The 6 Skills part 4: Multiple Interpretations

The 6 Skills part 4: Multiple Interpretations

Analytical Progression Model

1. Tentative Language
2. 3 Part Explanation:
3. Zoom In/Technique
4. Multiple Interpretations
5. Evidence in Explanation
6. Link Across Text

Why Teach it?

Developing more than one interpretation about a specific textual reference or piece of evidence demonstrates a critical perspective: in depth analysis considers and explores multiple viewpoints, building an argument and resulting in detailed, exploratory responses.

What to teach?

Perhaps the simplest way that students can produce multiple interpretations is by producing analysis that has consecutive interpretations within it. Novice students often produce writing that offers only one interpretation for each textual reference and the initial job of the teacher may be to prompt them to produce additional ideas for each piece of evidence, helping students to make their writing more developed and ensuring that each textual reference is examined and discussed in sufficient detail. Restrictive practice drills, the benefits of which I explain in this post, can help prompt students to add further interpretations to their initial idea.

Let’s have a look at an example:

The teacher writes this example on the board:

1. Candy tells George that Curley’s wife ‘got the eye’ because he thinks that she is promiscuous. His comment could also demonstrates his misogyny because he sees women as a threat and something to distrust.

The teacher can then present a second completion problem, this time with prompts about what to include:

2. Candy calls Curley’s wife ‘a tart’ because…

• Include flirtatious
• Include derogatory
• Include patriarchy

The bullet pointed prompts can help students to understand what their next steps are and the worked example in number 1 can be used by students as an analogy so that they understand what is required.

Once students become proficient at changing the prompts into short pieces of analytical writing, the teacher can then ask the students to generate the ideas themselves. Usually, before attempting analytical drills, students will have read, discussed and annotated a vocabulary table as well as discussing and annotating an extract, providing them-should they need it-with plenty of ideas to use, critique, reject or develop. This post explains this process in more detail.The explicit teaching of possible interpretations and vocabulary that could be applied within their writing helps students with weaker background knowledge, ensuring that they are not precluded from producing multiple interpretations or more developed analysis.

After students are able to create analysis that contains a number of successive interpretations, they can be taught to apply some specific sentence structures like these:

• Not only………but
• Even though/Despite

‘Not Only…..But’ How to teach it?

This instructional sequence assumes that students are secure with embedded evidence and are already able to write in response to texts. Teaching the ‘not only…but’ construction allows students to refine their ability to express complimentary perspectives when responding to texts. Additionally, this construction lends itself well to rhetorical or transactional writing. Although there are many ways of expressing multiple interpretations or complimentary ideas, choosing to teach a construction that has high utility  (in this case one that is able to be used across types of writing) ensures that instructional time is made as efficient as possible. Like with vocabulary, some things are more useful to students than others and as curriculum designers, we should always be thinking about the utility of what we choose to teach.

While the instructional sequence below could be seen as overly detailed, it was written to help the lowest performers in year 7; more able classes could probably cope with less practice at each stage. The sequence broadly follows the I-WE-YOU continuum. Apart from the first lesson in the sequence, each lesson below is not an entire lesson of instruction (we have 50 minute lessons) and the rest of the lesson would be taken up with other instructional sequences, application of previous content and other teaching. This approach aims to emulate the ‘track system’ that DI schemes use.

Lesson 1 Stage 1

Teacher writes an example (The ‘I’ Stage):

The teacher can then label the example, drawing attention to the ‘not only……but’ construction. It is important to draw attention to the reversal of the subject and auxiliary verb here which has the form of a question (Not only has he decided).

Here are some possible questions that the teacher could ask about the worked example:

• Read out the first interpretation
• Read out the second one
• Which words from the quotation are explained by the first interpretation?
• What does the word ‘deep’ mean? What are the connotations of the word ‘black’ here?
• Which words from the quotation are explained by the second interpretation?

When exploring processes and model answers, initial questions are often asked in order to focus student attention to the salient parts of what is being taught.

Whenever a teacher asks a question with only one desired answer (this describes most of the bullet points above), choral responses can be really useful. Choral responses massively increases student response rate, providing the teacher with the ability to make more valid inferences about the understanding of the class as a whole. With choral responses, everyone responds and everyone is expected to take part; with individual responses, most students are let off the hook and, notwithstanding the fact that many others may be paying attention, many may not be concentrating at all!

The teacher can then ask the students to precisely copy the example into their books. Students will then be able to use this initial worked example as an analogy when completing the next stage.

Lesson 1 Stage 2

The teacher writes half an answer. This is a completion problem (The ‘We’ stage)

The teacher should write until ‘Not Only’ and then stop. Stopping just before the reversal of the subject and auxiliary (Not only does this…) is important as it allows students to practice this potentially confusing aspect of the construction when they give oral responses, which, unlike written responses, can be immediately corrected if necessary. Students can be asked for ideas and interpretations regarding the chosen quotation and the teacher can then ask a range of students to orally complete the half written example. With really weak classes, the teacher may want to give a number of oral examples themselves before asking for student responses. When students give oral examples, it can be helpful to get them to narrate their punctuation, allowing the teacher to give instant corrective feedback regarding accuracy. After a number of students have orally completed the completion problem, all students can be asked to complete it in writing. The teacher can then circulate and find a perfect piece of work to show under the visualiser, using the student model to give feedback to all students: this example has a reversed verb form, check that yours does. This example has a comma before ‘but’, check that yours does. If it is clear that success rate is really high, then students can be asked to do independent massed practice.

Lesson 1 Stage 3:

Independent Massed Practice (The ‘You’ Stage)

In the initial stages of massed practice, students can be given ‘problems’ with prompts, ensuring that they know what to write about. Yes, student responses here will be very similar, but the purpose of these initial restrictive practice activities are to practice the form of the ‘Not only….but’ construction. In the absence of prompts, many students may stumble over their lack of ideas, precluding them from ever practising the desired construction. Later practice activities in later lessons would see these prompts removed, following Engelmann’s shift from prompted to unprompted formats.

With this initial prompted practice activity, the teacher should give an oral example that demonstrates how to turn the notes (‘strength of man’/’witches’) into proper analytical sentences:

LM says ‘come you spirits unsex me here’. Not only does she want the strength of a man because she lives in a patriarchal society and was expected to be subservient, but she also uses the language of the witches, making her seem sinister.

