind my mask.  This works because teaching isn't a normal social interaction, just as being on stage isn't either.  The power balance and attention is not equal or eithin the usual bounds of social interactions.  As a teacher, you are telling a narrative, explaining a concept, talking at the world even (at times) - you are not engaging in small talk and reading facial expressions carefully, worrying about whether the other person likes you or thinks you're weird.  In short, teaching doesn't fire off the usual Asperger's traits that make social interaction so difficult

But it still takes its toll.  I still feel deeply anxious before and after every lesson I teach, and each lesson exhausts me, drains me of energy.  You can't wear a mask all the time, and every minute with it on requires still more minutes with it off, preferably alone, recharging. But I can do it, and that keeps me coming back for more.

Next time I'll consider how Asperger's actually helps with reading a classroom.

Things to do on Results Day

Hello.  It's that time of year again - the fortnight of horrible Thursdays.  Results day scares me a great deal.  It is partly the importance of the grades on the students: have they achieved what they have to achieve in order to progress through life happily and fulfilled? This weighs heavy on any teacher's mind this next two weeks, and yet is probably outstripped by the more selfish, yet arguably more important (to the teacher themselves) question of 'how do these results reflect my ability?'  Like it or not, the grades awarded to students after one or two years of teaching from you do reflect your teaching ability.  Yes yes, I understand the old adage about horses and drinking but still - ignoring your input on their grades is foolish and would lead to a logical conclusion of removing teachers altogether if gone the full distance.  We can bleat as much as we like about the little terrors ignoring us or not revising, but ultimately, your ability to teach and aid them learn has a huge, huge effect on their results.

So this is quite a lot of pressure.

I am terrified of letting the students down, you see.  It keeps me awake at night, sometimes - the very idea that I could have explained something more clearly, or used a more effective activity to practice a skill.  This is the torture of any professional left to their own devices - I'm sure doctors and lawyers recognise the feeling.  It's an integral part of reflective practice and is, therefore, ultimately a good thing.  However, it still remains a fact that the whole thing is horribly stressful.

So, here's my tips on what to do on results day 1 or 2 (you know what I mean):

1. Only go to one of them, unless you have responsibility in that area.  This is obvious - don't go through it twice if you don't need to.  I know this seems a little uncaring, or even unprofessional, but it isn't.  Your presence on results day is far from vital, especially if you only teach Year 12 - you'll see them in September.  Wait for the email and do your analysis in comfort at home, at your own pace.  This will give you the breathing space you need to work out how the students did and what comes next.

2. When you do go in, spend most of the time talking to the students.  This is the only worthwhile way to spend results day if you're in school.  Analysis and worrying can come later at home with a glass of wine.  If you trouble yourself to go into school, you're only really doing it to see the kids, so chat with them, advise them, console them if need be.  That's the way forward.

3. Be on holiday.  If you really can't cope with the stress in the midst of your mega-downtime, then wait until September before you engage with it at all.  Unless you're a HoD or higher, you can get away with this - do it if the alternative is losing your mind.  Being away (preferably abroad, away from the British media) is the perfect way of making it so you don't even know it's results day.  It's not cowardice - just self-preservation.

4. Do not read the papers on the day.  Don't even be tempted.  It'll only make you angry and belittle your years of hard work as they bleat about rising standards, as if they're a bad thing.  Honestly, it's as if all that money and expertise spent on improving education over the last 20 years was meant to yield no results at all, isn't it?  The logic of the papers (and the Daily Hate Mail in particular) is astonishing.

So there we are, four ways to help maintain your professional sanity today and next Thursday.  I do hope they help.

The Reading Festival?

This started off as a pun on the name of a fairly damp and uninspiring town in the UK, known for its vast music festival every August.  Once I had noticed the potential hilarity behind this pun, nothing could stop me beavering away on this poster for a fairly embriotic Reading Festival in my school in the autumn term.

Now I have my title, and my poster, it's time to start thinking about what a reading festival would actually consist of.  A festival suggest chaotic life and many activities occurring simultaneously.  This can be hard to arrange in the strict environs of a secondary school.  However, I am now responsible for primary transition and recruitment in English, with close working links with several primaries, so I see potential there for something really quite large scale.

What would be the aim of a reading festival?  Well, primarily it has to be a celebration of books and the joys of reading and learning from fiction.  Every teacher knows the pitfalls here, and the sadness that encroaches on us when students fail to share our enthusiasm, so I must tread carefully.  Reading challenges and competitions are a staple of such affairs, and I will endeavour to include many of these crowd-pleasers.  Public readings are vital too - potentially from teachers in role, masquerading as Dickens, Shakespeare and Jane Austen.  This would lend a sense of Horrible-Histories excitement to proceedings.  Tutor time activities and lunchtime diversions are a must, for the whole week (or two days, depending on my energy levels), and some kind of grand finale is required.

I am going to sit and ponder ideas that will be added to this blogpost, but in the meantime, if you have a cool idea please let me know.  Similarly, if you've attempted anything similar and have stories to share, I'll be happy to add them to this blog!

An excerpt from my travel journal:

Day 1

Having the sick bucket beside my leg is no qualification.  Upon rumour of sickness at the front of the bus, the bucket was passed nonchalantly away from me, to remove any possibility that I may become embroiled in the ensuing affair.  Sadly, I still had to report the incident to the self-appointed vomit-manager - catchphrase, 'I can do sick'.  Confused by the ambiguous nature of the verb in this sentence, I simply nodded and retreated back to my seat, humbled and strangely sad.

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Bristol Old Vic

The haunting, insistent tapping music created on a load of old planks, carried by a young and inventive cast, proved a high point in this inconsistent yet memorable production at the Old Vic.  The planks of wood are the central props in the show, playing a myriad of roles from Oberon's fairy hordes to the jaws of a hunting dog, all controlled by the wonderful choreography of the Handspring Puppet Company (War Horse) and the clever movements of the cast.

Having large hunks of wood in a central role is a brave move in any performance, with the possibility of cliched puns groaning from all quarters.  However, it pays off admirably, and I would argue that the work done with the 2 by 4 is probably superior to that done with the more conventional puppets.  Their use as instruments, elements of large scale dioramas, creeping tides and waves and forest pathways shows a real creative spark, and lent the whole show a sense of delight that it may otherwise have lacked.  The traditional puppets, all creaking joints and mischievous faces, were often lacklustre and even redundent.  The acting started reasonably and got an awful lot stronger, leaving the odd homunculi-like doppelganger puppets seeming unnecessary and forced, dragging the attention of the actors (and audience) away from the complex language and plot structure of Shakespeare.  Oberon and Titania were stronger - the sparse puppetry used well to create ethereal and otherworldly characters that are very difficult to successfully portray in the usual manner.  But it was the planks that stole the show.

