Notices
NTUNOW
Sconul
RJA1
Visits
Teach First Subjects
1. Motivating to write - strategies
2. Primary level English
3. Assessing Progress in English
4. Reading the whole novel – getting them to
5. Teaching sentences
Learning Outcomes of Day
‘I must write, I must write at all
costs. For writing is more than living,
it is being conscious of living’
Anne Morrow Lindbergh, cited in McCormick Calkins, 1989: 3
Percentages
I can’t make the pupils write.
I tell them to write and they won’t.
They don’t know how to write properly.
They need to to pass exams.
If they don’t pass exams then I will get in trouble.
Pedagogy
I want to be an English teacher because...
What do you love?
Five Ways to Kill a Man
There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.
You can make him carry a plank of wood
to the top of a hill and nail him to it.
To do this properly you require a crowd of people
wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak
to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
man to hammer the nails home.
Or you can take a length of steel,
shaped and chased in a traditional way,
and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.
But for this you need white horses,
English trees, men with bows and arrows,
at least two flags, a prince, and a
castle to hold your banquet in.
Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind
allows, blow gas at him. But then you need
a mile of mud sliced through with ditches,
not to mention black boots, bomb craters,
more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs
and some round hats made of steel.
In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly
miles above your victim and dispose of him by
pressing one small switch. All you then
require is an ocean to separate you, two
systems of government, a nation's scientists,
several factories, a psychopath and
land that no-one needs for several years.
These are, as I began, cumbersome ways to kill a man.
Simpler, direct, and much more neat is to see
that he is living somewhere in the middle
of the twentieth century, and leave him there.
What has worked for you in motivating to write?
Getting the buggers to write
Give them a reason
Create the right atmosphere
Ensure correct behaviour
Make writing fun
Use ‘warm ups’
Keep it topical
Group tasks in writing
Challenge them
Remove the stress
Remove the blocks
Offer a reward
Show writing is relevant
Show writing is important
Show your writing
Be an inspiration
1
Remove the stress
Remove the blocks
Role play in pairs
One is the child
One is the teacher
My father died when I was three but my
sister was twelve and my brother, ten.
When I see pictures of him holding me, it’s
like he is a stranger. In the same picture is
my brother and sister only they knew him
well. They never talk about him except to
say, “You would have liked him.” When I
see other kids with their fathers, I wonder
what it would be like to be his daughter
Pp125-6
The Art of Teaching Writing, Lucy McCormick Calkins,
1989, Heinemann: Portsmouth USA
The girl is sad
She has no friends
‘Instead of thinking honestly and deeply about why
students have learned to dislike writing, we rush
about, pushing, luring, encouraging, motivating,
stimulating, bribing, requiring...
The bitter irony is that we, in schools, set up
roadblocks to stifle the natural and enduring reasons
for writing, and then we complain that children don’t
want to write’
McCormick Calkins, 1989: 4
Demotivated – writing not good
Scared – criticism
Bored – writing does nothing
Rebellion – won’t do what teacher wants
2
Give them a reason to write
Show writing is relevant
Show writing is important
Why do we read?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJA2CZdd3Bc&feature=related
Why do we write?
To be surprised.
The writer sits down intending to say one thing and
hears the writer saying something more, or less, or
completely different. The writing surprises, instructs,
receives, questions, tells its own story, and the writer
becomes the reader wondering what will happen next
To understand
‘We write because we want to understand our lives’
McCormick Calkins, 1989: 3
There is no plot line in the bewildering
complexity of our lives but that which we
make and find for ourselves...Writing allows
us to turn the chaos into something beautiful,
to frame selected moments of our lives, to
uncover and to celebrate the organizing
patterns of our existence’
‘It is during adolescence that we have a
special need to understand our lives’
McCormick Calkins, 1989: 106
Creation
‘Writing is but a line which creeps across the page,
exposing as it goes all the writer does not know...writing
puts us on the line and we don’t want to be there’
Shaughnessy, 1977: 7 cited in McCormick Calkins, 1989: 106
Expression
Sometimes when I’ve had a really tough day and
nothing seems to be going right, I think, ‘nothing is
mine.’ Well, my writing is. I can write is any way I want
to. You know how your mother can tell you, ‘Go up to
your bed right now.’ Nobody can tell you how to write
your piece. You’re the mother of your story
Cited in McCormick Calkins, 1989: 6
LISTEN
Express passions
Teaching writing begins with recognition
that each individual comes to the writing
workshop with concerns, ideas, memories,
and feelings. Our job as teachers is to
listen and to help them listen. “What are
the things you know and care about?” I ask
writers
McCormick Calkins, 1989: 5
It is not my piece of writing. It belongs to someone else
McCormick Calkins, 1989: 120
Blog
3
Create the right atmosphere
Ensure correct behaviour
Recap
Action-consequences
Relationships
Happens at the start
Rule-praise-ignore
Collaborate on rules
Be polite – model
Treat pupils as people
4
Group tasks in writing
COLLABORATION
Peer conferences
Writer reads aloud
Listeners respond perhaps with questions
The group asks and helps with what happens next
McCormick Calkins, 1989: 129-132
Read, watch and write.