The teacher can then ask for students to give oral responses. The notes (‘strength of man’/’witches’) are deliberately short so that there are a number of ways to complete the activity. If the notes were more detailed, there would be fewer possible responses and students would do less cognitive processing when converting them into proper analysis. All students can then be asked to complete the activity in writing in their books.

After this initial walk through of a restrictive practice activity, students can then be asked to complete a number of similar activities themselves:

Again, feedback can be given through showing a perfect student response and giving comments like:

• My/Student X’s work starts with a Capital…check that yours does
• My work has quotation marks around the evidence…………….check that yours does
• My sentence makes sense….check that yours does
• My interpretations fit the evidence and comment on it….check that yours does.
• My ‘Not only…..but’ has a comma before ‘but’….check that yours does
• My sentence ends with a full stop…..check that yours does.

Giving feedback like this is much more efficient than written marking. It is also immediate, following Engelmann’s idea that initial feedback should be instantaneous, thereby preventing errors from being learnt and misconception going unchallenged.

Later Lessons

While the first lesson was entirely dedicated to teaching ‘Not only…but’, subsequent lessons would probably involve many other foci and the suggestions below would only take up a small part of the lessons.

Lesson 2, 3 and 4

Students should be given more practice using models that contain the steps needed, like in ‘Lesson 1 Stage 3’.

Lesson 5, 6 and 7

The utility of the ‘Not Only…But’ construction can be broadened to include examples that fit ‘rhetoric’ and other texts. These examples should also demonstrate that the expression can be used without evidence or textual references. We should present the widest range of possible examples to students so that their understanding of what is being taught is made as broad as possible. Limited examples will result in limited understanding!

The teacher should present a broader range of examples, perhaps like these:

• Not only is regicide a heinous crime, it was sacrilegious too, offending God himself.
• Not only did Priestley believe that the upper classes were selfish, but he also wanted society to change and become more equal.
• Not only was King James interested in the supernatural, but he also wrote a book about witches called ‘Demonology.’
• Not only do school uniforms look terrible, but they stifle our individuality.

Using the examples above as analogies, students can then complete examples like these:

• Not only does Sheila regret her actions, but….
• As a lower class woman, not only is Eva destitute, but she…
• Not only does Lady Macbeth subvert the conventions of femininity, but she…
• Not only do phones provide a faster way to study, but they often make learning more enjoyable.

Lesson 8, 9 and 10

While lessons 1-4 involved students using prompts to help them know what to write about, at this point these prompts can be removed. Students could be given quotations that they know well- a good choice, at GCSE at least, are the quotations that they are expected to memorise and apply in their essays-so that they can then produce independent examples without support.

While lessons 5-7 involved students completing ‘not only…but’ sentences that can be applied in persuasive writing, in these later lessons, they can be given broad topic headings instead. The teacher can then ask them to produce two or three ‘not only…but’ constructions for each one.

EXAMPLE:

Topic 1: Parents are overprotective

Not only do parents patronise teenagers by refusing to allow them sufficient freedom, but this results in resentment, causing teenagers to rebel further.

Later Lessons

Ask them to include ‘Not only But’ in their wider writing

General Points:

• Do not expect them to use ‘Not Only…But’ in paragraphs or more extended writing until they are able to do it accurately and independently at a sentence level.
• Success rate should be continually high at each stage (70-80% correct for all students)
• If it is lower: maybe you need to provide more scaffolding, give more examples or move back a stage on the I-WE-YOU continuum

The 6 Skills part 3b: Techniques

Analytical Progression Model

1. Tentative Language
2. Three Part Explanation
3. Zoom in/Technique
4. Multiple Interpretations
5. Evidence in Explanation
6. Link Across Text

Why teach it?

If taught badly, focusing on techniques can be harmful, unfortunately resulting in students merely labelling language-often incorrectly- and not interpreting or responding to it. If taught well, students can use the terminology to ‘enhance rather than drive responses’ (AQA English Language Paper 1 Examiner’s Report June 2018), making links between language, form and ideas.

This article , written by Mark Roberts, argues that we should not shy away from teaching specific terminology. Mark makes the important point that ‘Feature spotting is a sign of sloppy teaching, rather than an indicator of an unnecessary term’, an assertion that I would agree with.

For some students, there is a certain allure to the nomenclature of literary techniques. Esoteric and technical, literary techniques are seen by some pupils as a clear marker of expertise. Students like learning and applying new vocabulary, particularly words that seem academic and recherché and one of our main roles as teachers of any subject is to broaden our students’ vocabularies.

However, if this allure becomes a fixation and the search for techniques becomes the sole ‘drive’ of student responses, then this can be detrimental: a student who believes that they must find a technique in an extract will panic and become demotivated when they cannot find one. Students should be taught that commenting upon techniques is one of many possible avenues of interpretation.

All techniques require analysis but not all analysis requires techniques! (Chiasmus!)

Students should know about the different methods and techniques that writers use to create effects: this will not only improve the precision of their analysis, but it can also help them develop the sophistication of their descriptive and rhetorical compositions. Knowing the meaning of ‘chiasmus’ (a rhetorical or literary figure in which words, grammatical constructions, or concepts are repeated in reverse order) can be incredibly useful and exploring how it is used in the texts that we teach is often used as a springboard to students practicing using the technique themselves. While persuasive writing is clearly more than applying a set of techniques, providing students with a tool box of approaches can go some way into improving the clarity, precision and tone of their writing.

‘Technique: What to teach?’

Students should be taught to recognize and identify specific techniques; they should also be taught how to make use of this knowledge by explicitly teaching the sentence forms that they will need to use when responding to a text. At the end of KS3, students should have mastered these two connected areas.

What to teach: Specific Techniques  

Here are some screenshots from our knowledge organisers, focusing on poetry:

Year 7: Poetry from Other Cultures

In our KS3 curriculum, the first year 7 unit is on poetry and we expect students to learn a number of poetic devices: most of them are word or sentence level techniques.

Year 8: Romantic Poetry

In year 8, a second poetry unit introduces terminology connected with structure and form:

Yr.9: War

In year 9, students begin with a term long thematic unit on ‘War’ and they learn further terminology, including:

Previously, we asked students to learn almost the same body of knowledge every time they encountered a specific text type: this is what is referred to as a ‘spiral curriculum’ and I wrote about the problems with such an approach here.