The Mechanicals were wonderfully played, with the play-within-a-play of Pyramus and Thisbe a manic and super-detailed romp: the wall getting, perhaps, the biggest laughs, which is an impressive achievement.  The vigour and timing of the Mechanicals was great, bestowing the script with the skill required to make it truly hilarious.  The teenagers in the audience laughed even more than the adults.  The love square of Helena et al was reasonably portrayed, but bogged down in the wholly gratuitous puppetry.  Attempts were seemingly made at presenting the puppets as external souls, or perhaps the second part of a dual personality - at one point, Hermia and Lysander swap puppets - but it never quite seems to work.  Puck was, for me, the true highlight.  Portayed using ony a mallet, hammer, basket, saw, chisel and blowtorch, the inventiveness behind one of Shakespeare's most inventive beings is a joy to watch.

And so, before I stop - Bottom.  It needs to be mentioned, but I will not give the game away.  If nothing else, you have to see this production for the porytrayal of the Ass-form Bottom.  The actor playing the role imbues him with an excellent cod-Grecian accent and attitude, but after his transformation, you'll never look at a bicycle the same way again...

Randomised Trials in education?

The big question here is 'why not'?  Ben Goldacre is completely correct in saying that if we want to be treated as professionals, then it may be an idea for teachers to actually partake of some rigorous trials into what interventions really work.  As I tweeted earlier, in my experience of teaching most 'evidence' of working interventions are anecdotal, biased and often totally unrepeatable.  Yes, every child is different and yes, we don't want to have prescriptive methods foisted upon us, but I don't believe either of these arguments should prevent randomised trials from being, well, trialled.

The main reason RTs are so highly regarded in the world of cold empiricism is because they remove bias and  variables and allow us to identify exactly what works and what doesn't.  For drugs testing this is an obvious boon, as it allows researchers to identify the effectiveness of chemical interventions without any other issues muddying the water.  But in medicine, RT go beyond this - it isn't all drug trials.  RTs into the behaviour, style, language and techniques used by doctors and nurses have been carried out, with their effectiveness measured and analysed.  Tests such as doctors converging their language to that of their patients have been measured and the results published (see here).  If these patently non-pharma tests can be run, published and respected, then why can't similar trials be done in schools, on either a local or national level?

Obviously there are concerns that somehow children are a mysterious and vague concept, that no amount of scientific analysis can comprehend.  I view this as utter nonsense, as I see no reason, other than the deliberate mystification of the profession, for it to be the case.  Children are all different, yes; but as Goldacre said in his report: they're not that different.  Anyone who's ever written a class set of reports will know this.  If all children and their behaviour were utterly unique, teaching would be totally impossible, as no-one would have any benchmarks to set things by.  Of course there is variation - as there is in patients - but not enough to stop us from giving RT a go.

As I said, prescription from on high is feared, too.  But this misses the whole point.  Goldacre's entire idea is based on giving us as a profession an arsenal of solid, trustworthy evidence to throw back in the face of bureaucrats trying to tell us our job.  It would give us the intellectual clout required to seriously question the wisdom of policy without sounding like spoilt brats, over-mystifying the whole job by making it sound like only the chosen few can cope with teaching.  Rot.  RTs would enable us to trial techniques and ideas, to see if they actually, objectively work better than not doing them at all.  This harms no one.  For example, trialling mini-plenaries to see if they have an effect on learning would involve analysing book work, classroom participation, questionnaires, and yes, even data.  It would take time, and real focus, but over a set period would provide us with a picture of whether they are useful or not, in general.  This, multiplied all over the place, would give us an invaluable understanding of pedagogy that we currently lack.

The main things to bear in mind is that medicine and education don't have to be that similar.  All they need is to both be about results (whether data, engagement, behaviour, whatever) and RTs will give us some feedback on the efficacy of the techniques and interventions we use.

I would say that RTs done locally, with teachers leading them and analysing them, would be a good place to start.  They certainly shouldn't be top-down (they're not in medicine, after all - one of Goldacre's other big point that has been totally ignored by some) and should empower teachers to do some proper academic research into their own techniques, or new ones they fancy trying.  This would soon build a corpus of evidence for different intervention and teaching styles/techniques that would enable teachers to actually argue their points against the government with actual evidence to back them up! How invaluable that would be!  And what a change it would make, creating a more reasonable, logical profession and hopefully helping to dispel some of the ridiculous dogma that surrounds the profession (a pet hate of mine is teachers who act like there's something inherently 'different' or 'special' about teaching, as if it absolves teachers of any criticism at all.)

Look, I'm not saying that it's the be all and end all, and I obviously can't be sure that it will work, but I just hate the knee-jerk anti-idea culture of teaching sometimes.  Think about these considerations - maybe Goldacre is onto something.

Of Mice and Men - Character Ideas

I love Steinbeck's novella about two guys so much, that I fancy writing about it on a grim grimy morning. So here we go.  If this is useful for revision, then that's obviously very good news indeed.  If it's useful for teaching, then all the better.

Character - beyond the basics

George is a very complex character who suffers from a permanent clash of motives.  He is a young man, working itinerant ranch labour, and yet he is also essentially a parent of a very difficult child.  This is a totally impossible situation which tears the man apart, as he simultaneously loves and hates Lennie.  His flashes of temper, as seen in part one, are a symptom of this internal strife.  His self-isolation is another manifestation of this.  He plays solitaire at all times, never seeming to play a competitive game with others (the game of euchre in part three never really gets off the ground, due to the tension building as they wait for the gunshot) and speaks in terse, thin sentences to the majority of characters (especially Curley's Wife, Carlson and Whit).  Despite this, the novella gives us a fascinating window into a transitional phase in George's life: he meets new friends in Slim and Candy, and his long-held pipe-dream seems, startlingly and disorientatingly, to be on the cusp of becoming reality.  As such we see glimpses of warmth, sorrow and shame in George: particularly when talking to Slim in the opening pages of part three.  His decision to kill Lennie is not inevitable, though.  There are other options open to him, and I believe there must be some sense of relief in pulling the trigger.  Relief that is submerged under a tide of misery, but it would be a simplistic reading to assume there was no sense of final rest from the stressful life he's been forced to live for so long.

Lennie is scary.  There can be no doubt in anyone's mind that when Lennie gets annoyed, he is a tremendously intimidating character.  The 'fish'-like flopping of his victims, and the repetitive 'bear' imagery present us with a monstrous being - a Jekyll and Hyde - that is usually docile and calm but occasionally lethal and wantonly aggressive.  Simple readings of Lennie as a victim are inaccurate.  It is fair enough to a point, but his disability (whatever it is) makes him something of an anti-hero who does choose to do horrific acts of violence.  Evidence for this is in the petulance with which he 'hurls' around the dead puppy: the intense flash of hatred that the dead animal sparks is an insight into a deeply troubled character who is far more than just 'stupid'.

