Teach Secondary Issue 13.4

Read like no one’s WATCHING The way we teach literacy can and should leverage teens’ love of stories and narrative, says Carol Atherton – but that doesn’t mean we need to see their reading logs... W hen I started teaching English 28 years ago, teachers had considerably more freedom of choice over the texts we taught – especially at GCSE, owing to the coursework component in place at the time. The ways in which students could respond to those texts were also muchmore wide-ranging compared to now. Instead of being limited to traditional literary essays, they were able to engage with texts more creatively, by thinking about the ways in which a character could be acted in a play, or how a scene might have been directed. There were opportunities for students to write into texts – for example, taking a single character and exploring their background and motivations more deeply. They could even be tasked with writing a follow-up chapter, such as imagining the conversation between Jack and Ralph during their voyage home after the events of Lord of the Flies . The examroom’s limitations In their exams, students are required to produce literary essays and given a very limited range of other forms to write in beyond that. Realistically, though, how many of our students will go on to become literary critics and produce that kind of writing in their working lives? Very few. There are many more aptitudes we could be asking KS4 students to demonstrate with the texts we set, even given the limitations of the exam room–many of which would prepare them far better for the types of writing they will find themselves having to do in their lives beyond school. Things are admittedly different at KS3, where there remains some scope to set students more wide- ranging English activities. Inmy experience, many will respond to them creatively and articulately up until Y9 – so why don’t we channel some of that energy into the exams they’ll take at KS4? I, and many other English teachers feel strongly that English at KS4 is now as much about teaching exam craft as it is about teaching the subject itself. Students can end up spending more time focused on how to get their answer to a level 5 from a level 4, rather than engaging with the ideas that drive the text; ideas that could fire their imaginations, stay with them and even inform their futures, long after that difference between a level 4 and level 5 has become irrelevant. Changing things for the better will involve making changes within the exams themselves. We can’t necessarily return to the days of coursework, but nor would I want to see us go back to the models of controlled assessment that used to form part of the GCSE, and which took up huge amounts of teaching time. If, however, we required students to attempt at least one traditional literary essay and at least one creative task in the exam, maybe then we could restore that sense of breadth to KS4 that’s been lost. Making reading ‘available’ These issues are currently being discussed by various groups within the wider English subject community. Robert Eaglestone at Royal Holloway has chaired a working group looking at potential modifications to the curriculum. The English &Media Centre has expressed interest in broadening the range of ways in which students can respond to texts, so that the assessment process can become more than a narrow exercise centred on the “Englishat KS4 is now asmuchabout teaching examcraft as it is about teaching the subject itself” 50 teachwire.net/secondary