ENCOURAGE MULTILITERACY
Class andGender
Gender
Around 50% of low achievers are white British males
Boys are 30% more likely to be low achievers as girls
http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/2095.asp
Ethnicity
http://www.poverty.org.uk/15/index.shtml?2
His door was open, but I sort of knocked on it anyway, just to be polite and all. I could see where he was sitting. He was sitting in a
big leather chair, all wrapped up in that blanket I just told you about. He looked over at me when I knocked. "Who's that?" he yelled.
"Caulfield? Come in, boy." He was always yelling, outside class. It got on your nerves sometimes.
The minute I went in, I was sort of sorry I'd come. He was reading the Atlantic Monthly, and there were pills and medicine all over the
place, and everything smelled like Vicks Nose Drops. It was pretty depressing. I'm not too crazy about sick people, anyway. What
made it even more depressing, old Spencer had on this very sad, ratty old bathrobe that he was probably born in or something. I
don't much like to see old guys in their pajamas and bathrobes anyway. Their bumpy old chests are always showing. And their legs.
Old guys' legs, at beaches and places, always look so white and unhairy. "Hello, sir," I said. "I got your note. Thanks a lot." He'd
written me this note asking me to stop by and say good-by before vacation started, on account of I wasn't coming back. "You didn't
have to do all that. I'd have come over to say good-by anyway."
"Have a seat there, boy," old Spencer said. He meant the bed.
I sat down on it. "How's your grippe, sir?"
"M'boy, if I felt any better I'd have to send for the doctor," old Spencer said. That knocked him out. He started chuckling like a
madman. Then he finally straightened himself out and said, "Why aren't you down at the game? I thought this was the day of the big
game."
"It is. I was. Only, I just got back from New York with the fencing team," I said. Boy, his bed was like a rock.
He started getting serious as hell. I knew he would. "So you're leaving us, eh?" he said.
"Yes, sir. I guess I am."
He started going into this nodding routine. You never saw anybody nod as much in your life as old Spencer did. You never knew if he
was nodding a lot because he was thinking and all, or just because he was a nice old guy that didn't know his ass from his elbow.
"What did Dr. Thurmer say to you, boy? I understand you had quite a little chat."
"Yes, we did. We really did. I was in his office for around two hours, I guess."
"What'd he say to you?"
"Oh. . . well, about Life being a game and all. And how you should play it according to the rules. He was pretty nice about it. I mean
he didn't hit the ceiling or anything. He just kept talking about Life being a game and all. You know."
"Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules."
"Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it."
Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right--I'll admit that. But if you get
on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game.
Some say life is like a game and it is - some
start on 1 and others on six and some have to
throw a six before they start and they’ve lost
already
Timothy Winters
Timothy Winters comes to school
With eyes as wide as a football-pool,
Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters:
A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters.
His belly is white, his neck is dark,
And his hair is an exclamation-mark.
His clothes are enough to scare a crow
And through his britches the blue winds blow.
When teacher talks he won’t hear a word
And he shoots down dead the arithmetic bird,
He licks the patterns off his plate
And he’s not even heard of the Welfare State.
Timothy Winters has bloody feet
And he lives in a house on Suez Street,
He sleeps in a sack on the kitchen floor
And they say there aren’t boys like him any more.
Old Man Winters likes his beer
And his missus ran off with a bombardier,
Grandma sits in the grate with a gin
And Timothy’s dosed with an aspirin.
The Welfare Worker lies awake
But the law’s as tricky as a ten-foot snake,
So Timothy Winters drinks his cup
And slowly goes on growing up.
At Morning Prayers the Master helves
For children less fortunate than ourselves,
And the loudest response in the room is when
Timothy Winters roars ‘Amen!’
