More Unseen Poetry Stuff!

Just in case you're still limping on to the end of term and your Y11s are still with you...

Here's another Lit poetry lesson that combines skills needed for both Part A and Part B of the second GCSE Literature paper (AQA). It's not a particularly formal, exam-y lesson; instead it looks at embedding the skills students will need in including key assessment objectives in their writing, in a short amount of time.

It's very quick and also transferable to any texts you choose. 

It focuses on song lyrics on a theme. I based it around songs I've used in the past when teaching "My Last Duchess", all based around a certain kind of misogyny and unsettling behaviour, but disguised in harmonious, disjunctive or gentle music.

I put copies of the lyrics of three songs on the tables, colour-coded so you can ensure students read the right poem at the right time. I played each song in turn and they read the lyrics during each song. The songs:

Every breath you take - The Police
Under my thumb - The Rolling Stones
Run for your life - The Beatles

Whilst they were listening to the three songs, I put AOs and a title on the board:

AO1: Ideas and attitudes
AO2: Quotations and analysis
AO3: Language and structure
AO4: Comparison

"Explore how both women and men are portrayed in each of these texts."

I gave the students 10 minutes or so for initial discussion and swapping of ideas; highlighting those quotes they thought might be most useful to analyse or examine more closely.

Most of them had heard the Police song at least, but they'd all heard of the Stones and the Beatles even if they hadn't heard these particular songs before. They were shocked to realise the attitudes behind each of the sets of lyrics. 

We talk about how the music could disguise or enhance the meanings in the lyrics and we explored how this might be done in the rhythm of poems. A few of the students take music GCSE and they stated that, if they had been given these lyrics and asked to create a score, how unlikely they would have been to create the music of the Beatles track in particular!

Some of the students wanted to know when the songs had been written and they found links to the social and historical contexts through this information.

I was impressed how much they were able to glean about structure, even though they recognised that songs would contain more repetition than other types of poetry. Kris made a brilliantly insightful comment about Every Breath You Take:

"Look how it just goes on... and on, with that repetition of Every at the start of each line in the second half. He will not give up. Even thought the song eventually finishes, you just know he's going to keep going. Ugh!"

After the discussion, I gave them 15 minutes and they then worked in silence, answering the question, with the objective to include all 4 AOs. I suggested a concluding paragraph might look at which speaker they found most threatening...

After the 15 minutes they either peer or self-marked, annotating the AOs, and then we shared the level of insight and analysis shown and attempting to match it to Band descriptors that they all have a copy of in their books.

One more thing:

A brilliant tip that I picked up from the wonderful @JohnTomsett is the use of 'Janus sentences' when writing comparisons. At the end of a paragraph making and exploring a point, you start the next paragraph reflecting on what you've just written and looking forward to the new paragraph's linking point. I've drummed it into my Y11s and they're pretty good at it now. Here's an example:

"In the opening verse of 'Under My Thumb', the speaker refers to 'The girl who once had me down'. This implies that the girl he is referring to treated him badly at one point and this is given as the reason he now behaves the way he does. The word 'down' relates to his status in the relationship at the time; later on he repeats that she is now 'under my thumb', so she is not only lower than him now in status, she is actually being held or controlled; pinned down.

In contrast to the speaker in 'Under My Thumb'  who uses past mistreatment as an excuse for his current behaviour, the speaker in 'Run for your Life' states: "I was born with a jealous mind" implying that he cannot help the way he is, as he was born to be jealous and possessive. This feels less of an excuse and more of an arrogant assertion."

Tackling unseen poetry

Preparing for the Unseen Poetry Question

AQA English Literature

In these last few weeks before the exams begin, I’ve been keeping my ear to the ground in both my Year 11 classes to gauge which specific parts of the forthcoming exams they seem to be struggling with most. The students have indeed been dropping subtle hints to help me plan for their last few lessons:

 “God I HATE the unseen poems.”

“I don’t understand a word of this.”

and

“I can’t do this. I’ve never seen this poem before.”

Quite.

So I tried a lesson out this week – twice – and both times, with parallel mixed-ability Year 11s (grades A*-E) it seemed to work very well in focusing the students on both the need to work quickly and to shape their answers around the 3 assessment objectives. I share it in case there are others out there also going bald with exam prep and would like to give this a whirl.

