Teaching Embedded Clauses

One of my favourite things to teach Year 7 or 8 is the embedded clause. It sounds boring but it's relatively simple and students always have fun with the idea of manipulating language in unexpected ways. Embedded clauses can be taught effectively in thirty minutes or so in just three steps.

Step 1: Model an embedded clause

An example, inspired by Louis Sachar's Holes but not actually in the text:

Mr Sir squinted in the moonlight, his hand wavering over his gun, and told Stanley to get out of the way.

The embedded clause in this case is the middle part of the sentence that sits between the commas. The function of this clause is to add additional information to the situation, and it turns the line from a compound sentence to a complex one. 

An easy way of explaining the clause to students is to ask them to remove it from the sentence and then read aloud what remains to see if it still makes sense. If it does, the removed section was an embedded clause and the sentence itself was a successfully complex one.

Students should copy the above modelled sentence, highlight the embedded clause, and label it as such. 

Step 2: Scaffolding an embedded clause

The next step is to provide a sentence without an embedded clause and to ask students where such a clause could be inserted. It's important to make it a bit silly to offset the dryness of an activity focused on grammar. Here is such a sentence:

Spaghetti O'Jones laughed and grabbed a hold of the tortoise.

Students will start to get a feel for this by nominating places where a clause could go. The 'his hand wavering over the gun' clause from the Holes sentence works well enough as an example for discussion purposes. The [ ] indicates potential places to add the clause, and commas have been inserted accordingly to show students how to potentially punctuate it as well:

[ ], Spaghetti O'Jones, [ ] , laughed , [ ] , and , [ ] , grabbed a hold of the tortoise , [ ] .

For the ones at the beginning and end, this can be an opportunity to talk about 'reversibility' with complex sentences. If the sentence still works with the clauses reversed then students can label it correctly as a complex sentence.

Anyway, students then pick one of the following clauses below and insert it in one of the above spots. 

• EG. Spitting pasta everywhere
• EG. Sneezing uncontrollably
• EG. Kicking over the daffodils
• EG. Something else of student's choice

I would take this opportunity to walk the room and read the new sentences students create, laughing or marveling with them at what they've been able to put together.

Step 3: Without Training Wheels

Students then use an embedded clause to create their own sentence from scratch. 

Disclaimer: The above activity was written specifically for this blog.  

Teaching 'Setting' with Holes

Setting/Characterisation is one of the criteria assessed in NAPLAN for the years in which creative writing is prompted. In fact, in comparing the Persuasive and Creative options for the NAPLAN writing section, this is the only real point of difference that comes up in the criteria. Without getting too much into it, Setting and Characterisation are conflated on the understanding that both of these textual elements require sufficient detail and a sustained approach across the length of the student's writing. 

I think there's something in this definition.

For example, if a student introduces their setting at the start of their piece, then we want to see them remember that this is the setting right until the end - and the writing should reflect this. If it's a freezing tundra then we want to see constant and varied reminders of this throughout the text, and we also need to see that events and characters within the text interact with this setting appropriately. 

The same is said for characterisation. If a character is dressed in a cumbersome pizza slice suit, then we  need to read about them sweating throughout the story, or the way in which the suit restricts their movements, and that other characters comment on the bizarre appearance of this pizza slice protagonist.

In Stage 4, I have on occasion used the novel Holes by Louis Sachar to teach the literary concept of setting. This can be done across the first 45 pages in relation to the story being set in Texas's Chihuahuan Desert. Before I demonstrate some of the ways this can be explored, here's a quick paraphrasing of what Stage 4 English says about setting:

• EN4-1A contains a content point that asks students to recognise and analyse the ways in which setting interacts with events or characterisation. 
• EN4-2A contains a content point in which students are encouraged to use textual evidence related to setting when justifying a point of view.

So, as we can see, by the time students are in Years 7 and 8 they should be looking at the more complex ways in which setting operates as an element within a text and be able to use their knowledge about this when analysing said text. Here are three ways in which this can be addressed in relation to Holes:

Activity 1 - Stretching Our Creative Muscles

1. Before the students even have a chance to read Holes, I ask them to spend 10 minutes writing about their own setting for a story. Free reign is given here, students can set their story anywhere, anytime. I usually walk around the room and give students a range of options to prompt their imagination - do they like the beach? Bushwalking? Perhaps they'd like to go to an alien world, or a frozen wasteland? Haunted houses, grimy cities, and ancient civilisations all get a look in as well.  
2. Then we go off and do something else for the bulk of the lesson. I like to let their descriptions sit for a little bit, perhaps while the class does one of the other setting-related activities.
3. At the end of the lesson, for about 20 minutes, I then direct students to read through their descriptions and monitor how they used vocabulary to build a setting. This means highlighting any adjectives they've used, and circling any imagery that relates to four of the major senses (sight, smell, sound, touch). Students then come up with an additional 5-10 adjectives or sensory imagery that could have been used in their description.

Activity 2 - Purpose and Complexity

1. Read the opening chapter of Holes as a class and then discuss what sort of setting this is. Students collect together any details that let them know what this setting is, and reflect on what impression Sachar wants the reader to get.
2. Then we read on until we get to Chapter 3, where the protagonist Stanley Yelnats is travelling to the Juvenile Correction Facility at Camp Green Lake via bus. There is a part in this chapter where Stanley thinks about where he is going and expresses gratitude that he will at least be able to go for a swim in the 'Lake'. 

Stop here and explain what irony is. I look at three types of irony and usually a little bit of discussion will get students to recognise that sarcasm is one of these - this is a good way of starting off.

• Verbal Irony: Also known as sarcasm, this is when someone says something that is the opposite of what they mean.
• Situation Irony: This is when we expect something to happen in a story only for it to be subverted or flipped by the writer.
• Dramatic Irony: This is when there is a disconnect between what the audience knows and what a character knows. When the audience knows more about something than a character this can create tension or humour.