Now, students are expected to master and retain the knowledge that we teach to them, something that is aided massively through systematic retrieval practice.  Students are regularly tested on their knowledge of the techniques that we teach and we deliberately ask them varied questions so that their understanding is deepened.

In year 7, the units that we teach are broadly focussed on one text type, the idea being that students will master the basic knowledge required when responding to that text type. From year 8 onwards, units become broader in scope, allowing student to encounter a range of text types, applying and adding to the knowledge that they mastered in year 7.

What to teach: Sentence Forms

Yr7

In year 7, we teach students basic sentence structures like these:

The simile ‘……………….’ suggests…

The writer uses the noun ‘multitude’ to convey

The writer uses the simile ‘………………….’ to convey…

The use of a simile creates….

Yr8 and Yr9

Once students have mastered the basic forms that are taught in year 7, we teach a number of other constructions which integrate other analytical skills and grammatical structures. Before students are asked to integrate these different skills, they will have practiced and mastered them in isolation. As Engelmann points out, ‘prerequisite skills should be taught before the strategy itself’. Seen through the lens of Cognitive Load Theory , this makes complete sense: if you are asking students to combine different skills, then in order to prevent excessive and unwanted cognitive load, students should be proficient in each of the components, freeing up their working memories so that they can direct their attention to combining the skills.

Here is an example:

Caesar is described as being ‘like a colossus’, a simile that not only conveys the extent of his power and authority but also demonstrates his arrogant, pompous and supercilious nature.

This construction combines a number of different components, each of which were initially taught in years 7 and 8.

Here are some of the components:

1) Caesar is described as being ‘like a colossus’,

• This particular structure for embedding is taught in year 7

2) simile

• Although many know this from KS2, students learn this in the first unit in year 7

3) his arrogant, pompous and supercilious nature.

• This is a 3 part explanation, one of the first analytical skills that we teach in year 7.

4) a simile that not only conveys the extent of his power and authority but also demonstrates his arrogant, pompous and supercilious nature.

• This appositive structure is taught in year 8.

5) not only….but

• This particular structure allows students to create multiple interpretations, one of our 6 skills, and is normally taught at the beginning of year 8.

If we truly want to teach to mastery, ensuring that student success rate is consistently high, then we should teach the prerequisite skills for a strategy before the strategy itself. If students master the components, then they are much more likely to master the whole. Instructional sequences should move from simplified contexts to complex ones and an effective sequence should move from restricted, isolated drills to wider and freer application.

How to teach it?

Like with tentative language , zooming in and three part explanations, from the beginning of year 7 students will have encountered and read many sentences and model paragraphs containing this specific skill: our booklets deliberately model the skills that we want our students to master. Teachers can begin by highlighting and drawing attention to the specific constructions within these worked examples and asking students to copy their annotations.

An instructional sequence that teaches students how to identify and analyse techniques should probably be arranged similarly to the one that I explained in this post, beginning with plenty of worked examples and, through a process of backwards fading, ending with freer application. Initial teaching should take place over a minimum of two lessons, beginning with massed practice, and then moving to distributed practice. Initial practice should involve individual sentences, moving through to paragraphs and then finally wider, freer essay writing.

This table sketches out a possible instructional sequence:

Each column in the table refers to one or more of Engelmann’s ‘six shifts of task design’. The second column, labelled ‘Instructional Choice’, includes the shift from overtised to covertised strategies and initial lessons should make all steps explicit through a detailed process of demonstration, questioning and practice as explained in this post. The second column also includes the shift from prompted to unprompted formats.

In previous posts, I have outlined specific instructional sequences for teaching other analytical skills as well specific sentence constructions. The table above is deliberately generic, hopefully giving an overview of how to apply some of the ideas from Cognitive Load Theory and Engelmann’s DI to designing instructional sequences in general.

The sequence of lessons in the table is a rough approximation: how quickly you should move along the six shifts will be determined by feedback to the teacher from student output-if success levels are high, then support can be gradually withdrawn, students can begin to complete more steps independently and the context of practice can be made more complex.

Next Post: The 6 Skills part 4: Multiple Interpretations

 

 

The 6 Skills part 3a: Zooming In

This is the third part in a series of blogs exploring different analytical skills. The first part looked at tentative language; the second part looked at the 3 part explanation.

Analytical Progression Model

1. Embedded Evidence
2. 3 Part Explanation
3. Zoom In/Technique
4. Multiple Interpretations
5. Evidence in Explanation
6. Link Across Text

‘Zoom In: Why Teach it?

Literary analysis requires students to respond to both the bigger picture and the finer details within a text: sophisticated analytical writing will contain a well-balanced mixture of the wider overarching ideas-perhaps thematic concerns or authorial intention-and a ‘fine-grained’ analysis of salient textual evidence. If students are able to identify and interpret a significant word, phrase or technique, then this skill can help to develop the precision of their writing. Although more general textual references can also be effective, zooming in on a noteworthy word or two helps students to be specific, ensuring that their interpretations are firmly based in evidence from the text.

With regular practice in zooming in, students become more economical and efficient with how they use their quotations as they are conditioned into moving beyond merely making a cursory remark and then hastily moving on to the next piece of evidence, and instead ensuring that they analyse each significant word or phrase in turn. This can be particularly useful with lower attaining students who often fail to get the maximum usage out of a quotation.

‘Zoom In’: What to teach?

In the initial stages of instruction, students could be taught to respond to a piece of evidence and then zoom in on one or two significant words or phrases within it.

EXAMPLE:

Creon angrily commands ‘never let some woman triumph over us’ showing his fury towards Antigone because of her defiance. The phrase ‘some woman’ conveys his scathing and dismissive attitude towards his niece.

While the instructional sequence below could be seen as overly detailed, it was written to help the lowest performers in year 7; more able classes could probably cope with less practice at each stage. The sequence broadly follows the I-WE-YOU continuum. Apart from the first lesson in the sequence, each lesson below is not an entire lesson of instruction (we have 50 minute lessons) and the rest of the lesson would be taken up with other instructional sequences, application of previous content and other teaching. This approach aims to emulate the track system that DI schemes use.

Like with tentative language and the three part explanation, from the beginning of year 7 students will have encountered and read many sentences and model paragraphs containing this specific skill: our booklets deliberately model the skills that we want our students to master.

