Write Less. Teach More.

Mock exams. Days, weeks, and months of preparation, ensuring our students feel ready to take on the reality of exam conditions. We believe they’re up to the task. Their exercise books? Immaculate. Extended writing? Reams worth. And every SLT book look is 100% green.  All of this outward evidence available to us, calling us to the land of 100% 4+, only to have their mocks come back and it’s as if everything we taught them has disappeared. ‘This is shown in the quote’ when the last three essays have used context to embed them; summarising the story when their books have in-depth analysis of methods, alternative interpretations and ‘critical’ evaluations. So– what happened between that RAGd book look and the exam? We focused on their performance in the moment, emphasising speed and quantity, and looked for superficial behaviours, in hopes that they equated with a final demonstration, but in ignorance of the reality that long term learning doesn’t necessarily follow the temporary performance in lessons.

Performance vs Learning: What does it mean to ‘know’ something?

The first issue between the exam hall and our classroom is the conflation between performance with learning, performance being short-term evidence we can measure, like a plenary task or an exit ticket, whilst saying we have learned something (albeit a contested definition) refers to the ability to use that knowledge or skill flexibly, in various situation (exam hall, independent learning, or other). What does this mean for the classroom, then? When we read ‘this is shown in the quote’, it’s certainly possible that the basic skills of sentence writing have been eschewed under the mistaken assumption that students already know everything they need to be successful, and your thought may be they simply need to practise writing more. Whether that assumption is based on the idea that the more students write, the more they will learn or the idea that developing learners are already accomplished authors matters not:  students won’t become better writers if they “just keep writing”. Just like any other skill, there is a delicate balance to be had between knowledge and application – and instead of fixating on the number of pages filled with ‘this makes the reader imagine images in their head’ we should remember that writing proficiency is dependent on knowledge, and shift our focus from the output of performance and return to the input: more teaching.

Think about your curriculum– how much of any given unit is teaching ‘stuff’, the knowledge and big ideas of your subject, the ideas that will make their writing interesting and sparkle, giving them that the elusive flair versus expecting them to perform, especially in writing,  with the inflexible knowledge from the lesson you just taught them yesterday? Writing is dependent on what we know, and if 60% of our lessons are planning for writing, writing, and then feedback, they won’t know very much. This becomes even more important for essay subjects at A-level, particularly literature. 

Another Way

A typical and expected course of action at A-level  is to teach a few lessons of content,  and get them writing as much, as early, and as frequently as possible, perhaps a residual effect from GCSE-led  thinking. This approach however has a few flaws. For example,  level 5 of Edexcel’s A-level literature mark scheme for AO1 states that students must’ [use] sophisticated structure and expression’. Essentially, what this means is that students will be marked on how deftly written their papers are: Does the argument make sense? Is it free from convoluted phrasing intended to sound clever but actually using words to say nothing? Does it contain clear and delineated ideas? After three lessons of teaching, the answer will be a resounding no. The ’just write more’ approach embeds misconceptions about the texts and about how to write and form an argument, and can potentially weaken their schematic development as they don’t have a greater picture of how the big ideas map onto each other, ultimately solidifying a fractured understanding through extended practice and leading to a false sense of security in ability for both student and teacher. 

The knowledge they have acquired in those three lessons is still inflexible and fairly concrete, dependent solely on what you model to them when you plan the essay together, whereas if we build the world of the author first, making the connections, focusing on laying the groundwork of a conceptual understanding led by ideas, they are more likely to succeed when they have to perform on their own because they have knowledge. When we ask them to perform exam tasks before teaching them the course, we are setting them up to fail: You can’t write about the play as a whole if you’ve only studied 1 Act, you can’t distil a poet’s belief about nature if you’ve only studied two poems, and you can’t write a thesis if you have limited ideas from which to form this argument. We’re asking them to play an opposing team in basketball, but all we’ve taught them is how to shoot free throws. We need to teach them more and focus on the performative elements less, but this requires a fundamental shift in how teachers, and SLT, perceive learning.

The exam question might be something like ‘explore how Keats presents the idea of permanence’ using a given poem and one of your choice, however, if you’ve only taught 4 poems, you’ve already limited and forced their understanding, when perhaps those 4 poems aren’t the best to choose from for the exam. Instead, ask them to write a few paragraphs for homework: how does Keats seem to feel the idea of permanence? Make reference to the poem. 

This task is not performance (and exam) driven, but learning driven. And that’s the shift we need to make. 

MsJasmineMN