How to teach: English - Chris Curtis 2019

Getting in ‘the zone’
How to teach writing – Part 2

Writing is so important that the seven simple ideas covered in Part 1 will never be anywhere near enough to cover the difficulties inherent in getting students to write well. I’d love to say that writing in my classroom is like something out of Mary Poppins: I simply sing a jaunty educational tune and the students write with glee and joy as I twirl about. Sadly, and rather more prosaically, my classroom environment is more akin to a Roman ship with me beating a metaphorical drum at the back. Boom. Boom. Boom. Write, you dogs!

How do we get all students writing to the beat of the drum? Well, I think we need to form clear patterns and processes for writing. We need to signal when the lesson is a writing lesson. How you do that in your classroom is up to you. Students need to be clear what a ’heads down and write’ lesson looks like. And we need to repeat that process and train students so that they get used to it. The problems happen when you haven’t signalled that it is a writing lesson. Writing, for most people, involves having a silent working environment. Silence is important as it helps channel thought and focuses our attention on the paper and the job. In drama, you have the idea of the ’suspension of disbelief’ and this is a state that playgoers experience in a theatre. There is an equivalent in writing. Let’s call it the ’suspension of artifice’. Students know that what they are doing is fake. They know that the head teacher isn’t going to change their opinion on the school’s uniform based on their well-formed argument. They know that the BBC isn’t going to take on board their suggestions about what might make EastEnders less unrealistic. They know that the Queen isn’t going to read the letter persuading her to knight their English teacher. But that teacher needs to create the artificial bubble of context so students write with an audience in mind. The writing is real, but the context isn’t. And just as actors and stage crew work hard to create the suspension of disbelief by ensuring silence except for the actors on stage and that all is in darkness apart from the stage, teachers need to work on creating the same environment. Theatre audiences buy into and support the rules. Set the rules and place the focus on the stage and its actors.

As with actors, there are various types of writer. There’s the hesitant writer who doubts their ability. There’s the writer who throws everything at the reader. There’s the writer who is perceptive and insightful with every word and sentence. There’s the writer who will not even start until their demands are met. I have seen them all. The context for writing is a challenging one in any classroom. We are asking students to make their thoughts concrete. We are asking them to produce something visible and readable. Something that can be judged. We are, in some ways, asking them to bare their soul. I have seen the most articulate students crumble under the portentousness of picking up their pen. We aren’t so critical of verbal contributions and of speech in general, but with writing we (and I mean society here) can be prone to being hypercritical. We know it has to be perfect. Students know it has to be perfect and that worries them. Writing well is perceived to be the single most important and universal marker of intelligence in education.

The desire for perfection in writing has become a real problem for English teaching. We know that students will make mistakes and our job is to help them eventually stop doing so, but a lot of students’ hesitancy is related to our view of what constitutes useful writing. Students see endless examples of ’perfect’ writing. Many lessons are given over to reading work by the greats. We give model examples. Of themselves, these are fine, but subconsciously we are feeding the view that only perfection is acceptable. There is no in-between state. Perfect or not perfect. What if you are that student who knows their work is very far from perfect? The students who are close to perfection are usually well-motivated because they are a pen stroke away from genuinely useful competence, but the students who are a fair way from that state know it because they have perfection paraded before them every lesson. This creates boundaries and mental blocks. Why bother if you know you are opening yourself up to criticism? A lot of my time is spent with these students. I am trying to undo the behaviours they have adopted given our conditioning, trying to divest them of the layers of protection that I, myself, have caused them to don.

Writing isn’t as simple as it seems. It is emotionally, physically and psychologically complex. We need to work out the thinking behind unproductive behaviours in writing. Have a think about these examples. What do you think is the real issue at play with these students?

1 The student who writes absolute rubbish but is always the first to finish the task.

2 The bright student who spends ages on a single paragraph.

3 The articulate student who writes pages and pages without using any punctuation at all.

4 The naughty student who produces dull writing, but always writes enough.

I have taught many students like this over the years and some of my solutions to dealing with the problem are as follows:

1 The student who writes absolute rubbish but is always the first to finish the task.

This student hasn’t had much success with their work, but the one thing they can do is complete it first. They crave positive encouragement from finishing first, so they work hard to ensure they get it.

