I have just left teaching after 9 years in the classroom. As an act of reflection, but also a bit of a brain dump, I've started to distill all the things I've learned into this blog.
Please take as much or as little of it as is useful.
AQA English Language Paper 1, Question 1
I often find that Question 1 is an ideal gateway for students of all abilities, not necessarily because the question itself is easy (it is incredibly easy) but because teaching it provides the opportunity to establish some clear, repeatable norms that I want students to use for the other questions on the paper.
Preach the value of the question stem.
Like all of the questions on the AQA English Language papers, Question 1 is always worded in the same way. I find it's worth being really explicit about this with students so they don't fear what is coming up on the exam. Clarity creates certainty. Certainty creates confidence.
So, to begin with, I will show them something like this:
Read again the first part of the source from lines X to Y. List four things about XXXXXXXX from this part of the source.
At this point, I will also usually say something like "this question will always focus on the first paragraph: usually the first 4 to 9 lines". The reason for stating 4-9 lines is mainly because it's true but I have also had students comment on how specific this is. It's not 5 to 10 lines. It's 4 to 9. Sir isn't talking generally here. Sir knows EXACTLY what he's talking about and if he's being specific then so am I. It may be an easy question but there is no margin for error.
2. Highlight. Highlight. Highlight
Once students have read the question, I always get them to highlight the line numbers and the focus of the question. I will model this explicitly under the visualiser like this:
Read again the first part of the source from lines X to Y. List four things about XXXXXXXX from this part of the source.
Again, it may seem obvious but the point of going over Question 1 in this way is not because I think they can't do it (they definitely can) but because I want them to get into the habit of doing these things REGARDLESS of the question. You always know what the question stem is going to be. You always highlight the focus of the question.
3. Box, box, box
Having read the question and identified the focus, I then get students into the habit of knowing that whenever they see line references, they know they need to box the text. This is to make sure that they aren't selecting evidence from the wrong bit. The only exception to this is Language Paper 1, Question 2, where they will be given the extract in the question paper itself (with a box already around it, I might add). My students often know that I'm a big fan of Formula 1 so the 'box, box, box' mantra fits nicely and saying it three times also makes it more memorable. After a few lessons, if I ask for a choral response to "what do we do when we see line references?", the kids know that the answer is always "box, box, box"
4.Highlight the relevant parts of the text
This may seem unnecessary for some groups but I always reiterate that this is about developing good habits. They might not feel like they need to highlight now but they will (and should) for more cognitively demanding questions like Questions 3 & 4.
For example:
Q1. Read again the first part of the source from lines 1 to 5. List four things about the old man from this part of the source.
It was the design of Angelo Ricci and Joe Czanek and Manuel Silva to call on the Terrible Old Man. This old man dwells all alone in a very ancient house on Water Street near the sea, and is reputed to be both exceedingly rich and exceedingly feeble; which forms a situation very attractive to men of the profession of Messrs. Ricci, Czanek, and Silva, for that profession was nothing less dignified than robbery.
Under the visualiser, this questions would then look like this:
Q1. Read again the first part of the source from lines 1 to 5. List four things about the old man from this part of the source.
It was the design of Angelo Ricci and Joe Czanek and Manuel Silva to call on the Terrible Old Man. This old man dwells all alone in a very ancient house on Water Street near the sea, and is reputed to be both exceedingly rich and exceedingly feeble; which forms a situation very attractive to men of the profession of Messrs. Ricci, Czanek, and Silva, for that profession was nothing less dignified than robbery.
5. Write in full sentences that start with the focus of the question.
It seems an obvious point, given how easy the question appears, but I always make sure that I am explicit in telling students how I want them to format their answers. If the question says "List four things about the old man", I want to see every sentence start with "The old man is..." or "the old man lives..." or "the old man has..." NO single word answers or short phrases.
e.g.
the old man dwells all alone
the old man lives in a very ancient house
the old man lives on water street
the old man lives by the sea
the old man is reputed to be exceedingly rich and exceedingly feeble
NOT
dwells all alone
very ancient house
on water street
by the sea
exceedingly rich
exceedingly feeble
Some of the second examples are technically correct (but some of them also aren't) so I don't want to give students the impression that writing answers like this is OK. Full sentences. No exceptions.
