Creative Writing: Reinforcing an Idea

One of the challenges of teaching Year 7 is that we often have to determine the level of understanding that a class is at. We may often find that this varies wildly from year to year. Students in metropolitan secondary schools are often drawn from a range of primary schools, and this variation in context can lead to ever-shifting permutations of Year 7 classes where students sitting alongside each other have come from different primary schools where curriculum has been interpreted and delivered in many different ways. 

In short, we can't really assume too much. 

Instead, we utilise assessment for learning - informal evaluation of student ability gathered through activities that act as a litmus test of classroom efficacy. We watch how students react and work with certain activities to gauge their ability level. We check for understanding. And then, after this, we engage to some extent in a process of universal design - re-adjusting how we pitch the lesson so that all students can access it in some way. 

Sometimes, or oftentimes, the general ability level of a mixed ability Year 7 class requires us to start from scratch so we can better understand what's happening inside the learning of our students. The activity in this blog is borne from such a context. It speaks to the idea that one needs to go back to basics to ensure that an intellectually-diverse collective of students are brought onto the same page. Even high-performing students with gifts for critical thinking will benefit from having things broken down to their components as this allows for new approaches that they may not have considered, or explains things they may have subconsciously wondered about. In the task below we are looking at one aspect of imaginative writing. With Year 7, or any mixed-ability class, I often find that it's much more effective to only focus on one skill or idea at a time.

In this case I'm aiming to teach the use of increased vocabulary to reinforce a theme or idea. This means that I won't get bogged down in spelling, or grammar, or sentence structure, or punctuation, or any number of other things. I want to look at this skill in a vacuum. I want to quarantine it off so I can examine it in on a plate of glass in the cold unyielding light of a microscope. And so students, who are looking at this microscope slide alongside me, can better understand how to "show their working" (to borrow a phrase from Maths). The time for synthesising a range of disparate skills is a whole other lesson - we simply just can't teach everything at once all the time; it's overwhelming for both the teacher and the student. 

Here is a PowerPoint that breaks down this skill through the use of a modelled paragraph - Make Your Idea Stick.

1. The goal is to get students to come up with an idea or theme and to then explore and reinforce this using a variety of words.
2. First, we model this with an excerpt from an age-appropriate novel. In this case, I've used Victor Kelleher's Taronga. The idea is that he wants to show his audience a version of the future where society has broken down and everything we know has been destroyed.
3. Give the students a copy of the paragraph from the PPT.
4. Students highlight any words that show that things have broken down, gone wrong, or been destroyed. Direct students to look for nouns, adjectives, verbs that demonstrate this. This will create a visual guide to a subject-specific set of vocabulary within the paragraph.
5. After students have had a chance to find their words, work together as a class to construct a highlighted version on the board with the 3rd slide of the PPT. The 4th slide of the PPT then has a completed one for the class to compare their collaborative version to.
6. Students then draw arrows from each word to the next, creating a text chain that ties the paragraph together and again visually demonstrates how subject-specific vocabulary has conveyed Kelleher's idea. 
7. The final step is for students to then write their own paragraph. If they're stuck for an idea it will up to the teacher to pick one for them, something different to the Kelleher model. It could be something like: a character is amazed by something they've seen or a character feels a sense of immense dread related to their surroundings or depict a world where modern technology was never invented. The possibilities are endless.

I'm a big fan of teaching students these text chains. The real name of this grammatical element of writing is 'lexical chain', and it exists in texts as a reflection of said text's overall cohesion. Well-developed or expert use of lexical chains improves clarity for the reader and 'builds the field' of a topic that is being explored. Teaching this isn't restricted to just English, I've used it also with History and Aboriginal Culture classes, and have seen it used really well in Science.  

New Assessment Approaches in Stage 6 English

The 2019 ETA Conference emphasis the progression of 'Passion to Practice', which covers a range of conceptual pedagogies for their implementation in the English classroom.This particular session was borne of consideration pertaining to Outcome 9 in the NSW Senior English syllabus and the new HSC specifications rolled out by NESA in the past 18 months.

