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. 

Scaffolding Paragraph Construction

If there's one thing I was never explicitly taught as an English student back in the 1990s, it was how to write an essay. Even in my time as a senior student, I don't remember ever being conscious of how to write one... I wrote them, of course, and I got good enough marks to justify my later life choices, but essay and paragraph structure weren't ever focused on in my days as a student. 

This presented me with a challenge when I became a teacher. The day I became an English teacher was the day when I first had to start thinking about how essays were written. I observed my fellow teachers and backwards-engineered A range student responses, learned about PEEL paragraphs for the first time and, a bit later, ALARM. I've since come across a range of acronyms that help to formularise and quantify the process of paragraph writing in English... PEAL, TEAL, PEEEL, ICAV, CLACEL, OREO. 

I don't begrudge any of these. Whatever works, right? I just don't have the experience of learning these as a student, and I think it's important for teachers to have such experiences to call upon. Being inside the learning process as student is very different to constructing it as teacher.

I've since tried my hand at writing in the aforementioned formulae for this precise reason, sometimes under fake student names so that I can get an honest appraisal from my teaching peers (a daunting process, let me tell you!). Thankfully, my essays have received appropriately high marks when I've done the 'fake student' thing, but I have to admit that I don't think I do my best writing in the context of using paragraph formulae and scaffolds. When I meet students who have an instinct for writing I encourage them to avoid squeezing themselves into the acronyms, at least as much as our system allows.

That's enough reflection for now. Below is a task that I wrote a couple of years ago while I was thinking about paragraph writing. I've since used it with Stage 5 classes (both Year 9 and Year 10) and it works pretty well. 

It relates to the documentary Blackfish and aims to familiarise students with the idea of supporting a concept statement with relevant examples and analysis. The task does not require students to come up with said examples and analysis as I wanted to explicitly and specifically hone in on the actual construction of the paragraph. As I've explained before on this blog, I think we sometimes get too open-ended as teachers and become afraid to show students exactly how things are done because we don't want to be seen as doing the work for them. Unfortunately, this approach can leave students completely in the dark and they can become unwilling to attempt tasks that they perceive as just too complex.

Here is my thinking:

• Academic paragraph writing is complex. It requires the synthesis of multiple skills - conceptualising, judicious selection of evidence, the ability to write sentences in a variety of structures, use of appropriate vocabulary in a high modality, use of a wide and subject-specific vocabulary (IE. Metalanguage), the use of a paragraph structure that makes internal sense whilst also operating within the wider context of an essay, and memorisation of detailed content that can be recalled in essay-writing contexts that may not allow for notes to be on hand.  
• In order to get students to even start doing the above, I need to remove some of those skills from the playing field. I need to zoom-in on just one or two things and make sure students are confident with these first, and I need to do it in a way where students have the ability and confidence to complete the task whilst also still learning new things (that zone of proximal development we're all familiar with from our university pedagogy days).
• In this particular task below, students are being taught TWO things - the ordering of information within a paragraph, and how to generate a concept based on two different examples from a text. 

The task:

1. Students are given this worksheet.
2. Students pick two pieces of evidence from the worksheet that they think are similar, or that they like the look of. Higher ability students can fill in details about the point being made by each piece of evidence.
3. Students think of something they could say that brings these two pieces of evidence together. What common idea is within them? How are they similar? What argument do they both support? This is then written onto the top of the sheet.
4. Students then write a paragraph that starts with the concept statement they have created and copy the two examples in after it. This is done under timed conditions (9 or 10 minutes for Year 9, 8 minutes for Year 10).

There are three things to watch for when students construct the paragraph. These are things we may take for granted, or things that have not been explicitly taught to students before.

