Of Mice and Men: A Whole Scheme

As a new teacher, there can be no greater gift than the opportunity to teach Of Mice and Men. Resources are plentiful, the internet and teaching guides are awash with ideas and approaches to the text, the book is reassuringly short and the whole enterprise seems so much more manageable than starting with something like Mockingbird or Lord of the Flies.

I've been using the novella with two different classes. My Y10s have been treated to some whizz-bang lessons with Aloe Blacc and O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtracks, a lesson on the etymology of the N-word (and its alleged re-appropriation), hot-seating, a whole lesson about a punctuation mark (Curley's wife's apostrophe) and an hour spent analysing and writing about the word 'tart'. They seem to be really enjoying it, and i have really enjoyed studying it with them. Their work has been bloody good too.

My Y9s, on the other hand, have struggled slightly. They are very low-ability and, while they love the story, a change in focus and curriculum at my school means that they are relatively inexperienced in studying literature in this way. I am delighted that language is no longer seen as more important, but hamstrung by their lack of familiarity with whole text work. With this in mind, I wrote an entirely new SoW for them which focuses very much on cementing their understanding of the plot and context. Further down the line we'll return to OMAM and concentrate more closely on themes, structure and subtleties which, at the moment, are a little lost on them.

It’s a scheme which is heavily scaffolded in the beginning, becoming less so as it progresses. There is an early assessment point, followed by an end of unit assessment built in to the planning. Each lesson has a discussion based starter.  There are questions interleaved throughout, designed to constantly recap information relevant to the chapters of study. Each lesson ends in a writing task. These are heavily scaffolded initially, with that scaffold being gradually removed as the unit continues, hopefully leading to some strong independent writing in time for the final assessment (which focuses on George). It uses a made-up mark scheme which is kind of a hybrid of Extended Reading and Lit, but you could mark it any way you wanted, really. There’s a sample essay which is not designed to be brilliant, so please don’t tear it apart!

The whole unit is based on an abridged version of the text, but could easily be used with the novella. Individual chapters could be printed for annotation or closer study, the whole booklet could be printed as revision resources, or pupils could be given it at the start of the unit and asked to keep notes on it throughout. It would be really simple to differentiate the scheme for more able classes. It takes 24 lessons to deliver, including assessments.

Hopefully you’ll find something useful here. Please ask if you have any questions.

Rob @PGCEng

All the resources for the Of Mice and Men scheme are available here. If you don't have Google docs, DM me your email address and i'll share a DropBox link.

This scheme was inspired by a blog by Joe Kirby. Follow the link for his views on planning a ‘knowledge unit’ on Oliver Twist and Greek Myths.

Samsara

As i'm sure many teachers do, i spend inordinate amounts of looking around for inspirational lesson ideas and wondering how i can transform everyday instances from my life into whizz-bang lessons which link learning with experience in a truly memorable form. Today, i watched a film which did that around 25 times in 100 minutes.

That film was Samsara, an extraordinarily visual documentary crammed with evocative images, eery sequences and arresting ideas. It's a documentary with no dialogue whatsoever. Instead, music links individual scenes from around the world which show everything from religous worship to factory assembly lines to massed martial arts demonstrations. Shot on 70mm film over a period of five years, it's a striking and thought-provoking piece which could have dozens of applications for educationalists.

Often the film's focus is on juxtaposing growth/decay, wonder/disgust, life/death, etc. That's a lesson in itself, illustrating perfectly why juxtaposition works and setting the wheels in motion for some original writing. There are also some wonderful characters whose stories could be explored, amazing landscapes and vistas to inspire writing on setting and some excellent sequences to inspire debate on issues such as vegetarianism and/or animal cruelty.

There's plenty here for teachers of other subjects too: Geography, RE and Citizenship could all draw heavily on passages and scenes of natural phemonena, the nature of devotion and numerous moral issues. Each scene is only a few minutes long too - there's no need to lose half a lesson to showing a clip.

Of course, it'll be a while before Shantaram appears on DVD, but the moment it does i'll be buying a copy. The value of the moving image is huge and it's rarely been captured so beautifully or powerfully. And it beats jerkily buffered YouTube clips any day.