    3. I ask students here to consider how Sachar has used dramatic irony. The answer is the bit where            Stanley thinks he is going to be able to swim at Camp Green Lake. Thanks to the opening chapter         (which features no characters and only focuses on setting), the reader is aware that this lake is                 completely dry - although Stanley is not. We see now how setting interacts with character and                 the novel's structure in a more complex fashion than students perhaps realised, and the teacher can         help make it clear here that the entire purpose of the opening chapter was to allow the reader to            know about the setting before Stanley does.

Activity 3 - Textual Evidence

1. Students read Chapters 5 to 7. If you wanted to do this in the classroom, I find that this will take about half an hour. This works well if you read to the students (which is valuable for a whole range of reasons) because the second half of the lesson then has the students working more independently. 
2. After finishing Chapter 7, we look at Reinforcing Setting. That is to say, how has Sachar continuously made references to the setting and shown how this setting impacts on the characters? Students will at this point be asked to gather 8 quotations from Chapters 5 to 7 that demonstrate this.
3. For some students, this could be the first time they've been asked to identify quotes as a form of textual evidence. With that in mind, I think it's useful to give students the page numbers so they don't waste time aimlessly flipping through pages and disengaging altogether. I do the first one for them so they can see exactly what they need to do (NOTE: the page numbers refer to the edition of Holes pictured above. Even though the cover may be the same, be aware that some page numbers may differ a tiny bit due to different printings having slightly different font size):

• P.17, "They were dripping with sweat", this shows the way in which the setting is affecting the characters.
• P.19
• P.21
• P.26
• P.28
• P.32
• P.35
• P.36

What I find interesting about this last activity is that some students will pause and ask how a character being thirsty relates to the setting, and this allows for discussions of more subtle uses of setting beyond "It was dry and hot". 

 

The above activities can of course be adapted for use with a variety of other novels too.

Disclaimer: The above activities were adjusted specifically for this blog. 

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.

Online Media - How Does it 'Get' You?

Hi! 

Recently I had Year 7 English class that looked at the Media and how ideas are represented within it. It was a very relevant unit of work in light of our society's growing concerns with fake news, toxic online cultures, and the need to increase diversity both in front and behind the screen. It was also quite a useful topic as it allowed me to explore a broad range of ideas and activities while we try to get students back into some sort of meaningful routine after a prolonged lockdown.

The lesson idea below was created afterwards while I was reflecting on the unit. It focuses on targeted online media and the way that it interacts with users. Year 7 students have varying degrees of online literacy and are often experts at operating a range of apps and devices. There are, however, very few who understand the 'back end' of online technology. The rise of smooth smartphone-friendly user interfaces has meant that it's no longer all that necessary to understand the nature of an internet browser cache, what HTML is, or even how web addresses work.

At least, that is to say, it's not necessary if you're a casual user who relies upon social media to navigate the online world. 

But it is perhaps this lack of digital literacy that is ultimately letting our society down and opens some people up to exploitation. The Stage 4 English syllabus can assist our students here with outcomes and content dot points that look to address some of the issues around this. Some examples of how this lesson links to the current syllabus:

Outcome 2: A student effectively uses a widening range of processes, skills, strategies and knowledge for responding to and composing texts in different media and technologies EN4-2A

• Recognise and practise responsible and ethical digital communication
• Analyse and explain the effect of technological innovations on texts, particularly media texts

Outcome 7: A student demonstrates understanding of how texts can express aspects of their broadening world and their relationship within it EN4-7D

• Draw on experience to consider the ways the 'real world' is represented in the imaginary worlds of texts, including (...) media and multimedia texts.

The following lesson looks at how cookies are used to track our activity online and the ways in which this leads to targeted advertising. 

1. Students start off by completing this worksheet - Tracking Activity.

During this activity they outline and describe what they were doing at set points throughout the previous afternoon and the morning before the lesson. This is then put aside, with the teacher explaining that this information will become relevant at the end of the lesson.

2. The teacher then leads students through a PowerPoint with some questions that combine comprehension and critical thinking skills. During this PPT, students learn about online cookies and the way in which advertisements online target individual users. 

PowerPoint Here - Online Media.

3. The final part of the PPT brings students back to the tracking sheet, which they swap with a partner. Each student must then use the information provided to gather information about the 'user' and then design an advertisement to target this person. 

I think it would be a useful activity in the sense that it allows for students to learn about online tracking without having to actually go online (which I often find a logistical problem - EG. Tracking down laptops for classroom use, monitoring and locating student passwords to get onto school network, relying on functionality of wifi). It's also useful in a more abstract sense as it helps students understand what it means when a website asks them to 'accept cookies', how their search history can be financially exploited by advertisers, and why advertisements seem to specifically apply to just them.

Disclaimer: All of the above material was created specifically for this blog in my own spare time.

Introducing Year 7 to the Concept of Literature

While teaching, I find myself coming back to English over and over again and thinking about what the discipline is and why we teach it. Looking at the NSW syllabus document and examining the content points becomes useful because I can use it to reframe how I approach things. It gives me ideas about other 'ways into' the subject. If I get stuck while programming a unit of work I'll keep bouncing back to the outcomes and looking at the content points, which contain loads of ideas embedded in them. This also seems to be one of the most effective pieces of advice to give pre-service and beginner English teachers who find themselves stuck for ideas when lesson planning. 

On top of this, we also have the English Textual Concepts, which act as a synthesis of the major ideas and methods that have come to exemplify English. These can be incredibly useful when designing an overall unit of work but also have merit when looking at singular lesson activities.

When moving from Primary to Secondary school, students will need to be introduced to English in a new way - a more developed way that will hopefully sustain their growth as critical thinkers and challenge them by placing them in that 'zone of proximal development'. I've been thinking about this and how it can be scaffolded for students with varying degrees of literacy and other additional learning needs. How, for example, can the concept of Literary Value be introduced to Year 7, assuming that this terminology has not yet been mentioned to them in a Stage 3 context?

