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 2
In my last post, I covered the basics for Question 1 but was keen to note that there are certain habits that I want students to embed and use for other questions, namely: highlighting the focus of the question, drawing a box around the relevant parts of the text and highlighting key pieces of evidence.
As we move onto Question 2, these skills start to come into their own and the groundwork we have laid previously will now start to pay dividends.
Preach the value of the question stem and highlight the focus of the question.
All of the questions on the AQA English Language papers are worded in the same way. As we did with Question 1, it's worth being really explicit about this so that students know exactly what to expect in the exam. Clarity creates certainty. Certainty creates confidence.
So, to begin with, I will show students something like this:
Look in detail at this extract, from lines X to Y of the source:
How does the writer use language here to describe XXXXXXX
You could include the writer’s choice of:
• words and phrases
• language features and techniques
• sentence forms.
Then, as before, we will highlight the focus of the question and, when we are practicing, we will also put a box around the text. E.g:
Look in detail at this extract, from lines X to Y of the source:
How does the writer use language here to describe XXXXXXX
You could include the writer’s choice of:
• words and phrases
• language features and techniques
• sentence forms.
(Note: in the exam, the text for Paper 1, Question 2 will be provided for students within the answer paper itself and they won't need to put a box around it BUT, when we are practicing, I will generally hammer the point home and get them to put a box around the text anyway to build that 'boxing' habit).
2. Is the focus concrete or abstract?
The things that students are given to focus on for Question 2 can vary. Sometimes the focus will be concrete (e.g. 'the T-Rex' or 'the Hyena') and sometimes it will be abstract (e.g. 'Rosabel's bus journey home' or 'the relationship between Kino and the Scorpion').
Concrete foci are normally far easier for students to access, especially if they are low prior attaining or have poor literacy skills because there is a clear 'thing' that students can identify in the text. Abstract foci, like a 'journey' or a 'relationship' can be a bit confusing and.. well... abstract. For this reason, I often begin by showing students practice questions with a concrete focus and then introduce increasingly abstract foci once students are familiar with the skills they need to show.
Occasionally, you may also get a dual focus question but this is more likely to occur on Paper 2 (e.g. "how does the writer use language to describe the surfers and the sea?"). I will deal with this later on but, provided students follow the same steps, there is no reason why they can't attain equally well for any focus that they are given- but I always stagger the practice texts that I use to ease their cognitive load.
3. Highlight the relevant parts of the text.
Once students have identified the focus of the question, I then direct them to read through the text and highlight anything that is relevant to our understanding of what the question is focused on. Students should know that you always highlight important parts of the text.
For example:
Look in detail at this extract, from lines 5 to 13 of the source:
How does the writer use language here to describe the villagers
You could include the writer’s choice of:
• words and phrases
• language features and techniques
• sentence forms.
Harvest was their favourite time of year. Working round the clock, they gathered the best weeds that had grown in the swamp that season, bundled them onto donkey carts, and drove their bounty to the market town of Chipping Whippet, a five days’ ride, to sell what they could. It was difficult work. The swampweed was rough and tore their hands. The donkeys were ill-tempered and liked to bite. The road to market was pitted with holes and plagued by thieves. There were often grievous accidents, such as when Farmer Pullman, in a fit of overzealous harvesting, accidentally scythed off his neighbour’s leg. The neighbour, Farmer Hayworth, was understandably upset, but the villagers were such agreeable people that all was soon forgiven.
This then becomes:
Look in detail at this extract, from lines 5 to 13 of the source:
How does the writer use language here to describe the villagers
You could include the writer’s choice of:
• words and phrases
• language features and techniques
• sentence forms.
Harvest was their favourite time of year. Working round the clock, they gathered the best weeds that had grown in the swamp that season, bundled them onto donkey carts, and drove their bounty to the market town of Chipping Whippet, a five days’ ride, to sell what they could. It was difficult work. The swampweed was rough and tore their hands. The donkeys were ill-tempered and liked to bite. The road to market was pitted with holes and plagued by thieves. There were often grievous accidents, such as when Farmer Pullman, in a fit of overzealous harvesting, accidentally scythed off his neighbour’s leg. The neighbour, Farmer Hayworth, was understandably upset, but the villagers were such agreeable people that all was soon forgiven.