Candy is a troublesome gossip, and not as great a guy as some may suggest.  His glee at sharing his disgusting information about Curley's glove shows a man who thrives on rumour and scandal, and his reaction to his ticking off by George in part two - 'He had drawn a derogatory statement from George.  He felt safe now' - shows a man comfortable in the role of disciple rather than leader: he is very easily led and has little power of his own.  This is most clearly displayed when the men bully him into killing his dog, though Candy's insistence on keeping it alive could be viewed as selfishness.  Candy's relationship with Curley's Wife is fascinating.  He clearly hates her, behaving brutally when she joins the three 'weak ones' in Crooks' room.  He changes when addressing the only woman in the tale, becoming more assertive and aggressive.  Clearly, this emphasises the level at which women operate in this story - below even the weakest of the 'weak' trio.

Curley is a simple plot device, really - a simple antagonist with a coincidental hatred for the very physicality of Lennie.  George is right about him, in that there is nothing Lennie can do but wait for the boot to eventually drop onto him.  Steinbeck offers a little more insight, but it is all third hand: the vaseline glove, the boxing...even his position as boss's son is never fully explored.  He is, therefore, unknowable, which is exactly how Steinbeck wanted it - a mysterious, blank presence whose raw energy and hatred acts as a catalyst for the plot.

Curley's Wife is the only woman in the book, apart from the hallucination of Aunt Clara and the mentioned floozies and jailbaits of the town.  She is an exotic addition to the novel, multi-coloured and feathered like a rare bird ('ostrich feathers' on her 'red mules'), and so she is always centre of attention.  Her posture and habit of standing in doorways adds to the idea that she is inescapable: it is impossible to avoid her as she moves randomly through the ranch, like a ghost in Pac-Man.  The danger signified in her red colouring and her 'brittle, nasal' voice means that she is a source of incredible tension - totally unpredictable and capable of causing infernos of anger wherever she goes.  Every major bout of aggression has Curley's Wife at its core somewhere.  Despite this, she is not an antagonist.  Instead she is misunderstood, but prone to bursts of childlike and petulant behaviour, just like Lennie.  And just like Lennie, she cannot simply be a victim, though as a woman she is certainly prejudiced against.  Her naivety in believing the man from 'the pitchers' create some sense of culpability, but as a whole she is simply a bumbling character, desperate for love and warmth in a world where these things barely exist.  Her treatment of Crooks is fascinating, as it shows a more assertive side to her character.  Again, though she is low down the pecking order, she is still higher than Crooks, and enjoys her moment of power in part four.

Crooks is the only black character in the novel.  This highlights the unusual nature of racial relations in California at this time.  It would be dangerous to assume that California was akin to the Deep South of Alabama and Kentucky (the racism in Of Mice and Men is of a different nature to that in To Kill a Mockingbird).  As Crooks himself says, he grew up on his 'old man's chicken ranch', in a position of reasonable security.  Racism in the North and West was generally de facto, rather than enshrined in law.  The infamous Jim Crow laws were only a factor in the Southern States, where racism was an institution.  In fact in the 1930s California was most famous for its prejudice against the Filipino population that led to scenes of terrible violence in Watsonville in 1930.  This is not to say black people were not prejudiced against: they certainly were, and California had a system of segregation in place.  The Ku Klux Klan had a great many members in various areas of California at this time, too, with Orange County alone having 1200 members in the 1920s.  This lends weight to Curley's Wife's threat of lynching - it would probably have led to that.  Crooks is a quiet, embittered man who reads to pass the time when not working.  He literally shares his home with the animals, to the point that his medicine, and the medicine for the horses, are stored in the same container.  His collection of books is fascinating.  It contains an out of date copy of the California Civil Code, presumably to create the impression that he is familiar with his rights.  He has some ambiguous 'dirty books', suggestive of pornography.  Considering he can't go into town with the boys, this is not unreasonable to presume.  His tattered dictionary is the most interesting possession, as it is 'tattered', suggesting great use.  His interaction with Lennie and Candy is an emotional high point in the book, as we see the three misfits bonding over a common dream after initially hostile posturing.  Steinbeck seems on the verge of creating an Eden for these loners and 'weak ones' when Crooks asks to join them on their ranch, and society seems on the verge of inversion, with those on the periphery becoming those who have succeeded in the pursuit of happiness.  Of course, Curley's Wife's intrusion destroys all of this, as this Eve is placed below even them, worthy only of scorn and distrust.
More later on...

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Units of work with overarching narratives

The council had decided it.  The beautiful village needed a bypass, and quickly.  Deaths on the main road had been occurring all too often, and it was time to act.  Three potential routes were established, and the villagers quickly decided on the route best for them, their families and their businesses.  Just as the contest between the routes  was getting fierce, the local vicar was killed in a hit and run incident.  There were rumours of murder…

So goes the storyline of a KS3 transactional writing/speaking unit of work that I have taught for several years.  Units of work that focus on the writing of news articles, letters, speeches and the like can be incredibly boring to teach and to learn from.  Endless lessons of writing different, meaningless letters to imaginary people can really wear down the motivation of even the happiest students, and are anathema to those who find school to be an annoyance.  I just couldn’t bear to put my students through this hell, so a few years back I trawled my imagination and dredged my memory for some way of making a unit of this type fun.  Year 8 English lessons from my own past swam into focus: a village, that every student is a ‘resident’ of, with careers, social anxieties, relationships, friendships and deep seated rivalries.  This was a unit of work I remembered well, delivered by my teacher of the time, Mr Fox.  And it was certainly memorable.  I barely remember any peers (apart from close friends) from my school days, but I certainly remember us all in the drama studio, acting our parts with gusto, arguing and back-biting about the pros and cons of Bypass Route A.  Happy days indeed, so it made eminent sense to steal this unit, give it some more flourishes and develop it for a full transactional writing unit.

The Village - drawn on MS Paint (I'm a masochist).

The reasons this unit work so well are two-fold.  One, it embeds character development into the scheme, giving the students open-ended opportunity to flesh out their villager, giving them traits, back-stories, motives and relationships.  This leads to very rich and detailed Speaking and Listening activities, and gives them an opportunity to add a very strong voice to their writing.  Two, it has an over-arching narrative: a story, that gives all of the written and spoken tasks a distinct purpose and flavour.  Yes, it is a fiction, and I imagine some would argue that transactional writing in a world of fiction is meaningless.  I would take issue with this, as the fictional world is grounded in reality and deals with real issues, but still: there is ample room to create narrative units entirely based in reality.

