Michael Walsh

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The Wavell School, Ofsted and LTE

The Wavell School in Hampshire was visited by Ofsted on the 9th and 10th November 2021. They saw English on the first day and you can read the full report here.

Megan Hill is English KS3 Co-ordinator and Pastoral Assistant at Wavell School. She started teaching Let’s Think in English in 2015, is a regular attendee at the LTE Network meetings and is a member of the LTE Steering Group.

In the following blog post she reflects upon Ofsted feedback on Let’s Think in English, how LTE has supported students through post-Covid challenges and how student and teacher confidence were developed and sustained in the programme.

‘Let’s Think sessions help to develop pupils’ confidence to question, debate and reflect on the world around them’. (The Wavell Ofsted Report November 2021).

I can honestly say that this little gem was in the main, the result of our Ofsted Inspector’s discussions with students. I had talked about Let’s Think in my interview with her, amongst other areas such as curriculum intent and implementation, encouraging reading for pleasure and our Covid recovery programme, but she did not observe any Let’s Think lessons. She was very interested in our observation that our classes have not been afflicted with a common post-covid ailment – refusal to speak or participate in discussion in the classroom, and that we credit the students’ familiarity with Let’s Think and discussion-based learning as a reason for this. She was also interested in the wide range of texts used in Let’s Think and how these benefit students’ reading skills and their confidence with approaching unseen texts.
Students and the teachers that she spoke to must have confirmed what I told her as she saw fit to include this in her summing up. I credit their confidence and enthusiasm for Let’s Think as the result of the following factors:
• Metacognition of the ‘rules’ and ‘benefits’ of Let’s Think lessons as on-going each year i.e. what we’re doing, why we’re doing it and how it will benefit the students themselves.
• Students like Let’s Think as they know the lesson is discussion based (they also like arguing and airing their opinions!).
• We run refresher training for staff and new staff every year, as well as monitoring the teaching of Let’s Think lessons across key stage 3 – this ensures equality of opportunity for all students (one Let’s Think lesson a fortnight) in terms of their Let’s Think lesson experience.
• We attend Let’s Think network events so we are up to speed with new lessons and pedagogy, which we disseminate across the Faculty via training sessions.
• We measure the impact of LTE through Student Questionnaires each year.
• SLT are very supportive of our LTE programme, and at their request we have also run a Let’s Think training session for staff during CPD sessions to allow staff to experience an LTE lesson for themselves and for us to explain the pedagogy and the pillars of LTE. This may have enabled staff to begin to use the open questioning style in other curriculum areas, so the style of Let’s Think teaching is familiar in areas across the school as well as being exemplified and led in English.

What might happen next? Internal models and the power of prediction.

“Prediction, not narration, is the real test of our understanding of the world.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). “The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable Fragility””, p.133, Random House

As mentioned in my previous blog post, every year I try to teach Let’s Think in English (LTE) on a regular basis. As co-creator and lead tutor for LTE, I am teaching a Year 6 class once a fortnight and blogging about my own learning journey and reflections.

In How we learn Stanislas Dehaene claims: “to learn is to form an internal model of the external world” with our brain continually projecting “hypotheses and interpretative framework” on stimuli. Learning it is suggested “allows our brain to grasp a fragment of reality that it has previously missed and to use it to build a new model of the world.”

The development of internal mental frameworks is central to Let’s Think and echoes Piaget’s view on a child’s cognitive development; it is more than acquiring knowledge as the child must develop and construct a mental model of the world. It is these mental models of the world and literature we seek to develop in Let’s Think in English.

In my second lesson with the Year 6 class, I decided to focus on Charles Causley’s poem Who?. See full poem here. The lesson reviews the poem through a slow reveal with pupils focusing on the first stanza considering why the child might find it hard to hear the speaker

“Who is that child I see wandering, wandering
Down by the side of the quivering stream?
Why does he seem not to hear, though I call to him?
Where does he come from, and what is his name?”

before analysing the portrayal of the child as it develops in stanza two and three:

“Why do I see him at sunrise and sunset
Taking, in old-fashioned clothes, the same track?
Why, when he walks, does he cast not a shadow
Though the sun rises and falls at his back?

Why does the dust lie so thick on the hedgerow
By the great field where a horse pulls the plough?
Why do I see only meadows, where houses
Stand in a line by the riverside now?”

Once pupils have a firm foothold in the poem, we explain there is one final stanza and ask them to predict how it might end. Prediction supports pupils to develop an internal model of an external world as it requires them to consider what might the poet do next. However, as the work of Efrat Furst and others stress:

“Prediction is using our prior knowledge in order to expect or predict the position of a newly introduced piece.”

With prediction we are inviting pupils into the process of meaning making but it is not speculative but rather reasoned; the predictions are based on the three stanzas pupils have already studied and the patterns they have identified. We can see how the pupils’ readings of the first three stanzas inform their predictions of the final stanza in such responses as (see full transcript below):

“Pupil 2: The title is like “Who?” and there are so many questions in the poem that we think it will end with a mystery… it’s most likely to be a cliff-hanger.”

“Pupil 8: I agree with X and Y I think the speaker is going to walk towards the child. The child will turn around and say something because he’s been ignoring the speaker the whole time.”