LESSON 1: Step One

Present an example under the visualizer:

The teacher can then label the example, ensuring that there is a prompt that links the zoomed in part to the original quotation. The teacher can then ask questions about it:

• Why have I used the word ‘command’ here?
• What does ‘phrase’ mean? Low attainers may need further practice on the difference between ‘word’ and ‘phrase’ and this can be taught through a series of examples and a test sequence much like the one described below in LESSON 1: Step Four
• What have I zoomed in on? How do you know?

LESSON 1: Step Two

Present a second, minimally different example  under the visualizer:

Following Engelmann’s theory, the intention here is to ensure that all irrelevant aspects of the example are held constant. By carefully manipulating only the relevant aspects-in this case the part of the evidence that is being zoomed in upon-students are less likely to become confused. This second example deliberately zooms in on a word rather than a phrase: students should be presented with examples that cover the full range of the concept that is being taught and with ‘Zoom In’, students need to be able to zoom in on phrases as well as words.

The teacher can then ask questions about the second example:

• What does ‘obstinate’ mean? This is a retrieval practice question
• What have I zoomed in on? How do you know?

LESSON 1: Step Three

Present a third, minimally different example under the visualizer:

This third example contains two separate examples of zooming in, demonstrating how students can combine evidence in their responses. Looking for patterns and links between language and pieces of evidence-the two examples here both conveying a sense of resolve and certainty-is a key skill when analyzing a text. Later skills (evidence in explanation/link across the text) broaden the range and scope of this approach to using evidence.

The teacher can then ask questions about the third example:

• What does ‘domineering’ mean? This is a retrieval practice question
• What have I zoomed in on? How do you know?
• How are ‘must’ and ‘never’ similar?

Presenting three minimally different examples allows students to see the breadth of the skill of ‘zooming in’. While there are certainly other variants of this concept, the range presented here gives a good starting point.

LESSON 1: Step Four

Non-Examples

When teaching through examples, it is necessary to demonstrate the limits of the concept by presenting non-examples that are minimally different. One possible misconception for very low attaining students is that they will make poor choices as to which words or phrases to zoom in upon. Staying with the same example paragraph, the teacher can then present a sequence of examples and non-examples.

In the sequences below, the bold text are the examples that are presented to the students and the italicised words are the responses given by the teacher.

Teacher Presentation:

Creon angrily commands ‘We must defend the men who live by law, never let some woman triumph over us’

 TEACHER: Can I Zoom in on this word? No. How do I know? Because there is nothing interesting to say about it.

Creon angrily commands ‘We must defend the men who live by law, never let some woman triumph over us’

TEACHER: Can I Zoom in on this phrase? Yes. How do I know? Because I can say something interesting about it.

The teacher should stress the underlined words here to make clear the difference between the Yes and No response.

Student Test Sequence:

A student test sequence is designed to test whether students have made the intended generalization. DI schemes teach ‘the general case’ and students are expected to perform on examples that have not been taught directly: their success is dependent upon the careful selection of examples and non-examples within the teaching and testing sequences. Importantly, the test is in an unpredictable order (not YES/NO/YES/NO), ensuring that the teacher can gain valid inferences from student responses. Student responses should ideally be given chorally, maximizing their response rate and further ensuring that the teacher can make valid inferences about whole class performance: if only one student answers a question, this is a pretty poor measurement of the understanding of the group as a whole.

 Creon angrily commands ‘We must defend the men who live by law, never let some woman triumph over us’

 TEACHER: Your turn: Can I Zoom in on this word?

STUDENTS: No.

TEACHER: How do I know?

STUDENT: Because there is nothing interesting to say about it.

 Creon angrily commands ‘We must defend the men who live by law, never let some woman triumph over us’

 TEACHER: Your turn: Can I Zoom in on this word?

STUDENTS: No.

TEACHER: How do I know?

STUDENT: Because there is nothing interesting to say about it.

 Creon angrily commands ‘We must defend the men who live by law, never let some woman triumph over us’

 TEACHER: Your turn: Can I Zoom in on this phrase?

STUDENTS: Yes

TEACHER: How do I know?

STUDENT: Because I can say something interesting about it.

 Creon angrily commands ‘We must defend the men who live by law, never let some woman triumph over us’

 TEACHER: Your turn: Can I Zoom in on this phrase?

STUDENTS: No

TEACHER: How do I know?

STUDENT: Because there is nothing interesting to say about it.

 I have deliberately chosen reasonably clear cut cases here as the intention is to get students to recognize that they need to choose interesting words or phrases that are worthy of analysis. There are obviously going to be words that may be worthy of analysis, but I am focusing on the easiest discriminations first. Two of the overarching theoretical ideas from Theory of Instruction support this decision: firstly, we should teach easy skills before harder ones and secondly, consistent instances should be taught before exceptions. This post explores these ideas in more depth.

LESSON 2,3,4

DI programmes never teach something in just one lesson, instead spreading initial demonstration and teaching across at least two or three lessons. In these next few lessons, the teacher should follow a very similar process to lesson one except with a different set of examples for each lesson. While these examples should focus on the same specific types of ‘zoom in’ (a word/a phrase/two separate words that are to be combined to strengthen a line of argument), they should have a different content focus each lesson. They could focus on a different character, be from a different part of the text or even come from a different text altogether. If we are to teach to the general case, ensuring that students learn a skill that can be generalized, we need to present a sufficient range of examples. If we only present limited range of examples, the danger is that students will incorrectly infer that the concept is limited to the instances that they have experienced.

While the examples in lesson one had a prompt arrow linking the zoomed in word or phrase with the quotation that it came from, this prompt could now be removed.

LESSON 5 Step 1

While earlier lessons involved the teacher presenting examples to the students, these lessons should see students completing examples that have been started by the teacher.

The teacher can begin by writing an embedded quotation:

Tiresias explains that ‘stubbornness brands you for stupidity-pride is a crime’ because he wants Creon to recognize he is at fault.

The teacher can then give students further practice on choosing words worthy of analysis:

Teacher Presentation:

Tiresias explains that ‘stubbornness brands you for stupidity-pride is a crime’ because he wants Creon to recognize he is at fault.

TEACHER: Can I Zoom in on this word? No. How do I know? Because there is nothing interesting to say about it.

Student Test Sequence:

 Like in lesson one, student responses should ideally be choral, allowing students to maximize the amount of practice that they complete.

 Tiresias explains that ‘stubbornness brands you for stupidity-pride is a crime’ because he wants Creon to recognize he is at fault.