So, the story of the village and its problems provides a backdrop to a range of written and spoken tasks.  Travel guides or Wikipedia entries can be written for the village itself (writing to inform/describe for different audiences); character biographies can be drafted (writing to entertain and develop character); newspaper reports and editorials can be written, with a focus on the difference between certain newspaper types/audiences; even obituaries and epitaphs, for the poor dead vicar, can be written – it sounds macabre but the students enjoy trying this formal and prescriptive style for a change.  Spoken tasks can include speeches from characters about their opposition to council plans; drama activities based around protests and village hall meetings; full on debates, even.  There’s plenty of scope for elongating or shortening the unit as you see fit.  I found myself adding a sub-plot about finding old manuscripts in the ancient cottage - this involved the class decoding and creating a cohesive storyline from a differentiated range of renaissance-18th Century text excerpts.  This acted as a pleasant taster for the next term's unit of work - Twelfth Night.

The students love it, of course.  It’s very engaging, but obviously this isn’t the be-all and end-all.  They learn an awful lot, too.  With their defenses down, they absorb the skills and knowledge quickly, as it all makes more sense, with their writing linked to a central narrative.  It all means something, and adds to the overall story.  They can follow their tasks through, recognising that writing a sub-par news report on the Vicar’s death would show a lack of respect, and would not be print-worthy.  They make their editorials truly powerful and persuasive, as they really want a certain by-pass route to be successful.  Thus, their learning and practice of technical aspects, such as punctuation, leap in quality.  It’s astonishing how ‘real’ the whole thing can become, to the point where the students end up leading the narrative, taking it to strange new places.  For example, we ended up doing some creative writing based on animals being displaced from their homes.  A pupil had chanced upon an old episode of Animals of Farthing Wood and wanted to use it.  And it worked brilliantly, with excerpts from Wind in the Willows analysed, and the whole theory and technique of anthropomorphism explored.

Creating story-driven schemes is time-consuming, but very rewarding.  I aim to storify all of my KS3 units in this way - I'm currently sorting out a First World War unit where the progress of the war is tracked by poetry and the biographies of Sassoon and Owen - and I believe that this will create English lessons that will be remembered for a long time.  There are limits, of course.  It would be unfeasible to create a narrative line in some units, I'm sure - but be imaginative.  Media units or transactional writing units can always be given a narrative (I have a Yr 9 writing unit built around the story of a decaying amusement park), and poetry units should be given some kind of central focus or tenet.  Novel and play units have their own narrative, of course, and I feel any persuasive module, either spoken or written, should have a story or major project at its heart.  

Punctuation Pets on Paper!

Here's my first attempt at properly drawn Pets, without the aid of a computer.  They look a bit different, but I'm sure that;'s just teething problems.  I've created a new Comma, to replace the derivative and boring caterpillar thing - he's much more fun.

Let me know what you think!

Books that I'd like to teach

When it comes to teaching literature we all have our favourites: books that we have taught many times and feel incredibly comfortable with.  Take you pick from the list: To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, The Crucible, An Inspector Calls, Death of a Salesman, Romeo and Juliet, Stone Cold, Touching the Void, The Great Gatsby etc etc.

But what of those books that we love, but feel we are not allowed to teach?  GCSEs and A-Levels seem to have harsh strictures on what we can deliver to students, and often this forces our hand away from gems that we've loved for decades, books that we know inside out, books that we could teach to a busload of Millwall fans without losing their interest.  Perhaps we need to make a change here and take a few literary risks.  After all, GCSEs and A-Level syllabuses are more flexible than they seem these days, and there's always KS3...

I remember teaching The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time to a Year 8 class several years ago, when I was an Independent school drone.  It was on the Year 8 syllabus, which surprised me (there's a wheelbarrow-load of bad language in that books, including the c-bomb), and so I built a tidy little scheme around it.  Goodness, but their attitude to the book was incredible.  I've never taught a text that has been so eagerly, so immediately lapped up as this one.  Once we'd established the salient facts about the narrator, Christopher - most importantly the nature of his Aspergers - the students understood everything, even the necessity for all the swearing.  It gave them an insight into authorial choices and intentions which set them up for the rest of the year.  It even gave them a chance to understand the term 'post-modern', which they guzzled up with relish.  So much enjoyable teaching and learning from a book that doesn't typically feature on school syllabuses must give us pause for thought.  Perhaps it's time to cast off the shackles of the tried and tested, and find ways to teach books we're really passionate about?

So, what would I teach, if I could?

1. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (KS3-5)

My all time favourite book, and with enough content and style to keep you busy for months, Wonderland is a perfect book for teaching.  The manipulation of language alone is going to help students grasp connotation and emotional impact, and the episodic structure of the story will aid with that tricky side of things too.  Characterisations are many and varied, and the humour will draw in even the most grumpy student.  I'd probably teach Looking Glass too, mainly because it contains 'Jabberwocky' and Humpty Dumpty, whose meeting with Alice could be analysed for years - 'There's glory for you!'  A whole term spent on this book in Year 8, perhaps, could be very useful indeed, paving a way for later understanding about language, structure and form.  And Year 8 can be adapted as we wish, so it's simply a case of buying the books (the biggest sticking point) and coming up with a detailed and relevant MTP.

2. The Devil's Dictionary (KS5)

Ambrose Bierce's fascinating and hilarious spoof dictionary would be great in any of the Englishes at KS5.  It has a really savage humour that could be a great focus for English Language, and its status as a work of literature can raise interesting questions regarding the nature of literature.  Bierce's biography is enthralling, too - especially his disappearance in 1913, where he set off to Mexico (at the age of 71) where he joined Pancho Villa.  He was never heard of again.  The potential for this to be used at KS5 is huge, thanks to the non-prescriptive nature of certain units on all English courses.  Perhaps as inspiration for coursework in Lit Lang, or as an example of language change in Language A2? This could easily find its place into a curriculum.  And by the way, if you haven't already, make sure you read it!

3. The Waves (KS5)

I've waxed over-lyrical about this before on here, but it's worth reiterating.  The Waves is an enormously important book.  The structure is very simple - a narrative separated into times of day by short descriptions of a beach at dawn, midday, dusk etc.  But the narrative held within this is very complex and abstract, charting the lives of several children as they pass through time, with traits, utterances and images carried through their whole life.  The self-awareness of the characters, and the fact they speak with the forced formality of a witness in the dock throughout the book, describing their lives, have stayed with me for years.  A-Level literature students would have a field day.