Extract: With the arrival of the new HSC specifications for Stage 6, the time has never been better for examining new approaches to essay writing that take students away from the stress and anxiety of formal exam settings. In this presentation we will cover how peer editing, conferencing, annotation, and Assessment as Learning can be used to build both confidence and valuable writing skills in senior English students. Teachers will also be given access to a variety of materials that can be adapted to their own classrooms and a number of Year 11 and 12 modules. 

Here is the presentation, which covers multimodal assessment, peer editing, conferencing, lexical density testing, feedback (or analytical) criteria, and dynamic assessment.

• New Assessment Approaches

(I'll add here, as it's as good a place as any, that none of this is really 'new' - it's just new in the sense that these approaches provide alternatives to commonplace formalised assessment strategies that require stripping back in light of the new HSC specifications).

Here are the resources that go with the presentation:

• Resources

Thanks!

Mountains of Stories: The Role of Creative Writing in the West

High Street, Penrith. The horizon that sits above the buildings is the Blue Mountains. This elevated horizon allowed me to always know which direction was 'west' when I was a kid.

It's perhaps undeniable that the Blue Mountains exist as a kind of nexus point for artists and teachers. I've heard it said that there are more school teachers living in the Blue Mountains per capita than anywhere else in Australia, and my wife and I have crossed paths with more famous artists in this area than anywhere else we visit. Living in Penrith, I've come to appreciate being equidistant from both the mountains and the city. The opportunities my geography has afforded me hasn't gone unappreciated and, no matter how often I may feel despondent at some of the attitudes I've grown up around, I know that I will forever remain tied to this town with some degree of belonging. But being a writer here isn't a way of life that I have come to easily.

Yesterday my friend Kira and I travelled up to the Springwood Learning Hub for the Mountains of Stories creative writing workshop run by Cymbeline Buhler.

This was the advertisement for the workshop. It was $25, which is incredibly inexpensive considering it went for 4 and a half hours.

It was a fantastic day in that it focused on letting us write. Cymbeline used prompting activities to encourage creativity (new activities that I hadn't really had any exposure to before) and we experimented with synaesthesia, unreliable narration, and grounding our writing intentions in figurative analogies. 

It got me thinking about this writing game and why it's important.

I have to admit that, having grown up in Western Sydney around the practicality of 'working class' concerns, I often struggle with a certain inherent tension that arises from wanting to write. I hear this nagging voice that tells me that delving too far into creative pursuits is a waste of time... art has its place in enriching society but there's just so much of it. There are so many people who want to devote their entire life to writing - how could they all be worth listening to? How do I know that I'm worth listening to?

It's insecurity but I can also recognise that it comes from being enculturated by those around me. So many of my peers, my friends, my neighbours, my extended family live their lives in the pursuit of creating a foundation of security and comfort for the generations to come. Writing about feelings and the senses just doesn't come into it; how does one earn a living from that? How can people in this community connect to each other over discussions of the abstract?

I've spent a lot of my life thinking about the role of the intellectual in a world of sport, cars, trades, and family. I worked in retail for ten years because I wasn't convinced of the value of an ideology grounded in thinking and writing. I played music in a handful of bands and wrote countless film reviews, but it never felt like a real thing to do. Becoming an English teacher at the age of 29 was my first step in accepting that education and academia had an important role to play in the West.

Cymbeline Buhler brainstorming word associations during the 'Mountains of Stories' workshop.

So why write?

I've come to realise in recent years that the extension and development of a beautiful and extensive vocabulary allows us to put increasingly complex thoughts into words. Words are the backbone of symbolism; each letter represents a sound, each combination of letters becomes a word that means something. The denotative and connotative possibilities of each word means that these small collections of symbols have great potential for meaning. 

The more combinations of letters we know, the more shades of meaning. The more we can express in language, the closer we get to articulating the endless complexity of thought. 

