ICAV Paragraph Structure

Quite some time ago, we're talking about 10 years, I attended some Professional Learning run by Emily Bosco and Anthony Bosco of Into English. This PL was focused on Nineteen Eighty-Four but the thing that stood out to me was a paragraph components activity where four different elements were highlighted to help students understand the purpose of each part. 

(Full disclosure: I've since gone on to write for Into English but this was back when I'd only been teaching English for a couple of years and didn't know Emily or Anthonyyet). 

Anyway, the activity in the Nineteen Eighty-Four PL was focused on vocabulary and crafting a paragraph with enough relevant detail. I'm not here to talk about this today. I want to look instead at how the four different elements can be used to prompt students to think about writing structure. 

I don't personally invest myself as a teacher in any particular paragraphing acronym. Off the top of my head, I'm familiar with or have taught (or been required to teach): PEEL, TEEL, CLACEL, PEAL, TEAL, ALARM, PETAL, SEAL, OREO and I'm sure there have been some others. To be honest, it doesn't matter which of these get used, the point is whether a student understands it and if they're able to use the acronym to build an effective framework for writing about texts. With this in mind, I tend to use whatever each particular class is likely to 'get'. If the school is an ALARM school then it makes sense to use ALARM because students should (hopefully) already understand it. If some students are really struggling and have some literacy deficits, then I'll probably aim for something as simple as PEE (Point Example Explanation) just to get them started. If I have a class of skilled reader/writers then I might tell them to just write freely without thinking about paragraph formulae at all and then go from there. And if a student has a tutor who's taught them a completely different way of writing a paragraph that I hadn't even considered, then who am I to stop that if it's working? My point is that I've come to realise that there's no definitive way of doing it. 

This brings me to ICAV. I don't use this all the time but I've found that sometimes, with some particular students who are a bit stuck, that it helps them to think about things in a different way. 

What it is: Something that can kickstart a student's thinking and get them writing, which is often the biggest hurdle. 

What it isn't: A formula for writing HSC examination essays (...unless, of course, it seems to work within this context for a particular student!) 

Here is a quick explanation of the acronym:

• Idea. Same as concept, topic sentence, thesis, or point. What is the main idea that your paragraph is exploring?
• Context. Provide some background for your idea. Expand on your initial sentence by adding some contextual details. 
• Analyse. Provide an example from the text with analysis of an identified technique.
• Values. What conclusions can be drawn about the values being explored in the text? What stance or position is potentially being suggested by the author?

I like it because it builds-in a relevant way of talking about context. The values bit at the end also helps students reconceive their overall paragraph in a new way so that they're not just repeating their main point.

Here are examples of how it can be used with a preamble for students to read. The first is a general example and the second a specific one.

Poetry

ICAV (Ideas Context Analyse Values) is a way of structuring and writing paragraphs. The first step is to pick a poem, any of the ones we've looked at this term, and to write at least four sentences using the guideline below so we can start practising paragraph writing.

1. Write a sentence or two explaining the main IDEA of the poem. Don't forget to mention the name of the poem and its composer.
2. What is the CONTEXT behind this poem and idea? Think about how they connect.
3. Give at least TWO examples from the text that explore the idea. Use 'inverted commas' to quote each example, identify the techniques used, and ANALYSE how this technique highlights or enhances what the poet is trying to say.
4. Link back to what the poet VALUES and how the poem explores this.

Writing about Fritz Lang's Metropolis

Examine a range of Metropolis screenshots and select one to form the basis of your paragraph. 

• Write down an IDEA that's relevant to what you see.
• EG. Capitalist control of the means of production.
• EG. Dehumanisation resulting from capitalist exploitation of workers.
• Expand upon your topic sentence by giving further CONTEXT.
• EG. Marxism, industrial expansion after WWII, influence of German industrialists like Hugo Stinnes.
• ANALYSE techniques - deconstruct the screenshot in terms of what connects it to the context.
• EG. The close-up of the clock is symbolic of the amount of time workers are required to work, and the way that their time has been turned into a commodity to be exploited. 
• What conclusions can you draw about the VALUES of the composer?
• EG. Lang establishes the value of the individual by calling the viewer's attention to the process of dehumanisation visited upon the workers. 