I chose two poems that I thought they would not have seen or studied before, that seemed to have some links between them: “Follower” by Seamus Heaney and “Catrin” by Gillian Clarke. Granted, these two poems are probably more complex and lengthy than the poem they will be given to tackle in the exam but I figure that, if they can set to work with more challenging material on a regular basis, the exam poem will not seem as daunting.

I set the poems out in identical fonts, fairly big and well-spaced with stanzas not identified and printed them out onto A4. I then cut each line into a strip and mixed them up so I essentially had a mash-up of both poems.

As students came in I gave them a line each and a piece of A4 lined paper. I introduced the focus of the lesson: to gain some unseen poem practice focusing on the 3 areas highlighted in the mark scheme. (I hope it won't be too confusing here to call them Assessment Objectives; I know the syllabus describes the AOs differently but the students don't need to be confused with all this: they just need to know what is needed for the exam, so we refer to these criteria as the AOs in class. I know...)

I divided my whiteboard into 3 and headed them according to the 3 AOs:

AO1: Ideas / attitudes + themes

AO2: Quotes + analysis

AO3: Language + structure

My Y11s are well-used to referring to the AOs for each part of their exam practice, and we use it a lot when peer-marking or when I’m annotating their work.

The first step was for them to read the line they’d been given and attempt to give some sort of immediate response to it. For some, who had a line that made broad sense (“In the dark, for one more hour.”) this was easier than sentences that were ambiguous in meaning or sense (“At the headrig, with a single pluck” or “You off, as you stand there”). However, I told students that if they could make little sense of the line, to focus on the meanings of individual words. With the Heaney poem especially, which contains a certain amount of technical terminology about ploughing, I gave key meanings on the board, which the exam will often do (did you see the past paper explaining what a ‘telegram’ was? Boy, did I feel old).

So they used their lined paper to put down some initial thoughts, at this stage working individually. Some thoughts were great; some weren’t. It was a start though.

I gave them a couple of clues which I wrote on the board: one poem had 26 lines; one had 29. One was by a woman and one was by a man. And I then walked around and dropped off another line each.

Could they repeat the process and start analysing the new line? 

Could they make any links yet? 

Could they instinctively decide if they came from Poem A or Poem B or one each? After they’d had a few minutes to think about their own ideas, I then encouraged them to share links and their quotes with the others on their tables (they were mostly working in 3s and 4s).

I reminded them of AO1. Could they have a quick conflab and then give me some ideas about what ideas and themes they might see coming through? I allowed them 1 minute of discussion: this would keep the pace up and also give everyone the chance to listen and contribute; a rehearsal in case they were asked to feedback. This keeps everyone on their toes and encourages full participation. I chose one person from each group for at least one idea and I purposely chose the lower ability or quieter students. Their answers were great and surprisingly accurate. I told them as much and this helped raised confidence.

Could this now lead to some AO2? Could they back up their assumptions about themes and ideas with any of the quotes they had on their tables? I did a bit of Pause Pose Pounce, and if anyone was stumped, I did a bit of Bounce and then asked the first person again to reiterate what they had heard.

Next stage: I circulated again and got rid of all of the remaining quotes. The groups were asked to sort them into two piles: ones they thought belonged to Poem A and the others for Poem B. As a clue to help with this, I asked them to look at the shape of each quote as well as the content. Were lines of a similar length? Did they have any particular rhythm when spoken aloud?

I’d cleared two tables in the centre of the room and labelled them with my whiteboard marker A and B, then asked the groups to bring their quotes to the right tables. Everyone stood around as the quotes were spread out on each table, reading what they saw. I then gave each student a letter A or B. They gathered round their table and I encouraged them to do a bit of Catchphrase strategy: “Say What You See”. I told them they had 5 minutes to build on what they could say for AO1, backed up with evidence for some hits of AO2: quotes and analysis.

At this stage I called out some questions. Which poem was written by the woman and which by the man? They were all right! Interesting…

What did the poems have in common and what were any differences they could see? They correctly gathered a sense of a period past for Poem A: the plough helped with that. And this built into an understanding – again through discussion – that this poem was a child’s view of his father.