I think the first step is to break down what 'Literary Value' means in wording that the average Year 7 student will understand. Part of this is reframing the concept in a way that has authentic meaning in a wider context, so I'll swap out 'Literary Value' here for 'Literature'. When I used to work in a bookstore, the term 'Literature' was recognisable as a term with its own connotations separate from 'General Fiction' - a distinction that also extends into the realms of literary criticism, publishing, marketing, and popular review categories in newspapers, magazines, websites, etc. Using this idea along with the English Textual Concepts descriptor for Stage 4-level Literary Value, we can arrive at a workable definition that looks like this:

Literature: Fictional written works, especially those considered to be of superior or lasting artistic merit.

Activity 1: The first step is to place this definition in the centre of a board. Rather than do a mindmap or brainstorm, the teacher should lead a discussion on what each constituent part of the definition means and annotate it. Students should copy the definition into their book first and then add the annotations as you go. This serves a dual purpose - it scaffolds and models the process of determining meaning, and it also teaches the skill of annotating which will become more useful to students as they get older and begin to interact with more demanding texts.

The parts you will need to discuss with students and annotate are as follows:

• What does 'fictional' mean?
• What does 'superior' mean? Who decides what is superior?
• What does 'artistic merit' mean?
• What does 'lasting' mean?
• Note also that 'especially' leaves the process open-ended - what one person determines to be 'literature' may be subjective.

Activity 2: Students can then be given a worksheet with six examples of written works, ones that they will hopefully recognise or for which they will at least understand the context. The worksheet scaffolds the process of determining what 'counts' as literature. You may need to read aloud some of the fine print on the book examples as they probably won't be large enough on a printout for students to see. You should also project it on the board so they can see it in colour (assuming your photocopy of the worksheet is in black and white). 

Focus the conversations around things like:

• The age of the book (IE. Is the book 'lasting' in that we still know about it after all this time?)
• Prizes the book has won ('Pulitzer Prize', 'Australian Children's Book of the Year')
• Is the book fiction or non-fiction?
• The last example, Wonder, will be interesting because a lot of students read it in Primary school. In their eyes, this will make it a 'classic' of sorts. This could lead to interesting discussions on whether it may one day be considered a classic in the future and therefore have lasting artistic merit. 

Activity 3: As always, try to get your students writing independently for a bit. Tell them to pick one literary text from the worksheet and write a few sentences explaining why they think it continues to have impact after such a long time (or will continue having impact into the future). 

You can find the worksheet here - Literature. 

Guided Storywriting

Hi, how's it going?

I hope you're well, and I really do mean that - this has been a tough year for everyone and being a teacher in the public system looks like it might only become more challenging as we move into 2021. I've long been a big believer in free education for all but I know how hard it is not to feel demoralised and disillusioned sometimes when working within this system. What's that adage... nothing worth doing was ever easy? 

Teaching isn't easy. 

So, fellow teachers, I hope you're all kind on yourselves as we move into Term 4 of 2020. I hope I can be kind on myself too! Today I thought I'd share a stand-alone worksheet that worked well with my mixed-ability Year 8 classes in that nebulous part of the year where we were all trying to get students back on track after everyone isolated during NSW's first COVID wave. This lesson was designed to focus the students on building their literacy skills, and it bought me some time so I could continue planning some longer term work for my classes.

Guided Storywriting - Worksheet.

The first half of the lesson involves students filling in an open-ended cloze passage that comes with annotations that 'guide' the sort of answers that will work best. This is useful for students who aren't yet at the point where they can generate ideas in sufficient number, and helps them ascertain what categories of words work well in particular contexts.

The second half of the lesson contains some Super Six Strategies to extend student comprehension, and this includes visualisation, connection, and monitoring/summarising activities.

Have a nice term! :)

Teaching Context for Stage 4

One of the key components of understanding a text is consideration of its context. We can see this idea echoed over and over again in a range of material related to teaching English and literacy, consider:

• The NSW English K-10 Syllabus, which specifies in the Rationale for students to "examine the contexts of language to understand how meaning is shaped by a variety of social factors".
• Outcomes EN3-5B, EN4-3B, and EN5-3B across Stages 3, 4, and 5, which all mention a need for recognition of different language contexts.
• Content points in the syllabus, which take it a step further through requiring students to "develop and apply contextual" knowledge by describing and analysing the context of texts (EN4-3B). Or for students to "critically consider the ways in which meaning is shaped by context" (EN4-5C).
  
• The English Textual Concepts, which includes Context as one of the twelve concepts - specifying the way in which context changes meaning in the way we read things, the way texts are shaped by outside factors, and the way values can change over time.
  
• The Literacy Progressions, which map the need for contextual understanding of words in both the Understanding and Creating Texts sub-elements from Levels 5-10.
  

For NSW High School English we start with Stage 4, where context becomes an important factor in modifying meaning when writing, or when recognising the parameters of meaning while reading.

It's easy for English teachers to start looking at context by considering the cultural or personal factors of an author, or how texts are reinterpreted and adapted over time (think Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet, or Clueless as an adaptation of Emma) but sometimes I find jumping straight into this can leave some students behind. It took me a couple of years of teaching before I realised that context wasn't something explicitly taught in Primary School English, at least certainly not to the extent that the metalanguage term of 'context' had become embedded in student thinking. I can say, "What's onomatopoeia?" to a Year 8 class and, without fail, students will start shouting things like "BANG!", "CRASH!", and "CRACKLE!" If I ask, "What's context?", I usually get blank looks from the same group.

A good starting point is to break the term down into four parts:

• Who wrote it and/or to what audience?
• When was it written?
• Where was it written?
• Why was it written?

I want to get students understanding the impact of these elements on a text and, as with learning vocabulary, it's more effective for students to do rather than copy. So the starting point is to consider a single sentence delivered identically in two very different contexts:

"Stop falling asleep"

Who: said to a student vs. to an airplane pilot.