• Make sure the students are putting their sentences one after the other in the paragraph. Some students will start a new line for every sentence which makes the paragraph look like three small separate paragraphs. It can mean a couple of things when students do this, the most worrying of which is that they may not think of all these separate sentences as being part of something cohesive that belongs together. Some students won't learn this through being told ahead of the task, they will need to physically write it wrong first and then have the teacher correct it in front of them in person. 
• The two examples will need some adjusted wording or a connective clause of some sort between them. EG. Additionally, In addition to this, A further example of this is, Moreover, etc. Not all students will instinctively know this, especially if they haven't done a lot of (or any) academic reading. 
• For students who have no trouble assembling the paragraph quickly and understanding all of the above, this could be the time where you introduce the idea of a linking sentence at the bottom that consolidates the concept of the overall paragraph and ties things back to a bigger idea (the thesis). Stronger English students will be able to do this quite well in Stage 5.  

Happy paragraphing!

Disclaimer: The above resource was created specifically for this blog in my own spare time. 

Modelling Essay Writing

Earlier this year I had the pleasure to write a student resource textbook on The Merchant of Venice for the HSC 'Texts and Human Experiences' Common Module. I wrote this at the invitation of Into English (the book can be found here [digital e-book] and here [print edition]). It was something I did separately to my teaching as I actually taught my 2019 Year 12 class Nineteen Eighty-Four for the Common Module, and this means that I haven't had much of a chance to reflect on the module from a Merchant of Venice standpoint. Anyway, long story short, I've received some questions over the last few months about essay writing for The Merchant of Venice and this prompted me to write a sample paragraph. 

This paragraph can be viewed as supplementary material in support of one of the sample questions in the Into English book. The question itself isn't too important as the piece is predominantly designed to just demonstrate the components of a paragraph addressing human experiences, and can hopefully be used as a model for students to look at.

Here's the paragraph in question:

Sample Paragraph

The Merchant of Venice, through its exploration of the way in which people respond to appearances, reveals particular inconsistencies inherent in the human condition. This is perhaps best exemplified by the Prince of Morocco's observation that "All that glisters is not gold", an aphorism in which the deceptiveness of appearances is rendered concisely on multiple levels. Primarily, this remark is made in response to the false selection of a gold casket in the test for Portia's hand in marriage. It also doubles, however, as a metaphor for one of the play's key themes, wherein society often projects a shiny veneer that covers uglier truths. The antipathy that exists between Antonio and Shylock similarly conveys this context, with Antonio using the simile "like a villain with a smiling cheek" to describe Shylock's offer to loan him money, highlighting the apparent act of kindness as being inherently deceptive and evil. The inability of Christians and Jews within Renaissance-era Europe to see each other's true nature is further reinforced by Shylock's rhetorical identification of Antonio's hypocrisy, exemplified by the line "You called me 'dog' - and for these courtesies I'll lend you thus much money?" From a 21st century context, the audience is positioned to give equal weight to both the Christian and Jewish standpoint, and Shakespeare's depth of understanding becomes clearer from this more enlightened vantage point. In his examination of deceptive appearances, Shakespeare utilises these discussions to bring to the surface a range of inconsistencies in human behaviours and attitudes in order to demonstrate how conflict originates in such duplicity.

Annotated Paragraph

To assist with breaking up the above paragraph into its constituent parts, I have also attached an annotated version below.

Here it is: The Merchant of Venice and Human Experiences

I wanted to put the annotations up here directly but I couldn't figure out how to do it within a blog. I mean, to be honest, it's the end of the year and I'm feeling pretty exhausted so I didn't really invest too much time in trying to figure out how to convey annotations in the blogging format. 

Okay, look, if I'm really honest I didn't invest any time in figuring out how to convey annotations here. It's been a long year.

I would like to add that I wish you all the best over the upcoming holiday break!

Pushing the Paragraph

Write! Write like the wind!

A while ago I was marking NAPLAN and my desk buddy told me about something she does with her senior classes to help them prepare for the HSC. It was a while ago so I can't recall all the details but the idea was that students are given a paragraph (or essay) prompt and only six minutes to write in response to it. The reason for it being six minutes is that someone, somewhere, crunched the numbers and worked out averages to determine that this is roughly how long it should take per paragraph to generate enough output to qualify their essays as a 'sustained' response in a HSC setting.