It's not a revolutionary approach but it can be a useful way to mix things up a bit. I've found that it works best with the outliers at either end of the bell curve - students who find it difficult to write paragraphs altogether and students who are quite high ability but need that spark to get them started.

Credit to Emily Bosco and Anthony Bosco for the initial Idea, Context, Technique, Values approach to paragraph vocabulary. 

Author Mentors: Yuri Herrara and Structure

English in the 21st century is a strange beast. For older generations, there will be an awareness that the current subject of English taught in Australia is not the English that was taught 50 (or even 25) years ago. The rise of the new version of English in 1960s and '70s academia, with its focus on culture, contextual elements, and new media, would really only truly be felt in the NSW syllabus circa 2000. 

As someone who finished school in 1997 and then didn't come to teaching until 2010, this shift in the English discipline was a bit of a shock. The English essays I had written in Years 11 and 12 were decidedly formalist - focused on the structural purposes of the text, with the idea that the text was 'closed' and that everything you needed to know could be found within the text alone. Come 2010, The History teacher and Postmodernist in me loved that English had developed into something much more wild - that we can trace contextual elements and examine their impact on the text and audience, and that we can also look at the endless ways in which the same text can be read, or the ways in which the reader brings themselves to the text and reads it differently to their peers. 

But, that said, the English of the 20th century hasn't been replaced by this newer English. The two Englishes live alongside one another in our syllabus; you can see elements of both within the outcomes. You can also see them both within the diverse teaching methods of a powerful workforce of English teachers with their own myriad experience and wisdom. Some English teachers thrive on the idea of alternative readings and context, others prefer examining how a text is constructed and what this means. If you're teaching the bulk of the secondary English syllabus you'd be hard-pressed to completely avoid one side in favour of the other. 

Anyway, my point is that, while Part 1 of this series focused on the author and the role of context in shaping a text, today's entry (Part 2) focuses on the structure of the text. I think it's important that we teach students (without necessarily using fancy words like postmodernism and formalism) that reading and writing is a complex process with different 'ways in'. It works as a form of differentiated practice because some students will react better to a contextual study, whereas others will prefer looking at structural elements.

Structure

The author used for this structure lesson is Yuri Herrera, a really interesting Mexican writer who gained some attention in the 2010s for his novellas. Before looking at an extract from his Romeo & Juliet-inspired text The Transmigration of Bodies, it's useful to prime students by giving them an overview of some of the structures we use when writing. This can be done by checking for understanding with the following activities:

Mechanics. Write a bad example of each of the following:

• Punctuation
• Grammar
• Spelling
• Sentence Structure
• Paragraphs

Techniques. Also called 'literary devices', these are figurative, persuasive, and sound-based techniques used to make an impact on the treader.

• List some examples.

Conventions. The motifs or recurring elements that help the reader identify the type or genre of text.

• Give an example.

Writing Choices. Pick one below and discuss why it's important.

• Word Choice
• Point of View
• Tense
• Themes
• Being conscious of controlling how the reader sees your text

Editing. Pick one of your previous answers and re-write it using one of the methods below.

• Re-reading
• Drafting
• Sharing for feedback
• Using criteria
• Polishing

After these opening activities, have students read an extract from The Transmigration of Bodies and then consider some of the elements that have been used. In particular, ask students to look at its 'mechanics' and techniques by answering the following:

1. Find and highlight the following punctuation: comma, dash, colon, capitalisation of a proper noun. 
2. What reason is each one used for?
3. Explain the impact of the following techniques used by the writer:
1. Repetition of the word 'everyday' three times in one sentence.
2. The irony/dark humour of the line "Occasionally, his teeth fell out."
3. The metaphor "Eyeing (...) with venom."