“Pupil 9: So what we thought was, the speaker would go up to them and try to get a response and they would touch them but then another person on the side of the stream will kind of like call again so it will start to repeat and they will be the next victim…Well…so it’s like there’s the person walking down by the stream with the old-fashioned clothes and the person who calls to them.”.

In my last post I focused on scaffolds and in this lesson scaffolding questions were deployed to ready the pupils to make predictions. Before pupils work in their groups considering how the poem might conclude we can pose some preparatory questions such as:

• Will the final stanza also have four lines?
Many thought it would while some thought the pattern might be broken in the final stanza with just a line or two to conclude.

• What patterns do you notice so far and will these continue?
The pupils noticed the continual use of questions to frame the poem and many felt this would continue while others felt there would be a resolution. The rhyming pattern was also discussed.

The pupils undertook the activity with great enthusiasm and their predictions were reasonable and linked to elements of the preceding stanzas. However in LTE it’s not just the process of suggesting reasonable interpretations or predictions that is of importance but also monitoring and evaluating their validity. Frequently in classrooms the teacher is expected to and assumes the role of evaluator but in LTE we encourage pupils to undertake this task. While different textual interpretations are raised in classrooms, time should also be provided for pupils to reflect upon and re-evaluate them once shared. The final task in this transcript encourages the pupils to monitor and evaluate their collective interpretations thus supporting metacognition:

“Teacher: Thank you for all your predictions. Before we read the final stanza please return to your groups and consider the different predictions that have been shared and consider which is most likely and why?”.

How might prediction support pupils? As Efrat Furst suggest there are “two pathways”:

1. New knowledge that is consistent with existing schemas or mental models is more easily learned and better remembered
2. Novel information that is unexpected or violating existing models, is also more easily learned and remembered.

Again, we hear the echo of Piaget. Piaget through his work on cognitive development introduced the idea of schema. He described schema as: “a cohesive, repeatable action sequence possessing component actions that are tightly interconnected and governed by a core meaning” (Piaget, The origins of intelligence in children,1952, p. 7). In developing schema Piaget identified two processes: assimilation and accommodation.

Assimilation is the process by which new knowledge is placed into existing knowledge schemas. For example, some pupils expected the Causley poem to continue to have four lines as that’s the pattern they identified. We can recognise assimilation in Pupil 1’s response which draws upon a literary feature they know “cliff-hanger” and they start to recognise potential markers within the first three stanzas:

“Pupil 1: Well we thought that maybe the boy will reply and then it’s gonna leave on a cliff-hanger. because it um describes a lot about the boy and at the start um it talks about how the boy er doesn’t reply and um like he can’t hear the person calling so we thought that maybe at the end he’s gonna reply and it will end on a cliff-hanger.”.

Accommodation by contrast is the process when existing knowledge must be adapted to new knowledge. Accommodation creates an imbalance, demanding that we think hard as new information does not seamlessly integrate with existing mental schema. In Let’s Think in English we purposefully evoke accommodation through the cognitive conflict stage of the lesson. As their schemas are challenged students have a sense of disequilibrium before accommodation takes place and equilibrium is restored. The key is to seek productive challenges evoking a state of disequilibrium which can be reconciled and assimilated with time.

Upon sharing their predictions and having time in their groups to consider which prediction was most likely and why they were truly excited to see the final stanza. They had readied an internal mental representation and now it was time to compare it with Causley’s final stanza.

“Why does he move like a wraith by the water,
Soft as the thistledown on the breeze blown?
When I draw near him so that I may hear him,
Why does he say that his name is my own?”

Once revealed assimilation was triggered as the pupils confirmed there were four lines, the rhyming pattern they identified continued as did the use of questioning. Indeed, many predictions such as the child and speaker meeting and talking, continual time shifts and a cliff-hanger of sorts were also confirmed. However, there was the need for accommodation too as the final stanza’s twist was contemplated.

There was a sense of excitement as the final stanza was revealed and this was accompanied by involuntary exclamations from the groups as the poem’s twist dawned on them. There was no need to set the pupils a question as they immediately, without prompting, shared their thoughts on the final stanza with each other. Once they had aired and shared their initial thoughts, I encouraged a more deliberate reading of the poem by asking the class: “Is the speaker of the poem alive or dead?” which sparked a lively debate.

The process of prediction had placed pupils in conversation with each other and the text. It has also placed them in Causley’s position as they considered what might he do next. The slow reveal of the poem supported by prediction provided the pupils with to “grasp a fragment of reality” making them more aware of the writing process, the importance of the stanzas’ sequence and the choice of ending.

A transcript of the pupils’ discussion follows so you can follow the development of their thoughts if you wish”.

Who Transcript? Year 6 pupils
Question: How might the final stanza conclude?

Pupil 1: Well we thought that maybe the boy will reply and then it’s gonna leave on a cliff-hanger. because it um describes a lot about the boy and at the start um I talks about how the boy er doesn’t reply and um like he can’t hear the person calling so we thought that maybe at the end he’s gonna reply and it will end on a cliff-hanger.