I love this idea because, well, other things I'd tried weren't really working. I would give classes practice essay questions to do and the results would be middling at best; the high-performing students would jump into the questions and it was great practice for them, but the students who still had much more potential for further growth would find it too overwhelming. A different someone, somewhere, told me once that, "You don't run a marathon as practice to run a marathon," and I liked that; it resonated with me. The HSC is a massive undertaking that requires a highly-condensed explosion of writing unrivaled in other stages of education - the vast majority of students will never go through anything even remotely like the HSC examinations ever again so it's quite understandable that the less academically-primed students would be reticent to write essays in order to practice before they're asked to write essays in the HSC.

It's much less confronting for most Year 12 students to write paragraphs instead. And, yes, some still try to avoid it, however, when I'm collecting data every single time and letting students see their progress, it becomes difficult for the reluctant to continue non-attempting. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The Goal

In getting students to write paragraphs I want them to be mindful of what they're writing rather than simply trying to write as much as possible. Part of keeping them focused is to make them aware of the lexical density of their writing. 

Lexical density refers to the amount of lexical items found in a piece of writing. A lexical item is any word or word-group that carries meaning on its own, IE. A noun, a verb, an adjective, or an adverb. These are words that we can easily define or can swap with synonyms. If a word isn't a lexical item then it's a grammatical one - these are all the joining or connecting terms, some examples being 'with', 'what', 'it', 'the', 'however', 'in other words', etc. What we want to do is to have students write paragraphs and then test how dense they are with lexical items.

Testing the lexical density of a paragraph is to see how much 'content' is in a piece of writing. The key here is not to think about lexical density in terms of a higher amount of content equalling better writing, it's more a measurement tool that can help pick up patterns and identify trends in writing on repeated examination. 

Some things to keep in mind:

• A high lexical density (say, a piece of writing that is 80% made up of lexical items) might indicate a piece of writing that is too jargonistic, or convoluted, or loaded with words that the writer doesn't necessarily understand. 
• A low lexical density (below 50%) might demonstrate too much colloquialism, informality in sentence construction, or a lack of appropriate vocabulary.
• I'd probably say that the 'sweet spot' would be anywhere between 55% and 75%, but I'm not completely nailed down on this yet. Ask me again after I've collected data from a few more classes over the next 5 years!

The goal is to have students produce something within the 'sweet spot' bracket but, more importantly, to generate a word-count of 180 words or so within the 7 minutes given. The lexical density testing is a byproduct of building speed; by having the students focused on vocabulary in this way it ensures that they are keeping some kind of standard in mind in terms of ensuring that quality isn't sacrificed in order to just increase speed.

The Process

Written language tends to be more lexically dense and less grammatically intense than spoken language. Part of testing lexical density is to teach students to switch codes when writing and ensure that they aren't getting too conversational.

To calculate lexical density there needs to be a bit of maths in play (sorry!) This is represented as a percentage and is created through the following formula:

Get students to give you their lexical density percentage and word count after they've written a paragraph in response to an essay question. You want to do this a couple of times a term so you can start to build a reliable data set.

The Data

This is the cool bit, and it comes especially in handy during parent-teacher interviews when parents are interested in seeing how their child is progressing in their writing skills. By using the graph function in Word you can start to assemble a visual representation of student growth in regards to word count in timed conditions. It also allows both the teacher and the student to identify patterns in lexical density, which allows students to meet Outcome 9 (the reflection outcome). 

Record the information with pen and paper each time the students undertake paragraph writing in this fashion. It's best if you have a separate sheet for each student - that way you can record the information in front of the students without them seeing what their peers are doing (not that it's really a secret, students are usually okay sharing numbers related to this stuff because it's not formally assessed). The reason this is useful is that if particular students don't partake in the activity, or they make a series of excuses, they can see how this looks on paper over time. The realisation that you are collecting this information on a regular basis will prompt a lot of these students into action.

