How to teach: English - Chris Curtis 2019

Model and read aloud
How to teach writing – Part 1

I write in almost every lesson. I think it is important that students see me writing. I set students off to write and I have a go myself while they are doing it, asking myself the entirely reasonable question: can I do what I am expecting students to do? My early years of teaching were spent setting students off to write and then waiting at the front to see what they would produce, wondering how much work I’d have to mark or what I’d have for tea. Like an expectant father, I’d pace the classroom. Usually, the arrival was met with tears but not of joy.

Now, I do the same task as them. And, as I am sharing their experience, I am able to ask questions like:

✵ Who else found it difficult to start?

✵ Did anybody else manage to use a rhetorical question? (What’s that? You struggled, Jane? Never mind.)

✵ Anybody else struggle to fit that word in?

There are few things more powerful than a shared experience in learning. Years down the line, every student can remember the time a wasp got into the classroom and the time Bill vomited over the front row of desks. A shared experience easily becomes a shared memory as we constantly remind each other of it. The other advantage of sharing the experience is that students can see what a good example looks like and, even more importantly, how you write.

Able students are great, but they can give others a misguided idea of how easy it is to achieve success. There will always be students who can quickly produce superb pieces of work with little apparent effort. Other students will see them as something to aspire to: that’s why some boys race to finish first because that’s what ’brighter’ students seem to do. Me tapping away on the board helps students to see the pace at which I write, which is quite slow. It also allows them to steal or borrow ideas, words or phrases for their own writing. Speed of writing is needed in the final exams, but not necessarily in the years leading up to them. I set the pace for the completion of the task.

The other advantage of having a clear, visual example is as a point of reference. I love saying to students, when we have finished, ’Who wrote it like I did? Who didn’t?’ At that point, you learn about the different possibilities on offer. The students learn that there is more than one way to approach the task. Also, they can see the humour in my writing. I love being playful and I model this to the students. Can I write a paragraph without the word ’the’? Can I describe a setting without mentioning anything visual? Can I reference the head teacher without the class knowing?

At this point, I get a chance to read students’ work out loud. This, I feel, is a neglected aspect. We get students to read out their own work and that is commendable, but it lacks the life and power of the teacher doing so. I can use my delivery to turn the most turgid, clunking prose into something rather more atmospheric. I love the drama of reading out a student’s writing and, whether it be a letter or a piece of creative writing, I am modelling how the text might be received and experienced. The voice of the writing is reflected in how I speak. I will pause for emphasis, speed things up, slow things down. All the time, I’m modelling the way the text is communicating to the reader. Every text is a performance. Teach students that writing is a performance and it becomes more interesting.

Over the years, this has been incredibly powerful as bright boys, especially, try to build up the humour and explore different ways of creating an effect. I always find one student is willing to push the boundaries to try and outsmart me. For a whole year, one played a cat and mouse game with me. We both had fun and the class did too because we were writing for an audience — each other. The class couldn’t wait to see how the student had ridiculed and belittled me. I am 5 foot 5. There was a theme.