Authors also used various conventions when writing in their chosen genre. A reader's familiarity with these conventions (also called motifs) allows them to better understand the ideas or style of the story. Have students make notes on three of the motifs featured in the extract (a depressing setting, blood, and a less-than-heroic lead character) and then ask them to identify which of the following genres the text fits into:

• Comedy
• Crime
• Romance
• Science Fiction

The lesson then focuses on writing choices. Herrera has a talent for using verbs in fascinating and memorable ways - ask students to locate the following verbs in the extract:

• Trickled, scamper, cricked, dreaming, managed, fell, buzzing, tethering, attempting, rammed, leaned, sucking, blew. 

Students can then answer the following questions. Some of these break away from a strictly formalist approach but we'll keep that to ourselves.

1. What is the impact of using particular verbs?
2. Whose point of view is the text written from?
3. How does the writer want the reader to think of the main character?
4. How does the writer want the reader to think of the setting?
5. What would you change if you wanted to introduce some more drama in the first paragraph?

The above lesson can be found here in these resources:

• PowerPoint on Structure (this walks students through the lesson step by step).
• Suggested extract.

Acknowledgement: The following material has been adapted and modified specifically for this blog. I would like to acknowledge some of my colleagues - Ashleigh Galea, Lauren Hage, Amra Winter - who also developed some additional material not included here

Author Mentors: Kurt Vonnegut and Context

One of the more interesting developments that occurred in Stage 6 NSW English these last few years was an increased and specialised focus on writing craft. This is encapsulated within the Year 12 Craft of Writing and Year 11 Reading to Write modules, which encourage students to use quality texts as models for their own writing. When we look at these modules closely we can see the way in which they build upon previous wisdom about student writing whilst adding some new parameters. In particular, the idea of providing a focus on creative writing has re-arranged itself around a need to include the disciplines of persuasive and discursive writing, which prompts further reflection when it comes to backward mapping some core skills and ideas into earlier years of high school.

Like many others, I've had to think about the idea of using Stage 5 as a formative ground for considering authors in this same way. I've summarised this as the somewhat dorky term 'Author Mentors', which can be extended into a short unit of work. This approach takes students through four different authors, with each one used to explore and model writing in relation to one of four stages of approaching texts:

1. Context
2. Structure
3. Discussion
4. Create

Context

The author used for the context lesson is Kurt Vonnegut (from whose work I took the title of this website, funnily enough!). The purpose of this lesson is to explore what context is, how it works, and how students can use their understanding of this concept to approach a text (the text in question being an extract from Vonnegut's famed science-fiction/war novel Slaughterhouse-Five).

Context is a tricky beast because it can sometimes feel like it pulls time away from studying the actual text. With this in mind, it's useful to frame context in general terms and to also approach it (in this case) in a way that Year 9 and 10 students will understand. This means communicating to students the way in which the 'background' of a text can help the reader understand what a text is about. The reader can draw useful conclusions about a novel by connecting the text to the life and times of the author. Examining context will typically involve the following four elements:

• When: When was the text written and/or published?
• Where: What society was the author living in when they wrote the text?
• Who: What sort of person was the author and what were the key events that shaped who they were?
• Why: What reasons or events prompted the author to write the text?

After considering the above, students should then be asked to read an extract from Slaughterhouse-Five. I like to use a small part of the text that comes about 15-20 pages before the end of the novel. This is accompanied by some straightforward comprehension questions to help orientate the reader and ensure they have a general understanding of the extract, as well as priming them for more in-depth discussion of context afterwards. Questions are as follows:

1. What is happening in this text?
2. What is the setting?
3. What is the backstory for the protagonist (main character)?
4. What elements of the story let you know these things?

The next step is to look at some contextual information about Kurt Vonnegut. Students read a brief overview of the context of Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse-Five and then rewrite/summarise some information using a basic schema. This means they read the overview and then gather together information that corresponds to the following:

• When?
• Where?
• Who?
• Why?

The final part of the lesson asks students to reflect upon and consider Vonnegut's context more specifically in relation to the novel. It also requires them to make some connections from text to self and text to the wider world. Ask students to respond to these questions:

Reflect: Look back to your answers to the questions of 'When, Where, Who, Why'. How do they stack up in comparison to what you learned from the novel's context?