When: in the daytime vs. during a flight.

Where: in a classroom vs. on a plane.

Why: they should be doing their work vs. they should be flying the plane!

Once students understand this, give them a series of sentences and have them devise their own contexts to go with each one. They should create two separate contexts per sentence with the challenge being that these contexts should be as different as possible. Once they've finished, discuss as a class and compare the responses students came up with, exploring the idea of just how much context can matter. Considering this for single sentences is the building block of considering larger extracts of text, to short stories or articles or films, to whole novels, to whole genres or literary movements. The advancement through the progression will depend on the sophistication of the student as they work their way through the stages and courses towards their final year in High School.

Here's a worksheet that lays out the above-described context activity for students to complete: Context Worksheet.

Stand-Alone Lesson: Parents Just Don't Understand

The last few weeks have been challenging for just about everyone. As Term 1 wound down, and the era of COVID-19 descended upon education, teachers found themselves needing to adapt to online learning platforms as a substitute for face-to-face teaching.

I don't have enough time, space, or inclination to go into my experiences in moving to Google Classroom during the last three weeks. There have been some failures, some ongoing challenges, and (I hope) some small successes. I'm still feeling my way through it all and learning about what I do and don't like, what I think might work, and how I might force things to work.

Suffice to say, this is still a teething stage. As it is for many teachers.

During the transition stage at the end of Term 1 I created the following Junior lesson in order to test a few things out. It may or may not be useful in your context if you need to fill a lesson separate to your current scope and sequence.

Firstly, students will need to watch the following music video. This was chosen in response to some Year 8 students who love rap/hip-hop... do you know how difficult it is to find family-friendly rap music? Luckily Will Smith was on hand to help me out. 

As it's a music video it would be remiss to only cover the lyrical content so I provided the students with a worksheet that covered their comprehension in terms of both written and visual literacy. The use of the table format to project questions alongside the relevant parts of the text is an adaptation of the Cornell note-taking method and is part an ongoing effort I've been making to get my Year 8 and Year 9 students to internalise the annotation process.

There are two versions of the worksheet - one for Stage 4 and one for Stage 5.

Parents Just Don't Understand - Stage 4 (Year 8 version)

Parents Just Don't Understand - Stage 5 (Year 9 version)

Note that the Year 9 version includes a question comparing this song to a previous song the class had studied. This can be adapted to suit your context.

English Textual Concepts: Point of View

In my teaching adventures last year I had the privilege to teach a Year 8 class with additional learning needs and I can say (and have probably already said on this blog before) that it was one of the most rewarding teaching/learning experiences I've had so far in my career. Teaching such a diverse range of little people helped me re-frame a lot of teaching strategies in a way that would make them more accessible and inclusive for those with learning difficulties. At this point I had already been experimenting with integrating the English Textual Concepts into my programming for a few years and the resources below represent one of these forays in relation to the aforementioned Year 8 class. 

For some additional context: the English Textual Concepts have been in development for quite some time. When I first heard about them at the 2014 ETA Conference they were referred to as the 'English Concept Continuum' and after this it popped up in various English-related professional learning scenarios and I kind of made it my mission to attend as much of PD sessions as possible. These days it is now being taught at Western Sydney University and is endorsed by the Department of Education as an invaluable resource for English programming - it isn't a mandatory part of being an English teacher but it's certainly a helpful one! When I get stuck in the formative stages of programming I find it's useful to have a squizz at the Textual Concepts and locate a concept that might work as a way to pull everything together.

So, anyway, I wanted to teach Point of View to my Year 8 class because I'd noted some of the students struggling to comprehend how writers establish a relationship between narrator and audience. Here's what the framework says in regards to teaching this particular concept to Stage 4:

Point of View - Stage 4

Students understand that choice of point of view shapes the meanings, the values and the effect of the text.

Students learn that

• a narrator can tell a story, comment on a story or break out from the story to address the responder, directly
• point of view is a device for persuading 
• point of view directs the responder to the values in the text

The Qinling Panda, with its brown fur, is one of the most endangered mammals in the world

Animal Conservation

At the start of 2017 the unit my school was teaching Year 8 focused on endangered animals and text types, which works well with Point of View if you want to look at how different text types utilise first, second and third person for particular effect. Anyway, here's a breakdown of the lesson:

1. Start the PowerPoint Presentation on Point of View. On the second slide brainstorm with students the language used for first, second and third person (IE. 'I, 'Me', 'Myself' for first person; 'You', 'Your', 'You're' for second person; 'He', 'She', Proper Nouns', 'His, etc. for third person). This explicitly identifies and classifies the sort of language the students will be looking for in the next part of the lesson.
2. Students are then shown three pieces of writing about the American Bison in the PowerPoint Presentation; hand out these extracts as a separate sheet and have them highlight the language that differentiates the pieces as first, second and third person.
3. On the 6th slide students are asked to consider the implications of how point of view affects the relationship between writer and responder. Think about: the first person text could be either non-fiction or fiction, however, the third person feels more resolutely like fiction and the second person example moves into a different realm altogether (it can be seen as an instructional text of some kind, perhaps even a travel guide). The questions build upwards ala Bloom's Taxonomy, starting with the 'what' questions before asking students to engage with some basic evaluation (which version appeals the most and why?)
4. The last slide gives students a first person piece of writing that they must rewrite as third person. It's a fairly straightforward activity that allows a struggling class a reasonable degree of success. The scaffolding of analysis before this final activity should also prepare students to discuss their piece of writing afterwards in relation to the way shifting point of view can help the responder to see the content of the text in new ways.

Sometimes I think we (the teacher) underestimate the value of explicitly teaching what we might take as obvious - there are some students who come to high school with a very real need for continued support in developing key comprehension skills that some students can already access unconsciously. In any event, it certainly doesn't hurt to let students achieve success in regards to exploring Point of View before moving forward to more advanced English processes.