Solution: Get the student to lead the whole class in writing a response. They become the one who controls how others work. The class finish when they have finished. The speed at which they write affects the rest of the class. Students have to match the pace of this one student. What happens when you do this is that the student becomes aware of how others write at a different pace. All I need to do is shout out to the student, ’What paragraph are you on now?’ The class have to match the dominant writer. Another strategy is to get the student to work with a partner. However, the partner is the writer and the student in question gives ideas and suggestions. This adds an extra level of thought to the writing which is often lacking in the student’s work.

2 The bright student who spends ages on a single paragraph.

This student is searching for perfection. They are trying to control all aspects of the writing. They might actually lack confidence and doubt their own ability. They are hypercritical of their own work to the point that they can’t move on. Often, these students have a tainted view of perfection. They often create excellent pieces of work, but they are in the ’eye of the storm’ so lack self-awareness.

Solution: Give the student clear time limits for the writing. Do this as a whole class thing or as an individual ’intervention’ if you want to be fancy. Give the students an eight minute block to work on a paragraph. Once the time is up, they move on. I find it also helps to have something physically blocking the writing. A pencil case works for this. As soon as a paragraph is completed, the pencil case covers the offending work. Another strategy is to give them an example or style model to work with. Allow them to have a point of comparison as their perspective is currently a bit warped. They feel the need to have fifteen similes and twelve rhetorical questions. The example gives them a visual reminder that you don’t need to use every technique under the sun to be effective.

3 The articulate student who writes pages and pages without using any punctuation at all.

This type of student is quite common. Rarely have I come across a student who can’t use some form of punctuation. Often, they have a case of more ideas than tools to express them. This student’s keenness shouldn’t be quashed. They just need the physical tools to ensure that their thought process is smoothed and channelled. At the moment, like a broken tap, everything is gushing out at once.

Solution: I like to get students to pair up and do a little bit of transcribing work. One student talks through their ideas for the task while the other writes. They take turns, then they have a rough plan and a starting position for the writing. They have a draft to work on and can add punctuation. Another strategy is to refuse to mark work until you have seen proof that they have addressed this. All too often, students write and don’t give it a second look. They treat it like speech and that doesn’t need retrospective self-regulation and revision. As I have explained, if we accept the work and correct the punctuation ourselves, we are giving them the message that this is OK. You only have to refuse to mark work once or twice for the student to make a change. I will admit it is quite a shock, but it draws a line in the sand.

4 The naughty student who produces dull writing, but always writes enough.

This student is an interesting one because they highlight a problem that I think is quite prevalent in most schools: ’phoning in’ a performance. This student has developed a style of written waffling which they use in most subjects. This is very much how I wrote when I was at school. I could waffle for England. The teacher would give me a task and I would happily write stuff. It was bland and beige, but it kept the teacher off my back and it lightly addressed the task. A lot of boys use this approach; it is easy to do and doesn’t take much thought or effort.

Solution: Describe and identify this as ’phoned in’ writing. Make students aware of it. Often students are unaware of what they are doing because it is such a common practice for them. I spend time looking at writing in lessons. With one group, ’phoned in’ writing was easily characterised by the use of ’because’, ’and therefore’ and ’furthermore’. Students would scroll through these in their non-fiction writing. They’d rotate through these words to address the task, but they’d simply be listing ideas with the odd bit of reasoning thrown in. I forbid these words and added that they could only begin one sentence in each paragraph with the word ’the’, ’it’ or ’this’.