Regardless of whether every aspirant writer becomes professional or well-known in this field, the pursuit of increased lexical expression can only serve to improve the depth and breadth of our communication with one another. When teaching my classes, whether it's a low ability Year 7 group in need of extra support or a Year 12 Advanced English class, I spend a lot of time teaching vocabulary through explicit instruction. The exponential development of individual vocabularies allows for more nuance in language.

Even if some students walk away from school unable to write an essay, or completely unmoved by the works of Shakespeare, I would hope that they have at least achieved two things:

1. Improved the lexicon from which they draw upon when communicating.
2. Acquired the skill to continue building their vocabulary by using the materials around them (conversations, TV shows, news stories, etc.) to expand on their ability to think.

This is creating active, intelligent citizenship. By achieving a mindset of growth in relation to language we can instill the foundation for life-long learning that will enable future generations to advocate for themselves.

I've always written. When I was a student I wrote extensively - I loved 'Journal period' where, once a week in English, we could write our own stories in our journal book. After school I studied journalism and went on to write a range of published and unpublished materials but nothing extensive. As an English/History teacher I've rediscovered my love for writing through the creation of texts for student engagement and it's been an empowering experience. I now find myself working unprecedentedly close with language after a long and winding journey to this point and I'm voracious to know and learn more. Creative writing workshops like Mountains of Stories have been instrumental in reinforcing my role as a 'writing English teacher': IE. Someone who engages directly with creative language in order to model sample texts for students.    

Word associations. Cymbeline had us brainstorm words in relation to a central term and then we had to describe the central term on the other sheet using the words from the first one.

 

 

Here is the piece I wrote in response to the brainstorms above. The brief was to describe 'Hope' with words relating to 'Sweet' in just a few minutes. I found it tricky to get my head around at first but I found a bit of a groove after thinking about it a bit:

Hope is sugary. Its saccharine, ebbing through the bloodstream to cause intense emotion. It flows across my gums, soft and watery, and leaves a sticky residue that is hard to shift. The high leaves me exhausted. My jaw aches as if it has been closing around the fibrous stem of sugar cane, my teeth working against something essentially inedible yet fraught with potential for sweetness. Hope is like love. Hope defies us with our experience of it and it never, truly leaves us.

Anyway.

The vast majority of our students won't become professional writers. In fact, you might not ever have a student who becomes a (successful) professional writer. So what does this mean for us as English teachers? How do we teach creative writing authentically if it's not going to be an authentic experience in the sense of a post-school career for many of our students? 

The answer is that creative writing provides a forum for the extension of our vocabulary. We can use creative freedom to experiment in word choice without the restrictions necessitated by other text types, and through this students can exercise their imagination with increasing complexity. With a wider variety of terminology a person will be able to better express what's going on in their heads or respond to the language used by others.

For more on Cymbeline Buhler's creative writing workshops: Big Stone Creations

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

Building the Field: China 1966-1989

Red Guards read from Mao's 'Little Red Book' during the Cultural Revolution

A key aspect of increased capacity for engaging with knowledge is better literacy. If we want to be able to express our thoughts on a specific subject then we need to be equipped with the vocabulary that will allow for full interaction with the topic at hand. In other words, in order to find the nuance in meaning that permits for increasingly sophisticated discussion of an idea the responder needs to have advanced literacy skills.

It's easy to think of grammar as commas, full stops, and capital letters, but grammar goes well beyond this in terms of structuring our understanding of language. Our command and understanding of grammar is a significant building block for our cognitive ability; it's our ability to organise information into a taxonomy of terms demonstrating relationships between words and concepts that increases the individual's capability for dealing with new concepts and content. 

Getting more specific, there are three extralinguistic features that contribute to our understanding of a context surrounding a new text when we read it. These are:

• Field: What is being talked about or written about (the content)
• Mode: The nature of the text and the role language plays within it (how the content is being delivered - spontaneously? planned? written? televised?).
• Tenor: The relationship between the speaker/listener or reader/writer (does the composer treat the reader as a novice, an equal or an expert? What kind of language is being used to achieve this?)