Teacher: Okay so X you probably can’t see but if you look around you got lots of thumbs up with people agreeing with you. Could you explain a bit more Pupil 1 or anyone in pupil 1s’ group why do think it will end on a cliff-hanger? Pupil 2 carry on.

Pupil 2: The title is like “Who?” and there are so many questions in the poem that we think it will end with a mystery… it’s most likely to be a cliff-hanger.

Teacher: Thank you. Pupil 3 what did you group discuss?

Pupil 3: Well we kinda like had a couple of disagreements because at first M was half and half, Joseph thought it was a memory and I thought there would be a shadow but then we end up on memory because there’s because sunrise and sunset here.

Teacher: Ok. Thank you. Pupil 4 your group?

Pupil 4: We saw the child was a ghost and we thought in the last stanza he might be you like resurrected and like come back to life again.

Teacher: Ok. Can you tell us a little more about your predictions?

Pupil 4: Well… (another pupil in the group volunteers to continue).

Teacher: Would you like to add onto pupil 4s point?

Pupil 5: (nods) I think they might have a conversation and then no reason the child might disappear.

Teacher: for no reason the child might disappear? I guess that’s linked to the cliff-hanger idea?

Pupil 5: (nods)

Teacher: Did your group have similar ideas or something different?

Pupil 6: We didn’t’ really… we didn’t really come to an agreement but we have now but we went with X’s idea when he said he might be like the grim Reaper or something. We don’t really know though.

Teacher: That’s okay. Pupil 7?

Pupil 7: We thought the child might slowly start walking after the man.

Teacher: What would that add to the poem if the figure turns and starts walking towards the speaker of the poem?

Pupil 7: It might add suspense.

Teacher: (to class) Do we agree? (many pupils nod) Pupil 8?

Pupil 8: I agree with X and Y I think the speaker is going to walk towards the child. The child will turn around and say something because he’s been ignoring the speaker the whole time.

Teacher: Thumbs up from a lot of people there. Pupil 9, what did you group discuss?

Pupil 9: So what we thought was, the speaker would go up to them and try to get a response and they would touch them but then another person on the side of the stream will kind of like call again so it will start to repeat and they will be the next victim.

Teacher: This seems like a new prediction. Could you explain it again?

Pupil 9: Well…so it’s like there’s the person walking down by the stream with the old-fashioned clothes and the person who calls to them.

Teacher: The speaker of the poem?

Pupil 9: Yes. When they get close, they’ll touch them, the child will turn around. And then the next day another person comes and calls to both of them and so the loop continues. (Some pupils say ah).

Teacher: This seems linked to the idea of time repeating itself that you mentioned previously as a class. The poem is structured around repetitions and time shifts.
Thank you for all your predictions. Before we read the final stanza please return to your groups and consider the different predictions that have been shared and consider which is most likely and why?

Scaffolding in Let’s Think in English

Scaffolding in Let’s Think in English

“We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.”.

“Scaffolding” from Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966–1996 by Seamus Heaney.

Every year I try to teach Let’s Think in English (LTE) on a regular basis. As part of LTE training, tutors model lessons but we know teaching a one-off lesson on a visit is different to working with a class throughout an academic year. The opportunities as a tutor to consider the development of a class and individuals while receiving feedback from class teachers and visitors are rich.

This year I’m fortunate to teach LTE in a school where the Headteacher was trained in Let’s Think at the start of their career. In recent years, I’ve provided support for the school via modelled LTE lessons and presentations. The school values oracy and dialogic teaching with talk permeating their classrooms and enjoyed working with Voice 21 last academic year to further embed oracy across the curriculum.

The Year 6 class are new to LTE.
When introducing LTE the foundations needed are culture and habits. So, as we recommend to teachers, I started by focusing in on Howe and Mercer’s classroom indicators for dialogic teaching (https://oracycambridge.org/2020/06/13/research-and-practice-working-with-teachers-on-classroom-talk/) and the scaffolding that supports this.

1. High level of participation.

One of the keys to programmes like Let’s Think in English is to encourage high participation for all. As the work of Lefstein A, Snell J. 2014. Better Than Best Practice Developing Teaching and Learning Through Dialogue, a brilliant read, highlights:

“Research has shown that teachers often believe that only some pupils – usually the high achievers and those from privileged social backgrounds – are capable of participating effectively in academically challenging discussion, and this has an impact on the kinds of questions they ask pupils and the level of structure and control they apply “.

As such, in LTE, we try provide opportunities for all pupils to verbalise their thinking and share their ideas.

With this class most pupils were keen to contribute in groups and in whole class feedback. However I still implemented some simple scaffolds such as numbering in the group to ensure turn taking, setting small group size (typically triads), emphasising the need for representative feedback from groups rather than individual feedback, selecting who provides the feedback for groups and inviting pupils to respond to one another.

2 Encourage pupils to deepen their thinking.

The key here is to ensure pupils move beyond merely providing answers and also reveal their rationale. Some pupils were immediately able to deepen and explain their thinking as they responded to questions while others benefited from simple prompts such as:

“How do you know that?”
“Can you tell me more?”
“What lead you to think that?”
“How is your idea similar or different to X’s?”

It appeared for some thoughts were already formed but pupils didn’t see the need for explanation while for others prompts encouraged them to reflect upon their instinctive thoughts and to clarify and strengthen them.