Another strategy is to be brutal with redrafting. We can be a little bit too positive when giving feedback. We focus on what went well and what will make fast improvements. I think there are times, and it’s up to the teacher to decide, when a red pen needs to be used to draw lines through whole sections of perfunctory text. Telling the student a sentence is meaningless is far more constructive than pleasantries and vagueness. I will tell students when a sentence is pointless and when a sentence is repeating an idea. Clear and constructive criticism is needed when we want students to make improvements. Tough love is required and smothering students in a blanket of kindness will only take them to a certain point. Watch a PE teacher and you’ll see that relentless and determined pushing; they will pick up on when a student is capable of performing better and cajole them to do so. We lack that in the English classroom at times. We need to get better at telling them when things are ’crap’. But maybe don’t use that word.

The eyes are said to be the windows to the soul. I’d say writing is the front door. In my classroom, there are thirty different reasons why students write the way they do. That might range from the student who writes really small so I can’t read their words and judge them, or the student who writes so big that it seems (and fails) to mask the fact that they haven’t written much at all. Every student is different and each has a reason to behave as they do. It is too easy to blame issues with writing on their ability, their primary school or their previous English teacher. Writing is emotional and, while I am not suggesting that you have weekly therapy sessions with students as they write, I am suggesting that, before we look for an easy excuse or a ’get-out clause’, we explore the student’s emotional connection to writing. If writing is the front door to the soul, and that door is locked shut, there’s probably a reason why. It is our job to talk to them to find out what it is and what we can do.

1. Getting in ’the zone’

I know nothing about cars, but I always refer to them when explaining the writing process. Students like to think that they are Ferraris with the ability to go from 0 to 200 miles per hour in five seconds (this is my estimation — I told you I don’t know much about cars) when, in reality, they are more Ford Fiesta and take that bit longer to get up to speed. The gap between thought and writing is one we need to actively work on. You can’t go from nought to Jane Austen in five seconds. We need to get students to see the gap between thought and writing. Unlike speech, writing is not spontaneous — well, it shouldn’t be. We need to challenge this. Yes, for the exams writing will need to seem spontaneous in creation, but it doesn’t need to be during the four-and-a-half years spent preparing.

How do we get students into ’the zone’ for writing? I think the first five minutes and the reveal of a task is important.

Today, I want you to write me a description of a classroom. I am looking for 300 words. You have a picture for inspiration.

When I am looking at your work, I want to see that you have used repetition, noun phrases and some original word choices.

I want you to make it really interesting for me and to show off. Do something original.

Are there any questions?

I always have the task on a PowerPoint slide so that students have an aide-memoire. But the set-up is an important stage and one we can easily neglect. We want independence with writing, but that comes from familiarity with the process, so we need to normalise it. The questions I get in response are always interesting. Take these examples:

1 Does it matter what colour pen I use?

2 Can I use something I have written in my book already?

3 Do I have to use the picture?

4 What is a noun phrase again?

It is during this questioning stage that you can address the issues and stop further mistakes from occurring. We want students to make the right kind of mistakes. I feel this level of questioning helps prevent more obvious ones. Question 1 shows a lack of common sense and knowledge of the basic classroom expectations. Students should be able to answer that one themselves. I often refuse to answer, asking the students to provide me with a possible answer. Question 4 is a knowledge question but an important one. I’d always ask the class to ensure all students know it and simply to revise the concept.

Questions 2 and 3 are interesting because, as first glance, they seem simple but, fundamentally, they relate to aspects that could constrict and hinder progress. If the student feels that they can’t use something they have already written, they are going to have to think of something new and that could take time. If the student feels that they ’have to’ use the picture then their work is possibly going to be limited.

Once I have gone through the questions, I give students five minutes to talk and prepare. This allows them to articulate ideas or thoughts. Usually, I’d get them to write these down in note form. Planning and idea forming don’t need silence, but writing does. Finally, I ask if there are any more questions. Then I get students to write. During this, I will walk around the class reading their work. At this point, I might focus on students who I know may struggle and reassure them. I might tick a word or a phrase I like in order to motivate them. I repeat this process again and again. I will only interrupt the task if students are all getting the same thing wrong. I have witnessed some teachers give a constant commentary during a writing lesson: ’Don’t forget to …’, ’Remember you might want …’, ’I don’t do …’ The process needs silence and the teacher has to lead by example.