4. Lucky Jim (KS4)

Kingsley Amis' best book, in my opinion.  This would be a great text to read with a year 10-11 class.  The difficulty of the relationships and the sad heroism of Jim himself would appeal to a teenage audience.  In fact, Jim's open insolence and hatred of all forms of authority in his job as lecturer would strike a chord with most students! The fact that we can't help but root for the poor guy helps too.  The problem is, despite its quality and relevance, there is no easy way to fit it into a GCSE course.  It isn't a different culture text, and doesn't really fit into literary heritage either.  So its left out in the cold.  A shame.

5. A Confederacy of Dunces (KS4-5)

This is a tricky book, but the characterisation of the lead character is worth its weight in gold.
Ignatius J. Reilly is the modern teenager.  Any student who moans about the world, believing themselves to be better than all others, whilst gorging themselves on pringles playing Call of Duty, would see themselves reflected in this text, and that has to be a good thing.  Again, the contextual details surrounding John Kennedy Toole's suicide and subsequent posthumous publication would add fascinating flavour to it.  It's a different culture text, at least, but you'd have to be creative with the Controlled Assessments to squeeze it into a GCSE curriculum.

I'll have a think about more as the week progresses.  But there we go, a few books that I would love to teach.  Now I just have to figure out where, why and how.

Performance Related Pay

Performance-related pay will arrive, unwanted, in September – like a train full of dead cows pulling into Winchester.  There is seemingly nothing we can do about this, and no way of making our voices heard.  Reasonable doubts aired by the cautiously pro-cause NAHT, and serious misgivings bellowed by the NUT and NASUWT are being entirely ignored as Michael Gove pushes the idea through.

I am not about to get too riled by this; like I said, there’s little we can do.  Instead, I’m going to have a think about the ramifications of this move.  How is it going to work? What will the short- and long-term effect be?  How will I be affected? 

Little detail has been released regarding the machinery of this new system.  In fact, Gove has admitted that there is “further work to be done” to get the thing working.  This, of course, implies that he hasn’t the foggiest idea how it will work, and I think we should all be sceptical of any major policy change that hasn’t been thought through carefully enough to actually have its inner workings planned and decided upon.  This means we have next to nothing to go on when trying to assess how we will all be affected.  All we can do is ponder, speculate and wonder.  So here we go.

            1.       What will the pay scales be?

It seems that this is unknown.  We do know that the existing wider pay boundaries will be maintained as reference points, but that the various levels between will go.  So, Main Scale teachers will still be working within the established 21,000-31,000 bracket.  UPS will remain, presumably, but again without any set intermediary figures.  TLR will still put you somewhere within the next big chunk, and so forth.  One thing that has not been mentioned is altering the pay scales entirely, or opening them up.  It seems a classroom teacher is still going to be limited to £36,756 (U3), rather than able to climb up and up without taking on responsibility that removes them from the classroom.

2.       What will happen to pay?

Based on the above, we can make some quite clear guesses about what is likely to happen.  As things stand, teachers wait 6 years to hit M6, and can then go through to the UPS.  Their yearly pay rise is around £2,000 pa, year on year.  With the new system, these increments vanish.  Thus, teachers could be awarded any (or no) amount of money, within the wider band.  Yes, it means an excellent new teacher, ostensibly on M2, could be awarded with a huge salary increase, all the way up to £31,000 in their second year.  If this happens, good for them.  However, it also means that an experienced teacher in a school struggling with a broken budget could be awarded a smaller sum – say £500 – for the next year.  This could be a reward for excellent work – a real incentive – but if the money isn’t there, the raises wonj’t be great.

It seems schools are being made able to award much smaller yearly increments, slowing down the wage inflation that all schools have to contend with if they have a settled and happy staff.  Thus, pay awards for great work in the classroom could easily turn out to be much worse than the old level increments.

Similarly, there is no room for incentive for established, excellent classroom teachers.  The idea was that this plan would help keep outstanding teachers in the classroom, rather than in an SLT office.  This isn’t going to happen if the old wide payscales are kept, as we’ll still be capped at £36,000.

3.       What is the effect going to be?

I was going to move up to M6 next year, and was mightily looking forward to breaking the £30,000 barrier.  Now I am concerned that it may not happen.  I may only go up by a small amount, despite any incredible teaching I may deliver this year.  I may not go up at all.  If a school has serious budget problems, as many of them do, what’s to stop them halting payrises for a few years?  What safeguards will be in place to stop governing bodies using this new system as an exercise in budget cutting?  At the moment, there is no word of anything like this.  Instead, we get bland, vague statements with no real substance.  It’s like pasty taxes all over again (apart from the fact that pasty tax made some sense, though it was horrifically cold-hearted and evil).  Still, we must try and make a balanced analysis.

Let’s imagine that schools are able to really reward great teachers.  How will it be decided?  There are a few ways this could go:

a)      Target-based.  For this to be fair, it would have to be based on value added.  However, there are so many variables in student performance that it seems dangerous to base any pay increases solely on this.  Why should my pay be stalled because I have a class of students whose parents aren't interested in their children?

b)      Holistic.  This would depend on SLT knowing their teachers really well.  It would depend on very rigorous CPD and would probably require more observations than are currently allowed to be truly indicative.  It would take into account extra-curricular stuff, curriculum development, assemblies and everything else that teachers get involved in.  This would benefit teachers who work hard, but would not be dependent on results.

c)       Mixture.  This seems most likely, and is probably the most realistic.  It will be a huge extra workload for SLT and could cause intra-department resentment, and even then can only work properly if the money is there.

            But even if it is decided that a teacher deserves a pay-rise, there is still the problem of how much will          be awarded.  This alone questions the idea that there will be improvement in motivation and output after the introduction of this system.

In all the whole thing seems rather slapdash and ill-thought-out.  The professed aims of inspiring good practice and motivating teachers who are stuck in a rut, along with keeping excellent teachers in the classroom don't add up.  Most teachers won't get much benefit from this scheme - the most they can hope for is to be early enough in the career to speed up the scale faster that before, getting to the cap a few years before others.   Established teachers will see little difference, and it is they who may best benefit from some extra pay rises if they are outstanding.  It is not going to make the career attractive - I agree with the unions when they argue that "predictable pay scales are one of the main attractions for new entrants to the profession" - and it has too much scope for corruption.  What do others think?

Knowledge and/or Skills

What is more vital? Teaching of knowledge or skills?  Anyone with sense will know that they are symbiotic - they work together to improve students' ability - but too often I hear that teaching knowledge is somehow inferior, or even unnecessary, when trying to improve certain skills.  I don't want to get drawn into debating where the new curriculum is heading - I simply want to outline how the overt teaching of knowledge improves the learning and outcome of skills at KS3, 4 and 5 in English.