6. Ignore the numbers and write at least 6 things
The way that the AQA question paper is formatted can be misleading. For question 1, you get 8 lines in total with the numbers 1-4 listed every other line. Visually, this suggests that you get two lines per answer. I tell students to ignore this completely and imagine they have 8 lines to write 8 separate things and they HAVE to write at least 6.
The reason for this is that examiners want to throw marks at this question; they are looking for anything that is worthy of merit. However, if students do happen to write something incorrect, I want to ensure that they still get 100% of the marks available. If they write 4 things and get one wrong, they will get 3/4. If they write 6 things, and get one wrong, they still get 4/4. Secure the 100%.
In the answer above, a good example of this would be where students often write "the old man is exceedingly rich" or "the old man is exceedingly feeble". Both of these are wrong because the old man is only "reputed" to be these things and therefore they cannot be stated with any certainty or accuracy (and, more often than not, students that make this mistake won't know what 'reputed' means, so they either don't write it down OR if students are being lazy, they may only write "he's exceedingly rich/feeble" or even "rich/feeble", which goes back to my point about writing in full sentences above)
If the student in question had only written 4 things, and "he's exceedingly rich/feeble" accounted for two of them, they'd have limited themselves to half marks. Because they wrote 6 things down, they would hopefully still get full marks (even if I'm quietly furious about the lack of full sentences)
7. Deliberate Practice - SLOP
Having gone through the question stem, highlighting the focus, boxing and highlighting the text and writing out sentences in full, I will then get students to practice a few times using different texts: a technique I picked up from Adam Boxer called 'Shed Loads of Practice' or 'SLOP'. In order to do this, I have a set of 4-9 line extracts that I use in rapid succession, going through the answers under the visualiser each time. For their first attempt, I usually give them about 3-4 minutes but over the course of the lesson we try to get this down to under 2. By practicing in this way, students become really confident with this question but are also practicing those good habits: highlighting the line numbers and the focus of the question, highlighting the text, writing in full sentences and writing at least 6 things.
8. Look out for the killer sentence
Once we have practiced this a few times and students are familiar with the process, they will start to notice that some of the sentences that they write are worth more than 1 mark. In fact, there may be some sentences they write that will be worth 3 or 4 marks and this is great.
As an extra level of challenge, I will now ask students to look for a KILLER SENTENCE: one sentence in the nominated part of the text that would get them 3 or 4 marks if they just copied it down. e.g.
"The old man dwells all alone in a very ancient house on Water Street near the sea, and is reputed to be both exceedingly rich and exceedingly feeble;" (6 marks).
You'll be surprised by how desperate students will be to tell you that they've found it. They beat the system and got four marks for writing just one sentence! Clarity creates certainty. Certainty creates confidence.
9. Spend a whole lesson on it. But only one.
Generally speaking, I will use teaching Question 1 as an easy introduction to English Language Papers and in the course of the lesson, we might get through 8-10 different examples. However, I will also make sure to emphasise the importance of those key habits for every single attempt (highlighting, boxing and full sentences- no exceptions) because these are the things that I want to be carried over to the next lesson.
Once I have taught Question 1 for a full lesson, however, I probably won't visit it again until the final round of revisions (apart from perhaps a sentence to say "remember to write 6 things") because the 8-10 repetitions have drummed those habits into students enough that, alongside the reinforcement of skills through questions 2, 3 & 4, they will never fail to get 100% of the marks.
Question 1. 4 marks, 4 minutes. Clarity. Certainty. Confidence. Done.
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