Quality Texts to Quality Writing:Routes to Mastery EnglishXavier Catholic Education Trust, March 14th 2018

Presenter: Bob Cox, Director of Searching for Excellence Ltdwww.searchingforexcellence.co.uk

@BobCox_SFE

bobcox@searchingforexcellence.co.uk

Mastery – Going Deeper

Knowledge

Learning

Contexts

Access, Inclusion and Quality Texts!

Jon KlassenEmily Bronte

Never leave a red sock on the clothesline

Never be late for a parade

Never Ask for a Reason

Never lose a fight

LinksUse of coloursUse of imagesBody language of charactersLight and shade

AmbiguityIronyInferenceIntertextuality

Never miss the last day of summer

From ‘Tell Me’ by Aidan Chambers

When faced with a new text, the brain searches through its archive to find anything that ‘matches’ with something in the new text. If no match can be found, we say the text is too difficult for us. The more matches the brain finds the easier it becomes to read the new text.

The Opening Doors Strategy: Access

Voices in an Empty Room

Can you understand how a conversation in a poem can be dramatic?

Can you use direct speech in an original way in a poem?

Opening Doors Key Strategy: Dialogue Voices

Key concepts through which to ‘go deeper’.

‘She shall come in,’ answered the open door,

‘And not,’ said the room, ‘go out any more.’

Invent five reasons why ‘she’ may not go out any more!

The Opening Doors Strategy: Taster Draft

‘There’s someone at the door,’ said gold candlestick:

‘Let her in quick, let her in quick!’

‘There is a small hand groping at the handle.

‘Why don’t you turn it?’ asked Green Candle

Invent dialogue for the second stanza

Green Candles'There's someone at the door,' said gold candlestick:'Let her in quick, let her in quick!''There is a small hand groping at the handle.Why don't you turn it?' asked green candle.'Don't go, don't go,' said the Hepplewhite chair,'Lest you find a strange lady there.''Yes, stay where you are,' whispered the white wall:'There is nobody there at all.''I know her little foot,' grey carpet said:'Who but I should know her light tread?''She shall come in,' answered the open door,'And not,' said the room, 'go out any more.' Humbert Wolfe

Dialogue Voices

How is the poem made dramatic by the poet?

Support Questions

What do we learn about the lady? What ideas do you have about who she is? Why?

What do you think this poem is about? How does the poet convey this?

How many different words are used to describe a way of speaking, eg ‘answered’? Why is that important?

Which is your favourite line? Why?

In your own words, write out what seems to happen on each line. This will be a kind of story in prose.

How is the poem made dramatic?

Greater DepthCompare the use of dramatic dialogue with the way a different poet uses dialogue in a different poem

Excellent Responses could include…

Explaining how each comment shows a new ‘personality’.

Describing the interpretations possible – ambiguity – of the ending

Understanding how the urgency of the comments builds tension

Showing how the recitation of the poem enhances the meaning

Introducing the personification of the room and certain objects.

Knowing how rhyming couplets support the meaning

Link Reading

Make this link reading available on desks and in classrooms. It’s visible reading which will deepen experiences. Have regular, funny, challenging debates about which poems your class enjoys; but keep using opening doors strategies to ensure what they learn here is transferable. When they have an unseen test which includes direct speech, they will be more discerning readers; but they will need plenty of practice through the primary curriculum.

More poems to support dramatic direct speech

Overheard on a Saltmarsh by Harold Monro (in ‘Opening Doors to Quality Writing, ages 6-9’)

The Night Express by Frances Cornford

Grumble Belly by Michael Rosen

Who are We by Benjamin Zephaniah

Go-Kart by Michael Rosen

Brian’s Picnic by Judith Nicholls

The Fruit, The Vegetables, The Flowers and The Trees by Carol Ann Duffy

The Opening Doors Strategy: Wings to Fly

Wings to Fly – Drafting and Exploring

Look back to the taster draft devising a new stanza. So much more can be developed now. Your pupils can apply their new awareness of the dramatic possibilities of direct speech to their own poetry. There are many ways of scaffolding the process if need be:

Try crafting individual lines ‘spoken’ by a new ‘voice’.

Invent a new object for the room eg a broken mirror or a painting with a large frame

Draft a conversation first between just two objects

Devise an ending first

Wings to Fly - Titles

Continue the poem in the same style

Write the lady’s reply in three new stanzas!

Write a poem with an argument between white wall and the room

Invent a new room with voices but no human being.

Green candle meets white candle

Write a poem set in the same room in 100 years time or 100 years ago.

Dialogic Talk

• Collective – not in isolation

• Reciprocal – pupils listen to each other, teachers listen to pupils, the whole class listens to the teacher

• Cumulative – learning community builds upon each other’s ideas

• Supportive – pupils articulate ideas freely

• Purposeful – dialogic talk is planned with educational goals in mind

Robin Alexander, 2008https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/our-work/projects/dialogic-teaching/

Quality Text and Reading Journeys

Access

Strategies

AfLincluding LO and Success

Criteria

Plan from the top with

support resources

Beyond the Limit

Learning

Quality Writing and

AfL

Intervening, Adapting, Setting New Goals

Intervening, Adapting, Setting New Goals LO explored later

SC ‘excellent responses will’

Reflections

Reading for Pleasure Encompassing Reading for Challenge

Link Reading

Taught Objectives

Enriched Reading

and Writing

Crown House Pupils’ Work Site

https://www.crownhouse.co.uk/featured/opening-doors-pupils-work-ages-10-13

Just Imagine Reading Centrehttp://justimagine.co.uk/2018/02/02/five-good-reasons-for-reading-classic-texts-by-bob-cox/

Teachers as Readers.