(I may well be preaching to the choir here, in which case I apologise.  However, the debate of knowledge vs. skills crops up so often on Twitter that I think it's worth considering.)

I am an English teacher, and as such I will focus on the value of skills and knowledge within that subject area.  There may be areas of overlap with other subjects, but not necessarily.  English is seen as a primarily skills based subject, I think, by most teachers.  The skills involved are all linguistic - reading, writing, speaking and listening.  These are skill-sets that we seek to improve between years 7-13, and all are assessed on a regular basis.  But do these skills ignore knowledge?  Should the teaching of 'knowledge' - that is the sharing of scientific, emotional and artistic facts, plus the transmission of the opinions of people throughout history and around the globe - be a part of skill-teaching in English?

I would say it is intrinsic, and that teaching skills without also teaching relevant 'knowledge' is deeply misguided, simply because it's an unnecessary self-imposed limitation that doesn't really benefit anyone.  Knowledge, as defined above, is a vital part of any informed analysis of text, or piece of writing, or conversation.  As teachers, it would be remiss of us to opt out of transmitting the ideas and facts about the world that would help inform the skills we are teaching.

Let's take the analysis of a poem as a case in point.  Imagine we are analysing Andrew Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress', and we are a Yr 10 class.  The skill we will be improving and practicing will be textual analysis.  Now, analysis of the language of the poem is fundamentally a skill utilising the literacy skills that will be long-established by the student.  They will be able to analyse the line 'this coyness lady were no crime' and argue that the use of 'crime' has certain connotations - connotations that they picked up long ago.  But this kind of rudderless analysis based on literacy that has been cemented since Primary School will not serve them well, and it is impossible to improve their skill without giving them access to some knowledge that, up to this point, they have lacked.  They will need some contextual understanding of the position of women in the 17th Century for starters.  They will also need to be taught a little about human empathy and feelings (how many times have we had to teach students that people aren't purely good/bad, but that there are shades in between?  This is not a skill - it's a fact that must be taught, either proactively by a teacher or passively through the reading of books).  They will require, in short, some teaching of facts and opinions to make their analysis full and worthwhile.

An analysis of a later part of the poem, where Marvell uses the imagery of death to frighten the woman to bed, will only yield worthwhile results if the students spend some time researching/being taught the cultural associations of death, tombs, burial and such like.  Expecting them to come up with good analysis based only on their naive, pre-conceived notions of death, established at KS1 and 2 is extreme folly, when it would take only one lesson to improve their position.  Note that I am arguing that analysis of text is possible without overt teaching of accompanying knowledge, but that I don't see the point of leaving it there, when the analysis could be enriched so easily by giving them some extra knowledge to work with.

In writing, it is fair to say that skills alone will get us a long way (once the initial 'knowledge-transmission' of basic literacy is complete).  A student can write a passable letter to the headteacher about school uniforms without knowing very much of the wider world, and they can write a film review with no knowledge at all of the film-making process.  So far, so good, if we're happy to leave it at that.  But why should we?  Why would we, as teachers, not want to enrich their writing by teaching them of relevant concepts, events, terminology, culture?  Teaching a student to write a film review without teaching them facts about film making, such as camera angles, film terminology, a little of the history of Hollywood seems shortsighted at best and negligent at worst.  Knowledge is the perfect ally to skills, and allows the skills to be used to their utmost.  A student who uses the recently-taught knowledge they've gained in their writing will elevate it massively compared to one who doesn't (or can't, because they received none).

The same goes for teaching Speaking and Listening to, of course.  But I will detain you no longer.  Skills in English are fundamental; skills informed and improved by freshly-taught, relevant knowledge are the icing on the education cake - one that every student should be allowed a slice of.

My Teaching Groundrule

A week into the new term and I'm feeling more positive about the whole teaching thing.  More effort put into my planning (see an earlier post for my resolutions!), successes with my Punctuation Pets idea and rapid student progress have all made me a happy camper this week.  As such, I'm going to have a think about what my fundamental teaching groundrules are.  I've never really thought about it before, let alone codified it, so this should be an intriguing process.  By 'groundrules' I mean the central tenets that I seem to adhere to, and a reflection of all the reflection and improvements I've made in the last 5 years.  It all seems to boil down to one particular rule, so here it is: number 1 of 1:

See the classroom, and lesson, from the students' point-of-view.

I think this is a fundamental thing, and it's a rule that I live by day in, day out.  Perhaps it stems from Atticus Finch, perhaps it doesn't.  All I know is that I cannot plan, deliver or reflect on a lesson without placing myself into the shoes of a student who had to endure it.  They are our customers, in the broadest sense of the word, and their experience matters.  I am under no illusions, though.  I know that their viewpoint can be flawed, or short-sighted, and there is more to this than simply making lessons fun or silly.  No, this extends into really focusing on how they will be, are, or have been learning.  How will they react to this PowerPoint slide?  Will the colours aid their understanding? Should I explain this concept in three different ways, over the lesson, using different analogies each time for different students?  Can they understand this concept without certain key vocabulary?  Is there any way I can exemplify this skill in a way they can grasp and enjoy?  Above all, how can I make their learning easier, more enjoyable and more seamless?  These questions are always on my mind, and I am forever wondering how they are likely to react to what I'm giving them.  I think this is absolutely vital, and would recommend this simple technique to anyone.

It also leads to removing all busywork from lessons.  Occasionally I will set work like this, especially with KS3, but it always makes me feel awful afterwards, like gorging on a pizza covered in chocolate and chorizo.  We've all had days where we're ill and lack the energy to bounce around the room like a crazed educating frog; typically we react to these days by giving them work where time-consumption seems to be the main factor.  But equally, we've all felt that hollow sense of worthlessness that stems from this work.  As I can't abide this feeling, I avoid busy work like the plague, and ruthlessly over-analyse any set task in a lesson just in case it has elements of busy work within it.  This can be more a curse than a blessing at times, but it seems to work well.

Behaviour management also connects with this.  Have you ever told a student off, knowing full well you're being unreasonable and probably a bit of a prick?  I certainly have, and can't face it.  I have to know that I'm being totally fair, otherwise I find myself blustering like a moron and, viewing myself briefly from their point of view, I realise what an insufferably foolish goon I look.  Teaching two boy-only groups has taught me that being consistent, reasonable and willing to let things go is the only way to succeed with just about any child, let alone misanthropic male teens.  These days I always ask myself, am I actually correct? Have I fully explained why there is a problem? Have I made it crystal clear what the potential repercussions will be?  These self-checks tend to work pretty well, and I hope I don't come across as a frustrated, bellowing cow-person anymore.