3. Encourage pupils to respond to each other.

I often feel this is the aspect that takes longest to develop with classes. Normally pupils view the main audience for their responses as their teacher and are really seeking affirmation. In LTE, as in other dialogic lessons, the audience is the whole class including the teacher. As such in LTE we place pupils in the role of critical evaluators. Teachers adopt a more neutral stance and encourage pupils to monitor and evaluate the ideas shared; a key component of metacognition.

Interestingly this class had a range of prepared ways of responding to each other they were familiar with, using signals such as:

Placing one fist upon another to build
Flexing arm muscles to signal they wish to add onto something
And thumbs up for agreement.

As I started the lesson this visual signalling while unexpected appeared an eye-catching means of feedback to peers and me. Usually in LTE we seek verbal signs of response and as a scaffold we might introduce the idea/language of ABC: agree, build and challenge. We might invite and encourage pupils to respond to each other using these terms to interlink their thinking or seek feedback from the class through more subtle gestures such as head nodding, facial expressions etc

As this lesson developed, I wondered if the physical signals were having their desired effect. Were they really responding through these signals or was this like having ones hand up indicating you wished to speak? In LTE we discourage hands up when pupils are speaking as we emphasise the need to actively listen to what a peer is saying before responding rather than focusing on your own point.

Listening is so important in dialogic teaching and I found the frantic hand signals a distraction from engaging with the pupils’ points and I wondered if it was the same for the pupils too? While the hand signals provide the visual appearance of engaging, I wondered if this scaffold was necessary, helpful or if the pupils had outgrown it. In the next lesson, I plan to ask the pupils to focus more on the language of responding.

I was keen to receive feedback from pupils on their first LTE lesson so I asked them to independently share their thoughts on a mini-whiteboard. Interestingly, their feedback was split between the content of the lesson (a film) and the structure of the lesson. The feedback clearly indicates a connection between learning, fun and group work. Something to build upon in the coming months.

Pupil responses:

I think the lesson was really fun. I like the teacher the film was also good.
I really though of it as fun when we were watching.
It was really fun and I loved all the class discussions.
I like the film and the lesson was fun.
I thought very carefully about him being hungry as soon as he gets in the black hole.
I liked that we all engaged and talked together as a class building and listening to each other and all of us being able to put in our input.
I thought it was fun. The film was interesting. I also like how we were building and challenging.
I liked the film because it was a bit tense and it was horror. Also it was fun how we were agreeing and disagreeing.
I really liked it when I got to cooperate with my friends an d I was really fun dand educated especially with the movie.
Very fun and I enjoyed working in groups.
Very fun and enjoyable especially in groups.
I liked it when the mean stole the chocolate bar and avoided paying 50p.
I like this style of literacy because you pitch your ideas and no one is wrong.
I liked it. I liked discussing what happened in the video and listening to other peoples’ ideas. It was fun.
It was really fun because we got to work together in group. The video was alos fun to talk abougt and predict what happened.
I thought it was to learn a lesson not to steal.
I thought it was suspenseful which made it fun.
Fun
This lesson amazing. I loved it.

*One pupil did not respond while another accidently deleted their response.

Vocabulary development: more than words

Vocabulary development: more than words

Children’s range of vocabulary is a predictor of future success in education although I’m still uncomfortable with the statement published on the Ofsted Curriculum workshop slides in autumn 2018: “Simply put: knowing more words makes you smarter!” Leaving aside the unnecessary exclamation mark, we’ve all met individuals who use their verbosity to hide ignorance or fail to communicate their message. In the same presentation Ofsted used the oft cited Hart and Risley research and the well-known phrase the “30 million-word gap”.

Hart and Risley and the 30 million-word gap

Hart and Risley’s paper Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young American published in 1995 highlighted an “early catastrophe” as they found children from high-income families were exposed to 30 million more words than children from families on welfare by their third birthday. They recruited 42 families to participate in the study including: high-income families, middle socio-economic families, low socio-economic families, and a smaller number (6) families who were on welfare. They would spend an hour a month over two-and-a-half years observing each family and recording their exchanges.

Hart and Risley’s research, remains the subject of debate. They arrived at the figure of 30 million words by recording every utterance directly addressed to the children in monthly visits of just one hour each with the families. From there they derived the 30-million-word gap, assuming the same incidents of spoken language for fourteen hours a day, every day. However in It’s time to move beyond the word gap Douglas E. Sperry, Linda L. Sperry and Peggy J. Miller attempted to replicate aspects of the Hart and Risley research, although they included words not directly addressed to the child. They had very different findings:

“Most astonishing, however, was the result that children from our Alabama African American community heard 1,838 words per hour spoken by their primary caregivers, nearly three times the number of words heard by the Welfare group children in Hart and Risley. This result cannot be overemphasized; both our Alabama group and the Hart and Risley Welfare group were similar not only in terms of SES, but also ethnicity. These results suggest that the Hart and Risley Welfare group was an outlier.”.

More than words

The shocking figure of 30 million, understandably, grabbed attention from the report. The
startling number distracted from other significant findings. Not only did they find a word gap, but they also noted the children’s average number of words utilised, the duration of their conversations, and the speech patterns were all strikingly similar to those of their caregivers. The children were learning through imitation.

