Top tactics to make revision unavoidable for Year 11 students

It’s still five months before the first GCSE English exams and 1 in 5 of our Year 11 have already attended at least one voluntary after school revision session.

Now, not for a second am I complacent about this. What will impact student achievement this summer is sustained hard work – both in and out of lesson – but I am taking a moment to have a demi-smile that this year group clearly want to do well and are upping their game when it most counts for both them and the school.

I was asked by the lovely @cazzwebbo how we go about getting these students to attend such additional revision sessions. I can only reply with a slightly scattergun and naggingly persistent approach that uses two main tactics:

 

1)      MAKE REVISION UNAVOIDABLE AT SCHOOL

·         We display posters on the doors of all form rooms and class rooms.

·         We have daily announcements over the P.A. system at the end of the school day to say where revision is starting.

·         We give reminders in year team briefing for form tutors to pass on and ensure these messages are repeated in assembly.

·         We have a form group league table updated on a weekly basis to show which groups have attended most frequently and then award prizes to encourage a competitive element.

·         Our HoY has a loyalty card scheme which unlocks access to the prom and then further Vivo rewards.

·         Revision session reminders are also displayed on TV screens around the school.

·         We provide free buses for students to get home twice a week to ensure every child can access the after school sessions.

 

2)      MAKE REVISION UNAVOIDABLE AT HOME

·         We give all parents revision class timetables on Year 11 Parents’ Evening. Class teachers then refer to this in their discussions with parents to clarify expectations about which sessions their child will attend.

·         We send text messages to all parents to remind them when revision sessions are taking place.

 We call home or post letters when target students are not attending and clearly need to be.

3)      MAKE REVISION COUNT

·         We make sure that when students do attend that their time is well spent by teaching well-structured sessions. All teachers ‘opt-in’ to lead the sessions they are most confident delivering. This helps ensure that they come back!

·         We give every student a timetable showing the topics that will be covered on each day so they can ensure they can address areas of weakness. We hope that this encourages them to divide their time sensibly between revision for other subjects. Note: we remove the teachers who will lead each session as students sometimes only want to go to the ones ‘their’ teacher leads!

·         We liaise with Maths to ensure that students can attend revision in both core subjects.

Of course, this only scratches the surface of our revision strategy. I haven’t even begun to mention the revision bags, QR code revision sheets, revision book marks, half term and Easter schools, intervention days, walking/talking mock exams, use of website or Twitter, or our deployment of an English Support teacher. I’ll save that little lot for another blog.

Letter to my NQT self

So then, Caroline, you didn't do your MA in English Lit despite confirming your place - good decision. Your PGCE will stretch your legs, brain and emotional capacity that have all, you will admit, become somewhat stagnated after three years of bumbling through an undergraduate degree (that seemed to consist of a bizarre mix of the study of British place names and Deconstruction theory).

The next 24 months will be a challenge to say the least. At first just the 6am wake ups will be a source of distress, leading to *that* incident when you fell asleep in the staff room. Then it'll be the workload, as you attempt to balance marking, lesson planning, and the usual excitement of being a 21 year old living in a bedsit in a bustling city centre. But try not to cry so much. The tears don't help: they distress those who care about you and ultimately you will survive, intact and a wiser, better person for it.

Take comfort that when that kid threw the chair it wasn't about you. The one who whispered the Head teacher's name under his breath as a threat to report you for some invented injustice? Still not about you. 

The sensitive one who didn't know how to make sense of her feelings of depression and hid in your room at lunchtimes? Like you, yes, but not about you. 

You'll soon realise that you were one of the lucky ones. You have two supportive, loving, wonderfully eccentric parents who have simultaneously made you feel like anything is possible and that the most important thing in life is being a nice person. That is heartbreakingly rare. Cherish them as well as the children who are not so fortunate. Children can be vulnerable for a host of reasons, and not just the one who have the label of 'Pupil Premium'. Care for them in their most frustrating moments and if you shout and they shout back at you learn from that.

Appreciate how young you are. Older teachers have experience far beyond your years. Respect SLT, even the ones who pass on unhelpful advice about getting up at 3am to work. They've earned their position and you don't yet understand the pressures and tensions they have to respond to on a daily basis. 