For Poem B, they recognised a more modern context: the traffic, the sterile environment; and then the idea of a conflict and a struggle in amongst strong ideas of love. Was this a poem about a love relationship? Yes, they agreed, it was. Between partners? No – it was a mother and child, they agreed.

Still they didn’t know what order the poems had been written in, and yet they had gathered a lot about what each was about, its context, its themes and the poet’s perspective. Even better, they were able to qualify their assumptions with quotes. There wasn’t a huge amount of analysis evident yet, but this was going to follow.

I asked them to choose a quote they particularly liked, that tied in well with the ideas they’d found so far. I sent them back to their desks and asked them to start writing for me. I then gave them the names of each poem and the authors’ names. Together, using directed, questioning and building on responses, we came up with a starter sentence suggestion: “In the poem ‘Follower’/’Catrin’, the poet explores the idea of a relationship between parent and child…”

I gave them 6 minutes to continue with this and build it into at least two paragraphs, working on their own. I explained the trick would be to write something insightful about each quote they’d used.

After 6 minutes, they each had two paragraphs; some students even had three. And now for the reveal…

On the projector I displayed each poem in turn. We zoomed out to begin with so they could see the shape of the poems. What did the shape and structure show about each poem? I encouraged some calling out and then honed onto individuals and asked them to keep talking to see what we could find.

The results were really interesting:

“Poem A looks well organised…”

“…like the way he’d have had to plough the fields – very straight and even…”

“… and there’s no speeding up or slowing down; it’s all the same pace…”

“..and the lines run on evenly showing how he turns smoothly at the end of each line.”

And Poem B?

“There’s a gap in the middle. Is this to show a before and after?”

“…Could it be the child as a baby and then as an older girl?”

“It’s less well-organised than Poem A… It’s more like a train of thought.”

This was great discussion and it led us right to AO3. Students would now be ready to make at least one or two statements about each poem’s structure. So I gave them another 5 minutes to do so.

This was not a full answer, but it gave them a lead-in to covering all three AOs and how it could be done. I asked them to either swap papers or mark their own work and annotate where the AOs had been met in their paragraphs they had already.

End of lesson!

Next time, we’ll build on these techniques and now explore how we can improve the quality of the analysis for higher band responses.

Lesson Study and how it can work for you

A few years ago I came across the methodology known as Lesson Study. It’s been used with great success in the US and Japan in the last 10-15 years and it involves a different type of observation. You can read more about it here in its original form. I will admit I have taken parts of it that I think work better than others in normal classroom situations.

In essence, the way I’ve found works best for me and the colleagues looks like this:

Key Features of Lesson Study

• In pairs, teachers plan a lesson together and identify focus for lesson /learning

• The focus students are identified; typically 3 students, working at the highest, middle and lowest abilities for that group

• Each stage of the lesson is developed with those learner is mind

• One teacher teaches and the other observes

• Focus is on the behaviour and the learning of the case students, NOT the teacher and his/her performance.

• Following the lesson or during plenary, observing teacher and case students discuss their learning and gain their feedback

• Not a ‘lesson critique’

• Students are encouraged to identify WHAT they have learned in a lesson and, more importantly, HOW and to what extent. I usually do this during the last 5-10mins of the lesson; this works well as it acts as a type of plenary for them to reflect on their learning

• Students are asked to discuss “what went well” and “even better if…” for the methods used in class, NOT the teacher

• Post-lesson, teachers then discuss and plan how they can improve their practice in a collaborative and non-threatening way

• When progress is made by students, lesson study also provides the evidence of this, which is invaluable

At my own school we started with a pilot made up of cross-curricular pairs of volunteers looking at variety of teaching and learning focuses. The pairs fed back to whole staff and model was rolled out across the school. Now staff are familiar with the process, it is easier for me as NtG co-ordinator, our behaviour co-ordinator, Heads of House, etc. to go into lessons to watch individuals and have a discussion with teachers afterwards.

Through our experience, I’d say the most powerful elements of lesson study are:

• The joint planning

• The focus on the students, NOT the teacher, which immediately takes the pressure off the teacher and allows them to relax and teach as they normally would, without fear of judgement

• The post-lesson discussion that allows for gentle but effective coaching and a model for moving forward, again with the needs of individual students at the forefront.

