Making Stronger Arguments (Stage 4)

Two years ago I had a Year 8 class who were doing a unit of work on Conservation. The framework was all about endangered animals and themes of sustainability (Cross-Curriculum Priorities ahoy!), with the driving English focus being 'Text Types'*. It was basically an opportunity to teach a range of writing modes that didn't fit elsewhere in our Year 8 curriculum - early forays into discursive writing (IE. Feature articles), poetry, a range of informational texts, and persuasive writing. 

(* I put 'Text Types' in inverted commas as I prefer to use the term 'genre'. The above are all different genres of writing. But more on that another time.)

Today I'll show you an idea for a lesson that I wrote later in my spare time. It marries together two of my favourite things - the mechanics of persuasive writing and Marsupial Moles. 

Now, I know what you're thinking... Why haven't these two things been put together before? My answer to this is - I don't know, I was just as baffled as you are as they seem such an obvious pairing. But, as they say, "there's no opportunity quite as golden as a Marsupial Mole" (okay, no one says this, but they definitely should).

Incidentally, this lesson would come after introducing what a Marsupial Mole is. I would do this in a separate lesson that looks at the differences in perspective between European and Aboriginal viewpoints of this amazing and seldom-seen creature. If you haven't heard of the Marsupial Mole, here's the crib notes:

• It's not a mole. It's a marsupial creature that lives in Central Australia - it's closest relative is the Bilby. 
• It basically has no eyes and doesn't need them - it spends the majority of its time swimming through sand under the surface of the desert.
• The Marsupial Mole has only been photographed a handful of times and Australian scientists have no idea how many of them are even in existence. 

Okay, now that's out of the way - here's what I would do with a class.

Firstly, we would look at four ways in which writers attempt to craft stronger arguments when writing persuasively. I picked just four so it would suit a mixed ability class and I don't want to overwhelm students. I want them to be able to identify what these things are so they could start experimenting in their own writing. Here are the techniques:

1. Synonyms
2. High Modality
3. Second Person Language
4. Rhetorical Questions

Notes on this can be found here - Making Stronger Arguments.

Students would then use these notes while reading two persuasive pieces about the Marsupial Mole and annotating them accordingly. This can be done individually or as a whole class activity, depending on the class. I would then project the pieces onto the board and read through them while making notes / highlighting certain sections with contributions from the students. The students would then copy the annotations onto their own copies. 

Model pieces here - Why the Marsupial Mole is the Coolest.

Things we would annotate:

• A text chain showing different terms for the Marsupial Mole (this allowed students to see how synonyms were used).
• Examples of second person language.
• Rhetorical questions and why they were asked.
• Modal terms - this involved comparing the two pieces to identify which one had higher modality.

At the end, I would then asked the students to identify which of the two pieces was more persuasive and why (the pieces differ in quality quite deliberately for this reason; they provide set standards for the students to work off). Students would then write their justification for which one is more persuasive using the metalanguage they've now learned.

In terms of backward mapping skills from Year 12 to 7, this services the need for students to build their familiarity with persuasive writing (think Craft of Writing in Year 12). It also works to support the NAPLAN writing task for Year 7 and 9 - which can be either persuasive or imaginative. 

Disclaimer: All the above resources have been created specifically for this blog in my own spare time.

Stage 6 Writing Craft 2: Craft of Writing

This post follows on from last week's overview of writing craft across Stage 6. For that blog, I outlined my approach to Reading to Write for Year 11. Today, I'll share how I approach Craft of Writing for Year 12. 

My approach here is a little less involved than what I do with Reading to Write, and the reason for this is that I prefer a student-led approach. I don't mean student enquiry or anything like that - the idea is just for students to create a portfolio in which they craft their own pieces of imaginative, persuasive, and discursive writing. 

It's also less involved for practical reasons. Reading to Write is mandated as the first module of work for Year 11. By contrast, Craft of Writing usually ends up as the last module undertaken in Year 12. Being last means that the module is subject to all kinds of variables - other modules could have overrun, the teacher may decide that copious amounts of revision is needed for their class in preparation for the Trial HSC... anything could happen, really. So I like to ensure that I only need about 5 weeks for Craft of Writing. This is supplemented by ensuring that a suitable degree of prep work is integrated into Stage 6 leading up to this point.

Anyway, without further preamble, here's what I do.

Craft of Writing

One of the key elements of giving students room to create their own portfolio is in setting them up with a range of supporting material. The previously-outlined approach to Reading to Write is designed to do just this, but another thing that can be done on top of this is ensuring that explicit teaching of writing craft happens on a regular basis throughout all of Year 12. 

Students can chip away at this at the start of every second lesson by engaging in mini-lessons that highlight a literary device or writing technique, with the teacher walking students through short activities in the first 5-10 minutes. Where preferable, these mini-lessons should happen within-context, highlighting writing craft for the Prescribed Texts from the other modules (hence why you may notice a few Nineteen Eighty--Four, Under Milk Wood, The Tempest, and Hag-Seed references throughout my resources - these are my texts from my most recent pattern of study). 