So come one angel, come on ten:
Timothy Winters says ‘Amen’
Amen amen amen amen.’
Timothy Winters , Lord.
Amen
The Choosing
We were first equal Mary and I
with the same coloured ribbons in mouse-coloured
hair,
and with equal shyness
we curtseyed to the lady councillor
for copies of Collins’s Children Classics.
First equal, equally proud.
Best friends too Mary and I
a common bond in being cleverest(equal)
in our small school’s small class.
I remember
the competition for top desk
or to read aloud the lesson
at school service.
And my terrible fear
of her superiority at sums.
I remember the housing scheme
Where we both stayed.
The same house, different homes,
where the choices were made.
I don’t know exactly why they moved,
but anyway they went.
Something about a three-apartment
and a cheaper rent.
But from the top deck of the high school bus
I’d glimpse
among the others on the corner
Mary’s father, mufflered, contrasting strangely
with the elegant greyhounds by his side.
He didn’t believe in high school education,
especially for girls,
or in forking out for uniforms.
Ten years later on a SaturdayI am coming home from the librarysitting near me on the bus,
Mary
with a husband who is tall,
curly haired, has eyes for no one else but Mary.
Her arms are round the full-shaped vase
that is her body.
Oh, you can see where the attraction lies
in Mary’s lifenot that I envy her, really.
And I am coming from the library
with my arms full of books.
I think of the prizes
that were ours for the taking
and wonder when the choices got made
we don’t remember making
Ideology
Discourse
Labelling
Ideology?
Norms and values
Contained in a culture (trapped in time and space)
a way of seeing ‘reality’
Gives power to some and takes from others.
Awareness
‘Ideology is how the existing ensemble of social
relations represents itself to individuals; it is the image
a society gives of itself in order to perpetuate itself.
These representations serve to constrain us … they
establish fixed places for us to occupy’
Bill Nichols Ideology and the Image (1981) Indiana University Press p.1
‘Ideology operates as a constraint, limiting us to certain
places or positions’
Nichols p.1
The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate
Ideological State Apparatuses
•Education
•Media
•Family
•Government
•Law
Louis Althusser
Ideology is in stories
The prince is a figment of our
boring legend, he is the gravity
her sleep-ship may escape
from. Dressed in a red shift,
she’s always a world ahead of
his weight’
Dorman, 1978, 55
Texts are not transparent objects; they are highly
coercive linguistic strategies, positioning readers
in particular ways which have nothing to do with
encouraging individuality and everything to do
with reproducing a particular social formation’
Cranny Francis, 1993: p.98
Crash
letter
Michel Foucault
Discourse
THE POSITIONS TO WHICH WE ARE SUMMONED
The discourse is always chosen - played with…
BUT
...if we refuse the expected discourse we will be outside of society
class
age group
ethnicity
gender
interpellation
Louis Althusser
Why Does Jeezy
Oh No not Steely Dan
James Gee
‘Gee argued that when we try to understand a
person’s language-in-use, or discourse, we not
only pay attention to the accent intonation and
speech style of that person among other things,
but also we pay attention to that person’s style of
clothing, gesture and bodily movements. He
calls language-in-use discourse’
Pahl and Rowsell, 2005: 16
Stereotyping
‘A stereotype is the product of social construction,
growing from group relations; an individual is assigned
to a group and the supposed attributes of that group are
applied to that individual’
Stuart Price, The Complete Media and Communication Handbook, 1997, London: Hodder and Stoughton, p.219
We stereotype ourselves by
putting ourselves in discourses
‘Guys have been cheated by this society…the fact that men are supposed
to be stiff…they have to show their armoured self to the world all the time.
Having to do that hurts them as much as it hurts everyone else’
Susan Faludi, 1999, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the Modern Man, London: Chatto and Windus, cited in Gauntlett, 2002, Media Gender and Identity, London: Routledge, p.4
Teen Discourse Challenge
Place these into a sentence:
404
Cotch
Dope
Fomo
MySpace
Munch
EG
BORN MALE
AGE-25-35
WORKING CLASS
NORTHERN
Labelling
What lies behind the way we structure the
world is, ‘not directly available to the
senses … non observable … unconscious’
Strinati D 1995 An introduction to theories of popular culture London:
Routledge p96
Who is ‘black’?
DEATH
TROUBLE
EVIL
BAD
I waz whitemailed
By a white witch,
Wid white magic
An white lies,
Branded a white sheep
I slaved as a whitesmith
Near a white spot
Where I suffered whitewater fever.