When we have students engaging with a previously unfamiliar area of knowledge, such as the new Modern History HSC syllabus China option for Change in the Modern World, the students will need to 'build the field'. Arriving at a point where students can communicate sophisticated historical ideas is dependent on their understanding of the history in question. They will need to build a specialised lexicon that includes all the new terms that they will be coming into contact with, and creating this new vocabulary bank will be the base from which they can draw upon when formulating their responses.

There are several ways that the field can be built. One tried-and-true way is a glossary, which I've included below, but reading new words and their definitions isn't a particularly effective way to learn something. The research tends to suggest that students will have a better time with new terms if they put them into practice immediately. This means that new words should be introduced gradually, with students trying them out in sentences of their own construction. 

Another effective method is giving the reader a piece of text that includes several unfamiliar terms and having them monitor the piece with the highlighter. Students locate and highlight the new terms and decode them one by one, with the teacher's assistance, in order to increase their knowledge of the context around the text.

Anyway, here's an overview of the vocabulary a student should become familiar with during the course of their study of Change in the Modern World, Option B. As mentioned, it's best to introduce these gradually and in context.

Anti-Revisionism: The maintenance of communist ideals in China. Those who sought to compromise Marxist ideology were accused of 'revisionism', and anti-revisionism referred to the need for Chinese communists to fight against this.

Bourgeoisie: The middle class. In Marxist theory, the 'bourgeoisie' are the capitalist class who seek to get rich off the labour of the workers. Marxists aimed to remove the bourgeoisie element from society.

Capitalism: A system of government, or society, in which the goal of the individual is to accumulate wealth for themselves. Trade is controlled by the private sector, rather than by the government.

Capitalist Roader: A synonym for 'revisionist'. Those in communist Chinese society seen as taking the easy 'capitalist road' were derogatorily labelled 'capitalist roaders'.

Cold War: The international tension (1947-1991) between the communist East (led by the Soviet Union) and the capitalist West (headed by the United States of America). Although communist, China did not fit neatly into the Soviet Union's side of the conflict as the two neighbouring Marxist countries had their own unresolved tensions during this time.

Counterrevolutionary: Internal enemies of the Chinese communist state were labelled as 'counterrevolutionary' as their actions were interpreted as running contrary to the spirit of the Chinese communist revolution.

This propaganda poster literally depicts Chairman Mao as the sun that lights all of China

Cult of Personality: This occurs when a person in a position of authority (such as Mao Zedong) creates a political atmosphere in which they are worshipped as a godlike figure by the general population. See any of the many artworks produced between 1950 and 1976 that depict Chairman Mao as a benevolent father-figure to the Chinese people (such as that above).

Cultural Revolution: A movement that occurred between 1966 and 1976, in which Mao Zedong encouraged students and workers to rise up and rid China of revisionist and counterrevolutionary elements.

Dazibao: Chinese for 'Big Character Poster'. These are large handwritten posters used to protest, communicate propaganda, and express ideas. These were popular during both the Cultural Revolution and in the late 1970s Democracy Movement.

De-Stalinisation: In 1956 the new Russian Chairman, Nikita Khrushchev, began a process of deconstructing the cult of personality that had surrounded the previous Chairman, Joseph Stalin.

Feudalism: A medieval form of government in which landowners controlled the state, with peasants or serfs working the land in exchange for being allowed to live on said land. Much of China was still a feudal state by the mid-20th century.

Four Olds: Mao Zedong ordered the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution to destroy the 'four olds' so that China could be rebuilt anew. These were: old thought, old culture, old customs, old habits. This resulted in much of China's ancient heritage being destroyed to make way for a new and modern communist China.

Four Modernisations: A program launched by Zhou Enlai in 1975 to assist with China's progress towards increased industrialisation. These modernisations were: Agriculture, Industry, National Defense, and Science/Technology.

Fifth Modernisation: A dazibao in 1978 that called upon the Chinese Communist Party to add 'Democracy' as a fifth aspect of the Four Modernisations.