They also found higher- income families provided their children with far more words of praise compared to children from low-income families. Children from families with professional backgrounds experienced a ratio of six encouragements for every discouragement. For children from working-class families this ratio was two encouragements to one discouragement. Finally, children from families on welfare received on average two discouragements for every encouragement although it’s worth remembering they only had 6 welfare families in the study

Conversational Turns

It is important to state subsequent research has borne out Hart and Risley’s conclusions that the volume of words is an important indicator, if not the extent of their extrapolation. However, when one takes a wider perspective there are more important factors than the number of words.

As Dale Walker, the director of the Juniper Gardens Children’s Project in Kansas City, who worked with Ms. Hart and Mr. Risley and continues their line of research remarked:

“It’s not just throwing words at children, but making sure they hear new concepts, things of interest to them, so their brains make those connections earlier,”.

The importance of conversational turns – back and forth exchanges between adult and child- underpins research into effective vocabulary development. In “Beyond the 30-million Word Gap: Children’s Conversational Exposure is Associated with Language-related Brain Function,” Romeo et al at Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that the crucial factor in acquisition of language is the number of conversational turns the child experiences.

For a short video on the research see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=CNJQGbNbI-8

The project required children in participating families to wear recorders for two whole days on a Saturday and Sunday. Every word spoken or heard by the children was recorded and they were analysed for three aspects:
• the number of words spoken by the child,
• the number spoken to the child
• the number of times the child and the adult “took turns” in conversation.

The number of conversational turns, showed a strong link with the children’s scores on standardised tests of language skill, including vocabulary, grammar and verbal reasoning.

“The important thing is not just to talk to your child, but to talk with your child. It’s not just about dumping language into your child’s brain, but to actually carry on a conversation with them,” commented Romeo. The study suggests parents of any income level may influence their children’s language and brain development simply by holding conversations with them.

Romeo et als findings are corroborated elsewhere: The paper, “Language Experience in the Second Year of Life and Language Outcomes in Late Childhood,” marked the longest-term longitudinal study on the relationship between interactive talk in early childhood and later life outcomes. Like the MIT study LENA (https://www.lena.org ) developed a “talk pedometer” measuring adult words and back and forth conversations. The adult words and especially the conversations the children experienced between 18 and 24 months correlated 10 years later with their IQ, verbal comprehension, vocabulary, and other language skills. Like the Hart and Risley study the number of words their parents talked to them was important, but conversational turns proved far more significant.

Dr. Jill Gilkerson, Chief Research and Evaluation Officer at LENA, and lead author on the paper summarised: “It strongly supports what other research has shown: talk with babies may make a huge difference in their futures and there is a need to begin early, since parents’ talk habits in the 18-24-month window start forming from the moment the baby is born.” Once more the key emphasis is talk with not talk to.

Turn taking in the classroom

In Let’s Think in English conversational turns between pupils and the teachers is central to developing understanding of the text and exploring vocabulary. The following is an example of a transcript from a Year 6 LTE lessons on symbolism in “Way Home” by Libby Hathorn. Pupils through a gradual, in-depth, slow-reveal process, have explored the significance of the relationship between the protagonist Shane and the cat he befriends. The story is paused two pages from the end of the story and pupils are asked: What might Shane’s home look like?

The questions provoke another re-reading of the text as the pupils are encouraged to reach a reasonable hypothesis. They must revisit the images and text to seek clues regarding the resolution of the story. This enables them to identify key words that might support their thoughts.