Similarly, don't judge other schools. You haven't got a clue about the difficulties of recruitment, complexities of catchment and budget, and healthy dose of luck that can bring about disparities in student outcomes. 

You picked your first school well. Ten years on, your HoF will continue to mentor and inspire you and you'll still be attempting to capture the spirit of mutual support and collaboration, only this time in your own Faculty.

And now, in the style of a certain Mr Springer, my final thoughts. 

It's hard. It's worth it.

Questions V closed DIRT tasks

A lot has changed since the last time I blogged about marking, two years ago. Not least that I was still in my twenties (sob!) when I wrote the somewhat grandiosely-titled post 'the ten commandments of frequent, high-quality marking' and I am now writing as a thirty one year old cynic.
 
Gone are the "gloriously word-packed A3 APP epics" (although what replaced them is for another blog post entirely), DIRT has now become so ubiquitous that kids up and down the land know the acronym, and - horror of horrors - I'm slowly being won round by SOME use of marking codes.
 
But my biggest flip-flopping by far has been on the idea of questions as targets.
 
Here's what my younger self said:


5. Thou shalt word all targets as questions
It's a simple idea that was introduced to me by an outstanding (not the Ofsted version of this word, just simply bloody brilliant) teacher at my first school. The theory goes that asking a question demands a response. Like much good practice in the teaching profession, there's no empirical evidence to support whether this makes even the slightest bit of difference to whether a response occurs, but it's the intention that to me makes this so wonderful.

With zero additional effort, you're establishing that marking is fundamentally a dialogue. If nothing else then it reminds me to respect commandment number 6.

Note: I love the idea of marking work using only a highlighter for this reason. Like an irritating younger sibling it shouts out: "Here! Look over here! What did you forget? You can't leave me here like this!"
 

This belief stemmed from the use of sheets like these where students 'collected' their targets and I rubber-stamped their progress towards meeting them as I marked:

However, with the introduction of our (very good) whole school marking stamps, these sheets quickly became unnecessary and obsolete. Let's face it, if you can reduce paper in the teaching game then you're going to be on to a winner. And so the focus shifted, quite rightly, to high-quality feedback being given directly on student work.

But, as you can see, even after these changes my belief in the power of the question remained. So what did finally do away with this rhetorical flourish?

Well, as with the best pedagogical shifts, my students did. 

Y'see the problem with GOOD DIRT prompts are that they are HARD to respond to: they've got to be if they're going to lead to actual progress. Learning IS hard.

The problem for the teacher is then managing thirty students at the absolute edge of their ability all responding to a different, personalised prompt. What comes next is that dizzying 'whack a mole' feeling with hands springing upwards at a cumulative rate. Even without heels on, I cannot support every child at once in that kind of situation.

So, kids being kids, they then respond to the simple questions (or, in our case, go for the whole school 'write out the spelling mistake five times' task) and avoid the more challenging ones: the ones that would actually have the greatest impact.

What is needed in this situation is not a philosophical air of grandeur or insipid invitation to marking 'dialogue'. No, what is needed is action with no 'wiggle room'! What is needed is a closed imperative. 

No more 'Can you...?'.

Instead I ask students to

explain

list

write

or, answer.

And, you know what? Students now understand so much more clearly what they need to 'do' and more readily complete challenging prompts.

To my younger, more rebellious self it may at least come as no surprise that commandments, like rules, are indeed made to be broken.



 

I am a feminist. I am a teacher. I am Mrs C Spalding.

My love affair with feminism started at the age of 16, the moment I read an article in 'The Independent' declaring "Is this what we meant by feminism?" alongside a picture of a drunken young woman complete with spilling beer in hand. It was the era of the 'ladette' - a media-created female parody who mimicked the actions of an equally as mythical and reductive vision of a man who felt the need to prove himself to others by consuming his body weight in strong lager.

To me, feminism was heroic women in big skirts chucking themselves under hooves to win females the vote. For the writer to claim that my generation somehow 'wasn't worth the bother', whatever our questionable drinking choices, was my call to arms. Or rather, to pen: the resulting letter to the editor even making it into the paper.

In the next few years, I consumed the work of Greer and Davies, Faludi and Woolstencraft. And, when my bloody brilliant A Level English Lit teacher directed me towards them, I latched onto Carter, Plath and Woolf.