Whitelisted as a whiteleg
I waz in de white book
As a master of white art,
It waz like white death.
People called me white jack
Some hailed me as a white wog,
So I joined de white watch
Trained as a white guard
Lived off the white economy.
Caught and beaten by de whiteshirts
I waz condemned to a white mass,
Don’t worry,
I shall be writing to de Black House.
Solutions
•Awareness (demystification) can change and this changes the
power-base
•No privileged discourses - ‘pluricultural’
•Move from teacher-awareness to student awareness of the issue:
http://www.ricw.ri.gov/publications/GEH/college.htm
Multiliteracy Approach
Solutions
Multiliteracy Pedagogy
1. Pupil is intelligent, imaginative, linguistically talented
2. Acknowledges (celebrates) linguistic capital
3. Identity texts – sharing of the literacies that form their identity
Solutions
Practical Examples
Reverse ideologies
Red Riding Hood – the wolf’s tale
Practical Princess
Rap Hamlet
Teen speak Dickens
Present Diwali speech as done in temple
Creole poetry
RnB magazines/web-sites
Dialect books (eg Kes) and stories
Remember....the spirit of the literacy event is needed. Don’t
anglicise or standardise the presentation. Eg Jeezy
Writing in Stages
How do we acquire language?
Nobody knows
What do you know?
Infans - ‘not speaking’
‘the neurons of the newborn are relatively unorganised
and unspecified. Over time, the child begins to construct
auditory maps from the phonemes heard in the
environment. Sounds must be heard thousands of times
before neurons are assigned. Eventually, different
clusters of neurons will respond to each phoneme, firing
when that phoneme is heard.’
Owens, 2001: 134
Phonemes - name
•Phonemes collect in morphemes
•Morphemes make words
•Words are signs
•Signs have meaning
Words gather in schemata
True False timed
a robin is a robin
a robin is a bird
a robin is an animal
a robin is a fish
a robin has a red breast
a robin has wings
a robin has lungs
‘as new stimuli are received, the
…person..tries to fit this information into
existing schemes’
Owens, 2001: 137
Constructivism
New learning
Existing concepts,
knowledge and
experience
Geoff Petty
http://learning.media.mit.edu/content/public
ations/EA.Piaget%20_%20Papert.pdf
What is language?
What might be in the schemas for the following?
Thyme
Tesco
Pizza Hut
oak
Robert De Niro
Paris Hilton
Paris
Sony
Theories of language…..
How do we understand?
My name is….
I believe language…
My name is….
I believe language…
My name is….
I believe language…
My name is….
I believe language…
My name is….
I believe language…
My name is….
I believe language…
My name is….
I believe language…
My name is….
I believe language…
My name is….
I believe language…
Jean Piaget
Stages of language development. If not done then problems emerge
constructivism
stages
1. Sounds
Stages of Language Development
Crying Cooing
0
Babbling
6-8 months
Intonation Patterns
8-12 months
1-word utterances
1 year
2-word utterances
2 years
Questions and negatives
2.25 years
Rare or complex constructions
5 years
Mature speech
10 years
What
Neurology
is language?
Brain size
% of adult
Birth - 25
6 months - 50
12 months - 70
24 months - 80
5 years - 90
12 years - 100
13
Chomsky
Pinker - ‘a visiting Martian would surely conclude that aside their
mutually unintelligible vocabularies, Earthlings speak a single language’
Pinker, 1994: p.232 cited in Harley, p.100
Universals - syntax, semantics, phonology, creation
Child: Nobody don’t like me
(Mother: No, say ‘nobody likes me’
Child: nobody don’t like me) X 8
Mother: No, now listen carefully: say ‘nobody likes me’
Child: Oh! Nobody don’t likes me
‘The child, at this point in its learning grammar, was clearly not ready to use the
‘single negative’…Such examples suggest that language acquisition is more a matter
of maturation than imitation’
Crystal, 1992: p.234
‘ask Jabbe if the boy who is unhappy is watching Mickey Mouse’
say tur
tur
say tle
tle
say turtle
kurka
mama isn’t a boy he a girl
that’s right
18-24 months - ‘grammar explosion’
‘Colourless green ideas sleep furiously’ Chomsky
Jaberwocky
The Examiner: 1-6 months
responds to human voice
distinguishes sounds
coos vowel sounds
turns head to voice
responds vocally to voice
babbles
smiles at speaker
responds to name
varies prosody