TEACHER: Your Turn: Can I Zoom in on this word?

STUDENT: Yes.

TEACHER: How do I know?

STUDENT: Because I can say something interesting about it

TEACHER: What can you say that is interesting?

The teacher can then use this final question as an opportunity for individual students to give interpretations and analysis. The teacher should insist that a student expresses their ideas using the same language that they will be expected to use in their writing as well as NARRATING the punctuation: this maximizes student practice whilst allowing the teacher to make precise and swift corrections with regards to accuracy.

EXAMPLE STUDENT RESPONSE: The word QUOTATION MARKS brands QUOTATION MARKS has connotations of pain as if Creon’s decision is causing him to suffer.

 After listening to the oral example, students can write their own, zooming in on the same word. Because of the restrictive nature of the task-all students will produce something very similar-feedback can be precise. The teacher can either use their own model or another student’s work to give feedback (like LESSON 1 step 3 in this blog).

LESSON 5 Step two

The teacher can then present a series of additional examples, covering a broad range of structures and containing opportunities to practice all forms of zooming in (one word/one phrase/two separate words to be combined). While earlier instructional sequences had prompts and opportunities to practice choosing an interesting word, this and later practice sequences should see students making choices themselves in the absence of visual prompts, fading support so that students gradually learn to complete the skill independently.

Here are two possible examples:

Tiresias warns Creon that ‘Great hatred rises against you-cities in tumult’ in order to make Creon aware of the ramifications of his obstinacy.

 Creon is ‘poised once more on the razor edge of fate’ because of the difficult decision he has to make.

Students could then be asked to copy each example and add in a second sentence that zooms in on a word or phrase. These are completion problems, allowing students to

Later Lessons

This skill can then be integrated with other skills and students can be asked to complete restricted, interleaved practice drills as explained in this post.

‘Zoom in’ should then be included as a success criteria in increasingly wider writing, beginning with isolated paragraph practice. Eventually, this prompt should be removed, the expectation being that students know that this skill is required when responding to texts.

General Points:

• Do not expect them to use ‘Zoom In’ in a paragraph or more extended writing until they are able to do it accurately and independently at a sentence level.
• Success rate should be continually high at each stage (70-80% correct for all students)
• If it is lower: maybe you need to provide more scaffolding, give more examples, move back a stage on the I-WE-YOU continuum

I originally intended to include ‘Technique’ in this post but I will write a follow up that explores this skill on its own. Perhaps this means that the 6 Skills should actually be The 7 skills!

Next Post: Teaching Techniques

 

The 6 Skills part 2: The Three Part Explanation

The 6 Skills: Three part Explanation

Analytical Progression Model

1. Tentative Language
2. 3 Part Explanation
3. Zoom In/Technique
4. Multiple Interpretations
5. Evidence in Explanation
6. Link Across Text

Why Teach it?

Like a Tricolon in rhetoric, a three part explanation allows a writer to present three, sequential ideas about a piece of evidence. Skillfully unpacking a quotation often results in a range of interconnected yet distinct interpretations and the students who are able to recognize and explore these nuances demonstrate a deeper understanding of the text that they are analysing.

What to teach?

In the initial stages of instruction, students could be taught to respond to a piece of evidence with three ideas.

Example:

Napolean spoke ‘in a terrible voice’ demonstrating his tyrannical, authoritarian and oppressive nature.

How to teach it?

While the instructional sequence below could be seen as overly detailed, it was written to help the lowest performers in year 7; more able classes could probably cope with less practice at each stage. The sequence broadly follows the I-WE-YOU continuum.

Like with tentative language, from the beginning of year 7 students will have encountered and read many sentences and model paragraphs containing this specific skill: our booklets deliberately model the skills that we want our students to master.

LESSON 1: Step One

The teacher writes a short paragraph that uses a three part explanation:

The teacher can then label the three part explanation and ask questions about it:

• Where is the evidence and how do you know?
• Is the evidence embedded and how do you know?
• What does ‘respectful’ mean?
• Why is there a comma between polite and kind?
• Why does he need to be ‘polite/kind/respectful’?

Students should then copy the model paragraph into their books, labelling it in exactly the same way. At this point, the teacher can ask them to check specific things. Instead of have you checked your work, it is probably more useful-at least with novice learners-to ask them to check for the most likely mistakes:

CHECK 1: Have you got quotation marks around your evidence?

CHECK 2: Full stops?

CHECK 3: Capitals?

LESSON 1 Step Two

Write another paragraph and then get them to label it. They can use their first model as an analogy, allowing you to test their ability to generalise to another example. While you could cold call students and ask them to tell you each of the three parts of the explanation, this only allows feedback from a maximum of three students. Instead-and copying the approach in DI programmes-you could ask for a choral response, allowing all students to respond at the same time.

LESSON 1 Step Three

Following the idea of backwards fading, the teacher can then present a skeletal plan version of a paragraph containing a three part explanation:

First, the teacher can give a spoken model of how this plan can be converted into a full, written construction:

EXAMPLE: Henry calls his men QUOTATION MARKS noble QUOTATION MARKS because he thinks they are brave, worthy of respect and honourable FULL STOP

Narrating the punctuation draws attention to it, making all important steps overt and explicit. After the teacher has given an oral example, a stronger student can have a go. Yes, this initial task is mimicry, but it reinforces the form and conventions of the structure and allows students to experience instant success. After a further few oral examples from more competent students, the teacher could ask for a choral response, maximising the response rate of all students.

Once the teacher is happy that the class success rate is very high, students should then write a response, using the same skeletal plan. While students are writing, the teacher can circulate and give instant feedback, correcting student errors.

Because of the restrictive nature of the task, the teacher is able to give instant and precise feedback to the students. The more precise the feedback, the more useful it is. The teacher can show their perfect example under the visualiser, or even better, find a perfect bit of work from a student and show that. With the work under the camera and pointing to the relevant bit, the teacher can draw attention to different elements:

• My/Student X’s work starts with a Capital…check that yours does
• My work has quotation marks around the evidence…………….check that yours does
• My sentence makes sense….check that yours does
• My 3 part explanation has a comma in between the first and second ideas….check that yours does
• My sentence ends with a full stop…..check that yours does.

Students should be given time in between each of these instructions to complete the relevant check.