Student A shows growth in word count over time. They were already performing at a high level in terms of generating long paragraphs in short amounts of time, however, seeing this information presented in this way helped them push themselves further. The lexical density was way too dense at the outset - a lot of overstretching of vocabulary. We took at a look at some of the vocabulary used and worked on making the language more concise, which had the added bonus of increasing the amount of analysis they could get across in the time given.

Student B struggled with the concept of these paragraphs at first as they were nervous about not performing well. Eventually they joined in after realising that I wasn't going to stop running the activity, and they actually did quite well.

Student C showed phenomenal growth in word count whilst maintaining lexical density.

Once Student D joined in they started to show growth as well.

Student E really pushed themselves to extend the word counts they were achieving in 7 minutes.

At the end of each semester I give the students a copy of the data (such as the graphs above) to make sure that they're partners in the process. The above graphs are also what are given to the parents. It doesn't necessarily all have to be done the way I've described it but the main point is that students are practising writing in timed conditions without having to commit to an entire essay every time.

Target Audiences, Context, and Mad Men

There's a wealth of texts that we can use in the classroom with students when looking at advertising and the role it plays in relation to communication. As part of a Year 10 unit that examines this topic I settled on using two main texts - carefully-selected excerpts from the reality TV satire Nathan For You (see this blog and this blog) and the historical drama series Mad Men. As it's unlikely that many students will be aware of them it's worth bringing your class up to speed on the context of these TV series before launching into either of them in conjunction with activities. 

Below is a brief bit of context that sets up one particular scene I like to use from Mad Men.

Context

Mad Men is a 2007 TV drama set in 1960. It focuses on an advertising agency called Stirling-Cooper where a Creative Director, Don Draper, must come up with creative ideas to help companies sell their products. Companies decide whether they will hire Stirling-Cooper based on how good Don's ideas are. The show can be confronting for modern audiences because it honestly depicts the attitudes of the time (sexism, cigarette smoking, racism); allowing the audience to see how different the 1960s were to 2007. In this clip, Stirling-Cooper is dealing with a Jewish client for the first time.

Show students the questions below first and then let the clip play through a couple of times so they can watch for the answers. I find that students are much more willing to focus if they know what they're looking for so there's little use in just showing the clip without any of the context above or letting them know the purpose behind it.

The questions focus on comprehension and explanation, and scaffold students towards a point where they will be asked to discuss the concept of a target audience. They are (and I'm sure you could probably add a few of your own):

1. What is the agency's plan to boost awareness for Menken's Store?
2. Why is Miss Menken against the idea of coupons?
3. What has prompted Miss Menken to seek a new image for her store?
4. What kind of target audience is Miss Menken after?
5. Why does she say "the customer is always right?"
6. Give an example of sexism or anti-Semitism (discrimination against Jewish people) from this clip.
7. Find one example of sarcasm in the clip and explain its purpose. 

After the students have thought it through (and formulated some responses) you can then discuss some possible answers:

Potential Answers

1. The agency plans to boost awareness of Menken's through the use of coupons and a TV spot designed to increase their exposure.
2. Miss Menken is against coupons because of the connotations associated with them, IE. That they appeal to people trying to save money, whereas Miss Menken wants to appeal to a more affluent / well-off demographic.
3. Miss Menken's father previously ran the business, however, last year they reported their lowest sales so now she is seeking to revitalise the brand and find new customers.
4. Miss Menken wants a rich, upper class audience for her product, and gives an example of the sort of brand she wants her store to be compared to.
5. The phrase 'the customer is always right' is delivered by Miss Menken to remind Don Draper and his colleagues that she is currently his customer and that he should be listening to her ideas.
6. The reference to 'the village' is an allusion to Jewish people stereotypically living in a more 'backward' or primitive fashion. The phrase 'Your people' is also a reference to Miss Menken's Jewishness. Draper and co. also mention Miss Menken's father, alluding to their preference to work with him rather than her, which demonstrates sexism.
7. Miss Menken is being sarcastic when she says "this place runs on charm", as she obviously believes the opposite. 