4. List initial impressions and use this as a checkpoint to CFU
At this stage, I will ask students to list their initial impressions of the focus underneath the extract. To begin with, your weaker students will often lift a concrete quotation directly from the text e.g. "agreeable people" and your really weak ones will usually take something from the very first line like "Harvest was their favourite time of year" or "they like the harvest".
My job is clearly to guide them towards making deeper inferences than this but I always get them to list these initial impressions because it creates something concrete that I can check.
To this end, I will often use a mini-whiteboard check at this point to make students' thinking visible. Something like:
"On your MWBs, write down what impression we get of the villagers. If we were asked to describe them to someone else, what might we say? The villagers are… what? [pause for writing time] show me in 3…2…1… show me [scan to check]"
If I see lots of boards that say "the villagers like the harvest" or "the villagers are agreeable" (very likely in the early stages), I know that I need to work on building up those inference skills. If I start to see things like "the villagers are hardworking" or even things like "the villagers are likeable/ we feel sorry for them" (which will hopefully happen after we've looked at 4-5-6 extracts), then I can tell that we are making progress.
5. Use tempered questions to build deeper inferences
In order to get students from surface level statements like "they like the harvest" to deeper inferences (i.e. not just what the text says but what it means or shows), I need to ask effective questions to elicit deeper thinking. I have tried modelling this explicitly and then getting students to follow my model with a new example but have found that this simply doesn't work. Questioning is the only thing I've done that has been effective- but be warned: it can sometimes feel like pulling teeth.
At the most basic level, I will start with getting students to translate the text into their own words, even if they are initially just using synonyms (e.g. 'favourite' means you love or treasure something and 'agreeable' means easy-going, happy, friendly, good-natured, amiable):
"If something is your "favourite" what does that mean? Put it into your own words?"
"What does "agreeable" mean? How would you put that into your own words?"
Using this, information, I will then get students to reformulate their ideas in a way that doesn't just repeat words from the text:
"If saying something is your 'favourite' means that you love or treasure it and the villagers feel that way about harvest time, how could we describe them? What sort of people love or treasure working 'round the clock'?"
"Now that we know what agreeable means, how can we use that information to describe the villagers without just repeating what it says in the text? The villagers are… what? Write it on your MWBs… [pause for writing time] show me in 3…2…1… show me [scan to check]"
Following this, I will then go more abstract, using concrete information in the text that contrasts with what we already know to develop further inferences (e.g. harvest was their favourite time of year but it was also difficult work = they are earnest, hardworking, passionate & driven). The use of this contrasting information is, I think, the key to this question (more on this later) but initially, these types of questions might look like this:
"It says the work is really difficult. It says 'the swamp weed was rough and tore their hands' but harvest is still their favourite? Why do you think they like the harvest so much if it's so hard?
or "If the harvest is really hard, what does it tell us about the villagers attitudes towards their work?"
OK, on your MWBs, what else can we now say about how the villagers are described? 'The villagers are…what?' [pause for writing time] Show me in 3…2…1…. show me [scan to check].
Finally, I will go deeper still and get students to think about how the writer wants us to feel about what is being described. First I will recap what we know and then build towards the deeper thinking:
OK, so we know that the villagers are really friendly and good-natured because it describes them as 'agreeable'. We know that they are really hardworking and passionate and driven because it says the harvest is their favourite time of year even though the work was difficult. How do you think the writer wants us to feel about the villagers overall? (here, depending on the group I might also give some options like 'Are they likeable or unlikeable? Does the writer want us to care about them or not? Does the writer want us to feel sorry for them at all?) On your MWBs, how do you think the writer wants us to feel about the villagers? The writer wants us to feel… what? [pause for writing time] Show me in 3…2…1 show me [scan to check]
and after each MWB check, I will get students to add to their notes on the page- what can they now add to their impressions of the focus of the question?