Error checking or giving feedback using a model is much more efficient than marking. It is also instant as there is no need for the student to wait. In early stages of instruction, feedback should be instant so that errors do not become embedded. Unpicking errors and misconceptions can take a very long time: it is much more efficient to prevent them in the first place.

Lesson 2, 3 and 4

Students should do more practice using paragraph plans, following the same process as step three in lesson 1:

If student success rate is high, you could ask them to come up with their own interpretations. You can then ask them to add a further clause that explains why:

,so he can win the battle/so that they will  destroy the enemy

Lesson 5 and 6

No note plans this time, ask them to do it independently.

Later Lessons

Ask them to include 3 part explanations in their wider writing. Initially you should include prompts to remind them to use the skill and these should be removed once students demonstrate the ability to produce the skill. In Expressive Writing, the DI remedial writing scheme, students are asked to underline the construction after they have finished, providing a further prompt to remind them to include it in their wider writing: this can be really helpful. In Theory of Instruction, Engelmann states that if students fail to produce a desired behavior or specific skill within a wider, less restrictive application (in this case paragraphs without scaffolding) then the teacher should highlight the ‘sameness’ between the original restrictive drills (in this case, the paragraph plan exercises) and the wider application.

General Points:

• Do not expect them to use 3 part explanations in a paragraph or more extended writing until they are able to do it accurately and independently at a sentence level.
• Success rate should be continually high at each stage (70-80% correct for all students)
• If it is lower: maybe you need to provide more scaffolding, give more models, move back a stage on the I-WE-YOU continuum

ResearchED Blackpool Slides

Here are the slides from my talk at ResearchED Blackpool:   researched1

 

The 6 Skills: An Overview and Skill 1: Tentative Language

Writing analytically is a complex skill which needs to be broken down, made explicit and demystified for students. In my early days as an English teacher, I would set lengthy written tasks and foolishly hope that written corrective feedback (which was always necessary as the success rate was so low) would remedy the poor output that I received. I gave well meaning but absurd comments like ‘You need to analyse in more detail’ or ‘You need to develop your points further’ without really considering the opaque nature of the verbs that I was using. I understood them with a rich level of detail; my students did not.

Analysis, like all genres of written expression, can be split into purpose and form or the ‘what’ and the ‘how’. Claire Hill and and Becky Wood have both written excellent blogs explaining how the ‘what’ of analysis can be split into three broad categories:

1)What is the author saying

2) How are they saying it

3) Why are they saying it

While these three broad areas can help students understand the types of declarative knowledge within an essay, what we have tentatively called ‘The 6 Skills’ (I am still unsure if these 6 are sufficiently distinct or whether they comprehensively encapsulate analysis!), is an attempt to formalise the approaches, methods and techniques required when writing analytically.

What/How/Why allows students to understand the content of the writing; the 6 skills exemplify the form.

PEE/PEEL and other similar frameworks were problematic and restrictive, resulting in clunky, predictable and overly formulaic paragraphs. Invariably, iterations of these abbreviations and acronyms also have fixed orders, placing evidence in the middle, one of the problematic inferences being that each train of thought contains only one quotation. Interesting analytical writing does not follow a predictable, sequential order. Finally, PEE also precludes embedded quotations, due to the unnatural scaffolding of sentence stems like ‘My evidence for this is….’.

Unlike PEE/PEEL, there is no fixed, consecutive order for how the 6 skills are deployed and applied, meaning that student responses are not as formulaic and rigid. As Becky mentions in her blog, the How/What/Why approach also allows for different ordering.

Although students will study worked examples that contain most if not all of these skills from the beginning of year 7, they will practice the skills individually and cumulatively, through a process involving backwards fading and slowly building students up to being able to use all 6.

This annotated model gives an overview:

6 Skills Progression Model

Before teaching any of the skills, students need to be secure with using embedded evidence. The list below is an attempt to sequence them in order of difficulty and utility, the later skills being more difficult and requiring a deeper knowledge of the text before they can be attempted successfully.

1) Tentative Language

2) 3 Part Explanation

3) Zoom In/Technique

4) Multiple Interpretations

5) Evidence in Explanation

6) Link Across Text

Engelmann’s DI programmes contain ‘tracks’ where teaching is spread across multiple lessons. Initial teaching and practice is through restrictive drill exercises, often beginning with copying models or only attempting a few steps in a procedure. Through a process of backwards fading, exercises become less restrictive and students are eventually asked to apply the specific knowledge or skill within a wider application. While DI programmes have these ‘tracks’ meticulously and methodically planned into the scheme, ensuring that learning is as efficient as possible, we are currently using a separate progression model in the form of a table:

The 6 Skills are listed vertically, ordered by complexity and beginning with the simplest-tentative language. This follows Engelmann’s philosophy to the sequencing of skills:  easier things should be taught before harder things and we should teach the components before the whole. Horizontally, the table moves from restrictive drills to eventual wider application. The number of lessons here is a rough guide to how long a teacher should spend at each level of application: more competent groups may be able to move quicker and really low groups may need further practice.

DI programmes use extensive field testing to ensure that this continuum from restricted practice to wide, free application is fine tuned: programmes should spend as little time as possible teaching concepts whilst ensuring really high success rates for even the weakest learners. In future, we will plan our progression model and 6 skill ‘tracks’ into our booklets. In the meantime, teachers have a copy of this progression model table for each class and can use it as a reminder document, ticking off the boxes to ensure that students receive adequate teaching and practice on each of the analytical skills.

Skill 1: Tentative Language

Why teach it?

Studying literature at a sophisticated level requires a reader to recognize that there are a plurality of acceptable interpretations available. Literary analysis often has a tentative and exploratory tone: interpretations are inherently subjective and tentative language implicitly demonstrates that a line of argument is one of many and certainly not definitive.

What to teach?

• Perhaps
• It is as if/ as if
• It could hint at
• seems
• It could suggest
• …gives the impression
• ..appears to be

 

How to teach it?

While the instructional sequence below could be seen as overly detailed, it was written to help the lowest performers in year 7; more able classes could probably cope with less practice at each stage. The sequence broadly follows the I-WE-YOU continuum.

LESSON 1: Step One

Our booklets are filled with worked examples of analytical writing: in vocabulary tables, there are models of sentences and when students are asked to write, they will have usually have deconstructed an analogous paragraph. From the beginning of year 7, students encounter sentences that contain tentative language. Teachers can begin by highlighting and drawing attention to the specific constructions within these worked examples and asking students to copy their annotations.