Film Studies: Making a Zoetrope

Okay. A little context before I start: I'm currently about a quarter of the way through teaching a two-year Film Studies course. This is a board-endorsed course that I'm currently running at my school as a Stage 5 English elective, and this term the class is looking at Special Effects. More specifically, students look at how key innovations have enabled new representations and shifts in meaning within the context of film narratives. 

The activity below could quite easily be adapted as a fun, practical exploration of film for any junior English class.

The Zoetrope

The zoetrope is an early innovation in film technology that helped to establish the fundamental premise for turning photography into a moving image. Variations of this invention had been around for quite some time by the 19th century and were used to show simple looped animations. It wasn't until 1878, however, that the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge invented a way to take a rapid sequence of photographs to depict a horse running. He combined this system (which utilised 24 separate cameras and a series of tripwires) with the existing technologies of the zoetrope and the praxinoscope (which was like a zoetrope with mirrors) to create what is arguably the first film, The Horse in Motion. I've recreated this above in the zoetrope example.

Muybridge suffered a irreparable brain injury in a horse-carriage crash, which led to erratic and eccentric behaviour, and it was after this point that he came up with his impressive innovations in photography. It's believed that his accident damaged his orbitofrontal cortex, leading to an erasure of social inhibitions that allowed for increased creativity in his mind.

Some students will be interested in hearing this stuff, but all of my class were able to remember the content much more comprehensively after they themselves have had a go at making their own zoetropes.

My first prototype was more complicated then it needed to be - there are a couple of things in the picture above that I ended up not needing.

Preparation

There are lots of instructions online that give an idea of how the zoetrope and similar devices can be made in the classroom but I wanted to ensure that I was able to create one myself before I put it into the hands of the kids. This was invaluable because I quickly learned that some aspects of the process could be streamlined or were best avoided altogether. Click here for teacher creation-instructions, which were written after I'd fine-tuned the process.

Initially I set out to use a wire and wire cutters to set up a frame from which the device could spin but my wife Nicole pointed out that it was much easier to simply hold the string by hand and spin it that way. 

 

Additionally, the cutting of the cardboard strip also requires a fine blade and the idea of handing Stanley knives out to my Year 9 class made me break out into a cold sweat. So I pre-prepared the cardboard strips they would use in order to take this element out.

Here's what you'll need before handing over to the students:

• Black cardboard (enough for the whole class)
• Paper (to measure the cardboard strips)
• A scalpel or Stanley knife 
• A cutting board
• Plastic picnic plates (make sure they have a raised rim - this will allow for the cardboard strip to be held in place)
• A single-hole punch
• String, or thick thread
• Scissors
• Ruler
• Sticky tape

Use the paper to create a 'master' strip - this is what you'll use to measure and cut each of the black cardboard strips you'll be giving your students. The best measurements (that work with a standard-sized plastic plate) are as follow:

• 10 frames in length - 60mm per frame.
• Entire strip to be 100mm in height.
• The frames will sit in the bottom 40mm.
• Above the frames are 10 slits approx. 2mm wide and 40mm long. These sit above and between each frame. 

As you can imagine, 2mm is quite finnicky so you'll need that fine blade. Measure it all out on white paper and overlay the paper on the black cardboard to cut the black strips out. Use sticky tape to place the white paper in place and do it all on top of a cutting board. I made about 14 black strips and got my students to work in pairs (that way I had some spares in case the kids accidentally wrecked them on their first go).

In Class

I'd already covered the concept of the zoetrope in class a few times before so the students had a rough idea of what they were making. I also brought in my one to show them what a finished product should look like. This helped to really motivate the students because they could see what they were working towards. 

I gave students a series of different animations to pick from (this gives them some ownership over the final product) or the option to create their own animation (this is more time-consuming but there are a few students who appreciate getting to exercise their creativity in this way). 

Students (or student groups) are then provided with:

• 1 pre-made black cardboard strips.
• 1 plastic plate.
• A ruler to measure their own animations and to space the string-holes evenly on the plate. 
• Access to a single-hole punch to create the string-holes.
• String to cut (I let them measure and cut this themselves).
• Choice of animation or option to create their own animation.
• Access to sticky tape to fix their animation into the black cardboard barrel. 
• Instructions on how to make it. 

Some of the student zoetropes - great job guys!

The most time-consuming part of the whole process is creating the black cardboard strip but, as I'd already done this for the students ahead of time, this meant it only took approximately 1 hour for students to put the whole thing together. The instructions above are a simplified version of the teacher instructions and are easily followed by Year 9 students.

Categorising Heroes: Literacy, the Soviet Union, and Differentiation in the Modern Classroom

The Khirgiz, once part of the Soviet Union, are still renowned for practising the ancient art of Eagle-hunting

A key part of early literacy for children is the development of a schema or model for understanding the world around them. We construct meaning by ordering new experiences and words into our own self-constructed epistemologies, and we can decode the unfamiliar with increasing confidence as a result. In simpler terms, a child's extending of vocabulary is made possible through their ability to classify words into self-determined categories based on what they already know. 

This now-commonly accepted theoretical underpinning of literacy was supported by the groundbreaking work of the Soviet neuropsychologist Alexander Luria in the 1930s.

(What follows is an explanation of the way that thinking is tied to literacy. Skip to the end if you just want the 'Heroes'-based Stage 4 resource, but read on for some interesting stuff on how literacy works!)

Luria hypothesised that some cultures understood the world differently if they were non-literate, and thus used the Soviet-controlled Central Asian states of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to support his work. The research that the Soviet socio-scientist conducted in these places revealed very strong links between literacy and the ability to think abstractly. 

Luria, circa the 1940s.