Some notes:
1) Even if your questioning and delivery is clear and on-point, these skills are still really hard for students to master. If students have poor underlying literacy levels then words like 'agreeable' might not be familiar to them, let alone their synonyms. You might have to grit your teeth and really guide them through your questioning sequences at first- but you have to stick with it, otherwise they will never get there. A good tip is to pre-empt the vocabulary you don't think students will know (e.g. 'agreeable') and have the definitions ready to hand. This isn't foolproof though- I have been surprised many times by what students do and do not already know.
2) For the same reasons as above, your accountability measures need to be tight: I use MWBs and have strict expectations about making sure every student writes something on their board to keep ratio high. No opting out. I need to know what they are thinking and not switching off just because it's challenging.
3) Whenever you venture into discussions about 'feelings' in relation to a text, try to frame them in the third person, especially with weaker students or groups. I use the phrase "how does the writer want us to.." and not "how do you.." for two reasons:
- 1. Directly asking students how they feel opens the door to responses like "I don't care", which is a legitimate answer to "how do you feel about the text?" but can also easily be avoided.
- 2. Plenty of students won't form an immediate connection with a text (for all sorts of reasons) and asking them to express a public and emotional response to it might push them further than they really want to go at this stage. They will resent you for it and it's counter-productive in the long run.
However, if you ask them "how does the writer want us to feel", statements like "I don't care" clearly aren't valid responses and you can hold students to account for this and students also don't feel committed to expressing any emotional attachment to some imaginary villagers that they have only just met. Instead, all they are telling you is the writer's intent (even if, in their view, the writer has failed miserably). Simple but effective.
6. Use the iceberg of metacognition to make it memorable
Once I have guided students through an example like the one above I will then employ the often used but highly effective metaphor of the iceberg to codify what we have just done (making sure that I am clear with students that the reason for using an iceberg is because icebergs have greater mass below the surface than above it…)
It's also a good idea to only introduce this once you have done a worked example: sometimes, if you give students an abstract concept before the example, if can create all kinds of weird misconceptions so I always give them the concrete example first and then attach this to an abstract concept.
For Paper 1, Question 2, it looks a bit like this:
On the surface (represented by an eye): what does the text actually say?
Below the surface (represented by a head/brain): what does this mean/ what implications does this have that aren't explicitly stated in the text?
Deeper still (represented by a heart): how does the writer want us to feel about what is being described?
To apply this to the villagers in our example, it will look something like this:
How does the writer use language to describe the villagers?
Surface (eye): Harvest was their favourite time of year. Working round the clock, they gathered the best weeds that had grown in the swamp that season….the work was difficult… The villagers were such agreeable people that all was soon forgiven.
Below the surface (head): The villagers are earnest, hardworking and driven. They are a close-knit community working towards a common goal.
Deeper still (heart): The villagers are amiable/likeable. The writer wants us to feel sympathetic towards them.
Clarity creates certainty. Certainty creates confidence.
7. Shed loads of Practice (SLOP)
Now that we have a clear methodology for our approach, much like we did for Question 1, we will practice these steps on a loop, using a series of texts to embed the skills fully. Practice (and practice and practice) makes permanent:
Eye: Read, box, highlight. What does the text say about the focus?
Head: Initial impressions: what does the text make us think about the focus?
MWB check/ update notes.
Questions to develop further
MWB check/ update notes
Heart: How does the writer want us to feel?
MWB check/ update notes
Show call/ share ideas from across the class.
Repeat with a new text.
…and then, when we are ready to move on, we will start to think about writing up our answers in full. More on this next time.
Some useful things:
Need some resources for this question? find some here.
For more info on using MWBs see here: https://tipsforteachers.co.uk/mini-whiteboards/
For more on how to keep ratio high see here: https://achemicalorthodoxy.co.uk/2022/12/14/the-ratio-lens/
Have questions?
Ask them in the comments below:
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