Bizarrely, I’ve always found question
3 of AQA’s English Language, Paper 1 the hardest to teach but (as a GCSE
examiner) the easiest to mark. Every year I struggle to get my students to understand
what is meant by the following question:
How
has the writer structured the text to interest you as a reader?
Many teachers will say they find this question
easy to teach. I am not one of them. No matter how hard I’ve tried over the past few years,
I still get those students who churn out the dreaded phrase, ‘the writer does
this to make the reader want to read on’ or ‘this is so it gets inside the
reader’s head’. Those who particularly struggle decide a simple retelling of
the extract is enough. As we all know, it’s not and don’t even get me started
on the student who exclaims to everyone after an initial read through, ‘but it
doesn’t interest me’.
So how can students pick up these 8 pesky
marks? This year, I’ve tried something different. I’ve stripped everything back
and slowed everything down in order to lay the foundations students need. I’ve
carefully planned each step to help build up the required knowledge to answer
the question successfully… and I think it’s beginning to work! I’m certainly
feeling more positive than I was at this point in previous years.
There has been a lot of talk on
Twitter over the past few days about language versus structure and approaches
to the structure question. Here’s my say which (obviously) isn’t the only way.
The simple aim of this blog is to provide another approach for those who may be
feeling the same about question 3 as I was. Here’s what I’ve done this year:
1) What is structure?
Firstly,
I always ask my students what they think the term ‘structure’ actually means. Our
students will have come across this term and discussed it in previous years but
I start at the beginning again. It’s one of the ‘big questions’ I give them at
the beginning of the lesson. ‘What is structure?’ is a vital question to ask
because it gives them something tangible to work with. We craft our own
definitions through discussion before seeing how closely they link to mine
which I put up on the board:
‘The structure
of a text is how it is organised by a writer and how its parts fit together.
Writers structure their texts deliberately to make the reader think and feel certain things.’
This is quite
a simple definition but I don't want to overload students at this stage. I
demonstrate what this definition looks like in theory during the next part of the lesson.
2) A tour of a school
After reiterating that structure is how a text is
organised by the writer, I ask my students to imagine a school that has
positive and negative qualities. (Thanks to @teachals for this idea). To get
across the idea that writers ‘put together’ their text to create certain
effects, I ask students to quickly ‘put together’ a tour of their imaginary
school. This tour must leave their imaginary visitor with a positive
impression. I take feedback but most importantly ask students WHY the various
stops on their tour would leave visitors with a good impression of the school.
Next, I ask students to ‘put together’ a tour which would leave their imaginary
visitor with a bad impression of their imaginary school. Again, I ask students
WHY their various stops would leave a negative impression on their visitor. I
must admit, students may stray into their own experiences with their own school
here and so I set clear boundaries and ask students to speak generically. (eg.
‘A disruptive class’ instead of naming actual disruptive classes that they may
have been in or know of). I like this approach because it works in helping
students to realise that we are shown things in a text for a reason and the things we are
shown will leave an impression on us. I’ve been questioned before why I ask
students to create a tour of a school. Put simply, it’s because every student
has experience of school and so they can relate to it. I also make clear that
students are giving a tour of an imaginary school, not
their own.
3) Structure in film
Next, we look at how directors
structure scenes in films. Students seem to like this approach because the
visual element of the activity removes the threat. I start with a scene from ‘Harry
Potter’ that has four distinct edits that students can say a lot about.
We
watch the scene twice. The first time, I ask students to simply watch it. The second
time, I ask students to complete the following questions:
-
How many edits are there?
-
What is the first shot?
-
Why do you think the director begins the scene
focusing on the character’s eyes?
-
Why does the director then pull away so we can
see the whole of the character’s face?
-
What is the last shot?
-
How is it different to the first shot?
-
What is effective about this shot?
The purpose of this task is to help
students discuss structure on a basic level. I’m not concerned with subject
terminology or the intricacies of the question yet. All I want is for students
to start thinking about what the director is showing us, how they’re showing us
and why. I repeat this process with the opening
of ‘Back to the Future’ (again, thanks to @teachals for the idea) to embed
basic knowledge of the ‘What, how, why’ structure which I’ll ask students to
use later on. You can read more on this structure from Becky Wood.
4) Introduction of subject terminology
To make the link between film and text clear, I stress that writers have the same jobs as directors. Their job is to show us certain events to make us think and feel certain things. A director has music, edits and camera angles to help them create their effects and a writer has their own tools too. I introduce a limited amount of subject terminology here and am extremely careful when talking to students about how they should use it. I don't want students to become too preoccupied with subject terminology when some will still be grappling with what structure is and why it's important. However, I feel at this stage they need some of the writer's 'tools' to help them consider what they should be looking out for.