The Gang of Four were blamed for all the horrors of the Cultural Revolution

Gang of Four: A radical faction within the Chinese Communist Party headed by Jiang Qing (Mao Zedong's wife). The Gang of Four opposed efforts to modernise China as they saw it as the 'poisonous road to capitalist restoration'. After Mao's death, the Gang of Four attempted to seize power but instead found themselves denounced and arrested as enemies of the state. 

Gerontocracy: A government ruled by the elderly. Protestors against the Chinese government in the 1980s derogatorily labelled Deng Xiaoping and other senior members of the Chinese Communist Party as a 'gerontocracy'.

Glasnost: A policy promoted by the Soviet Chairman, Mikhail Gorbachev, in the 1980s. This policy loosely translates as 'openness' and was characterised by the loosening of strictness in communist Russian society. 

Industrialisation: Widespread development of modern industries in a country.

Leftism: Political views or policies of the 'left' (those who identify with communism, Marxism, and socialism).

Liberalisation: The process of allowing increased freedom in Chinese society. Many members of the Chinese Communist Party in the 1980s feared that liberalisation would interfere with socialist progress.

Liberalism: The idea of a society founded on freedom, particular in regards to equality, free trade, and freedom to pursue personal wealth.

Marxism: A political system based on the teachings of Karl Marx, the philosopher who invented the theory of communism.

Maoism / Mao Zedong Thought: Chairman Mao's own interpretation of Marxism could be found in his Little Red Book, and featured several key differences in comparison to the Soviet/Marxist version of communism. One main difference was that Maoism focused on role of the peasants in the maintenance of a communist society.

Modernisation: The process in which countries develop from a traditional or feudal state into something industrialised and up-to-date.

People's Liberation Army: The Chinese army, who assisted Mao in winning the Civil War that led to the creation of communist China in 1949.

Perestroika: Translates as 'restructuring'. Perestroika were the reforms that the Soviet Union underwent in the 1980s before transitioning away from communism.

Permanent Revolution: The idea that communist revolution was an ongoing struggle between the social classes, and would continue until the entire world had become communist. Also links to the idea that Marxist societies, such as China, had to continue revisiting Marxist ideals in order to ensure that they stayed true to the spirit of communism.

Plenum: A political meeting in which all controlling members of the Chinese Communist Party had to be present.

Proletariat: The working / peasant class of a society.

Millions of Red Guards made the pilgrimage to Beijing to see Chairman Mao during the Cultural Revolution

Red Guards: The students encouraged by Chairman Mao to spearhead the Cultural Revolution were dubbed the 'Red Guards'. These students numbered in the millions and became fanatical devotees of Chairman Mao and his Little Red Book, vowing to fight those who wanted to bring capitalism to China. 

Rehabilitation: Enemies of the Cultural Revolution were sentenced to 'rehabilitation'. This often consisted of several years of forced labour that would teach capitalist roaders and revisionists how to be communist again.

Revisionism: Those who wanted to 'revise' communist society in China and allow increased freedom, or accumulation of personal power. These elements of Chinese society were criticised as 'revisionists'.

Rightist: Political views or policies of the 'right' (those who identify with nationalist and conservative ideologies).

Stalinism: The ideology of Marxism as practised by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. Stalinism was extremely totalitarian in its control of Russian society.

Struggle Session: Those identified as enemies of the Cultural Revolution was made to undertake 'struggle sessions', in which they had to denounce and criticise themselves for hours at a time so that they could start afresh as true communists. These sessions also meant humiliation and torture at the hands of the Red Guards and, sometimes, death.

Westernisation: The increased adoption of Western (American/European) and capitalist culture in China.

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

Stage 5: The Rise of China



The artwork of Maoist China is particularly ripe for historical analysis.
Students can use visual literacy skills from English to identify the purpose of the text.

Isn't History an amazing subject? I'm so glad you agree. Below you'll find a complete unit on The Rise of China for Stage 5 History, which includes a rationale, outline, scope and sequence, assessment task, and associated resources/lessons. The idea behind this half-term unit is to build literacy skills in tandem with source analysis, with an emphasis on helping those students who dislike or have trouble with reading.