Alongside this I discovered a whole new group of brave, exciting and ground breaking women. Only these ones played guitars and the drums and fought for equality in a very different area: music.

Riotgrrl grew out of the same American punk scene that gave us the ubiquitous Kurt and Courtney and lifelong loves of mine like Minor Threat and Babes in Toyland. Frustrated by macho gigs and the lack of female representation in the alternative music scene, women and likeminded men banded together and tried to create something a bit different. For me it marked the start of two years of adventures, from helping to run a music festival in a legalised squat in Amsterdam (thanks for letting me go to that one, mum) to contributing to zines now homed in the Women's Library in London to getting published a bit in this book:

I met truly unique young women and men and, although I now cringe at the use of the word 'grrl', it secured for me a lifelong commitment to the feminist cause and the pursuit of gender equality, key to which, of course, is freedom from binary notions of gender for both sexes.

Fast forward ten years and I'm now bucking a good few of the dominant ideologies associated with the female: bread winner, leader, ferocious competitive streak, fan of data, happy in my own skin. I've also married and have taken my husband's name, love shopping, and occasionally wear lipstick. All of which are equally irrelevant. Because if feminism taught me anything it's that I can do whatever I damn well choose to, so long as it doesn't impact negatively on others. As can every man and woman, regardless of their gender.

But I am keenly aware that this freedom is not the case for every woman. We live in an era when a woman can still be shot in the head for seeking an education, where women are still routinely paid less for the same work, and where we have had to develop an acronym for chopping off parts of a woman's anatomy so frequently does it (dis)grace our newsfeeds.

Which all makes me deeply uncomfortable when I see some of the debate arising in education circles.

I am not a 'girl' and do not subscribe to 'girl power'. Does anyone truly believe the Spice Girls, product of a misogynistic pop industry, can be role models for a movement of any significance? Did anyone else read Laura Mulvey? I'm not a 'little bit more qualified'. I'm a lot qualified. I don't 'occasionally wear professional dress'. I am a professional. No I don't believe that I have been discriminated against when applying for jobs and nor do I feel pressured by my work/life balance any more than my male colleagues.

The gender issue is far more subtle, complex, and serious than these distractions.

I might as well add that, on reflection, I also could not give a crap if I refer to myself as 'Mrs' or 'Ms' - it's most definitely not a sign of ownership by my husband (I think he'd snort out of his nose at the very idea) and I don't feel demeaned or exposed at people knowing I'm married to him. He's ace. I don't care if I refer to students as 'guys': my commitment to making all of them feel comfortable in their own skin regardless of where they fall on the gender spectrum every single lesson trumps any simplistic notions about the impact of nomenclature.

In our schools, we do indeed have a disturbing gender gap in the make up of our SLT, but I feel equally disturbed by the growing gender gap in achievement between boys and girls in my subject. The causes of both of these patterns are multi-faceted and numerous. They cannot be summed up in an infographic and solutions cannot be honed solely through a national conference or Teach meet. They are social and cultural as much as pedagogical.

So, a plea to the wonderful women involved in #womened. I'd love to be involved too. But let's get serious. Let's stop talking about wearing heels to work. Let's stop using sassy pop references. Let's talk about the fact that boys are underachieving as well as the appalling lack of female Head teachers. Let's make this a real gender debate.
 

The five stages of post-results grief

Before you read the post, watch this: https://vimeo.com/46652994

 

A wise woman once said that there are five stages in the response of human beings to death:

1.       Denial

2.       Anger

3.       Fear

4.       Bargaining

5.       Acceptance

 

Many thanks to Homer for the comic illustration.

 

Now, IF I was prone to melodrama (Hildrew, Fry, Newton, stop smirking!) I would argue that, as Head of Faculty, receiving a set of bad exam results is a kind of death.

 

The finality of the letter on the results page marks, for most students, a blunt end to the processes of learning, revision and examination that have been their life for at least two years. As in death, all GCSE students will face the day of judgement that is results day.