If you look at some of the photos of the Japanese lesson studies in particular, you’ll see hoards of people, some with the dreaded clipboards, swarming over classrooms with the students working in amongst them. That’s NOT going to show the observers what lesson usually look like; in fact, I can’t think of many things worse. It’s an artificial construct, it's highly unlikely to create an atmosphere where the students - and you - behave normally. So, in my humble opinion, it's usually better with just 2, maybe 3 people. 

I’m well-used to being observed in the classroom; sometimes by up to 10 people, but we have an observation classroom and sound-proofed room at the back that allows sound to be mic’d in and observers can discuss the lesson as it progresses. I’d say this has been one of our most successful developments in CPD and has encouraged the most unexpected staff to come along in a non-threatening environment to see these ‘open’ lessons. I’ve had a couple of staff actually volunteer to teach more of these lessons too, as their confidence has grown and they’ve seen the supportive nature of the feedback, which takes the shape of a post-lesson chat and cuppa with all involved. This isn’t strictly lesson study, but it definitely uses some of its core elements.

The key is to find a way to make lesson study work for your school. Breaking the ice and having support from SLT to give everyone the chance to do it is very important too. Time is definitely a factor, but if schools are serious about improving T&L, leaders must build in capacity for this type of collaboration and staff development.

Narrowing the Gap Part 3

In the final blogpost of 3 about Narrowing the Gap, I will share my findings and ideas about how FSM/PP students can be supported by ALL teachers in the classroom.

Quick recap: As we now know, FSM students underachieve by around 30% compared to their non-FSM peers (locally and nationally).

·   In many areas this also translates to a high level under-achievement in white, working-class boys in particular.

·   In all available data, FSM students consistently under-perform in comparison with NFSM students.

·   Significantly, any student who has eligibility for FSM at any point over a 6-year period joins that group of under-achievement, hence the Pupil Premium which includes students who are or who have been FSM in the past 6 years.

·   This affects 70,000+ students nationally each year.

This underachievement presents itself in a number of ways that you might recognise in the FSM students that you teach and know, including:

·   Lack of resilience

·   Inability to look at ‘the wider picture’: the relevance of learning, qualifications, work experience, etc.

·   Low expectations – their expectations of themselves; significant adults’ expectations of them (including teachers at times)

·   Lack of financial opportunities

·   Few cultural and ‘life’ experiences

·   Low self-esteem and lack of confidence

·   Little or no aspiration

·   Lack of emotional/educational support at home

Do you have an intervention programme for under-achieving students?

Are some of these students FSM/PP?
And what does 'intervention' mean?
It should mean what you do in the classroom to promote progress. It means marking, oral feedback, making learning outcomes explicit and then measuring how far they've been met.

It isn't extra catch-up sessions organised before or after school. This isn't intervention; it's revision. And it doesn't work.

Intervention starts in the classroom and it is every teacher's responsibility. The last, crucial, bit of the NtG programme we've developed focuses on Teaching & Learning.

The essence to the in-class support I wanted to develop was to:

·   Identify where FSM/PP students are doing well and/or not-so-well in classes, gained  from the student themselves or from their teachers/Significant adults (see NtG Part 2)

·   Use the Lesson Study (see below) model of observation to watch these key students and aim to identify where they do well and where they aren’t progressing

·   Engage in post-lesson feedback with teachers about the key students. Where things are going well, can we share these findings with other staff and record on the FSM Individual Student Profiles? And where things aren’t going so well, can we use coaching and support to help teachers develop their teaching repertoire to promote greater engagement for the FSM student(s)?

·   Documents such as the EEF Toolkit, Pockets of Poverty and the Evaluation of the London Challenge all outline teaching strategies that have the highest effect sizes, i.e. strategies that work. These are the methods we aim to develop through the post-lesson discussions and coaching. Also see below for “What Works”.

And you’ll probably spot something important here. I’ve used a visual analogy to illustrate this point:

Geddit? We’re killing two birds with one stone: we are addressing the learning needs of FSM/PP students who are finding it harder to engage in some lessons; we’re also creating a CPD model of coaching that promotes the needs of the students first and foremost. And you may also have spotted that, if this model works, not just the FSM students will be benefitting from improved teaching: all of the students in this group will hopefully follow suit.