Another example of sexism

The rest of the lesson can then be spent on some paragraph writing practice, with a formula of your choice. If I'm working with a mixed ability class who have limited confidence about this sort of thing  then I'll use a fairly open-ended question such as:

Write one paragraph outlining how you would aim to change the target audience for Menken's Store to suit Miss Menken's vision.

Students should aim to start their paragraph with a statement of some sort that re-frames the question so that an unsuspecting reader could follow the paragraph without having read the question. After this point the student is free to explain what their idea is, how they would go about implementing it and making it work, and then finishing up with a confident assessment of why their idea is the best option for Miss Menken.

Writing a paragraph in this way provides scope for students to just get some independent writing done (which can be a struggle at times), plus they can practise their command of rhetoric - which is pertinent in light of the overall topic's focus on persuasion and advocating for ideas. 

Analysing Text to Facilitate Better Writing

Year 9: Youth Culture

At the HSC level, English becomes heavily reliant on a student's ability to write. This is a point in a student's education where it doesn't matter how eloquent and insightful they are during class discussion; if they are unable to formulate their ideas into a cohesive and sustained, structured piece of writing then they are going to run into big problems.

The solution is backward mapping. If we extrapolate the skills needed for quality HSC-level composition and map them backwards through the curriculum for Stages 6, 5 and 4, then we can help students build the technical expertise needed for this kind of text construction. 

There are several ways that English teachers work towards this goal. The most common approach is perhaps through the teaching of paragraph construction formulae - things such as PEEL (Point-Example-Explanation-Link), PEAL (Point-Example-Analysis-Link), TEAL (Topic-Example-Analysis-Link), TEEEEL (Topic-Example-Explanation-Example-Explanation-Link)... you get the point, they're all kind of the same. 

Another approach is text analysis. This is a method that works particularly well with Year 9, and it involves giving students a structured response and asking them to firstly identify the content, or main point, of each paragraph (as opposed to the structural components). The idea here is that students are asked to identify the concept behind separating paragraphs in general, the fact that each paragraph needs its own theme or topic sentence, and it is possibly too readily taken for granted when we teach Year 9 students that they will automatically know what the point is behind paragraphing. 

Run a diagnostic text with a mixed ability Year 9 class where they're asked to compose an extended response, and you'll quickly see what I mean.

There's simply no point in teaching the individual elements of constructing paragraphs if students don't even know what a paragraph is or how it works. You have to crawl before you can walk. (Sidenote: if your class exhibits a wide disparity between those who can and those who can't, then this is where differentiation of activities will also come in handy).

The other thing that works well with text analysis is getting students to identify cohesive devices that the author has used to avoid unnecessary repetition. This means:

• Explicit acknowledgement of reference terms (such as 'these' - what does 'these' refer to?)
• Text chains (the use of synonyms to refer to the same idea). 

Unless we show this to students, or test them, we simply can't tell if a student understands how these building blocks of cohesion work. There's often a shift in high school English teaching away from the explicit teaching of grammar in favour of more conceptual forms of engagement, but I would argue that there is room for both and that we are doing some students a disservice by skipping more straightforward means of text analysis. The grammatical approach not only caters to lower ability students, it can also offer a foundation of knowledge for students with learning difficulties, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and those whose epistemology favours ways of learning that are less compatible with English in general (all the prospective STEMsters out there!)

Resource 1

Below are two resources for a Youth Culture unit my school teaches. The focus of the unit is on issues related to being a teenager, with a sizeable slice of time dedicated to the inimitable classic '80s film The Breakfast Club. With that in mind, the text below is an introductory piece about the history of teen films, written to also function as part of our school's Focus on Reading project (in which we start every junior English class with ten minutes of reading).

Resource 1 - This can be put onscreen to demonstrate to students what you want done with the text in front of them.

Resource 2 - This is the version that can be handed to the students for them to annotate.

For more on teaching the skill of annotation to juniors, there's a novel study activity here: Extending Stage 4 Students in English
For more on text chains, see this History resources: Text Analysis: The Rise of China