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“There are no wrong answers!”

2019-06-03T08:52:59+01:00June 18th, 2016|English|

Along with, "It's a skills based subject," the cry that there are no wrong answers in English is, I think pretty unhelpful. Take the example of teaching Priestley's perennial, An Inspector Calls. Every time we've finished the play, without fail, a body of students will be firmly persuaded that poor, unloved Eva Smith was murdered by the Inspector. I'm not going to bore you with why this interpretation is so wrong-headed, just take it from me that goes against everything that Priestley was trying to achieve. When I've pointed out - precisely and at length - why this view is incorrect, [...]

Improving critical reading through comparative judgement

2016-05-11T19:04:24+01:00May 11th, 2016|English, reading|

The following is a guest blog from Dr Chris Wheadon of No More Marking. The reformed GCSEs in English present new challenges for pupils in critical reading and comprehension. Teachers across the country - and pupils - are studying mark schemes and trying to interpret what they mean and how they may relate to standards. No More Marking, working with David Didau and a group of 11 schools took a different approach. David created some stimulus material for pupils in Year 10 in line with the reformed GCSE English questions. Pupils were given an unseen text and then asked to write [...]

Cargo cult teaching, cargo cult learning

2017-03-27T22:54:04+01:00December 10th, 2015|English, learning|

…it is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives… Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, Aphorism, 1620 Cargo cults grew up on some of the South Sea islands during the first half of the 20th century. Amazed islanders watched as Europeans colonised their islands, built landing strips and then unloaded precious cargo from the aeroplanes which duly landed. That looks easy enough, some canny shaman must have reasoned, if we knock up a bamboo airport then the metal birds will come and lay their cargo eggs for us too. This is the [...]

Comparison is easy

2021-08-02T16:40:12+01:00November 19th, 2015|assessment, English|

The basis for poetry and scientific discovery is the ability to comprehend the unlike in the like and the like in the unlike. Jacob Bronowski Judging the quality of a thing in isolation is hard. Is this wine good? What about this restaurant? This cheese? This television programme? This child’s essay? But just because we’re bad at making meaningful judgements doesn’t mean we’re aware of experiencing any uncertainty. Uncertainty is uncomfortable and as cognitive psychologist and psychophysicist (who knew that was a thing?) Donald Laming puts it, "In such a state of mind people are unable to resist extraneous suggestion." The [...]

Essay writing: style and substance

2017-01-15T10:19:18+00:00November 17th, 2015|English, writing|

You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable. George Eliot As with most subjects, the step up from GCSE to A level English literature is tough. You can get a pretty good grade at GCSE without developing a critical style or understand much about the art of constructing an academic essay. Students' work is routinely littered with stock phrases such as "I know this because" and "this shows" all of which shift the focus from having to think about subject content in sophisticated ways to simply learning a collection of fail-safe formulas. Of the 4 [...]

researchED English & Literacy Conference

2015-07-08T20:37:09+01:00July 1st, 2015|English, research|

A few months ago I asked Tom Bennett if he'd be up for rubberstamping some sort of rEDx project (like TEDx but with brains) devoted to exploring the intersection between education research and English teaching and he came back, quick as a flash, with the suggestion that I organise an actual researchED spinoff. So, under the steadying hand and watchful eye of Helene Galdon-O'Shea, I have. When? Saturday 7th November 2015 Where? Swindon Academy (which is also where I'll be working next year.) What? The theme of the conference is exploring the intersection between 'what works' according to the research community [...]

Using Threshold Concepts to design a KS4 English curriculum

2015-05-02T10:19:22+01:00March 24th, 2015|English|

The big change a-coming for curriculum design is that the final vestiges of modularity will soon have been licked clean from the assessment spoon; from September it will linearity all the way. Many English teachers have never worked in such a system and there's widescale panic about how exactly we can expect children to retain the quantity of textual information they will need to know in order to have something to analyse in a closed book exam. An obvious solution is to redesign your curriculum to harness what we know about the best ways of getting students to remember stuff. I've written [...]

How can we increase breadth and challenge?

2014-06-02T18:29:29+01:00June 2nd, 2014|English|

Over the past few days as sorry tale has unfolded. The new GCSE English literature specifications have been announced in draft form, full of sound and fury, signifying... nothing. The current GCSE lacks rigour and breadth and challenge. You're welcome to argue with this, but I think it's broadly true. Exam boards compete for business by positioning themselves as the 'easiest to get a C in' and schools, unsurprisingly considering the stakes, select the least challenging texts in the altogether understandable aim of getting as many students as possible to pass so that Ofsted will leave them alone. This is reality. [...]

Wanna play fantasy GCSE Literature specifications?

2015-12-08T19:24:35+00:00June 1st, 2014|English, Featured|

The exam boards have played their hands and they're relying on jokers rather than aces. GCSE English literature is a race to the bottom: with the overwhelming concern seemingly being how to retain schools' business by offering the most predictable, easiest texts. The biggest shock for me has been the suspicious consensus on what constitutes the canon. Every single board is specifying Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice, while Jeckyll and Hyde and A Christmas Carol are available on 3 out of the 4's lists. It's not that any of the texts are bad - they're not; I've read and enjoyed all of them - but [...]

Who's to blame for the new English literature GCSEs?

2014-05-30T11:29:18+01:00May 30th, 2014|English|

The sound and fury surrounding text choices for GCSE English literature just won’t go away. The exam boards got their digs in first with Paul Dodd of OCR claiming Gove wanted to ban US authors because he "had a particular dislike for Of Mice and Men and was disappointed that more than 90% of candidates were studying it". Gove then struck back saying neither nor anyone else had banned anything: ‘”Just because one chap at one exam board claimed I didn’t like Of Mice and Men, the myth took hold that it – and every other pesky American author – had [...]

Whose English literature is it anyway?

2014-05-27T20:28:04+01:00May 27th, 2014|English|

Have you heard? Education Secretary, Michael Gove has personally intervened to ban the only books worth teaching in the entire canon of English literature. Twentieth century American classics like To Kill A Mockingbird, A View from the Bridge and Of Mice and Men (Not to mention one of my personal favourites, The Catcher In The Rye.) have been summarily removed from English classrooms.  Only, he hasn't. Here's what he has actually said: I have not banned anything. Nor has anyone else. All we are doing is asking exam boards to broaden – not narrow – the books young people study for GCSE. [...]

Does it do what it's supposed to? Assessing the assessment

2014-04-06T06:22:54+01:00April 6th, 2014|assessment, English|

In response to a request for constructive criticism of the English assessment model I helped design, Michael Tidd got in touch to query whether it met his 7 questions you should ask about any new ‘post-levels’ assessment scheme. For the record, these questions are: Can it be shared with students? Is it manageable and useful for teachers? Will it identify where students are falling behind soon enough? Will it help shape curriculum and teaching? Will it provide information that can be shared with parents? Will it help to track progress across the key stage? Does it avoid making meaningless sub-divisions? My initial response [...]

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