5) Reading the extract/storyboard
Next, we shift our focus away from structure in film to structure in writing. In this example, we read one of the extracts from the AQA English Language Paper 1 resource booklet which can be found here. I chose 'I'm the King of the Castle' because the extract provided is relatively easy to understand whilst containing lots to talk about in terms of structure. Reading through the extract, I asked students to title each paragraph to summarise what was happening, asking questions to do with plot and character as I went to check understanding.
In previous years, I would have asked students to storyboard the entire extract. Upon reflection, I think it's too much to ask students to consider the text as a whole at this point. Therefore, I chose one paragraph for students to concentrate on. In ten minutes, we discussed the six main ideas in the extract, considered what that might look like in a film and then story-boarded our ideas. I think it's important to note here that students should be instructed to make each sketch very different. If the picture in each box looks the same with only a slight change, it won't help them.
In this example, students could sketch the following:
1. Picture of bird in corn with 'enormous' wings
2. Picture of bird circling over head.
3. Picture of Kingshaw looking at the bird.
4. Picture of wings beating together.
5. Picture of bird screeching.
6. Picture of inside the bird's beak or picture of its eye.
A student will have six different pictures meaning they will have six different thing to discuss.
6) What/How/Why, I/We/You and the structure of a paragraph
This is where Becky Wood's 'What/How/Why' blog has really transformed my teaching of this question. In its most basic form, question 3 can be condensed to three key areas:
What is the writer showing us?
How are they showing us this?
Why are they showing us this?
The first of those three questions is simple to answer and can be summed up in one or two sentences maximum. For me, the 'how' questions is where students can add in their quotation containing a structural feature. I've made this explicit to my class as historically, my students have always struggled with how they should include quotations in question 3, particularly as they won't be analysing any language from them. This gives them a clear format they can use to help them add quotations to their answer in a way that will strengthen the quality of their response.
The 'why' question is the hardest and one I've thought long and hard about how to deliver and teach. I find students really struggle to articulate why they're being shown something. To help direct their thoughts, I now always ask a sub-question:
Why are they showing us this?
- What does the reader learn from being shown this?
By considering what the reader learns about the setting/character/plot, students are able to articulate clearly why the writer is showing them what they are. When modelling with the 'I/we/you' method, I always begin the 'why' by selecting from the following sentence structures:
Perhaps the writer shows the reader X to help them learn...
This is structurally significant because the reader learns...
The writer does this so the reader can learn...
Eventually, students will find their own ways of expressing the 'why' part of the structure question and many will be able to do so without using the word 'learn' but to begin with, I've found this is a really effective way of nudging students in the right direction when helping them comment on the effect of structure.
I ask students to highlight the 'what', 'how' and 'why' in a pre-written answer which focuses on just ONE small paragraph from the extract. Focusing on the structure of a paragraph before the structure of an entire source removes the threat, allowing students to gain the knowledge and skills needed on a smaller scale first. With this in mind, we discuss each section of the answer before choosing another small paragraph from the extract and writing about that together as a class. Again, a strong focus on the 'what/how/why' structure allows students to clearly express their ideas. I still don't focus on the whole of the extract yet. During the modelling stage, I get them to think back to their tours of the school. What did they show their visitors and why? What is the writer showing them and why?
When students get to the 'we do' of the modelling process, I choose a third paragraph for them to focus on. At this point, students' use of subject terminology is still limited with most focusing on 'zooming in/out' and 'shifts in focus' but I don't find this to be a problem at all. Students who focus on the 'why' more than the 'how' tend to be more successful and an answer stuffed with terminology can run into problems very easily.
Focusing on the structure of paragraphs before looking at the whole text has been extremely beneficial. It allows students to understand what is required of them and allows them to hone their skill of analysing structure on a smaller scale before moving to the text as a whole.
I would follow this up with a side by side look at question 2 and 3 with a new extract (an idea inspired by @heymrshallahan) so students can see the different requirements of each question and clearly separate them in their mind.
Stripping everything back has made things easier for my students to understand and access. Moving forward, I'll start to build the challenge to help push students to new areas of thinking. The methods described here may not be for everyone but I hope they help those who are struggling with this question. There are things I'll continue to change and adapt but this is most certainly an improvement on how I've taught this question in the past.
You can find the resources mentioned in this blog here.
Stuart
@SPryke2