Student: ‘So it’s really important, but not part of our overall GCSE grade?’

English teacher: ‘Yes. Presenting to an audience is a highly valuable life skill, and something that you may need to do in a whole range of education and workplace scenarios. It will not contribute to your English Language GCSE grade. You will receive it separately, and not as a numerical grade.’

Student: ‘Oh.’

I (mostly) love teaching the Spoken Language Endorsement part of the course – that is, a presentation on a specific topic lasting no longer than 10 minutes, including questions from listeners. But there’s always that point where we reach the conversation about it not being part of students’ main GCSE grade.

While students do eventually buy in and work on their presentations, they know that come results day, no one will ask about it. And that when they get to further education, it will be the numerical grades – and not the pass, merit and distinction they received for their SLE presentation – that matter.

A downgraded skill

In 2015, this spoken language component replaced ‘speaking and listening’ in the new GCSE as part of the ‘Govian’ reforms; Ofqual told us that it wouldn’t form part of the final grade. It therefore doesn’t factor into a school’s exam results profile which, in the current accountability structure of our schools, means it was spectacularly downgraded as a skill.

A 2021 report produced by The Centre of Education and Youth and Oxford University told us that the term ‘spoken language’ is ‘barely featured’ on Ofsted’s report recommendations. Their analysis highlighted that “Oracy does not feature prominently in Ofsted’s reporting,” but the issue extends beyond the regulator. The same report further found that only 23% of secondary teachers were confident in their understanding of the National Curriculum’s ‘spoken language’ requirements.

A separate report by the Oracy All-Party Parliamentary Group Inquiry meanwhile found that, “The status and provision of oracy education in England today falls significantly short” of the Group’s vision that, “All children and young people should benefit from high-quality oracy education.”

It’s become increasingly clear that talk, in all its forms, is far from being at the heart of our educational culture.

Widening the gap

Secondary school teachers know that not all students attended, or consistently attended their online lessons. I won’t forget how deeply uncomfortable and quiet some students visibly seemed from our side of screen in those sessions.

The aforementioned Oxford University report noted that, “Teachers working in state-funded settings were more than twice as likely as teachers working in private schools to say online teaching had a ‘significantly negative’ impact on pupils’ oracy.”

This side of COVID 19, how often do all students get to readily contribute in groups, pairs or whole class discussions? Who is struggling the most? Is there a noticeable gender divide? How wide is the gap between those in receipt of Pupil Premium and their peers in terms of vocabulary and talk confidence?

A huge body of evidence tells us that as far as latter is concerned, the gap is wide – but what does it look like in your school? Can students effectively manage exploratory group talk? How many students talk about experiencing fear and anxiety in the run-up to delivering their spoken language GCSE presentation?

A devastating picture

In May 2020, my daughter turned 2 – a crucial time in her language development. We celebrated her birthday as an immediate family unit socially distanced from everyone else in a breezy park. We waved nervously to another family we knew who also happened to be there. She didn’t see any members of her extended family, nor any peers from her childcare setting.

As I write these words, she is now in her final term of reception, and happily celebrated her fifth birthday last month with all of her classmates. However, much of the talk amongst parents there still dwelt on the impact of the pandemic on our lockdown toddlers.

And what about the students with SEND, pre-teens and EAL students? What impact did lockdown have on them? The CFEY and Oxford University report cites polling that paints, “A devastating picture regarding the pandemic’s impact” on children’s oracy skills.

We shouldn’t be surprised. There’s no reason to expect a positive outlook when our students stepped straight from social distancing and back into school cultures that don’t put oracy in the classroom on the same footing as literacy and numeracy.

What should we do about oracy in the classroom?

After screaming in frustration at the ongoing policy vacuum, we can begin to take some meaningful steps towards improving matters as teachers, leaders and advocates for young people.

We can start by a developing a heightened awareness of talk opportunities in our classrooms. Who is speaking, and when can we increase those opportunities? Some strategies might include ‘no hands up’ time, think-pair-share activities and utilising group feedback.

Could your class’ group work activities benefit from guidelines, modelling or sentence starters to facilitate discussion? We can also think about our curriculum. Could we build up students’ confidence in presenting via the gradual introduction of shorter speaking tasks at KS3? This doesn’t have to be just in English, but across our all subjects.