The Rise of China - full unit here.


Most of the texts in the above unit are included only in small part, or in the case of Mao's Little Red Book, aren't really covered by copyright. I recommend you try to seek out each of these texts anyway, some are out of print but can be gotten from places like Bookdepository.com or abebooks.com. A class set of Little White Duck in particular would be invaluable.


For more information on the lessons in the above unit, feel free to peruse the following pages:


Conception
Outline
Lesson Planning
Lesson 1
Lesson 2
Lesson 3
Lesson 4
Lesson 5
Lesson 6
Lesson 7


Have a nice day!

The USSR: Collectivisation Source Analysis

Propaganda poster showing the fist of Soviet Russia smiting the greedy Kulak (rich peasant). Kulaks were the enemy of collectivisation, and a ready scapegoat on which Stalin could blame the peasantry's many woes.

I'm right in the midst of teaching the Modern History National Study, Option G: Russia and the Soviet Union (damn, that name is so catchy) and have been chatting to my students about Stalin's Five Year Plans and the process of collectivisation. 

I've come to realise that it's worth spending at least a few lessons approaching collectivisation from a few different angles. In one lesson we did a role-play activity in which students moved through the stages of Marxist society - from feudalism/capitalism to socialism, and from socialism to collectivisation (adapted from a great activity by one of my colleagues, Ashlee Horton). 

In a more recent lesson, I gave the class some sources about collectivisation so they could practice their source analysis. In previous posts I talked about taking a more grammar-based approach to source analysis - here and here - and described the way text chain identification can assist students in building their ability to decode unfamiliar words in order to increase their content-specific vocabulary. 

Let's not beat around the bush, HSC Modern History is a difficult subject. And whilst Modern History is the sort of course that rewards students who work hard, read regularly, and have no major issues writing essays, it's also a course that attracts a diverse array of students with a variety of learning styles that don't necessarily encompass those skills. For some of these students, who may also be undertaking the non-ATAR English Studies course, extra support is needed to scaffold the skills section of Modern History. Conceptual approaches like OCMAP or COMBAT can elicit some great analysis from many students, but taking a grammar-based approach can help open the process up to students who need something else. 

The first source in the sheet below is a speech from Joseph Stalin about his motivations behind thrusting the Soviet Union into a brave new world of super-farms. Students start out by identifying some text chains in the source. A text chain is a string of connected words in a text that mean the same thing. Finding and linking these synonyms allows students to build their vocabulary in relation to the content, scaffolding the reading process in order to dissuade them from disengagement before they attempt whole-text analysis.

You can start this out by modelling one or two text chains on the board. Pick a word out, such as "slow down", and join it to "put a check on" and then "reduced". Students can then do this with any number of words in the text, building up their understanding of the whole source by creating meaning within and across sentences.

The next couple of questions then follow on from this understanding to get the students engaging with the content and the reasons for Stalin's choice of language. For teachers looking (or needing) to differentiate their work more substantially due to the presence of students with a wide range of learning abilities, this grammatical approach provides an alternative way-in for any kids struggling to get to grips with the usual methods for analysing historical sources.

After the Stalin speech there are some tables about production and collectivisation in 1930s USSR, and an activity where this information needs to be converted into a graph. I like this sort of stuff because it's a legitimately useful way to use numeracy skills in Modern History, and it can make the learning more concrete for those students who are more mathematically-minded. 

Anyway, the activities are all below on the sheet.

Resource:


A Source on Collectivisation

That Pesky Russian Vocabulary!

One thing I've found with teaching Russian History is that some students have trouble accessing the content because the terms are so unfamiliar with them. About a year and a half ago, one of my Year 12s disparagingly exclaimed, "I can't get my head around all these bolsheviks and nosheviks and yesheviks!" 

I was a little sad about it, but in hindsight it shouldn't have surprised me. A lot of the words that come into play during the Russia and the Soviet Union HSC National Study aren't even in English, and then there's also the tricky English terms too, all the -isms; nationalism, communism, marxism, stalinism, totalitarianism... these are new terms for the vast majority of students. 