Jo: I think that his home is like when it says look at those building they are all dark I think his house might be in one of those building and neglected by his parents because like his clothes are a bit dirty and there’s no lighting no TV and he might be a bit like not lonely because I think he’s pretending to like the cat but when he gets home and says he’s got milk for the cat, I don’t think he has and he’s just going to make the cat like have a really hard time.
Teacher: Why don’t you think he likes the cat?
Jo: Because when you say it, it sounds like a bit and you can see it, it sounds a bit I don’t really know how to put it like a bit informal like a bit of thug life sort of.
Teacher: Do you think if he didn’t like the cat he would have rescued it from the tree?
Jo: He might still not like it because he might want to take it home and kill it to get food and his family doesn’t have money
Al:I think that Shane’s home might like a normal home and have lots of pets because no one would just pick up a cat like that, usually people would buy a cat or adopt one so I think he might usually pick up lots of pets and take them home for their own so they can have a home as well.
Teacher: Do you think he’s got lots of pets in his home?
Al: Maybe not too much because I think he’s got more at home than just the cat that he got.
Ru: I think Shane’s home is like our homes and maybe he’s like a bit rejected because maybe his, maybe he’s quite young and his parents let him go out and stuff.
Teacher :Do you think he has parents?
Ru : Yeah but maybe like a single parent.
Teacher : What suggests to you from the story that he has a single parent?
Ru :Because maybe he’s a bit lonely and is a single child.
Teacher:What make you think he’s lonely?
Ru:Because he’s acting like the cat is a family member; he’s really close to the cat.
El: Our table thought that he might be quite poor and not wealthy as us because his clothes are a bit muddy and don’t look expensive so we thought because of that his house might not be that nice either.
Teacher: If he is poor, do you think he’s aware of how poor he is?
El:Probably because [uncertain] Teacher: Open that up is there any evidence that suggest that he’s poor or
El: Well I think the evidence of him being poor is his clothes because you wouldn’t find someone living in a nice mansion wearing those type clothes, it wouldn’t make sense.
Teacher: What does he comment on, on his way home?
Re: He comments on the jaguars and fancy cars in the showroom and says to the cat, me and you are going to own one and says he doesn’t want the red one, he wants a green one.
Teacher: Why do you think the author might have included that?
Re: Because maybe it just shows he thinks he’s gonna say become of great importance or quite wealthy.
Am: I think he maybe wanted a green jaguar instead of a red one because I think his favourite colour might be green because his jacket was s shade of green.
Teacher: But there was only a red one in a showroom what does that tell us when he said we don’t want that colour, we want a green one.
Am: Maybe because they don’t have the specific colour.
Sa: He might want a green one because if he is poor and you’re going to be wealthy you will get more picky in what you want because you’ve been brought up with nothing and you’ve been like and you go I want this certain colour because we have what we want and we need but because he doesn’t have it he wants more than he needs he wants everything in his favour.
Teacher: Linking to the question Sa, what might Shane’s home look like, taking into consideration what you’ve said to me there. What does his current home look like?
Sa: It’s not going to be a mansion because obviously he’s not the wealthy but it could be an abandoned home that his family have moved into because they are just trying to survive and keep alive or maybe it’s just a small house with his family.
Teacher: Which one do you think is more likely?
Sa: I think more likely probably an abandoned because he’s being brought up in not the best environment and he’s almost, how do I explain it? He’s in an environment and he doesn’t overly – I think if it was just an average house he would not use the language that he’s using to the cat, he’d be more educated I think because he might be at school or something. He’d be more educated. He’s maybe not as educated as everyone would like to be.
Em: Going with Sa, with the he wouldn’t be a millionaire, it doesn’t say that he’s posh and expensive because kids go through different types of clothing of what they want to wear. And also yeah he would be more educated I mean less educated because the way that he uses his actions shows that he’s quite a bit maybe like he doesn’t have that much way of looking to cross the road because he runs across the road and like stuff like that.
Teacher: So link back to the question, what do you think his home is like based on that?
Em: His home is going to be probably be like a flat sort of because he says he has a home but then he said he didn’t like the posh people who gave the cat the posh food so maybe like he is a bit poor but he’s got enough money for a house or something but I don’t think it’s gonna be a house, I think it’s gonna be a flat or something.
Ow: I think his house is a bit not like adding onto El it is a bit like not the house that we have because he probably would be at school and erm Shane probably just wants to have companionship because he was probably lonely and would probably have a small space to live in and it shows that his parents don’t care about him like our parents care about us because he is a very long way from home and listening to how much he’s done because his parents obviously don’t care as much because they are not coming to see if he’s ok and also he probably might not have parents or because he kind of it didn’t say what kind of like life he’s been living it might be like a book when you are like a baby and your parents have passed away or something like that so he’s probably lonely and just wants companionship.
Am S: I think his home is like a single parent and he is an only child because it puts more pressure on you if you are like a single parent as you need to work more to earn more money and I think he doesn’t have many friends and he just had the cat as his friend so he’s opening up to the cat like and is willing to do anything for that cat. Because he hasn’t had the chance to care for anyone because maybe his parents haven’t been around to care for him.
Teacher: Why did he choose that cat?
Am S: So relating back to the cat he called the fat cat he might not want the fat cat because there is too big of a gap between their personalities so he wants a cat that’s been neglected because maybe he’s been neglected before so maybe he can like find a relationship between them.
Ph: I think his house is quite like not looked after because of the other houses around him they are all like dark and most don’t have lights on just one house there has the light on and I think he might have chosen that cat because he wants a cat he can look after and not the cat in the window because that cat is already being spoilt and having too much food or something and that cat I don’t think has been out because he is just sat by the window staring out the window looking at the surroundings around him. I think his house could be quite like he could have two parents but they don’t have enough money for the house he might not have enough money for clothes because I saw that he had a hole in his shoulder so I don’t think his parents look after him as much as our parents look after us. Our parents buy as new clothes and his parents probably don’t because they’ve got holes in them at that.
Lo: I think that his house is probably like a normal average size house for like a person in this class well my type of normal average house, anyway and I think it is probably because of the setting of where the house is looks like more run down maybe then what it is – that’s why his parents can afford it because he is probably quite poor.

The image below summarises the words used, the larger the word the more frequently it was referenced.

What do we notice? Well unsurprisingly simple and more complex words both feature. However, terms such as “family”, “companionship” and “educated” are not directly mentioned in the text. These are concepts lurking within the text, but it is the pupils shared conversation that starts to unlock them and make them transparent to the class. Reading and discussing the story awakens understanding of the concepts that underpin the story. Pupils become familiar with this new vocabulary by reapplying it to the story.

It is noteworthy that the two most frequently used words (leaving aside “like” contained in the question posed) are “because” and “think”, they provide the keys to the conceptual, and vocabulary growth becoming memorable. I would suggest conversational turns helps us to clarify our thinking and encourage us to evidence our thoughts.