Context

As Luria's fieldwork was conducted in the 1930s, when Stalin's hold over the Soviet Union was at it's most stifling, this meant that several factors contributed to him being in the right place at the right time. The country was undergoing a process known as Collectivisation, in which farms and other peasant holdings were grouped together to allow for easier control by the state. Joseph Stalin was undeniably one of the most brutal and totalitarian dictators to ever walk the Earth but one upswing of his regime was a historically-unparalleled rise in literacy. Luria's studies in remote Uzbek and Khirgiz societies were therefore quite serendipitous as they came at a point in Russian history that allowed for observation of completely non-literate communities prior to rapidly-increased literacy. 

It would probably be most accurate to identify Luria's work as something firmly grounded in a Marxist context reliant on class distinctions rather than cultural ones. This is most clear in the way that the neuropsychologist delineates between the literate and the non-literate on the basis of the 'old' non-literate peasantry vs. the newly-educated and unified Stalinist proletariat (working class). 

(I should note here that Luria's writing on this matter is very much a product of its time in terms of the attitudes portrayed therein - he often uses the word 'we' to refer to mainstream Russian society and marginalises minority groups such as the Uzbek and Khirgiz in the process. He also, problematically and Eurocentrically, uses the word 'primitive' to describe non-literate societies). 

The Research

Luria examined five different groups in his field study, roughly half of whom were completely non-literate. I use the term 'non-literate' here rather than illiterate as 'illiterate' implies the option of literacy; these societies were non-literate in the sense that they had not even been exposed to writing (as opposed to illiterate members of Western societies). 

Luria conducted extensive interviews in the native languages of these groups, concentrating on three central questions:

• How do people linguistically code basic categories of experience as colour and shape?
• How do they manage classification and abstraction?
• And then, what about verbal problem-solving and self-analysis?

Results

The Soviet researcher found that the non-literate groups were able to classify drawn shapes only by referring to them as objects from their everyday life (EG. A circle was a 'plate', a triangle was a 'tent'). They did not have abstract terms for these shapes that could be used to classify all circular or all triangular objects. If pressed to arrange two shapes together, they did not classify them through shared shapes but by shared use (EG. Two objects might appear to be tools and classified as similar in this way despite being different shapes). 

This appears to reveal that a lack of written language means that the non-literate groups lacked the language skills/tools for abstraction. The written alphabet is, after all, a series of symbols and therefore an abstract concept. By learning how to work with the abstract concept of written language, literate societies are able to develop a greater level of abstraction in their thought, and can therefore categorise ideas in more complex ways. 

For the Khirgiz and Uzbek groups, colour was even more problematic than shapes. Instead of assigning a name to things that literate groups might classify as 'green', they would instead describe certain things as 'the colour of grass in the spring'. When challenged, they lacked the ability to group colours in any way whatsoever.

When forced to group objects together, the subjects always needed to theorise a shared situation that had a practical use. For example, a log and some tools would go together because they could be used together to build a house. It seemed impossible for the subject to separate one of these things from the other because they could only think in practical terms.

Developing Taxonomies in the Classroom

In Stage 4 English the teacher will often still come across students who struggle with abstraction and this is almost always tied to the students' lower literacy levels. In order to deal with this in English the teacher can combine symbolism with categorisation so students can begin to experiment with building their own taxonomies for better understanding.

The activity here is in connection to a visual literacy unit on Heroes and Villains. Before starting, get students to brainstorm as many different fictional and real life heroes as possible. This should be done independently.

Click here for the Categorising Heroes activity.

In the activity, students use the symbols attached to categorise the list they've created and then assign themselves a 'diversity' score using the criteria. This can then be used to prompt discussion about things such as:

• Representation of heroes in the media.
• Who can be a hero?
• What makes a hero?
• How aware are we of the kinds of heroes in our world?

A while back I wrote about using an Assessment for Learning task in connection to this same Heroes and Villains topic. This diagnostic assessment can be used to differentiate students into streams of ability. The activity above can be targeted towards the 'mainstream' portion of the class, whereas students identified as more gifted can be targeted with an 'extension' version of the activity.

Click here for the Extension version.

In this version it's left up to students to create their own symbols/categories, and their own criteria to judge them against. This requires more independence, imagination, and willingness to take risks in one's learning.

Alternatively, here is the Adjusted version for the students with typically lower levels of achievement.

In this version the students are given a higher level of scaffolding; an array of heroes are provided in case these students have been unable to put a diverse-enough list together. This works well for students with low literacy as they can then monitor and interact with the lesson without having to write.

For more on Luria's research on literacy, see the chapter 'Cultural Differences in Thinking' from his book The Making of Mind.

Differentiation: Using Assessment for Learning

Batman: definitely a fan of education

I often find myself coming back to the concept of Day One.

Day One can be the point where you first meet a class, or the point where you decide to start again with a class you already know. Day One is a beautiful thing because it allows you to essentially reboot; you can reboot your expectations, reboot your teaching methods, reboot the resources you use, and even reboot your opinion of the students. Day One can be therapeutic, for both the teacher and the students. Don't we all deserve a new Day One sometimes?

Day One is a time for trying new things. It doesn't matter if it all goes horribly exercise-book-ripped-in-half wrong because when you get to the end of Day One you get to make a decision: is tomorrow Day Two or will you forget and try again with another Day One?

Day Twos are good when they build on something that's worked, and it's important to remember that even the lessons we perceive as 'failures' are still useful lessons in what does and doesn't work, but if a Day One doesn't completely pan out then it's inevitably best to give everyone (yourself included) a second chance. An potentially essential part of an effective Day One is collecting data on your students to assist with their instruction in the days to come and I guess this post, in essence, is about allowing ourselves as teachers to evaluate students from scratch at multiple points throughout the year.

If, like me, you're teaching in a context where the majority of the classes are mixed ability, you'll find yourself tasked with a need to differentiate your curriculum. The idea of targeting your resources to match the strengths and needs of your students isn't a new one. It should be noted, however, that if you're starting out in teaching or just looking to stretch yourself, it won't always be clear how exactly one should identify the differing needs of a class of 20-30 students. You can lean on your Learning and Support Teacher if you have one, and they should be able to give you some helpful pointers, but at the end of the day it's up to each individual teacher to evaluate and judge the abilities of their students accordingly.