Another step we could take is to analyse the results of our spoken language components for yearly trends. We can probe how well our PP-eligible students are faring in this part of the course. Let’s all demand CPD opportunities and research time, with support from the brilliant organisations and advocates of oracy in the classroom that are among the biggest voices currently clamouring for change, such as Voice 21 and Oracy Cambridge.

We can start the conversation with our colleagues and senior leaders. Let’s seek to involve students more actively in assemblies, and explore other opportunities for public speaking. We can find out what our students think about their oracy development via class surveys, exit slips and questionnaires.

So let’s give up on the idea of simply screaming. Let’s instead get proactive about starting conversations with colleagues and students alike. We need to develop as many speaking opportunities as we can, step by step, to fill the vacuum.

Oracy in the classroom resources

Voice21
Provides case studies, research, CPD opportunities and guidance – the latter of which includes Voice21’s own ‘Oracy Benchmarks’.

Oracy Cambridge
Oracy Cambridge is a helpful source of downloadable resources. This includes self talk and peer reflection tools, as well exemplar discussion guidelines and The Oracy Skills Framework and Glossary.

Education Endowment Foundation
Find detailed impact reports pertaining to oracy studies and related projects in schools at EEF.

The Oracy All-Party Parliamentary Group
This is a useful destination for case studies detailing progress in oracy in the classroom in primary and secondary schools.

Jenny Hampton (@brightonteacher) is an English teacher, literacy lead and former SLE (literacy)

The post Oracy in the classroom – Let’s help our students become better speakers appeared first on Teachwire.

They’ve done the ‘green pen work’, or DIRT, or whatever your school’s equivalent of feedback response is. They’ve ‘walked and talked’ countless past papers. They’ve completed the online quizzes and watched all the exam
board videos.

With the English Language GCSE, it can be easy for students and teachers alike to feel that the course is ‘done’ and all the necessary skills have been taught. How, then, do we put the bounce back into these lessons as the exam approaches? And how can we ensure that said bounce has meaningful impact at a point when, frankly, we’re all a bit sick and tired of it?

From students to examiners

There’s a huge volume of evidence telling us that students’ comprehension of texts is much less than we think. We’re all familiar with the grim statistics about literacy levels and especially how pronounced they are among
particular groups.

With that in mind, how often have you seen analysis, comparative and evaluative responses foiled by simple misunderstandings? One way of tackling this is to explore more deeply what examiners will be looking for by giving students texts and asking them to design a series of questions to test their peers’ comprehension.

Making this a paired activity, with students focusing on clarifying meaning by helping each other, is a rich and rewarding process. For each question, students will need to know the answer so they can test their classmates orally in groups or in a whole class scenario.

To do it well, however, they’ll first need to interrogate the text themselves. Consequently, they’ll get to see the text from a different perspective, and can even be empowered by the role play involved: ‘Mr Smith, will you please deliver your questions on the opening paragraphs now…?’

Give them the text(s), and as a group or pair challenge, get them to write the paper. They’ll need a past paper to refer to, so that they can replicate the language in which the questions are written. They’ll also need to think carefully about which sections of the text will be appropriate for each question, and have some ideal responses in mind.

Again, this process will involve them interrogating the text for themselves. Where appropriate, the task can be extended further by asking students to create section B writing tasks, or even write out indicative responses as part of a mark scheme.

Find the joy in SPAG

If, like me, you’ve ever wondered where all the commas and full stops went during those periods of remote learning (let’s not mention the ‘C’ word), then you’ll know all too well how this cohort might need more support when it comes to gaining those all-important SPAG marks, since they can make all the difference.

I’m no fan of comma splicing, it’s so annoying (sorry). If you want to nip that tendency in the bud, try the ‘splice or nice’ activity. This involves presenting students with a sentence containing a comma, and inviting them to discuss and decide whether that comma is doing the job it was originally intended for, or is actually usurping a full stop, conjunction or the lesser spotted semi-colon. Use mini whiteboards, cards or thumbs to lend the activity a ‘Roman gladiator arena’ flourish.

If students aren’t using the semi-colon and its similarly low profile comrades, the dash and colon, train them with a safe structure. There’s a good example contained in a line from Animal Farm: “Let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious and short.”