Like most teachers of Modern History, I try to enforce and reinforce all these terms by teaming up the National Study with a Russian Personality Study (Trotsky), and setting it up in Preliminary with 'The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty'. I therefore hope that most students can at least remember a smattering of the tricky new words by the time they get to the end of all their Russification. 

But, just in case they haven't, I decided to create a quick vocabulary activity that will help my current class as they grapple with their 'isms and 'sheviks. The premise is fairly straightforward: 

• Students are given a wordbank of Russian terms and concepts.
• Underneath the wordbank is a table with a list of some key terms.
• Students have to match up the wordbank terms with the key terms in the table. All of the wordbank terms are synonyms or near-synonyms for the key terms in the table.

Activity found here. 

I put this together because, whilst programming this unit last term, I found myself swept under the sheer weight of information I had to impart onto the students. Which terms do I include? Do I stick to socialism or communism? What about Marxism? Aren't they all basically the same thing? Maybe, maybe not. Like it or not, I wasn't going to be able to prevent the students being exposed to all of these terms in their study of Russia so it was useless for me to try and moderate or censor the new glossary they would be learning.

A nice little bit of extension is to then prompt some of the higher ability students to determine which two groups of terms represent the 'Left' and 'Right' wings of the political spectrum. 

Hopefully this activity helps them connect a few ideas together. Heck, if it helps one student remember one new word, then it's definitely worth doing. 

Source Analysis: The Grammatical Approach

Art by the blogger, modeled on a photo of soldiers in the trenches.

At the time of writing (though this may change with some of the proposed changes to the incoming new syllabus), Modern History's HSC Core Study is WWI, with a focus on source analysis. 

Studying the 'Great War' is a gift of sorts as it's such an intensely source-rich area of history due to continuing interest from the public. It is, however, a rather large and unwieldy beast that can threaten to swallow historians whole. Thankfully, the current syllabus is focused enough to reign things in, and the decision to make this topic a source analysis one seems almost a relief to the teacher.

That is, until you take the sources into a mixed ability classroom. 

Over the years I have found the concept of teaching source analysis to History students a bit of a double-edged sword. Whilst it can be incredibly useful to students who have the requisite ability to skim, scan, deconstruct and evaluate texts, it can also be a very daunting task for students with lower literacy. Acronym approaches such as OCMAP (Origin Context Motivation Audience Perspective) and COMBAT (Content Origin Motivation Bias Audience Tone) can be overwhelming for these students, and only serve to push them further into disengagement.

I have found instead that taking a grammar-styled approach can be a more useful way in for these students. By attacking the paragraph at word- or sentence-level, students can build up a whole-text understanding of the source piece by piece, and then evaluate it afterwards. 

Step 1

Give the students the Resource below; an English translation of a German soldier's letter about the trenches. The source is relatively short but has been spaced out so that students can annotate the sheet. Read through the text as a class first, explaining any tricky words the students may be stuck on.

Step 2

The first question on the sheet asks the students to create some text chains. This means that they need to find and underline a word and then join it with an arrow to a later word that refers to the same thing. Some examples from the source:

• Somme > here > front line.
• One shell crater > next > one continuous trench.
• Terrible > dreadful > chilled through, dead tired and mentally crushed
• We > company of people

Step 3

With a highlighter, students identify any adjectives that describe verbs or nouns. The three main examples are "dead", "mentally", and "continuous".

Step 4

Students then look at three adjectives (most likely the ones above) and describe what they mean.

Step 5

The last three questions are more traditional content-related questions. These questions should, however, hopefully be a bit easier for the students to engage with now that they've unpacked the source. 

This approach can be replicated for any written source, and can be extended in other ways - noun identification, verb identification, how many simple or complex sentences have been used and why, etc. Once a student grapples with these 'mechanics' of the language they will then feel like they have a more in-depth understanding of the text and can begin to look at the wider meanings behind the combinations of words. 

I've found it to be a really empowering way of making history accessible to students of all abilities.

Resource: Trench Source Analysis