LESSON 1: Step Two

Write model sentences that contain tentative language; ask students to copy and label.

• Henry commands his men to ‘imitate the actions of the tiger’. It’s as if he wants them to be vicious, aggressive and brutal.
• Henry commands his men to ‘imitate the actions of the tiger’. Perhaps he is asking them to be predatory and violent.
• Henry commands his men to ‘imitate the actions of the tiger’ which could suggest that he wants them to be dominant in battle like a predator

LESSON 1: Step Three

Ask them to complete sentences ORALLY, using the same structures that you used in the models that you wrote in step two. Keeping the same sentence structure here is crucial, allowing students to use them as analogies.

• Henry asks his men to ‘disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage’

LESSON 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7:

The teacher should continue to highlight the tentative structures in model paragraphs and sentences, asking students to copy their annotations. Student could then be asked to complete retrieval practice of the specific tentative constructions, perhaps giving them clues to aid recall:

• Pe……….
• It is ………………
• It c……… h…….. at
• s…..ms
• It c……………… suggest
• give the im………..
• ap…….. to be

Once they have demonstrated perfect recall of the structures in retrieval practice, students can be asked to find the structures in model paragraphs themselves.

The teacher can write a short paragraph with NO TENTATIVE language. Under the camera, change the first few sentences to TENTATIVE, then ask them to do ones that are underlined:

Henry gives a rousing speech to his men, commanding them to ‘stiffen the sinews’. He wants them It is as if he wants them to toughen up and steel themselves for battle. He orders them to ‘summon up the blood’ which means which could suggest he wants them to be impassioned and prepared. He knows that the odds are against them and that the battle will be arduous and dangerous. He commands them to ‘set the teeth’. This means that he wants them to look menacing and threatening. This is because he wants them to terrify the enemy.

The teacher can then ask them to complete sentences with tentative language in them, using the same structures from step two in lesson 1. While lesson 1 involved fully worked examples, this task involves completion problems.

LESSON 8, 9, 10

Students could be asked to write their own sentences using tentative language. By this point, there is no scaffolding or support and students are working at the ‘I’ stage of the I-We-You continuum.

Wider Application

• At first, include ‘tentative language’ as a success criteria in their paragraphs. Eventually, take this success criteria out.
• Similarly, include ‘tentative language’ as a specific check when they read through their work; again, remove this check when it is no longer needed.

General Points:

• Do not expect them to use tentative language in paragraph or more extended writing until they are able to do it accurately and independently at a sentence level.
• Success rate should be continually high at each stage (>80% correct for all students)
• If it is lower: maybe you need to provide more scaffolding, give more models, move back a stage on the I-WE-YOU continuum

Next Post: Skill 2: The 3 part explanation

The Application of Theory: 8 Propositions that Underpin our Approach.

Designing and implementing a five year curriculum is no easy task: there are so many different things that need to be considered and combined. When we started out on our journey a few years ago, we began with a number of overarching ideas gleaned from both cognitive science and practical teaching guides. What follows is a list of 8 propositions that underpin our approach, along with summaries of how the idea is applied as well as links to further reading.

Proposition 1: Explicit instruction is the optimum strategy for novices

Application:

• Teachers teach from the front as experts, using extensive modelling, demonstration and guiding student practice
• Most lessons involve whole class teacher led explicit/direct instruction

Further reading and evidence:

‘Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching’ by Kirschner, Sweller and Clark. Accessible here

‘Putting Students on the Path to Learning. The Case for Fully Guided Instruction’. This AFT article summarises the Kirschner paper.

Oliver Caviglioli has produced a useful, visual overview of the AFT paper here 

‘Drivers of Student Performance: Insights from Europe’. Accessible here:

• According to the report ‘Our research found that student outcomes are highest with a combination of teacher-directed instruction in most to all classes and inquiry-based teaching in some classes’

Cognitive Load Theory

• ‘Cognitive Load Theory (Explorations in the Learning Sciences, Instructional Systems and Performance Technologies)’ by Sweller, Ayers and Kalyuga
• Oliver Caviglioli has produced a useful overview here
• ‘Efficiency in Learning: Evidence-Based Guidelines to Manage Cognitive Load’ by Clark, Nguyen and Sweller
• ‘Cognitive Architecture and Instructional Design: 20 Years Later’ by Sweller, Merrienboer and Paas. This recent paper gives a useful review of CLT.
• I have written a series of practical guides and overviews to CLT

Engelmann’s Direct Instruction and Project Follow Through

Project Follow Through was the largest controlled comparative study of pedagogical techniques in history: from 1967 – 1995, over 700,000 children in 170 disadvantaged communities across the United States participated in this $1 billion study to discover the best practices for teaching disadvantaged students. This was the result:

‘Eighteen school districts, some rural, some urban, applied Direct Instruction (DI). When the testing was over, students in DI classrooms had placed first in reading, first in maths, first in spelling, and first in language. No other model came close. Many of the others underperformed the control groups. DI even defeated the developmental and affective models on their own turf: DI students also placed first in self-esteem. Apparently children who mastered reading, writing, and maths felt better about themselves than those who did not.’

• Kris Boulton has compiled a list of further reading about Engelmann’s DI here.
• I have written a series of blogs about applying Engelmann’s ideas to the the everyday classroom.

Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction

• This AFT article explains the principles.
• This blog links to a useful reordering of Rosenshine’s principles.

Proposition 2: The definition of learning is a change in long term memory

Application:

• Regular, cumulative recap quizzes
• Teachers focus on retention; wherever possible, content is chosen for utility-what is taught in year 7 is retrieved and applied in later years.
• Distributed and interleaved practice of ‘The Big 3’ (analysis, description, rhetoric)
• Booklets and resources are centrally planned to a word level of detail, allowing distributed retrieval practice.
• Recap lessons and retrieval based homework planned into the curriculum.

Proposition 3: Novices learn better when studying worked examples; experts learn better when attempting problems.

Application:

• If we accept that most students are novices, we should be systematically using worked examples in our instruction
• The ‘Alternation Strategy’ is a useful approach, allowing students to use worked examples as analogies when solving similar problems
• Backwards Fading and completion problems can help students make the transition from worked examples to problem solving

Further Reading and Evidence:

• ‘Cognitive Load Theory (Explorations in the Learning Sciences, Instructional Systems and Performance Technologies)’ by Sweller, Ayers and Kalyuga
• Olvier Caviglioli has produced a useful overview here
• ‘Efficiency in Learning: Evidence-Based Guidelines to Manage Cognitive Load’ by Clark, Nguyen and Sweller.