Professor Teresa Cremin

• https://researchrichpedagogies.org/research/reading-for-pleasure

CLPE Reading and Writing scales

• https://www.clpe.org.uk/library-and-resources/reading-and-writing-scales

Let’s Think – cognitive acceleration

• http://www.letsthink.org.uk/

Opening Doors Link Reading and Book Lists

http://www.guidingreaders.com/

https://www.clpe.org.uk/corebooks

https://dawnfinch.co.uk/2015/07/24/a-primary-

school-librarians-list-of-125-books-that-a-

child-might-want-to-read/

How well can you include inference in your writing?

‘Metamorphosis’ and ‘The Castle’ by Franz Kafka

It was late evening when K. arrived. The village lay deep in snow. Nothing could be seen of the Castle Hill, it was hidden in mist and darkness, and not even the faintest gleam of light indicated the great castle there.

What is pink? A rose is pinkBy the fountain's brink.What is red? A poppy's redIn its barley bed.What is blue? The sky is blueWhere the clouds float through.What is white? A swan is whiteSailing in the light.

What is Pink?

What is yellow? Pears are yellow,Rich and ripe and mellow.What is green? The grass is green,With small flowers between.What is violet? Clouds are violetIn the summer twilight.What is orange? Why, an orange,Just an orange!Christina Rossetti

Colours

What is yellow? A daffodil is yellowNear an ocean scene so mellow.What is green? A leaf is greenOn a windy road so lean,What is peach? Skin can be peachAnd it changes colours on the beach!What is lavender? Lavender is lavenderWhy lavender, just lovely likeable lavender

Martha Reaney, Hawley Primary, Year 2

The Opening Doors Strategy: Access

Then, he said, he had a gust of emotion. He made a run for it, lest hesitation should grip him again; he went plump with outstretched hand through the green door and let it slam behind him. And so, in a trice, he came into the garden that has haunted all his life.

It was very difficult for Wallace to give me his full sense of that garden into which he came.

There was something in the very air of it that exhilarated, that gave one a sense of lightness and good happening and well being; there was something in the sight of it that made all its colour clean and perfect and subtly luminous. In the instant of coming into it one was exquisitely glad--as only in rare moments and when one is young and joyful one can be glad in this world. And everything was beautiful there . . . . .

Predict paragraph 3 – tone, suggestion and ‘feel’

Taster Draft

What do you think the narrator will find in the garden?

Imitate the style of H.G.Wells

Support:List vocabulary which might be aptSuggest one or two distinctive charactersTrial more drafts, explore and learnInform and infer chart on text revealed so far

The Text Revealed

Objectives

How well can you understand the ways in which H.G.Wells creates a world beyond reality?

Can you effectively create your own world beyond the ‘door’?

Mind Movement

‘Intimate realities of this life’ ‘wonder-happy little boy’

Use different highlighter pens to track mind movement West Kensington to world behind the wall.Repeat as a fortune line on a graph.

The Opening Doors Strategy: Reading Journeys

How does H.G.Wellscreate a distinctive world the other side of the green door?

Where is there evidence for a link between the panther and the girl?

How exactly is the garden described?

Which key images are used to describe the woman with the book?

What inferences are being made about Wallace’s childhood?

Greater Depth Mind Movement

Why not try to prompt some very advanced work by asking your pupils to consider the multi-levelled ‘action’ taking place here. There is so much to learn about narrative technique:

• The narrator is listening to Wallace’s story

• Wallace is remembering his childhood journey through the door

• We can only learn the ‘truth’ by evaluating Wallace’s changing mindshifts

Excellent Responses WillKey concepts

Using Contrasts

• Include the contrast between the West Kensington ‘real’ world and the garden

• Mention how associations are used to good effect from literature or art: books as knowledge; beautiful gardens for peace; lightly clouded skies

Using Image Patterns

• Explore some detailed examples of language use, eg the pattern of phrases connected with the panther, the girl and the garden.

• Explain some of the images of ‘home’ and what they might mean

• How does the panther image differ? Is there an explanation?

Using Tone Changes

• Show how the final paragraph is different and how.

Link Reading

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury

Coram Boy by Jamila Gavin

The Opening Doors Strategy: Wings to Fly

Wings to Fly

• Imagine Wallace finds a different creature in the garden. Continue the vision.

• Some of the ‘living pages’ of the book tell the story of the garden and how it came to be. Explore the mysteries of the world beyond the door.

• What were the games Wallace played? What happened which would explain why he can’t remember.

• Create your own world which appears to veer from ‘real’ to ‘virtual’.

The Opening Doors Series

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bob-Cox/e/B00GNBMNEG/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1443099693&sr=8-1

Apollinaire SaidApollinaire said

‘Come to the edge’‘It is too high’

‘Come to the edge’And they came

And he pushed them

And they flew

nb Guillaume Apollinaire is a French poet who died in 1918