Maybe it's an obvious thing, but I know I was never taught to look at a class from the customer's viewpoint during my PGCE.  I think it's very helpful, and reckon that it keeps me sane in an increasingly insane educational world.

Minecraft - a revolution for students Part 1

I play Minecraft.  There, I've admitted it.  I play it because it's fun, cheap, provides endless leisure, and allows me to utilise my imagination in a different way to writing.  I've been playing it for around a year now, endlessly tinkering with my own personalised world, adding buildings, bridges, churches, castles, underground lairs - whatever I can think of.  After a stressful day's teaching, an hour in this electronic sandpit can wash away all my troubles, allowing me to get on with life with a bounce in my step.

A market square in my map - all built by me out of cubes.

But though there are a huge number of adult players (it was designed by, and for, adults), it is the school age kids that have really run with it.  As you may have noticed, corridors and classrooms are now rife with talk about creepers (baddies that explode, destroying your handiwork), redstone (the Minecraft equivalent of electronic wire) and diamonds (the ultimate find when mining, deep underground).  and the thing is, these guys can play.  A student in my tutor group was telling me how he'd designed a working calculator using the redstone - a hugely impressive feat, and one that shows that he has somehow taught himself the rudiments of electronics, using a video game where you can ride pigs.  Another student was talking about traps he'd built, using this redstone - floors that disappear, hurling you into a lava pit, and doors that require a code to open.  I understand that to many of you this may mean nothing, but believe me, it's the equivalent of a 12 year old confiding that they have constructed similar things in real life - it's that complicated.  They can certainly do things on that game that I can't, and I'm quite capable on games.

So, students are learning about electronic circuits, logic gates, even electronic memory storing.  They are also learning about architecture.  I overheard some older students talking about their construction projects, and discussing the merits of different column shapes, or roof pitches.  I mean, when the hell did that get cool? And here's the final thing: though the game is obviously the preserve of the geeky, all other sorts play it too.  Girls and boys, geek and popular kid.  In my boys Yr 11 class, all but one student plays the game.  These are tough, naughty and tricky lads, but they all love to talk about mods, texture packs and blowing stuff up with in-game TNT.  The single lad that doesn't play tries to mock the game, but can't manage it, due to the weight of popular opinion.  I give him a week until he gets on-board.

I haven't yet mentioned the thriving modification (modding) community, mostly children, and those who draw and paint their own texture packs.  This game is a genuine phenomenon, and I feel we need to make some use of it.  But it will require imagination.

What happened to the DoE last night?

Last night I noticed a few folk on Twitter were guffawing at the antics of the Department of Education's twitterfeed (@educationgovuk), so I went to have a look.  I've seldom been so astonished!  It was churning out Orwellian epithets like besmirched, fetid sausages, one after the other, a constant flurry of grim tidings.  'Teachers participating in the NUT/NASUWT action are likely to be in breach of their contracts.' it opined, followed swiftly by the even more irrelevant 'Setting out a long list of activities that teachers should refuse to do doesn't empower teachers as professionals.'  Indeed, I thought...and nor does berating us over the internet like a deranged troll.  Then came the real doozy.  This actually made me smile, so banal and parody-friendly was the tone: 'We will support any school that takes appropriate sanctions against this irresponsible industrial action.'

So says Mumra, arch nemesis of the Thundercats.  Honestly, who on Earth do they think they're talking to?  Just about every teacher I follow on Twitter (must be nearly a thousand now) seems to be a dedicated, hard-working, imaginative and clever individual.  As such, what's the purpose of haranguing them over Twitter, the very tool they are using to improve their practice?  Absolute madness.  Obviously I accept that they worded it in such a way as to try and gain support from hard-working teachers, and yes, there are some in the profession who don't really help the situation much, but still: using Twitter in this way was misguided and ultimately foolish.  It also made the Department for Education sound like it was run by daleks. (Thanks to @Wonderacademy for that one...)  People tend not to enjoy being talked down to, and a Twitterfeed that could have been used to share good ideas and connect us to the government has now lost many teachers' respect.

So where now?  Now that Big Brother has warned us all, and scared us back into Victory Mansions, what will happen next?  I daren't even guess.

Punctuation Pets - going all Pokemon on them.

Hello everyone.  It's a cold December 1st, and now the joy I gained from my advent calendar has waned, it's time for another post.

An endangered Apostrophe

Yesterday, trying to engage my Yr8 literacy-boosting group with the idea of apostrophes, I hit upon the idea of presenting them as an endangered species, struggling to survive in the modern world.  I led the students along a while - one of my favourite techniques - wanting them to think we were going to talk about snow leopards or minke whales or something.  Then I hit them with the apostrophe, and a suitably cute illustration of what an apostrophe looks like under a magnifying glass.

This had them hooked.  Now, I understand that engagement is not the same as learning, but it is certainly a damn good foundation to it.  Over the course of the session, I instilled in them a sense that missing out an apostrophe was a little like saying 'I don't believe in fairies'.  After they'd stopped sobbing at the thought of the needless murder of hundreds of little apostrophes, we decided it was time to act.  So, every time an apostrophe is placed in their own natural habitat (possession/omission), we will make a point of adding another line to the tally of happy, healthy apostrophes living in the wild.

The rationale behind all this childish madness is this: students usually understand apostrophe rules (and those for capitals, commas, full stops and connectives); the issue is that they just forget to use them as they write at speed, usually under pressure.  It is this forgetfulness which needs work, and what better way to help them remember than giving punctuation personality?  In our school, with the help of literacy-freak @letterland123, we are hoping to create a Pokemon-inspired 'points gathering' affair, whereby punctuation is very cute, collectible and a source of small prizes.  Watch this space...

English and Boys-Only Groups.

When I moved to my current school, I was given an all-boys Yr 10 class.  They were the disinterested, naughty, often hostile students that had been a bit of a nightmare in Yr 9, plus a few quiet lads who'd flown under the radar for three years.  I was the only male teacher in the English department, and so it was believed that I may have half-a-chance of getting these students on track, and maybe even wring a few grades out of them.

A year and a half on, and these boys are in the middle of year 11.  They are benign, funny, talkative, opinionated and often hard-working, and I wouldn't swap this group with any other.  It seems to have worked.  They are mostly on course for their targets, or above; their behaviour is generally very good indeed, and their attitude to learning is incredibly positive.  I think biting the bullet, and including gender in your differentiation to this quite extreme extent is a good thing, and not to be shied away from.  So, what are the benefits of this segregation?