Proposition 4: Once decoding is secure, reading ability is almost entirely based upon background knowledge

Application:

• After a brief instruction in reading strategies, time is probably better spent building background knowledge
• Systematic, explicit vocabulary teaching throughout KS3 and KS4, focusing on high-utility words.
• Challenging reading across units.
• Texts chosen to raise cultural capital, ensuring student’s knowledge of the world is broadened
• Non-fiction articles threaded throughout units

Further Reading and evidence:

Ask the Cognitive Scientist: ‘The Usefulness of Brief Instruction in Reading Comprehension Strategies’ by Daniel T Willingham. AFT article from 2006

• This paper looks at how at the importance of background knowledge to reading ability and makes the point that ‘reading strategy programs that were relatively short (around six sessions) were no more or less effective than longer programs that included as many as 50 sessions’. There are diminishing returns to teaching them; they are ‘a low-cost way to give developing readers a boost, but it should be a small part of a teacher’s job. Acquiring a broad vocabulary and a rich base of background knowledge will yield more substantial and longer-term benefits.’

‘Reading Comprehension Requires Knowledge— of Words and the World’ Scientific Insights into the Fourth-Grade Slump and the Nation’s Stagnant Comprehension Scores By E. D. Hirsch, Jr. AFT article from 2003

• This paper makes some recommendations as to how to improve student comprehension:

1. Fluency allows the mind to concentrate on comprehension
2. Breadth of vocabulary increases comprehension and facilitates further learning
3. Domain knowledge, the most recently understood principle, increases fluency, broadens vocabulary, and enables deeper comprehension.
4. Don’t spend excessive time teaching formal comprehension skills. Hirsch asserts that ‘the point of a comprehension strategy is to activate the student’s relevant knowledge. That’s great, but if the relevant prior knowledge is lacking, conscious comprehension strategies cannot activate it.
5. Systematically build word and world knowledge. Hirsch asserts that ‘World knowledge is an essential component of reading comprehension, because every text takes for granted the readers’ familiarity with a whole range of unspoken and unwritten facts about the cultural and natural worlds’

Proposition 5: “Skills are domain specific. Knowledge is the key to successful critical and higher order thinking. As teachers, we should spend the majority of our time building student background knowledge”

Application:

• Systematic, explicit vocabulary teaching throughout KS3 and KS4
• Challenging reading across units.
• Texts chosen to raise cultural capital, ensuring student’s knowledge of the world is broadened
• Regular retrieval practice, ensuring that knowledge is retained. This is made easier by teaching from centrally planned booklets.

Further Reading and Evidence:

‘Minding the Knowledge Gap The Importance of Content in Student Learning’ by Daisy Christodolou AFT Spring 2014

• Daisy makes the important point that ‘factual knowledge is closely integrated with creativity, problem solving, and analysis. It allows these skills to happen’. Although it may seem counter-intuitive, if the goal of instruction is to solve problems, then the optimum approach may not be to practice problem solving: building background knowledge may be a more useful approach, at least in the early stages of instruction and when dealing with relative novices in a domain.

‘Critical Thinking Why Is It So Hard to Teach’ by Daniel T Willingham AFT article from 2007

‘Domain-specific knowledge and why teaching generic skills does not work.’ Tricot, A., & Sweller, J. (2014). Educational Psychology Review, 26(2), 265-283. Accessible here

Proposition 6: Practice and drills ensure success; learning tasks may look nothing like final assessment tasks.

Application:

• Because/but/so vocabulary practice activities
• Progression model of analytical skills (the 6 Skills) and grammar. Initial teaching and practice is through restrictive drills to allow a high success rate; later, student support is gradually faded and application is widened.
• Stand alone grammar lessons to practice sentence constructions.
• Focus on components to whole continuum: practice of vocabulary, sentences and paragraphs, building cumulatively towards application in extended writing
• Information is almost always delivered through extended reading, providing regular reading practice

Evidence and further reading:

Practice Perfect by Doug Lemov

• This book fundamentally changed my approach to teaching and explains how effective and purposive practice can accelerate student learning. It explores how to set up drills and exercises as well as how to use modelling effectively. The examples are taken from all walks of life, including the classroom, sports and professional training. The authors describe their approaches with a level of clarity that means that they are easily adaptable to whatever subject you teach.

The Writing Revolution by Hochman and Wexler

• The best practical writing guide that I have read, The Writing Revolution explains how to practice sentences, paragraphs and essays. Because/But/So is such an efficient way to practice vocabulary and is now a regular part of my lessons.

The Components of Direct Instruction by Cathy L. Watkins and Timothy Slocum

• If you want an overview of DI theory, then this paper is probably the best place to start. It explains ‘the sequencing of skills‘, a framework for planning practice sequences.

Making Good Progress by Daisy Christodolou

• As well as exploring the important difference between summative and formative assessment, this book also explains how practice activities may look nothing like final performances.

Theory of Instruction by Engelmann and Carnine

• Engelmann’s main theoretical textbook provides a wealth of information about sequencing practice activities and teaching through examples and non-examples. It also describes how items that are taught move gradually from restrictive drills to eventual wider application.

Proposition 7: Comparative judgment is faster and more reliable than traditional summative marking

Application:

• All end of unit essays are assessed using comparative judgment

Evidence and further reading:

• https://www.nomoremarking.com/aboutcj

Proposition 8: Written Marking is laborious and inefficient: whole class feedback has a lower opportunity cost

Application:

• Teachers use whole class feedback, deconstructing models of excellence and reteaching common errors and misconceptions through responsive teaching and retrieval quizzes.

Evidence and further reading:

• A marked improvement: a review of the evidence on written marking EEF report April 2016 Accesible here
• The Effects of Feedback Interventions on Performance: A Historical Review, a Meta-Analysis, and a Preliminary Feedback Intervention Theory by Kluger and DeNisis 1996
•  Adam Boxer has compiled a useful overview of the evidence surrounding effective feedback and marking.

 

I hope that some of the summaries and links here are useful!

Next Post: An Overview of The 6 Skills: An Analytical Progression Model