Blogger won't let me embed the trailer here for some reason, so click HERE to go somewhere else and watch it instead!

Give: Flying Solo

Simon Armitage is far and away my favourite poet. His working class 'northerness' appeals hugely, his down-to-earth style and witty readings are right up my alley and he lives down the road. The Not Dead is my favourite collection of poems ever and, as an added bonus, the majority of the kids i've taught are similarly enchanted by Armitage.

Without having yet begun my PGCE, i've been reading extensively and voraciously, desperately trying to absolve as much knowledge as possible about teaching before putting it into practice on my placements. Probably the most useful blog i've discovered is Jill Lavender's fledgling effort, which has provided much food for thought and some extremely detailed and innovative lesson ideas. I'll continue to follow Jill carefully - she's bloody lovely as well as being bloody talented.

David Didau's Learning Spy blog and excellent book have also been inspirational - not least his advocating of SOLO taxonomy: a useful and extremely user friendly way of structuring lessons, objectives and questioning designed to help pupils understand their own progress and how to achieve further.

I'd already planned and taught a pair of lessons on Give in my previous role as a TA, but having seen Jill's brilliant lesson plan based on Solo taxonomy, i immediately re-worked and re-wrote it so as to steal/incorporate her brilliant ideas. What follows is an combination of her plan and mine (weighted in favour of the former) perhaps a little more suited to a less experienced practioner.

Give Lesson Plan
Give Powerpoint Slides

Massive thanks to Jill Lavender, obviously. As always, feedback would be warmly welcomed.

We Are Poets

"Poetry is dead, man."

It's a refrain I've heard a number of times in school and one which, on occasion, I've almost been tempted to agree with. I've seen poetry taught terribly to totally uninterested classes failing completely to engage with or understand the text.

When I've taught poetry myself, I've used Sir Chris Hoy, Drop Dead Fred and the Sex Pistols to enliven and enrich my lessons and, by and large, have left classes enthused and with the feeling that poetry really is something which speaks to them. John Cooper Clarke and the amazing John Agard are also powerful poetic weapons for a teacher to have in their arsenal - who could fail to be impressed by the latter's amazing rendition of The Charge of the Light Brigade?

Now, though, I have something stronger, more relevant, more empowering, inspiring and impassioned: We Are Poets.

The story of six youngsters from Leeds taking on the best youth poets in a global slam event is one of the most powerful documentaries I've ever seen. Filmed on the streets where I live and starring kids who remind me of students at my school, it has a huge personal resonance and relevance for me. More than that, it gives poetry and the spoken word back to the people it belongs to.

The six poets are selected from Leeds Young Authors, an amazing project promoting community and cultural awareness through literature. None of the group are 'academic' in the traditional sense. None of them are white, nor middle class. All of them, however, are truly gifted poets, using the spoken word to explore and illuminate the very real problems they experience on the streets of Leeds: racism, knife crime, relationships, absent fathers.

The portraits of the poets which preface the competition are magnificent introductions to them. Their stories of broken family backgrounds, conflicting feelings over their mixed-race parentage and mistreatment at the hands of Islamaphobes and racists speak loudly to the audience - and directly to a typically mixed race English class. These experiences influence their poetry markedly- and offer an amazing opportunity to use the film in your classroom to examine poets' motives and writing processes.

The passion of all involved on the slam itself has to be seen to be believed. Kids from every race, background and culture compete for perfect ratings from their peers in an intense battle which prizes the delivery of the poems as much as their content. It's a reminder that poetry arose as an oral tradition - and one which makes direct links to acting, rapping and performing.

Most important of all, however, is just how relevant these brave and brilliant youngsters make poetry seem. They use it as social comment, argument and rhetoric, to explore issues which affect young people today and to explore their own lives and cultures - and prove beyond doubt that poetry is as relevant and powerful today as it ever has been. I cannot think of a better way of enthusing children about poetry than getting these talented people into your classrooms. Now!

Unfortunately i've been unable to embed a video of the film into this blog, but you can view the utterly amazing opening sequence of We Are Poets  by clicking here. It's stunning and features Joseph Buckley's gorgeous poetry set over stunning cityscapes of Leeds.