This brings us to the three modes of assessment in our current syllabuses: assessment as, of, and for learning. The qualification of assessment into this particular taxonomy is designed to make explicit the need for a teaching-and-learning cycle; that process where we teach, and then we learn, and then we use that learning to teach again (only better). Assessment for Learning is perhaps the most important factor in a healthy and innovative teaching-and-learning cycle. By assessing students at the beginning of a unit of work we can figure out the general level of the class's knowledge about the subject and, more pertinently, ascertain the full spectrum of ability amongst the students. 

In the course of programming a Year 8-aimed Heroes and Villains unit built around visual literacy I wanted to have a diagnostic activity that would allow me to create ability streams in the mixed classroom.

The idea is that students would start out by designing their own superhero. They would be given a period or so to write details about an original character and drawing said character. The 'test' can be found just below.

Activity: Design Your Own Superhero

After this the teacher takes the product the student has created and marks it in four different ways, using the analytical criteria below:

Through the use of this criteria, the student is being evaluated four separate times before starting the unit of work. These criteria are:

• Visual Representation: The teacher assesses the student's ability to use visual literacy to represent ideas. This will be seen in the image created by the student to represent their hero, and the use of symbolism and other visual techniques to show ideas related to their character.
• Textual Representation: How closely do the image and student-written content link together? Has the student taken their written ideas into account when designing the visual part? This is also where skills in creative writing can be assessed.
• Literacy: Starting out with a class always gives the teacher a chance to check on each student's ability to form sentences, write at a whole-sentence and whole-text level, use correct spelling and punctuation, and draw upon a wide vocabulary.
• Topic Knowledge: You're about to teach a unit on heroes and villains so finding the students who already have a strong background knowledge on comic book characters and the generic conventions associated with them will be invaluable in the days ahead. This means that it's incredibly useful to check this work to see which students know their stuff.

After you've used the analytical criteria to mark the students you can then began to see where their strengths are, and what areas need working on most. Students can subsequently be sorted into separate 'streams' of ability so that activities throughout the unit can be targeted towards different ability levels (IE. Differentiation). 

A thing to remember with differentiation is that you won't need to do it all the time - the separation of marks into five separate streams (see below) doesn't mean that you have your class split into five groups with five different kinds of work every lesson. That would be impossible to organise. The idea is that, sometimes, you can do some group work (with three different streams - core, adjusted, and extension) and other times you can individually target students who may be extremely talented in one particular area (visual literacy) with some homework.

The analytical criteria and the stream guide is included in the activity sheet linked further up. Obviously not everyone teaches heroes and villains to their Stage 4 students but feel feel to backward map anything and adapt it accordingly to suit other units of work.

Bill and the Beast: Building Vocabulary

Teaching in Western Sydney has been my passion, particularly in regards to teaching working class and middle class students. One aspect of this process is recognising the children who find it much more difficult to engage with our pedagogy, some of who may be inherently gifted, but many of which who are also simply just not equipped to reach higher stages of education.

Much has been written on this in academia.

One of my favourites is Basil Bernstein's work on elaborated and restricted codes in Class, Codes and Control: Volume 4.

Bernstein is best known for his groundbreaking work in the sociology of education and, to a lesser extent, for his love of knitwear

Bernstein's writing concerns itself with research conducted into the disparity between IQ results when working class children are tested both verbally and non-verbally. The resulting discourse theorises (without getting too much into the research here) that the lack of vocabulary endemic in the working class is a contributing cause to said children being unable to articulate and understand abstract concepts.

To put it simply, the more words that we understand and have at our disposal, the more we are able to name that which we cannot see. A large lexicon allows us to create context where we previously had none - it's our ability to call upon and create new systems of understanding that allows us to assimilate new knowledge and understand abstract concepts. How could we do that if we lacked the words to articulate anything from outside of our immediate, everyday context?

So what do we, as the classroom teacher, do about this?

In some cases, such as teaching a Stage 4 targeted class for students with additional learning needs, I've found that the easiest way forward is to work on vocabulary. My friend and mentor, Kira Bryant, comes back to this a lot under the banner of 'building the field'. I've written more about this aspect of grammar here.

Bill and the Beast

Such students often struggle to access longer or specialised text because they lack both the contextual information and vocabulary to decode it. In order to scaffold a greater capacity to engage with new texts we need to build the field around the text, and this means increasing a student's ability to use unfamiliar words. The resource below, which works as part of a Year 8 unit on the theme of Survival, assists in achieving this end through the following steps:

1. Students pull words from the word banks at the side of the sheet to complete the story about Bill and his encounter with a monster. There are five word banks: adjectives, verbs, adverbs, nouns, your choice. There are a variety of examples that fit each blank spot in the story, allowing for multiple possible creations. This kind of activity, where kids place new terms in context, is supported by research from the Focus on Reading program developed by the NSW Department of Education. A lot of research on grammar and literacy supports the idea that the best way to learn new words is to try them out in the context of a sentence. Students respond much better to this than copying out definitions. 
2. Something I've noticed when students do this activity is that they will scan through the available terms and then ask me what a certain one means. I'll tell them and then they'll try it out by slotting it into the sentence. Some students will think I've just given them an answer 'for free' but the point here is that they've just learned and used a new word - and that's what it's really all about.
3. After finishing the story it's always fun to get some students to read their completed work out. There's a definite sense of accomplishment from these students in that they chose the words from the word banks themselves and - especially for those who have never written a story of this length before - there's a new sense of ownership that builds valuable confidence in writing.
4. Students should then complete the title at the bottom of the sheet. This is a form of summary, or abstraction, and forces the student to boil the entire text down to its theme or essence - not always as easy for students as we might think!
5. Included in the resource below are also some follow-up activities that engage further comprehension skills through facilitating visualising, predicting, and creation of symbols. I'm a big fan of getting students to create symbols to represent ideas, it's one of my favourite aspects of the Aboriginal 8 Ways of Learning pedagogy and it works really well for a whole range of kids - not just those with Indigenous backgrounds. The use of visualisation and predicting are from the Super Six framework, and support increased comprehension.

