It was a surprisingly difficult thing to write: focussing on the "how" seemed uninspiring; focussing on the "why" seemed too abstract. In the end what seemed to work was focussing on a specific example of student writing and using this as the narrative focus to talk through both the "how" and the "why".
Making the abstract "real" through a concrete example helped to give my presentation a little more vitality.
I delivered the presentation to parents last Thursday evening and then we all headed off to classrooms for a hands-on writing experience. Once in the classrooms the parents took the role of students and two teachers worked together to teach the lesson - one in the role of classroom teacher and the other as a pedagogical commentator interjecting occasionally with explanations about the process and the theory behind it.
Making the abstract real in the classroom was a huge success. Feedback from parents was that my presentation was OK, but what they really loved was the writing classroom which helped them truly understand how their children learn.
Below is a version of my presentation. You'd be far better off to have come and joined us in the classroom, but this is OK as a second-best. I think our whole English team is looking forward to doing this again next year.
--oOo--
Good evening,
My name is Ian Tymms and my role is Middle School Head of English.
On the screen is the lead and first paragraph of an investigative journalism article written by one of our Grade 8 students last term. I’d like to read this to you and as I do, I wonder if I can ask you to cast your mind all the way back to your own experiences in Middle School. What kind of feedback do you think this piece of writing might have received when you were at school?
The Modern World of Peer Pressure
By A Grade 8 Student
Josh sits down by the curb, waiting for his bus to arrive. A couple minutes later, he is met by another group of kids from his school, who, to his surprise, are smoking. They sit behind him. Suddenly, one of the kids taps him on the shoulder. “d’you want a cig?” he motions to his pocket, revealing a packet of new cigarettes. Josh shakes his head and turns back around, feeling the stare of the kids burn into his spine. He feels small, he feels cold. Suddenly, he stands up and starts walking away, walking as fast as he can.
When most people think about Peer Pressure, these above types of negative situations would come up with their head. But instead, the victim would succumb to it. This example shows just one of the many social circumstances children around the world face every day. But just like this scenario, good parenting and general better decision making made by children around the world, makes it so that most children around the world come up with solutions to their own peer pressure.
Turn and Talk - what feedback do you think this piece of writing would have received when you were in Middle School?
(30 seconds for discussion)
If, like me, you were educated a very long time ago, you might well have come through an education system where the emphasis was in fixing mistakes. Feedback was often via a red pen which would be used to underline key errors.
In the early years of my teaching career, my feedback to this student might have looked something like this:
“You’ve written an engaging first paragraph. The second paragraph suggests you need to learn to draft your writing. Reading your writing out loud might help you improve your expression and avoid repetitive phrases.”
I’m going to say something provocative now which is that this feedback is unlikely to be useful.
And here’s why:
The feedback I’ve just given focusses on the writing and has little connection with the student.
Twenty years ago, this is often how we taught, the writing was what mattered and fixing the writing was the objective.
What we want to show you tonight is how much more powerful the learning can be when we focus on the writer rather than the writing.
Let me ask you two more focussed questions as I read you part of the student’s self-assessment:
Here’s what he wrote:
The piece of writing I have highlighted in the top of the article shows my ability to hook and engage the reader with my anecdote. My anecdote also demonstrates the power of change in tense, as my first paragraph is done completely in present tense as if it is a narrative piece of writing, as well as in active verb form. However, my tense changes to past tense, as well as passive verb form, as we were taught, that provides a far more journalistic tone, and shows that the piece of writing is more about the news, and showing info, rather than being about the action.
Like all stories, this student’s writing life exists in a context.
To support the student as a writer, there are some important things we need to know:
- we need to know him
- We need to know the learning that has been going on in class
- We need to know what form of writing the student is engaging with and how the student is using this form of writing to engage with the world.