To request a screening and a visit, email contact@wearepoets.co.uk or follow them on Twitter @WeArePoets

The River God Personified

Another of my poetry lesson plans, this time a two parter on Stevie Smith's creepy The River God. The first lesson focuses on personification, its uses and advantages.  The Powerpoint and starter activity will need adapting to your purposes - but doing so should be fun and a good excuse to do something creative in the classroom.

I took this photo. I love it.

Armed with that knowledge, the pupils will be better positioned to tackle lesson two - which focuses on how Smith uses the technique in her poem. There's a lot in here - it might be optimistic to think it could all be done in one lesson - a pick n mix approach might be best. The handout borrows heavily (blatantly plagiarises/cuts and pastes) from the TES Resources material on The River God which is excellent.

Personification/The River God Lesson Plans
Personification/The River God Lesson Handout
Personification/The River God Lesson Powerpoint Slides

Metaphor and Medusa

This post follows An Intro To Everyday Metaphor, in which I outlined my belief that teaching simile/metaphor was pretty pointless unless students understood just how ubiquitous such figurative language was. The lesson included in that blog was designed as a precursor to the two included here.

The first lesson is an introduction to metaphor in poetry, drawing heavily on two poems from the Relationships cluster of Moon on the Tides: Praise Song for My Mother and Nettles. It obviously makes sense to use poems from the anthology - not least because they're both so rich in metaphorical language relevant to young people growing up. The lesson is designed to encourage pupils to interpret and react to the poems themselves - a part of poetry teaching i've seen disregarded far too often.

Metaphor In Poetry Lesson Plan

Praise Song for My Mother Handout

Nettles Handout

Accompanying Slides (these are not a necessity)

The second lesson focuses on Carol Ann Duffy's Medusa. It asks the pupils to analyse the poem's use of metaphor, their effectiveness and whether or not Duffy uses Medusa as an extended metaphor or whether she is writing in her voice - there's a task asking the pupils to re-write parts of the poem with no figurative language at all. Hopefully this will help them arrive at a conclusion by demonstrating the strength of Duffy's technique.

Metaphor In Medusa Lesson Plan
An Autopsy of Medusa
Accompanying Slides (these are not a necessity)

As always, i would welcome any constructive feedback. I'm reading voraciously and taking advice from various sources on how to improve my planning - hopefully by the time September comes around i'll have absorbed oodles of useful hints and tips and be thinking and preparing on autopilot!

An Intro To Everyday Metaphor

I've just started reading James Geary's I Is An Other, a magnificent book about the power and prevalence of metaphor. Surprisingly, he believes we use around six metaphors a minute - some of which are obvious, some of which are the skeletal remains metaphors which have become so commonplace as to be invisible. It's a fascinating book and excellent reading for anyone with an interest in language.

For me, it has proved inspirational. I've never seen metaphor taught as anything other than a literary device - and often this teaching has been dry and prosaic. Surely it would be better to give students a grounding in the everyday nature of metaphor before examining literary applications for it? If they realise how often metaphor is used in their daily lives - and by themselves - surely they'll be far better placed to understand it a more academic sense.

With that in mind, i've designed a quickfire whizz through everyday metaphor which references Elvis Presley, Andy Carroll, Australian weather forecasters, the human skeleton and, obviously, young Romeo of Verona. As usual, it's not gonna be perfect - i'm only a learner myself. But the activities, questions and ideas in this plan can be adapted and modified to your own purposes.

I'd anticipate the lesson taking an hour and the Powerpoint slides are not necessary at all unless you enjoy a little visual stimulus (or just like gazing at Elvis).

An Intro to Everyday Metaphor Plan
An Intro to Everyday Metaphor Handout
An Intro to Everyday Metaphor Slides

Singh Song by Daljit Nagra

During my time as a TA, I saw poetry taught very badly, very often. Two 'old school' teachers I observed seemed to believe the hallmark of good poetry teaching was ensuring that pupils had reams and reams of notes scrawled all over their texts - regardless of whether they understood them or not. I hated this approach - it amounted to little more than dictation and encouraged little thought, analysis or interpretation. Wherever possible, I would step in by offering to teach the lesson or by interjecting vociferously. Thankfully, the teachers encouraged this and the pupils seemed to enjoy it. Hopefully they learned something, too.