Resource (click to download) - Bill and the Beast

Paperman and Assessment FOR Learning

One of my favourite things about the new Australian curriculum is the clarification of assessment into the categories 'as', 'of', and 'for'. It takes the summative/formative dichotomy that extra step further and puts the emphasis back onto the process of learning rather than just the end point.

I know, right, I'm an exciting guy. 

For each of my classes I try to build in some informal diagnostic assessment (assessment for learning) that lets me know where each of my students are at. There are a few reasons for doing this:

1. Know Your Students. It helps me get to know my students - if I can't see how they respond to certain kinds of activities then I won't be of much help to them as the topic progresses.    
2. Structured Teaching. As an individual, I respond well to structure, so having a process that puts students through a standardised task appeals to me.
3. Teaching and Learning Cycle. Pre-test, diagnostic task, or assessment for learning - whatever you want to call it - this stage of the Teaching and Learning Cycle allows me to collect data that can be used as a starting point for each term. It also informs my reporting; writing reports is always easier when I have a bunch of figures in front of me that I can line up against my personal impression of each student. The more figures I have, the closer I'll get to accurately representing their true ability.
4. Differentiation. The push at most schools right now is for differentiated curriculum, something that has grown as a response to the mixed ability classroom and as a way to support teachers in catering for the widest possible array of learners. A great way to establish loose streams of 'Adjusted', 'Core' and 'Extension' students within the classroom is to use a diagnostic test at the start of a unit. 
5. Student Response. Presenting work as an informal assessment seems to make the kids sit up a little straighter in class. What I mean is, students take this work a little more seriously than most student-centered work I put down in front of them. In addition, I always try to make it clear why they're doing each informal assessment by linking it to skills that they will need for upcoming formal assessment tasks.

An effective assessment for learning should connect to what I'm looking to assess towards the end of the same unit. What I plan to assess should inform every part of the unit (backwards mapping yo!), so this is always my starting point. In this case the plan is to have students write an exposition piece in which they persuade their audience. The argument they have to make is: why Tim Winton's Blueback should win the 'Novel of the Year' award.

I actually jumped into this blog post with a specific activity and resource in mind, so now that I've gotten all the context out of the way I can do what I came here to do: talk about Paperman.

Paperman is a fantastic and dialogue-free award-winning animated film by Disney. I use it as a diagnostic text that can help me quickly check on the students' analytical and persuasive writing skills before we do Blueback for the rest of the term.

First, we watch the film. As there's no dialogue and it only goes for five minutes, I think you'll be hard-pressed to find many kids who can't get into it. While watching, the students can start collecting some ideas about their impressions of the film by filling in this sheet: Thinking About Paperman. Have them watch the film at least twice and model at least one idea on the board so they can see the sort of things they can write. You can even got a step further and have the whole class contribute opinions and make a big class example on the board so students can fill their sheets up nice and full.

The next step is, in the next lesson, have your students sit the diagnostic test. This should roughly take half a lesson. Give your students as long as they want though, if a Year 7 student has it in them to spend the whole lesson writing their responses up, then give them that time. This is their chance to show what they're capable of. I even let some students take the sheet home and complete it there if they're that way inclined - I know I can't always focus in a noisy room of about 30 people, so if a student wants to do well by completing the task in a quieter environment then who am I to stand in their way?

Here's the diagnostic test: "Here I am!" It breaks down as follows.

Section 1 is a series of True or False questions that test general comprehension. It's important to allow a section that doesn't require much in the way of writing because if we want to assess comprehension then we shouldn't let a student's inability to write get in the way of that. Writing and comprehending are two completely separate skills. Sometimes we have to make sure that we're assessing one thing at a time. Plus it never hurts to let students succeed in English without having to be great writers, especially at a Year 7 level when we want to encourage engagement with English as much as possible and set them up for a long-term journey.

Section 2 tests vocabulary through the use of a 'best fit' cloze passage. The word bank includes more than one correct answer for each missing word, however, students are asked to pick the best word to complete each statement. This lets the teacher see how far the students' vocabulary extends.

Section 3 is where the actual mechanics of writing are looked at. This means articulating ideas, showing an ability to elaborate on ideas, structuring writing into paragraphs, writing for an audience, and showing an ability to evaluate. Very few students will be able to achieve full marks in this section, and the criteria has been intentionally 'amped' up so that we can avoid the students 'topping out'*. It needs to be difficult because if we're not looking for that tiny percentage of students who can do these really sophisticated and unexpected things, then we're never going to find those students in the first place.

Here's the marking criteria/answers: "Hello there!"

One more thing before I finish up; if you do decide to use this diagnostic assessment and collect some data it's worth keeping in mind that this information is just for you, the teacher, rather than for the students and their parents. I don't hand the papers back with the results because I don't think it's particularly useful for the students. It's not the sort of assessment that students have a chance to study for so it wouldn't be fair to give marks back to them. Plus it could be potentially demoralising to give students access to marks accrued in a test that has been deliberately 'stretched out' to accommodate the largest possible range of student ability. If any students ask for their marks (and very few do, because I don't use the word 'assessment' when I talk to them about this task) then I would simply tell them that the information was just for me and that the marks don't count towards their reports.

*By 'topping out' I mean that I don't want every student meeting the criteria too easily and getting full marks. If this happened then it would mean that I'm not extending my measurements far enough to see where their abilities end. This is another good reason why the students shouldn't be given their marks back: only the most gifted will achieve 'A-range' results.