The pupils are sharing and clarifying their inner thoughts when explaining their choices. The teacher’s responses could be categorised as:

Probing and opening:
Why did he choose a cat?
Why don’t you think he likes the cat?
Do you think he’s got lots of pets in his home?
Do you think he has parents?
What make you think he’s lonely?

Directing and linking:
What do you think his home is like based on that?
What might Shane’s home look like, taking into consideration what you’ve said to me there. What does his current home look like?
What suggests to you from the story that he has a single parent?

Comparing and evaluating:
Which one do you think is more likely?

The teacher is provoking the class to think more about their points and justify them. The pattern echoes that of the care giver who takes turns speaking to their child asking: “Why do you think that?” and patiently awaits a response. Furthermore, these prompts provoke the pupils to move beyond having an answer to justifying their responses with “because”. As with young children when pupils’ cognition is activated, that is to say they are being asked to think, vocabulary is more likely to be relevant, contextualised and memorable. Pupils are also exposed to the ideas and the vocabulary used to express the ideas of their peers. As ideas vary so too does the vocabulary used to express them.

In this interplay between high quality texts, rereading and mediated conversational turns that evoke thoughtfulness, vocabulary development can be nurtured in an organic and memorable way.

The Power of Stories 2: Narrative structure and lesson design

I decided to reread Daniel Willingham’s excellent “Why don’t students like school?” recently and as with all second readings you review certain aspects in a new light. In Chapter 3 Willingham draws our attention to the power of stories, which I wrote about in my previous blog here. He explains how psychologists sometimes refer to stories as “psychologically privileged” and how they are treated differently in memory. However, my attention was drawn to his suggestion: “organizing a lesson plan like a story is an effective way to help students comprehend and remember”.

Willingham explains there is no universal agreement on what makes a story but points to four principles:

• Causality: events are causally related to each other.
• Conflict: a main character pursuing their goal but experiencing a barrier or problem.
• Complications: sub problems that arise from the main goal
• Character: stories have interesting characters.

Willingham’s suggestion seemed oddly familiar in more ways than one recalling for me both the story mountain model and the pillars of Let’s Think.

Let’s Think lessons are structured like a narrative and have parallels with aspects of the story mountain model. Stories tend to start with an exposition in which character and setting are usually introduced and the reader becomes familiar with the fictional world created. In Let’s Think lessons we commence with a concrete preparation stage; introducing the terms of the problem to be explored and familiarising pupils with key concepts. Both expositions and concrete preparation share another aim: to hook their respective audiences.

In Let’s Think in English we pass from concrete preparation to social construction. Like the build-up or rising action stage of a story, in social construction pupils develop their first impressions and delve deeper into the text they are studying. Like a book group, pupils are invited to share their thoughts and receive feedback from others. While the story mountain’s rising diagonal line indicates tension, there is a gradual increase of challenge in the LTE lesson as pupils move from concrete preparation to social construction.

The high point of tension and often interest in a story is the dilemma or problem as we observe the protagonist’s attempts to achieve their goals and overcome challenges. Similarly, in a Let’s Think lesson cognitive conflict marks the peak point of difficulty in the LT lesson with its element of surprise that demands pupils’ attention. Interestingly Willingham in Chapter 3 also encourages teachers to organize a lesson plan around a conflict stating:

“The advantage of being very clear about the conflict is that it yields a natural progression for topics”

and provides the recommendation:

“Start with the material you want your students to learn and think backward to the intellectual question it poses.”

Designing stimulating and challenging questions are key to the cognitive conflict stage.

During the reflections and evaluation of metacognition in LT lessons there is a change in pace, mirroring the story mountain’s descending gradient towards resolution and ending. However, LT lessons do not seek resolution, or an end point and it is not unusual to hear pupils discussing the lesson as they leave the classroom. Effective bridging ensures the learning undertaken in LT is reawakened as teachers find opportunities to retrieve concepts, knowledge skills and understanding in their day-to-day teaching.

After the cognitive conflict Let’s Think lessons diverge from the story mountain model. However, as we know the story mountain model doesn’t fit all stories. Indeed, the limitations of the story mountain model is a concept we explore through the lens of narrative sequencing in a Let’s Think in English Year 5 and 6 lesson centered on the mesmerising short film: The Maker.

In this LTE lesson (see here for a fuller account) students appreciate the limitations of the story mountain as it doesn’t align with cyclical narratives. This encourages students to consider when, how and why writers/directors choose to invert this model. With the Let’s Think programmes’ emphasis on development over performance it strikes me the cyclical narrative is a better match to the LTE lessons’ structure with pupils revisiting key concepts in increasing cycles of difficulty over time.

One of the many remarkable things about Let’s Think in English lessons is how they sear into pupils’ memories as they recall them long after other learning experiences fade. Teachers we work with comment upon this time and again. Perhaps an explanation for this strong recall, engagement and memory lies in both the narratives we explore and the story-like structure of the lesson plan?