Ask students to write as many different versions of this sentence, from as many different perspectives as possible while still using the same opening words and structure. Use a timer and have them race each other in the quest to come up with as many accurate sentences as possible.

Because let’s face it: their punctuation could be more interesting and exciting. Find other fabulous sentences and replicate this process, and celebrate any subsequent sightings of bold punctuation in their written work.

In the exam they’ll be on their own with the text, and yes, we need to rehearse this and practise what to do in class. A fun way of doing this can be to have partners read the text aloud to each other, but swap roles whenever they encounter specific forms of punctuation. This can heighten their awareness of how the writer has used these little beasts, but also how they can too.

According to the mental health support organisation MIND, 1 in 6 young people have a mental health problem. We don’t need to sacrifice their learning in order to take the pressure off them; we just need to vary the nature of the tasks they’re set and watch for the energy change that this can bring about for a fatigued class.

Just READ

As English teachers, we know that readers – that is, regular readers for pleasure – are more successful in the English Language exam. Granted, it’s generally too late at this stage to instil such habits in students who don’t already have them, but we could still dedicate a whole lesson to the reading out of a brilliant short story as students read along.

We all have our favourites; those short stories that never fail to engage even the most reluctant readers and disengaged classes. One involving a taxidermist landlady immediately comes to mind.

There’s something warm and comforting for everyone in a lesson dedicated purely to enjoyment and appreciation of great characters and walloping cliff hangers. Fidgeters can draw and sketch events as they listen, for example.

Because really, at the end of the day, isn’t that what the language exam is actually all about – showing appreciation of what writers do, and trying to emulate those skills in the writing section? Sometimes, it can be necessary for us to step away from the ever present glare of assessment objectives and take in the bigger picture.

Moreover, if we’re able to step away from the structure strips and past papers and tweak our planning accordingly, it’s just possible that we teachers – in this tomato-less era of gloomy economic forecasts and strike action – might feel a little less fatigued ourselves.

Channel that KS3 energy

You may be like me and keep a bank of resources for Y7 comprising envelopes, big sheets of coloured paper and sundry other lovely things. In contrast, your Y11 resource stockpile will more likely be limited to a heavy box containing booklets and past papers – but it doesn’t have to be…

• Try harnessing that strange mix of tension and tedium in the build-up to exams by running group work challenges, such as sorting words into types. Consider whether your lessons at this time are less dynamic than they could be.
• Do your exam classes get to move around during lessons – even if it’s just walking around reading other students’ writing? Do they get to draw? It can be helpful to summarise a text using images alone, or sketch out a rich description that you read aloud.
• This cohort – given the well-documented mental health pressures they were already under pre-pandemic, subsequent school closures and endless gloom of the cost of living crisis – could really do with some additional creativity in their lessons. So give it to them.

Jenny Hampton (@brightonteacher) is an English teacher, literacy lead and former SLE (literacy)

The post English Language – End their GCSE lessons with a bang, not a yawn appeared first on Teachwire.

Depending on the exam board, teachers may have not recently taught either poetry, the modern text or the 19th century novel. For their part, students may have learning gaps, or be less resilient readers, having experienced learning in lockdown during Y8 and Y9.

This year, both literature papers are to be sat a week apart in May. An Ofqual statement made in September 2022, announcing the return of pre-pandemic grading, has additionally sent shivers down the spines of teachers and leaders (though students will be ‘protected’, if grades are lower than normal, by senior examiners acting on prior attainment data and grades achieved by previous cohorts).

Our task is to therefore try and eradicate those pre-exam fears plaguing our students, our colleagues and ourselves – but how should we do that?

Little wins

If a certain type of exam response has become a threatening behemoth, break it down. Learn a set of quotations in class around a specific theme or character, perhaps with the aid of mini whiteboards, pair talk, timed conditions and/or buckets of praise.

A set of short quotations firmly lodged in students’ heads equals a win, and with every win we feel more successful, more empowered and less afraid.

We practise a similar approach when it comes to verbs that explain effect (‘emphasises’, ‘highlights’, ‘reinforces’, ‘creates’ etc.) and phrases relating to social and historical context. We can do it with adjectives that describe character, or indeed many aspects of the complex responses our students will be required to give in the exam.

Active revision modelling

Beware those pretty notebooks and flashcards that haven’t yet become grubby through continual handling and flipping. It’s worth reflecting on how many of our students see their studies and exam preparation as a solitary, inactive and ultimately passive activity.