 

When that letter isn’t the one that was hoped for, as Head of Faculty, you also suffer a little death (and not the sexy French kind). For that black letter is the crushing end product of the hopes and aspirations you’ve fostered for your students, whether in your own class or those of others. In some way, a tiny light you’ve been holding on to, flickering beneath your weather-worn exterior, that perhaps, some way, they *might* just ‘pull it out of the bag’, when it really counts, is extinguished.

 

Of course, I’m not melodramatic. Not one jot. But, Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief do perfectly fit the emotional state I’ve found myself in since the end of August.

 

Firstly, denial. The first alarm bells were sounded by a text message: ‘It’s not good news.’ My super ego immediately kicked in: ‘Now let’s just think about this. They could’ve made a mistake with their calculations. The double entries between iGCSE and GCSE have just thrown them off! Silly boys.’ I’m a stubborn old mule, and not until I’d created my own spreadsheet from my own downloads of student results from e-AQA and manually crunched the numbers would I finally accept what I’d heard hours earlier – and easily could have read from SISRA Analytics or the spreadsheet our efficient AHT had already emailed round – our results were bad. Students had, rather spectacularly, underperformed in the exam, putting our Faculty and school, yet again, in a euphemistic ‘challenging position’.

 

So, what did I do? I got mad. “We worked so hard! They must not have revised!” I furiously typed to my DHoF. “Some students didn’t answer all the questions!” I screamed at my slightly bewildered husband. “Bloody AQA’s unreliable marking strikes again!” I tweeted to other HoFs. I even wrote a fairly hysterical blog post that will never see the light of day in which I sought to blame, well, pretty much anyone but myself. And it made me feel better for a time (particularly when accompanied by a large glass of wine and the company of sympathetic friends).

 

But anger, although cathartic, paralyses you. It leaves you charging round like the proverbial bull in a china shop, damaging professional relationships and yourself if you let it, making it just as unhelpful as the next stage to visit me: fear.

 

I’m not going to drone on about just how SAD I felt when ‘fear’ hit. Read the latest Guardian ‘Secret Teacher’ column if you want a sense of that. I will say that an internal voice started piping up that maybe my school and Faculty would be better off without me and will also confess that I did more than a little research into moving to Japan… But, after five years as HoF I’m lucky enough to have strong support networks to rely on when the ‘black dog’ hits (you know who you are).

 

I’m not one for swallowing my feelings and, as in the latest Pixar offering ‘Inside Out’, I’ll happily champion a good sob and a wallow when it’s needed, but at some point you’ve got to reapply your mascara and move on. (OK, the fear of not being good enough is still there. However I’m pretty sure that’s true of most people and I don’t think that, when it’s under control, it is a bad thing. It’s that feeling that constantly makes me want to learn more, do better, and has driven me to finish my NPQSL and sign up to present at TLT15.)

 

So, now far more calm and collected, it became time to take that cold, icy stare at those little black letters and start to work out how to navigate the way ahead. I guess applying for re-marks could be seen by some as ‘bargaining’, but for me, a tweet I received from a student sums them up best: “I don’t mind if my mark goes up or down. It was just unexpected. At least then I’ll know the mark I got is right.”

 

I’m pleased to say that at some point this week I reached the final stage: acceptance. Going into school to get stuck into the mundane task of clearing our horribly messy stock cupboard definitely helped. Not only is sweeping up what, inexplicably, appeared to be dog hair from under our display boards a fantastic leveller, but it’s the best possible reminder that LIFE GOES ON. SCHOOL GOES ON.

 

I’m ready to meet with the governors, the Head, my team. I’m ready to talk about our results and what we’re going to do to make sure it never happens again. And I’m ready to explain to them that in fact, exam results – good or bad – are no death at all. No. They’re the start of the next thoroughly exciting stage of our wonderful students’ lives and, just as before, we will go on supporting them to the absolute best of our ability to achieve what we know they’re capable of, even if (especially if?) they don’t know it themselves.

‘Santa isn’t real…

…and George kills Lennie.’ Or, ‘How to ruin literary texts for your students.’

We’ve all had it: on the index page of ‘Of Mice and Men’ a child of questionable wit has written the epithet ‘George kills Lennie’. To quote my students: face palm.

On the better days I remember to check each text before doling them out to my unsuspecting Year 10s. On the worse days the novella’s grand finale is revealed the moment they open that battered cover and, worst, the innocent recipient announces the revelation in a mystified voice to the remainder of the class.