So now, despite having not yet started my PGCE, I'm bravely putting my lesson on Daljit Nagra's 'Singh Song' online. I focused on how Nagra created the character of Singh through language. Hopefully some of you will like it and use some of the ideas within.

Following some fantastic feedback from the Twitter community (much of which is in the comments section below), this plan has been revamped and reconfigured in an attempt to make better use of learning objectives, assessment and structured questioning. It's quite different to before - and hopefully much improved!

Click the links to download the plan, accompanying Powerpoint slides and handouts. All of these can be downloaded as regular documents or PDF files.

Singh Song: Creating Characters Through Language
Sing Song: Powerpoint Slides
Singh Song: Extracts Handout
Singh Song: Standard English Handout


Thanks to everyone who offered advice - it's much appreciated!

Why Bother With My PGCE, Mr Gove?

Once again, and to nobody’s great surprise, Michael Gove has announced another ill-considered and absurd attack on the nation’s teachers. Now, in his infinite wisdom he has declared that anyone can teach in his academies without a relevant teaching qualification. Mere life experience and expertise will be enough. But where does this leave me as I prepare to embark on my PGCE year?

Firstly, I concede that experience and expertise are important. I’m almost 33 years old and have plenty of ‘life experience’ (I actually cringed as I wrote that) and relevant work experience having performed various training, coaching and management jobs over a varied career. More important than any of that, however, is the two years I’ve just spent working in a school. With young people. And teachers. And a national curriculum.

Assuming that being a genius in your field enables you to teach is plainly wrong. It’s the same wrong-headed attitude that sees those with first class honours degrees awarded three times the training salaries of their 2:1 toting contemporaries. The misguided assumption is that the better you are at something, the better you’ll be able to transfer that knowledge to your young charges. Anyone with opposable thumbs and a modicum of commonsense could point out that this is utter horseshit. The way that message is conveyed, the ability to relate to young people and making that learning memorable so that it sticks is what’s important. You don’t need to know string theory to teach kids GCSE physics. But you do need to inspire them and interest them in the subject – knowledge alone is not enough.

Without having yet embarked upon my course, I know that I’ll spend hours observing existing teachers, taking their advice, looking at the theory behind education and managing a classroom, coping with different behaviours, differentiating by task and outcome, setting learning objectives, continually assessing my students, applying my subject knowledge to the syllabus and correcting any gaps or weaknesses, absorbing the atmosphere of a school and countless other tasks, exercises and activities designed to raise my skill levels and my pupils’ attainment. Presumably Gove sees no value in any of this, instead preferring to assume that my knowledge of my subject will seep by osmosis into every child I come into contact with? 

I took a huge risk to leave a well paid career behind and work as a teaching assistant for two years (scraping by on less than £8000 a year). I’m now committed to a further year of study which will cost me £9000 in fees and will see my existing student loan debt swell beyond comprehension. I did these things because I needed to do them to follow this path, because I felt they would put me ahead of my contemporaries and because they were requirements of the job. I made sacrifices that I deemed to be worthwhile because I really, really want to teach English.

Now, it seems I may have wasted my time. I could’ve wandered into one of Gove’s academies, given a whizz-bang interview and been hired thanks largely to my charisma and fancy-talk. Of course, as soon as I entered a classroom full of kids who weren’t interested in me and didn’t share my enthusiasm for Simon Armitage and subordinate clauses, I’d have been up Excrement Creek without the required rowing implement. 

What Gove stupidly assumes is that anyone can wander into a classroom and teach. They can’t. It is an art, a skill and a profession. Teachers are not knowledge-boxes to be tapped. Kids have got Wikipedia for that. They are not lecturers or key-note speakers. I’ve spent two years sitting in English lessons, have taught plenty of my own and have read dozens of highly regarded books on the art of teaching. But I am not a teacher. I am not ready to be one yet. I cannot do the job properly until I have been trained appropriately. For Gove to assume that just anyone can walk in from whatever sphere, and can do this complicated, demanding job is an insult to all educators, prospective teachers and, worst of all, our children.