One of the biggest arguments against the overt use of NtG ‘strategies’ is that, if the teaching is better then the learning of all students will improve but therefore the achievement gap will remain. I get this argument, but I don’t wholly agree with it.

Firstly, FSM/PP students may not catch up completely with their higher-achieving peers, but even though they have more ground to cover, their progress tends to be more rapid and gaps will narrow. Giving previously mute students the chance to safely share in a paired discussion task or giving responsibility in group work to a usually noisy and attention-seeking member of the class can have surprising and very pleasing results. Here is an area where just changing your questioning strategies from hands-up to random names can vastly improve engagement.

Secondly, if other strategies are employed at the same time as in-class intervention – like the flagging up and awareness of the issues surrounding FSM under-achievement and like the significant adult programme of mentoring, this will give those students even more of a leg-up in terms of the progress we want them to make.

Here’s a bit of data. It's not extensive or conclusive but it's quite a good start:

2012 GCSE results (5+ A*-C incl. Maths & Eng)

Year 11 cohort for % FSM  Gap between FSM/non-FSM

School A = 11%                           33%

School B = 17%                           40%

School C = 19%                           50%

School D = 16%                           44%

School E = 16%                           24%

All of the 5 schools above are within a 10 miles radius of one another.
They are all shire county schools that have mixed catchments.
They are all in urban areas within a rural county setting.
School E is our school, 3% less than last year too. I hope this pattern continues. We’ve still got a way to go: finding time to do Lesson Study effectively is an issue, there’s no doubt.

One idea I am really keen to trial is that we use some of our Pupil Premium money to find some good quality cover which would allow for more time to do Lesson Study observations, coaching and joint planning. I’m still lobbying!

What Works

Studies into schemes where FSM students have been targeted and their achievement has greatly increased show that the following strategies are successful:

· Teacher credibility

· ‘Quality First Teaching’

· High levels of engagement

· Active learning

· Mini-tasks within lessons

· Immediate feedback

· ‘Chunked’ lessons

· Personalised learning

· Multi-modal reading (including new technologies)

· Explicit learning outcomes

· Helping students to recognise the significance of their learning, e.g. how it relates to the exam or skills needed, etc.

 What does this look like in the classroom?

At risk of teaching grandmothers to suck eggs, I have compiled a list of practical suggestions as to what the strategies above might look like in the classroom. You may already be using some, many, most or all of these ideas but in case you would like some ideas, here they are:

Recommendations	How can we do this?
· Teacher credibility	This is a tricky one to define but if you think back to your own school days, you will be able to pinpoint which teachers had credibility. Why do you think this was? It might come down to some of the following: How well do you know your students? Do they trust that you have their best interests at heart? Do you do what you say you are going to and always follow things through? How well do you know your subject and impart this to your students?
· ‘Quality First Teaching’	Planning key lessons carefully – when you’ve been teaching for a while, you wouldn’t use a full lesson plan for every lesson, but maybe revisiting this process for, say, the first lesson of a new scheme; or to re-energise a scheme in the middle, would help you to pick the lesson apart and think about how it is broken down, how it caters for the students in that particular class; how often you use AfL; what you want from the plenary, etc. Plan it with or show it to a colleague if you like, for a fresh set of eyes. Here, I would highly recommend the Lesson Progress Maps developed by the wonderful Headteacher and Clash fan @JohnTomsett. They encourage putting the students’ needs first in a way that other traditional lesson plan pro formas do not. I think they’re invaluable. Links to these below.
· High levels of engagement	Easier said than done… But planning would help with this, again. Another good tip would be to use the ‘lesson study’ model and pick out 3 contrasting students that you know in that class and imagine what their experience of the lesson might be. Include one of your FSM students: how can they be included without necessarily feeling self-conscious? How well will they progress in the lesson you have planned? Use a wide range of questioning techniques (see here for ideas, as gleaned from Geoff Petty)
· Active learning	Group work; PLTS; helping students to take responsibility for their own learning; using rewards throughout the lesson; lots of praise for positive behaviour and effort. Resources in the Box of Tricks are designed to help management of group work (see my blogpost on group work)
· Mini-tasks within lessons	Instead of one long activity, sometimes it might be possible to break it up into smaller tasks. Many FSM students need to see they are achieving things before they engage, and this could help.
· Immediate feedback	AfL is crucial and cited as one of the most important elements of raising achievement for FSM (and all other) students. Think about how you praise: make it ‘real’ and praise for effort and actual achievement; give out rewards as you go along and say specifically what it is for. Diagnostic comments are proven to be far more effective than ‘praise comments’ and giving scores/levels Creating a dialogue by marking their books after tasks to show whether LOs are being met – and to what extent. Use questions in your marking rather than stating what has gone well or what needs improvements: the student can then answer these questions. Set aside lesson time for them to act on feedback: for them to check and correct spelling and grammar, answer your questions, develop further points. Use stickers to record oral feedback that you might give in class to individuals or groups (“Mr/Ms X gave me some feedback: what was it?”). If they then summarise your feedback in their books, you then know that they understood what you discussed with them. Don’t accept RAG feedback until you know it’s being used properly: use questioning to check how far they’ve understood. Use Blob trees (mini ones are good for sticking in books - see below for link). These are brilliant at showing to what extent students have understood a concept and how they feel about it. Give opportunities for students to feedback as well. Be brave and ask for “Two stars and a wish” on post-its from all or selected students: How was the lesson for them? What bits did they like or not like? Why? Lesson Study is a brilliant way to get this kind of feedback in a controlled environment where you won’t feel too ‘picked on’!