Considering Context:

1. Why do you think this novel is considered by some to be a classic?
2. Do you think American schools are right to ban it?
3. What did the extract from Slaughterhouse-Five have to say about war?
4. What do you think about war? Write 400 words explaining your thoughts.

The above lesson can be found here in these resources:

• PowerPoint on Context (this walks students through the lesson step by step).
• Suggested extract.
• Context overview.

Acknowledgement: The following material has been adapted and modified specifically for this blog. I would like to acknowledge some of my colleagues (who I no longer get to work alongside but miss all the same!) - Lauren Hage, Ashleigh Galea, and Amra Winter - who also developed some additional material not included here. Hi! :)

Critical Study of a Text: Hamlet (Revision)

These are the end days! As the old syllabus hurtles towards its inevitable demise a new one waits just over the hill for its moment of dawning. English faculties all over NSW are busy securing class sets of new prescribed texts and creatively funneling old prescriptions into the junior years to cut down on expenses. As our bookrooms shift and re-arrange themselves like cities collapsing into new shapes under the exertion of tectonics, the dust begins to clear and a single, lone gem can be seen shining in the rubble.  

Hamlet.

The most discussed text ever written, the ur-character piece, the most coveted stage role of the 19th and 20th centuries, the single greatest play by the single greatest playwright. The very text that gives credence to the idea of a literary canon.

It has floated from syllabus to syllabus, ever-present but sometimes less obviously so than at other times. Most recently it was one of the cornerstones of Advanced English Module B: Critical Study of a Text, but as of next year this will no longer be the case. In 2019, Hamlet will move to one of the Extension English 1 electives.

It's a move that will mean two things:

• Recent PL sessions run by the ETA (and associated discussions online) suggest that the most popular English Extension 1 elective will be 'Worlds of Upheaval'. Very few seem interested in teaching Literary Mindscapes (the Hamlet option) so Shakespeare's relegation to this section of the Extension syllabus means that its probably not a text we'll be seeing in Year 12 much.
• The rules around Prescribed texts prohibit any of the Year 12 texts from being taught at a Year 11 level, so Hamlet's inclusion in this obscure part of the Senior English syllabuses means that it also can't even be used in Preliminary as a preparatory text.

I think this is a little sad. The vast majority of NSW senior students won't get to experience Hamlet over the course of the next five years (at least). Ah, Hamlet, I knew him well...

Anyway! Attached here are the revision notes that I used with my Year 12 Advanced English class last year. This follows the same format as other Year 12 Advanced English revisions notes I've previously uploaded (Discovery, Metropolis and Nineteen Eighty-Four, and W.H. Auden). Notable quotes are accompanied by some general analysis designed to model different ways of interpreting and connecting textual examples to themes and context.

Here it is: Module B: Critical Study of a Text - Hamlet

In addition to the above analysis here is an overview of techniques and aspects of the text related to themes / the rubric / context. These are as follows:

Techniques

• Foreshadowing
• Characterisation - particularly in reference to Shakespeare's use of foils (there are two in Hamlet!)
• Antithesis
• Hendiadys (if there was ever a time to talk about this literary device it's with Hamlet, which probably uses this technique more than any other text).
• Metaphor
• Motif
• Mockery
• Repetition
• Rhythm - Iambic Pentameter, and disruption to.
• Imagery
• Zoomorphia
• Hyperbole
• Bombast and bombastic language
• Puns, alliteration, and other forms of wordplay
• Rhetoric
• Soliloquy
• Verse vs. Prose
• Dramatic Irony 

Aspects of the Text / Context

• Gender - perspectives of the masculine and feminine
• The Great Chain of Being
• Elizabethan anxieties/concerns related to succession, corruption, etc. 
• Appearance vs. reality
• The old world of chivalry vs. the new world of subterfuge
• Protestantism
• Existentialism and Mortality
• Purgatory and its relevance in Shakespeare's society
• The Renaissance
• Tyrannicide - philosophical arguments for and against in regards to Hamlet
• Universalism
• Sovereignty 
• Humanism
• The influence of the new 16th genre 'the essay' on Shakespeare's Hamlet
• Hamlet's adherence to the tragedy genre
• The role of consanguinity in regards to character dynamics in the play

Further reading:

Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet

Macbeth and Grammar Analysis

The lightbulb moment.