I myself now know that the hours I spent studying for both GCSE and A Level exams could have been utilised so much more productively had I known just how ineffective my 1am note copying sessions really were.

As Pie Corbett – the brilliant teacher, trainer and poet behind Talk For Writing – says,‘If you can’t say it, you can’t write it’. That’s certainly something I need to consider more in my own practice.

Emphasise to your students that their beautifully neat notes are next to useless unless they’re also kept securely in their heads.

Immersion and joy

All of us will have different opinions on the texts we teach, the selections we’ve made and the factors governing those choices.

We need to recognise that at some point, we have to acknowledge the value and worth offered by even our most loathed set texts. Select the best chapter, best act or best online poetry reading of the texts in question, and then just read and/or listen to them – potentially for the duration of a whole lesson.

Invite your students to identify their own favourite lines, or pick out a work’s most humorous moments or haunting sentences. Try to recapture that moment when your fresh- faced Y10 students were first presented with a text’s then-new words, long before assessments, mocks and feedback began to eat away at its appeal. Relax, immerse and do your best to help everyone enjoy those well-written texts as if PETER paragraphs had never been invented.

Pair writing

How can we turn the demands of assessment objectives on responses inside out? One way is to outline what these actually are, and ask students to co-write a single response. Two brains, one paragraph/essay.

By doing this, we’re not only facilitating the exposure of different writing styles and different interpretations, but also different sets of notes.

Needless to say, this is an activity in which students will need be matched carefully, and for which ground rules will need to be laid down. Both students must physically contribute to the actual writing. Both sets of notes/resources will need to be accessible, and both should actually understand what it is they’re writing.

Once the activity is complete, invite your students to look back over their responses and take the best phrases and ideas from both. Yes, it can take practice and monitoring to get this right, but even the inevitable minor disagreements between partners will help to develop their knowledge and expression.

Tentative language

‘Could’, ‘maybe’, ‘possibly’, ‘perhaps’; such tentative language (often heavily demanded at undergraduate and Master’s level) can give nervous students a renewed sense of confidence, especially when faced with previously unseen texts.

Model sentences that contain these words. Encourage their use in verbal responses during class discussion. Explain how they’re frequently employed in academic writing, and emphasise how they can raise the intellectual bar of our writing while also, fabulously, giving us an insurance policy if we’re perhaps a little bit off….

Comprehension and the basics

As evidence mounts that students’ comprehension skills often aren’t as developed as we think, it’s worth checking to see if they really get it – especially when it comes to unseen poetry.

How often have you watched students spot a simile prior to reading the whole poem? Most of us will also have seen the detrimental effects of not truly understanding a text when devising language responses. I sometimes wonder if we’ve successfully trained students in identifying language to the detriment of comprehending texts in their entirety, and what they’re actually about.

Equally, when it comes to other studied texts – notably Shakespeare – do students know what’s happening in any given scene and that scene’s purpose? Sequencing and summarising exercises, quizzes, and ‘true or false’ questioning will help reveal misunderstanding.

I hate the phrase, ‘We’ve got this’, but in this case, I really think we do, and that our students should be told. Perhaps not in the booming personal trainer voice those words evoke in my head, but in myriad little ways; in every lesson, with every small win, and alongside every positive change in habit and chunk of confidence gained.

It’s not like we haven’t made the hitherto unfamiliar known, and therefore not threatening to our students before – remote live earning, TAGS, the list goes on. We don’t need to be afraid.

Making revision effective

• Take time in lessons to demonstrate self-testing (even the old ‘look, say, cover, write, check’).
• Show students how to map a theme or character via colourful mind-maps, or by using images accompanied by text.
• Remind students that they can use their omnipresent phones to record verbal notes after watching online revision videos, or themselves talking through an essay before writing it.
• Encourage students to test each other, or have a family member step in. It doesn’t matter if nan doesn’t know the novel – give her a list of points on paper, and ask her to make sure you’ve said them all.

Jennifer Hampton (@brightonteacher) is an English teacher, literacy lead and former SLE (literacy). Browse great ideas to help with GCSE English Language revision.

The post English literature – How to banish those GCSE exam fears appeared first on Teachwire.