Were we to focus simply on this student’s writing, we would undoubtedly miss some powerful learning about grammar as this student builds an understanding of the way tense and voice can be used to position an audience. Without knowing the student, we can’t know why his expression is a bit clumsy and without knowing why, we can’t know whether addressing this or another issue is what he most needs. Most important of all, if we don’t recognise and foster the student’s growing capacity to use writing to engage with his world, we risk missing the very point of writing.
If we focus on the writing rather than the writer, we risk completely missing the learning.
Tonight we want to give you some tools to help you engage more powerfully with students as learners. Grades 6, 7 and 8 are so important in student’s development because they are right in the middle of a critical transition from childhood to adulthood. Writing is not just a mechanism for passing exams, it is at the very foundation of student’s ability to make sense of their world and shape their responses to it;
supporting student’s growing reading and writing skills is is a moral imperative long before it is an exam requirement.
One can find morality even in the utility of exams, however, and I’d like to take a moment to show you why building a student’s agency as a reader and writer in Middle School is so important for their future exam success.
This slide is a screenshot of the examination criteria for an A and an A*, the two highest grades in IGCSE English at Grade 10. We know from previous years that over half of our students will be in these two bands and about ⅓ will be in the A* range. The criteria and achievement rates are similar for IB English in Grade 12.
Let me zoom in a little closer.
The A criteria says:
Sustains a perceptive and convincing personal response
A* adds to that with the expectation that students will write...
with further insight, sensitivity, individuality and flair. And show complete and sustained engagement with both text and task.
The examiners at Grade 10 are focussed on the writer rather than the writing as well. Whilst they can’t know the context of the writer, they are nonetheless looking carefully in the writing to try to uncover the voice of a student who is engaged and autonomous.
The really important question to ask is how and when these skills are best taught. What we are told by experienced IGCSE and Grade 12 English teachers such as Kate Levy, our Head of High School English here at East and Stuart MacAlpine, who prior to being Director of Curriculum at East was Head of High School English at Dover, is that it is relatively easy to teach a student to write an exam essay; it is much, much harder to teach them voice, insight, sensitivity, individuality, flair and engagement.
These skills are the consequence of years of immersion in a rich and challenging language environment beginning right back when you first started talking to your child and continuing through the early years of their education into Primary School and Middle School.
Our responsibility in Middle School is NOT to teach exam style essays week after week. Our responsibility is to engage students with a rich and broad foundation in Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening. For success in life and in exams, students need to have read widely as well as deeply in the areas that are of particular interest to them, they need to have experimented with their writing voice and tried many different forms and genres, they need to feel part of a community that encourages and challenges them to speak up and say what is important to them.
And all this needs to be supported by a carefully constructed and sequenced curriculum which provides them with the right language skills at the right time in their development.
So what does this look like in the classroom and how can you best support this kind of complex learning at home?
In just a moment we move to the classrooms where the MS English teachers will take you through a lesson. Anne Marie Chow, our amazing Literacy Coach, has worked with us to design a lesson which should give you a sense of how your sons and daughters learn. It’ll be hands on - we want you to write - but we’ll also give you some tips and tools for how to support writing at home.
I’d like to prime you with a few things to look out for.
Pay attention to how we focus on you as a writer rather than specifically on your writing. We’ll give you copies of the Learning Principles document that Stuart introduced, to help you think about how we teach and you’ll see a summary chart of this in the classroom, too.
There will be whole class instruction, but much of the lesson will also be time for you to write. During this time, the teacher will be conferring with some of you. If you’re not lucky enough to have a conference, keep an ear out for what is going on. This is one of the most powerful parts of a lesson because it’s where the teacher gets the chance to assess how the student is developing as a writer and support them to take next steps in their learning.
Tonight’s lesson will be only a tiny snapshot, but in the normal run of a writing unit, the student would have a menu of skills they would be learning from (we call this a checklist) and the conference is a chance for the teacher to see where the student is growing and celebrate and build that growth.
And when you leave tonight, we’ll give you this card with a few prompts to help out at home.
We hope this will be useful.