It's that point where you see a student's facial expression shift as the meaning of what you're saying dawns on them. You don't always see it in every lesson, or even in every week, but when you do see it - you know it. I haven't seen half as many lightbulb moments in all my other lessons combined as I have when explicitly teaching grammar skills.   

These skills include, but aren't limited to:

• Lexical Chains (also known as 'text chains')
• Simple, Compound, and Complex Sentences
• Embedded Clauses
• Adjectival Clauses
• Ellipsis
• Lexical Density and Grammatical Intricacy 

I recently spent a lesson with my Year 10 class honing in on text chains. This was done in conjunction with teaching Shakespeare's Macbeth. The first thing I did was get the students to copy this short piece of text on some of the play's themes.

The copying is the easy part, and you can even skip this step by just handing them the text on a piece of paper. The next bit is the interesting part where they have to start engaging with some text analysis. This is done through the identification and highlighting of 'lexical chains' (also known as 'text chains'):

1. Model an example first. Highlight the name of the play, 'Macbeth', in one colour and then highlight three other words or word-groups that mean the same thing, drawing arrows to show the 'chain' that runs through the text. (The other three examples are 'the play', 'this text', and 'piece of theatre').
2. Once students have seen one of these chains, ask them to identify some of their own. Examples could include: 'Shakespeare' and associated terms, 'themes' and associated terms, and 'Macbeth' (the character) and associated terms.

The purpose of this activity is to show students the way synonyms can be used to increase the cohesion of a text. 'Cohesion' refers to the way a text hangs together, and text chains are one of several ways that increased sophistication can be achieved in writing. 

Here are the completed examples:

The point here is that students begin to get a better sense of why it's important to utilise a wider vocabulary, and they can also now see explicit lines of meaning that tie the text together. The longer a particular text chain the more the piece can be said to maintain this specific theme throughout the paragraph or essay.

Another byproduct of this process is that it assists students in decoding unfamiliar terms. The lexical chains encourage the reader to 'read' the text in a different way, building up their understanding, and gathering further literacy tools with which they can attack increasingly sophisticated pieces of writing. For those of you out there who are keen on Super Six comprehension, this comes under monitoring.

Coming to grips with text chains is the point where students have that aforementioned 'lightbulb' moment, and it primes them for further analysis of the text in other ways. It's empowering for students to now see at least one clear way that they can determine the quality of a piece of a text. I point out here that it isn't by any means the only indicator of quality, however, it is nonetheless a way in which students can assess both their own writing and the writing of others. Having gained a better understanding of how an extensive vocabulary can improve writing, students now also seem much more willing to try a few other new things. They've essentially been scaffolded to a point where they can begin an even closer reading of the text.

Here's how we can build further. Ask students to do the following:

The first question is asking students to actively decode new words by using what they've already learned. I nudge them along at this point but it's important to let them have a few educated guesses first, and for them to share their answers with one another. 

The second question is a way to make students consider the usefulness of adjectives in building deeper shades of meaning. Take an example, such as 'underlying concepts', and demonstrate the way in which 'underlying' can be removed without changing the essential meaning of the sentence. Then ask students to consider what the adjective 'underlying' adds to the word 'concepts'. This demonstrates the overall point of the adjective as a grammatical function that describes an attribute of the noun it precedes.

The third question deals with the cohesive device known as 'ellipsis'. In this context, an ellipsis is any word that is implied but not stated. The phrase 'Chief amongst these are' omits the word 'themes' between 'these' and 'are' due to the fact that the term 'themes' has already been made clear in the prior sentence. Gaining an understanding of ellipsis is dependent on context; students need to read the preceding and proceeding sentences to achieve greater awareness of the word that is subject to omission. Ellipsis exists (much like synonym use to build text chains) as another way for writers to avoid unnecessary repetition. Getting students to become consciously aware of this allows for further empowerment in their own writing.