plays peepo
discriminate phonemes owens 152
sucking
rooting -finger into cheek
blinking at flashing light
crying
coughing
sneezing
The Experimenter: 6-12 months
recognises some words inc name
imitates sounds
learns ‘no’
Follows simple cues such as bye bye
1-2 years
goes from 4-300 word vocabulary
makes short incomplete sentences
prepositions (in, on etc)
pronouns
verb endings (s, ed, ing)
determiner noun - e.g. my teddy,
noun-verb - e.g. teddy goes
verb indirect noun - e.g. look there
adjective noun - e.g. red car
Emily, age 2 -monologue, alone
talking to doll (baby)
baby no in night
cause baby crying
baby in might
baby in might
my baby no in my car
my baby in my
baby no eat supper in in in this
no eat broccoli no
so my baby have dinner
then baby get sick
baby no eat dinner
broccoli broccoli soup cabbage carrots
no baby sleeping
so why baby eat
then baby get sick
Emmy no eat dinner
broccoli soup cause
no baby sleeping
baby sleeping all night
Nelson, 1989: p.158 cited in Blake and Moorhead, 1993:
p.46
3-5 years
300 to 1200 words
recounts stories
understands questions about the
environment
90% grammar acquisition
asks many, many questions
Age 6
24,000 word reception
2,600 vocabulary
Age 8
talks a lot
brags a lot
compares
Age 12
50,000 word receptive vocabulary
adult-like
JABBERWOCKY
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought -So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
2. Syntactic Blocks
Syntactic Blocks
BOOK
GIVES
A
SLEEPS
NILE
BOY
GIRL
STUDENT
THE
MALEVOLENCE
A
SLAVERY
TO
ORGANISE
PARSNIP
SEETHE
THE BOY (GIRL/STUDENT) GIVES A BOOK (PARSNIP) TO A GIRL (BOY/STUDENT)
ARTICLE NOUN VERB ARTICLE NOUN VERB PREPOSITION NOUN
‘round’
noun
verb
preposition
adjective
adverb
The pretty girl in my class can sing and dance beautifully
A ADJ N PRE (PRO)N N (AUX) V V CON V ADV
NOUN PHRASES
The father-of-fourteen,
thrice-married,
Malvern-based blind
prisoner
Jesus
VERB PHRASES
won Saturday’s rollover
lottery £14 million
jackpot
wept
3. Hypothesise and Create
Vygotsky
speech and thought separate up to 3 years old
3 onwards thought is shaped by language.
Whorf
Language determines thought - linguistic determinism -language
determines how we think
figure 3.7 p.83 language and thought Harley
Newspeak: ‘This statement could not have been sustained by
reasoned argument because the necessary words were not available’
Appendix 1984 cited in Harley p.80
Halliday
function first
what is it that the child is making the speech sound do for her/him?
The Functions of Language
instrumental - I want
regulatory - do it
interactional - hello
personal - uniqueness that’s funny
heuristic - explore environment what’s that
imaginative - let’s pretend lion in the garden
informative - I’ve got
9-18 months Halliday 1975
Skinner
language is behaviour
Purpose
Wittgenstein
But, language cannot express thought.
Thought and experience are obscure
Silence is the only response to complex ideas
Reading - a learned
code
Learning to Read Stages
1. linguistic guessing on context
2. rote learning
3. discrimination - guessing based on knowledge of sounds
4. sequential decoding - grapheme-phoneme conversion rules
5. hierarchical decoding - logographic - other words which share parts of
the word used as well as grapheme/phoneme
Marsh e t al 1977
Writing – a learned symbolic code
Writing
Drill
Phonetics
Guess
Memorise
Grammar
Correction – reward/punish
‘We laugh at the idea of drilling children on the
components of oral language before allowing
them to try whole words, and yet, this is what
so many people do when introducing children
to the code of written language’
ady
McCormick Calkins, 1989: 36
Getting the buggers to write ‘properly’
Show them writing properly is important
Show them incorrect writing
Share the work with the class
Share the work across the school
Ask them to read it back to you
Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle
Concrete experience
‘doing’
Reflective
observation
‘reflecting’
Active experimentation
Action planning
Abstract
Conceptualisation
‘theorising’
• Bloom (1956) taxonomy of learning
–
–
–
–
–
–
Knowledge
Comprehension
Application
Analysis
Synthesis
Evaluation
(lowest)
(highest)
Vygotsky
scaffold
play
formal instruction
work between a learner and a
more experienced learner.