· ‘Chunked’ lessons	Be specific about how the lesson will be structured. Even in longer tasks/project work, give deadlines and undertake ‘audits’ and reviews to show students that signposts should be reached. FSM students often find more open-ended tasks very difficult to stick at and are more likely to give up easily.
· Personalised learning	Know your students; know their needs; fit your lesson to them. Even generic lessons that are part of a scheme of work should be tailored for that group’s, and those students’, needs. Use and display key words. Vary your resources and methods to accommodate a variety of learning styles.
· Explicit learning outcomes	Make your Learning Objectives really meaningful, not just ‘board decoration’ Use the “So that…” rule. Add “so that…” (as championed by the fabulous Zoe Elder @fullonlearning) to your LOs, to remind yourself why you are doing particular tasks and to show students the relevance of their lesson. It’s an easy habit to get into, to write LOs as ‘general headings’. Look at them from your FSM students’ point of view: do these LOs really tell them what is expected of them in the lesson and do they know why they are doing it? (see below)
· Helping students to recognise the significance of their learning	Many FSM students are unable to see ‘the bigger picture’ about their learning; they don’t see the relevance of much of what they do at school and they fail to make the connections with the skills they might develop at school with those they will need in later life. When you introduce the LO, tell them why they are doing this, e.g. What part of the exam does it relate to? How important is it in building skills for their coursework/controlled assessment? What real life examples could you give them to show how this skill might be needed outside of school? Can the tasks be related to ‘real life’ scenarios? In a nutshell: What’s the point?!

Lastly, I'd recommend starting as early as you can. Unfortunately, by the time many of these students reach KS4, their patterns of disengagement and low self-esteem are ingrained. That's not to say you shouldn't attempt to make some leaway; your efforts just may not be as successful as you'd like, sadly.

Make your starting point your year 7s - this is an area I'm looking into now. We've asked our main feeder primaries to flag up those students who are already falling behind with 'symptoms' such as those we now recognise. We've also had a middle leaders meeting at a key feeder primary school to look at the work Y5 and Y6 have been doing, so we get a much better idea of the standards they are used to. As a result of this we are reviewing our schemes of work for Year 7 and we're setting our expectations much higher.

The 3 levels of progress expected by Ofsted now should maybe take the focus off those D to C students and look at ALL students and what their potential is. It's not a popular move with everyone, but I think it will make a real difference to FSM and PP students. And it will make NtG strategies even more crucial.


I hope this has been helpful.

 Link to post on Lesson Study

John Tomsett's blogpost about planning

One of Pip Wilson's blob trees

Pockets of Poverty

Education Endowment Fund Toolkit

Evaluation of London Challenge