Throughout Year 12: For the mini-lessons, students are given a 'Writology' exercise where they learn about an element of writing craft and then try it out themselves. These are aimed at an Advanced English level. I'll admit there are some obscure ones in here but this unfamiliarity/newness is part of what motivates Advanced students to try them out. It's not expected for students to learn them all by-heart, it's just presented as an ongoing range of tools for them to explore. Said tools are placed in front of students and they pick which ones they like. Some examples:

• Asyndeton
• Parentheses
• Hyperbaton
• Modality
• Pathetic Fallacy
• Iambic Pentameter
• Brachyology
• Shared Lines
• Congery
• Irony
• Symbolism
• Ellipsis
• Anthimeria
• Antithesis
• Stream of Consciousness
• Reported Speech
• Anadiplosis
• Allusion
• Tmesis
• Euphemism
• Motif
• Intertextuality
• Synaesthesia 

Weeks 1-2: This is where the study of the Prescribed Craft of Writing texts begins. I start by introducing the Craft of Writing module, looking at the writing genres, and examining selected prescribed texts.

• Students work through this PowerPoint to explore the different writing genres from the module descriptor. There are certain points throughout where the teacher will need to stop and look at some of the Prescribed Texts from Craft of Writing. The ones I use, as included in this PPT, are 'Eulogy for Gough Whitlam' by Noel Pearson (persuasive), 'Eight Days in a Corset' by Siri Hustvedt (discursive), and 'Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice' by Name Le (imaginative).
• Each time we look at one of the Prescribed Texts, students complete a schema to analyse it - resource here.
• On top of the ones we look at as a class, I also include another three Prescribed Texts for students to read and choose from on their own. I wanted to give my Advanced students a range of options to look at so that there's some level of differentiation at work. The other texts I offer the class are 'How to Marry Your Daughters' by Helen Garner, 'Spotty-Handed Villainesses' by Margaret Atwood, and 'That Crafty Feeling' by Zadie Smith. 
• We also look at some poetry - 'Mastering the Craft' by Vernon Scannell (which came recommended to me courtesy of some ETA professional learning), 'O What is That Sound' by W.H. Auden, and a piece of poetry that I've written myself (I think it's important for English teachers to be vulnerable with their own writing and share with students as part of building a collaborative writing culture). 

This is all a lot more open-ended than how I do Reading to Write. Some other things we might do:

• Examine and annotate a page from one of the Prescribed Texts.
• Have students evaluate one of the Prescribed Texts by writing some guided dot points outlining their ideas on the text's context, a summary of the text, what they see as the text's thematic core (thesis), how effective the text is in using writing craft to get the author's thesis across, and what their final verdict on the piece is and why.
• Getting 'Up-Close' with Noel Pearson's Eulogy for Gough Whitlam - resource here.

The Assessment Task should also be introduced by this point so students can start working on it:

Assessment Portfolio

It's not a complicated assessment task. I didn't want students to get bogged down asking about assessment specifications and getting stuck on passing individual sections of the task before moving on to the next one. The idea is for students to just write! They create three drafts and then turn ONE of these into a polished piece with a reflection. Get them started as soon as possible. 

Weeks 3-5: Students continue analysing the Prescribed Texts and working on their portfolio. Part of the drafting process in any of my classes is for students to show their work to their peers and give/get feedback. Now, this can be a very difficult hurdle to overcome - you have to create a culture of peer feedback, which I mentioned back in the Reading to Write blog. 

Peer assessment is valuable because it: 

1. Helps students articulate their thinking with appropriate metalanguage while giving feedback to their peers (this helps with their reflective writing).
2. Helps break down the kind of competitive culture that can occasionally make high-achieving classes a little toxic. 
3. Helps students learn how to draft their work by using feedback. 

Once a student has picked which of their three pieces they want to revise, they're required to show it to a peer for feedback before I'll give them my teacher feedback. Teacher feedback can be used as a 'carrot' to reward students who have shared with their peers first. Peers use this scaffold to help make the process less confronting.

To break things up, a lesson can also be spent engaging in Socratic discussion. This approach is outlined here. And some questions relevant to Craft of Writing for Socratic discussion can be found here.

I don't mandate the incorporation of material from the Prescribed Texts into the assessable writing pieces but I found that nearly all my students drew inspiration from the pieces anyway due to the recency of examining them, plus they incorporated material they had gathered from the Writology mini-lessons. 

It's a wonderful experience to read reflections where students explicitly referred to what they had learned and explained what inspired the craft and technicality of their own writing processes. It builds confidence for students in regard to their own writing ability, and it's a reassuring process for teachers to be involved in too.

Revision: At the end of it all, students can revise the entire module, using the HSC Seminar below:

• Craft of Writing PPT
• A booklet of material that goes with the above PPT.