1. No distractions.  This is the obvious one, and its been debated to death in the larger debate about segregated schools.  But within a mixed school, taking the boys away from the 'charms' of the female students seems to have a positive impact on their attention span and their learning.  They have no one to show off too, and as boys are usually pretty intolerant of idiotic bravado when women aren't around, this can become a positive cycle.  It helps if the teacher leads the way on this, highlighting foolish behaviour by labelling it using the student's lingo ('weak', describing poor quality humour, has gone down a treat!).  They latch onto this pretty quickly and the class benefits immensely from it.

2. Toilet humour.  There is no better way to get a gaggle of malcontented boys on side than making jokes about (and sometimes actually demonstrating) farting.  With no girls in the room to temper such grotesque behaviour, the potty-based 'banter' can reach disturbing new highs, with the level of trust within the room increasing with every foul joke.  Soon, every student feels comfortable in the classroom, knowing that banter is redirected from personal attack, to general 'blokish' silliness.  The teacher has to set boundaries, of course, and they will be stretched; persevere, though, and you can end up with the class wrapped around your little finger.

3. Similar interests.  I'm not going to say that all boys share the same interests, but it is reasonable to suggest that many discontented young men, around year 10/11, do have some interests in common.  In a group such as this, these interests can be made full advantage of.  Video games, films, football - these can all be used as starting points into modules, or even assessments themselves.  Recently, my Yr 11s completed a GCSE S&L discussion based around the future of video games, and it was fantastic!  Wonderful debates abounded, and lots of marks were awarded, as they actually wanted to listen to each others' ideas.  We have a 5-minute chat at the start of every lesson, before the starter, where we share our experiences - films we've watched over the weekend, Saturdays' football scores, video game highlights.  This leads to bonding and a sense of community, and before long, everyone's pushing in the same direction.

4. Camaraderie.  My group have really achieved this - they are 'all in this together', and are very happy to help each other out and offer new ideas to the lesson.  This could happen in any group, of course, but I feel that it has happened more quickly, and more strongly than in mixed groups, as the boys feel special.  They know they are in a boys only group, and a low one at that, and this has brought them together.

So, get those troubled boys together, add a dollop of poo-humour, chat about Grand Theft Auto, and then sneak in a bit of learning every now and then.  The results can be very good indeed.

They're afraid of Virginia Woolf?

How can it be that Virginia Woolf is missing, or under-represented, from the majority of A-Level English Literature specifications, ?  True, OCR, AQA and WJEC allow a tiny smidgen of Woolf in one of their units, but never for the independent studies, and usually as a single choice amongst many other texts.

Woolf is a vital date in the timeline of English Literature.  She is one of the more accessible 1920s English writers, and provides a useful transatlantic counterpoint to those mainstays of Literature syllabuses, Fitzgerald and early Hemingway.  Her writing is a wonderful 'way in' to Modernism (which should be a module on any Literature course!), and fills the gap between the Victorians (who are amply represented) and the mid-late 20th century poets, such as Heaney, who also fill the syllabus.  Her writing is structurally unusual, and she did things with the form of the novel that all students could get their teeth into.  Let's face it - Woolf's writing is something all students of literature should get a taste of.  But they don't.

A student reading Mrs. Dalloway would learn a lot about individual writing styles, about character development, about train-of-thought, about biased narration, and about structure.  They would also learn a great deal about the nature of writing, and its tribulations.  Sure, students discover something about the difficulties women faced in the world of literature if they check out the Brontes, but studying Woolf (with, perhaps, Plath as well) would flag up the less rosy side of literature, which, I believe is something worth highlighting - it's not easy, being an artist.

With the release of the new KS4 curriculum, I was hoping there would be more room for Woolf, but disappointment was the inevitable result.  The focus of the literary side of the syllabus (which is certainly full, if nothing else) is on pre 1918 work, with only a tiny possibility of inserting any 20th century prose (British fiction, poetry or drama since the First World War - pretty harsh either/or choice there...)  Thus we get more and more Shakespeare and less and less Modernist or Postmodernist texts.  The way the world's going, and the need for every student to be able to make rapid links in a modern world, makes me very sad that this is the case.  Woolf's modernity, flavoured with some delicious Mansfield and then some postmodern garnish, would have created a tasty chunk of GCSE fare.

Show students The Waves, and you'd simply blow their minds with what novels can actually be.  Give them a snippet of Orlando, and they'd never be the same again.  Get them to read A Room of One's Own, and see them understand the literary process as never before.

I first came across Woolf in my second year and University, and she blew me away with her style, technique and imagination.  I don't think it should be left that late.

The best laid plans...

I'm going to write a blog.  Everyone else is doing it, so I suppose I ought to join in and see what happens.  I cannot say exactly what will appear here, but its likely to be a mash-up of reflections on the career I've chosen, bits of intense geekery from the world of films and games, and probably some stuff about books too.

It's Sunday morning, I'm hounded by flu and my tea is not of premium quality, so my first blog will be a straightforward explanation of why I think those people who decry the simplicity of Of Mice and Men are missing the point.

In March 2011, and seemingly once a week ever since, Michael Gove bewailed the paucity of novel-reading in schools.  He 'questioned' the popularity of Steinbeck's book, which suggests he has much better experience of the whole teaching thing than we do, and also implying that our choice of it is due to its brevity and simplicity - in short, suggesting that we teachers will do anything for an easy life.  Of Mice and Men is a short book, granted.  It has to be, as it is a novella, and a conversion from a playscript to boot.  So we can't very well hold its length against it, can we?  It is also simple.  This is because it was written by Steinbeck, whose writing style, like many in the 1930s-1960s, was sparing, careful and concise.  Hemingway was similar, as was our own George Orwell, and I don't hear Gove belittling them.

So, its shortness and simplicity are a result of style and form - it is not short and simple to help teachers or students.  In fact, its simplicity hides huge depths of content, great oceans of emotional interplay and character development that elevate this book to its rightful place in the canon.  It is the kind of text where you can spend a whole lesson on the final line, with a top set group, analysing the myriad interpretations that can be made of it; or you can spend a happy lesson with the bottom set, writing tweets that the characters may have shared, given the chance (@princeoftheranch if I see ya with my wife agin youll git it #imtheboss).  It can be analysed for months, and still keep giving.

This is not an 'easy' book.  It is simple.  There is a huge difference (no-one would accuse the Old Man and the Sea of being 'easy').  The reason we teach it? Because it is excellent, it fits in with our schedules, it is efficient and it gives the whole spectrum of abilities the chance to get their grade.  Should we be hounded for being clever and choosing the best text available to us?  Obviously not.  Change the assessment style, change the focus, change the timings, and no doubt we may find a different text; but again - we will do it cleverly, choosing the best book for the job.  Don't hate us for that.