As a subject coordinator, I had liaised, supported and picked up work from supply, but had thought little about their overall daily experiences, and how my school contributed to that.

But after 11 years of teaching – including periods of middle leadership, whole-school responsibilities and time as an SLE – I found myself doing a stint of supply.

There are a vast range of personal and professional reasons why someone might be doing supply. Certainly, for many it can be a gateway out of teaching once the work/life balance battle has been lost.

For me, it was gateway job back in to the profession I had left.

It also served as an opportunity to sample other schools, their cultures and their students.

And that is what I did.

Starting off in the school reception, I got a superb taste of each school: the culture of learning in the classroom, health and safety in the corridor and staff wellbeing in the staffroom.

It was a fantastic, unfiltered access to a school and certainly much more revealing than any interview day I had ever attended.

Being welcomed in one school’s reception by a senior administrator with a map, a talk through my classes and a genuine enquiry about my lunch needs differed considerably to the one where I had to swap my house keys for a floor plan and an electronic door pass.

Being shown the staffroom, the water machine and what the staffroom coffee protocol was differed massively to simply finding my own way during a busy break.

Meaningful and real summaries of behaviour and achievement procedures, brief as they were, differed massively to being simply handed the cover teacher pack.

A thank you at the end of the day from differed massively from a reminder to sign out.

One school invited feedback notes on learning and behaviour in each lesson; it will not be surprising that every class in this ‘challenging’ school were willing and happy to learn despite never having seen me before.

Schools are seeking more and more creative strategies to recruit staff, and I wonder if the way we interact with colleagues from supply agencies could be a big help. It’s definitely something worth considering.

@brightonteacher is a teacher of English and consultant in the south east.

The post What Experience do Supply Teachers Have in your School? appeared first on Teachwire.

A school’s reading culture belongs everywhere in a school, and with everyone, but a well-stocked library and a passionate librarian will be the beating heart.

We intuitively know, and evidence tells us that reading habits and cognitive processes are connected. Engagement in reading transforms educational outcomes regardless of economic background.

Clark and Akerman’s 2006 study found greater confidence amongst students in receipt of free school meals, where reading was modelled and practised at home, than those who didn’t receive free school meals, where reading wasn’t part of home life.

The same study however tells us that students from lower income families can have much narrower perception of the value of reading and as teachers we will have experienced this. So, when reading is not practised and modelled at home, what can schools do? Well, here are some questions your school must ask itself:

The school library

Is there a range of texts that are in good condition and regularly refreshed? Is the space welcoming? Is it staffed by a librarian who knows and is passionate about children’s and young adult fiction and non-fiction? Can they advise and recommend on reading choices? Are borrowing patterns tracked? Are reluctant readers targeted?

Quality reading time

Does every student in the school have allocated time to read for pleasure? Whether this is part of form time, English lessons or shared across the curriculum, it is vital in building habit. When it happens, is practice consistent across the school and are all students meaningfully engaged? Are teachers reading too? What is the intervention offer for those who struggle to engage in reading for pleasure?

Teachers and professional development

Are reading habits discussed at parents evening by English teachers or form tutors? With a body of research telling us 10% of students have weak comprehension skills, are students asked to predict, summarise and notice when understanding breaks down? Are all teachers confident in how to do this? Are students aware of students’ reading ability through reading ages or SEN information?

Messaging

Do leaders and students discuss the books they are reading and the books that have been important to them in assemblies? Does the school website contain reading lists and other information that can help parents? Are there outreach workshops that can assist parents in developing reading and readings habits at home?

Events

Are key dates for reading on the school calendar like World Book Day or whole school Drop Everything and Read sessions? Are author visits or book clubs planned and resourced?

Environment

Do corridors, classrooms and the school canteen state the message that reading is important in your school with regularly updated ‘I am reading signs’, book posters and information on authors?

Students

Students are an incredibly powerful currency when it comes to reading culture. Giving students time and space to discuss reading whether in English or library lessons, form time or reading clubs: recommendations and book talk from peers can go a long way to supporting others.

Jennifer Hampton is an education professional and former English teacher/SLE. She blogs at brightonteacher.wordpress.com and you can follow her on Twitter at @Brightonteacher.

The post If We Don’t Have A Real And Deep Reading Culture In Schools, We Are Failing Our Children appeared first on Teachwire.