The Power of Stories

Stories have special powers. While most of humanity learnt to read and write in recent history – only 12% of the people in the world could read and write in 1820 – narratives have been central to human life for thousands of years. Cave paintings from 30,000 years ago appear to depict scenes that were probably accompanied by oral storytelling. Story dominance in human interaction has rewired the human brain to be predisposed from birth to think in, make sense in and create meaning from stories. Stories predominance is a survival skill; forms of narrative, allowed early humans to learn more about their kind than they could experience at first hand, so they could cooperate and compete better through understanding one another more fully [1]. Story was so crucial to survival that the brain evolved specifically to respond to it.

If you’re reading this your brain is designed by evolution to develop story representations from sensory input. Don’t believe me? Then watch this video and explain what is happening:

The animation experiment by Heider and Simmel (1944) revealed that humans have a strong tendency to impose narrative even on displays showing interactions between simple geometric shapes. When watching this animation with three simple shapes, most observers tended to interpret them the shapes as having intentions, desires and beliefs. You might enjoy watching how comedians reacted to watching the animation:

As Bruner [2] (1990) explained: “Children produce and comprehend stories long before they are capable of handling the most fundamental Piagetian logical proposition that can be put into linguistic form.’. In the present educational landscape when Ofsted claim learning is “an alteration in long-term memory” and recall and retrieval are valued so highly it strikes me the power of story in supporting the formation of memory is undervalued and frequently overlooked. As Egan [3] (1997) states:

“oral cultures discovered long ago that ideas and values put into rhythmic story form were more easily remembered and more accurately acted upon”.
The power of stories to support learning is quite remarkable with research showing it has impact on comprehension, motivation to learn, language mastery, writing and memory [4] .

Let’s Think lessons draw upon the power of story. In Let’s Think in English (LTE) we are fortunate as the focus of the lessons tends to be narratives. It’s a pleasure and privilege to observe pupils following the texts, eager to meet the next page and see if their predictions ring true before engaging in cycles of discussion sharing their views and collectively developing understanding. In Let’s Think we are familiar with the Vygotskian concept of mediation; the act of guiding and supporting pupils to develop higher mental functions as a more knowledgeable other. However, in LTE lessons I see narrative texts as mediators too providing a springboard for thoughts linking to Vygotsky’s role of cultural mediation and supporting internalization.

Let’s Think maths’ and science’ programmes draw upon the power of stories too. As Alan Edmiston, Let’s Think in maths tutor explains:

“All of the maths lessons follow a sequential series of episodes, the first of which is concerned with engagement within a context. From that context comes an exploration of mathematical relationships moving upwards towards the more abstract aspects of the concept that runs throughout each lesson. An example is a Year 5 lesson: Sports League.

The lesson is focused upon how many games a team will play within a league which can be expressed algebraically in an expression as n x (n-1). To begin with however we start with a story of how both my daughters love netball, yet I do not like team sports because of my father who used to embarrass me in team games when I was in Year 5. I mention to the class that they asked if I could organise some games with two other schools but this time the parents and teachers play, and the students watch. The only problem is I have to make sure I can take part in all the games and fit them into my diary so I need to know how many games we will play altogether if everyone plays everyone else and everyone plays at home. Hooked – you bet they are! I find such an approach and the narrative that flows from it acts as a stepping stone towards higher level mathematical thinking.”

While Dr Martina Lecky, executive headteacher of the Vanguard Learning Trust, outlines the influence of stories in Let’s Think science and CASE:

“As an experienced practitioner, I have often found that the use of a narrative can increase students’ engagement in CASE lessons. One of my favourite lessons is activity 20, which focuses on the reasoning pattern of correlation.

I set the scene with the class: we live in a village called Brocklehurst and we are all carrot farmers. The problem is our supermarket buyer, Sainsbury’s, is about to cancel its order because our carrots are not as big as those of other growers. One of the villagers has, however, found a company selling a chemical called ‘grocaro’ which could solve our problem. As the carrot growers of Brocklehurst we need to decide, based on the evidence, whether the treatment, grocaro, has the effect of growing larger carrots compared with a control group.

I give the students different roles – farmers, town mayor, representatives from Sainsbury’s and the company selling grocaro – and the excitement throughout the lesson is palpable. I believe the narrative provides the context for them to have a heightened response as they consider the issue from the perspective of their role. At the end of the lesson, I know that the experience leaves an indelible mark on students as they have not only been challenged cognitively in terms of the lesson’s reasoning pattern, but also they have been on a conscious journey facilitated by the unfolding narrative.”

The narrative framing evident in the LT math and science lessons and rich texts of LTE provide familiar steppingstones to formal thinking and abstract concepts. Once we recognise the power of stories we have to as Egan says: “…reconceive the curriculum as the set of great stories we have to tell our children and recognise … school teachers as the storytellers of our culture.”

In my next blog post I’ll look at another story influence: how a lesson’s sequence can mirror narrative structure.

Footnotes
1. Boyd, B. The evolution of stories: from mimesis to language, from fact to fiction. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, Volume 9, Issue 1. 2017
2. Bruner, J. Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
3. Egan, K. The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
4. Miller S & Pennycuff L. The Power of Story: Using Storytelling to Improve Literacy Learning. Journal of Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives in Education Vol. 1, No. 1 (May 2008) 36 – 43