For me this crime is (very nearly) unforgiveable. My current GCSE class are aware they face immediate after school detention should they even contemplate such a heinous act. For what that scrawler has taken away from a reader new to the narrative cannot ever be replaced.

What has been seen cannot be unseen. What is known cannot be unknown.

When you know Lennie’s going to die you’re simply waiting for the inevitable conclusion. All nuances of hope and friendship are crushed. The lives of the ranch workers are branded as futile from the outset: we might as well hurry up and get to the final page so George can blow his brains out and they can all wallow back into their melancholy way of life.

In fact, why bother reading the blinking novel at all?

So why on earth are some teachers doing the pedagogical equivalent of this by revealing whole plots to students before they get a chance to read it for themselves? Why on earth would you want to ‘make sure students know the whole text’ before you begin to actually read?

I still remember, aged 15, the moment I realised Hardy’s Tess would die and my fraught tears at the tragedy of it all. I’m not embarrassed to admit that I still re-read the ending of ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ and rejoice in the magical final word that discloses Carter’s skilful inversion of the fairy tale narrative. And every time I’ve taught ‘The Kite Runner’ I’ve waited for the lesson after ‘that’ incident for students to bring their ‘gasp’ back into the classroom. These visceral moments of revelation have the power to spark a whole life time’s love of literature.

This is a plea on behalf of your students: please don’t steal these moments from them.

Don’t insist students know the narrative. Do the opposite. Guard the plot, drip-feeding each incident with the excitement, anticipation and revelatory power truly great works of literature hold. I promise you they’ll be more excited to read it. More engaged. And, who knows, maybe you’ll spark in them the love of literature all English teachers aspire to instil.

 

You can do my job.

If I had a quid for every time someone has said ‘I couldn’t do your job’ I’d be a flamin' millionaire. And I’m not talking about my window cleaner (although he has said it) or a sympathetic mate after I've moaned my way through a bottle of Pinot Grigio (although this has happened). No. Most often I hear this from thoroughly wonderful, talented and professional colleagues who most certainly COULD do my job, if only they believed it themselves.

So, here’s my attempt to convince them, and you, that being a Head of English is no different from being a classroom teacher.

You’ll still be setting consistently high expectations.

You’re still trying to create a positive climate for learning and teaching.

Just as in a class, some teachers might not be bosom buddies, but as a leader it’s essential to try and create a cohesive team.

 

You are still managing behaviours.

Your strategies might be quite different, however, as generally staff don't respond well to the doling out of detentions.

Keeping others safe and developing their SMSC are still vital.

Personal problems are not simply the preserve of students and, when facing times of crisis, the support a leader can offer is invaluable. It must be instant, consistently apparent, and demonstrate the same genuine care and compassion that we show our young people.
 
You will still aim to inspire others.

You still have to differentiate.

Teachers, like our students, having varying levels of experience, knowledge and skill. Just like you do in a classroom, you’ll learn to utilise people’s strengths and support them in areas they're not yet as confident and/or competent in.

You’re still learning and teaching.

I take the same joy in watching my team develop as I do my students. I am also even more keenly aware of my own learning as I seek to become a better leader.

You’re still judged on progress over time.

Okay, so it’s for a slightly bigger group of kids, but the principles remain the same. It’s just that your ‘mark book’ now contains a year group; you just have a few more pupils to worry about and support.

You’ll still be focused on interventions and ensuring that they have a notable impact.

Teachers intervene on a lesson by lesson basis, making changes to ensure that all of their students ‘get it’. As above, the only difference for a HoF is that they’re doing it with more of them and, as a result, keeping sharper records to track what they do.

You’ll still need to systematically check understanding. 

Feedback is still essential.

You’ll have had difficult conversations with students when they’ve not quite achieved as well as they thought they had, or to underline some ‘home truths’ about their lack of effort and resulting underperformance. Although the idea of talking to a peer in a challenging context might frighten you, you’ll approach it in the same way - with honesty and sensitivity – knowing that, just as with students, these conversations get easier to have with practise.

You’ll still need to ensure you use time well.

Planning will still be vital.

But thanks to enhanced PPA provision you’ll get more time to do it and your plans will be for more than lessons.