D3+Al's+project

Class: Stage Two English Studies: Project Outline: **What?** 1. Focusing mainly on Inductive Reasoning (where they ‘observe’ literal features in the texts and ‘infer’ or interpret the meaning (literal and connotative) and articulate the PROCESS by which this meaning is generated (ie explain the way the inference happens) 2. . . . but also looking at classifying (as a way to get them to ‘own’ or think through and decide what’s important about the myriad of different literary techniques, rather than simply get them to choose from some of the ways I’ve grouped them (FC Pats, Sound techniques, etc). This would be a preparatory exercise 3. . . . AND looking at abstracting, in particular relation to getting them developing steps to deepen their understanding of metaphor (in expository and imaginative texts) and analogy (more often in expository texts)  Term 3: August/September: Classifying and Abstracting with King Lear; intro to Inductive and Deductive Reasoning Term 4: October: Classifying and Inductive Reasoning with Critical Reading  **Resources I'm developing: ** 1. Handouts for the students summarising the steps involved and graphic organisers that can be used (I've uploaded these to the student English wiki so they can access them from there too)  2. Sheet with the list of vocabulary relating to Critical Reading that students do some classifying work with: 3. Various comparing and abstracting graphic organisers I've adapted from material I've already been using:
 * When?**

Reflections from Classes: ** Mon 24th Aug: Teaching Classifying: Context: King Lear quotes: towards the end of the unit, students to gather, relfect on and make links. . . 1. Started well (asked kids what it is etc), they were keen to learn, recognised its value 2. Teaching the steps went well and generated useful discussion on the more complex of the two graphic organisers I offered them (see classifying steps handout above) 3. The practice with quotes: students struggled to generate the category out of the quote (rather than their habit of applying ones already given, 'theme 1' 4. The rules and reasons for the categories was VALUABLE DISCUSSION, and unexpectedly the discussion of the LINKS that related one category to the next generated some high level thinking (e.g. quotes about the problems of blindness and quotes about natural imagery were linked by 'the world is a place that seems naturally to be dark and difficult and violent') 5. After effects: 2 days later, when working with a student from this class on a different subject (Media Studies), helping him organise the mess of his research ideas about the issues arising from a topic (Obama's representation in New Media) I suggested he use classification (the proper way) to evaluate as well as organise his ideas - and he got it!
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Need to type up my written notes here on classifying King Lear quotes, abstracting thematic statements from Lear quotes and applying to other literal Lear situations. . ..

__Friday Week 10: **Inductive Reasoning** in response to three poems about Icarus. . .__ 1. This happened in the Friday lesson before the week's break and before their trial exams. Not all the class were present and of those who were present, not all the class had done the preparatory work on the three poems about Icarus (standard Crit Reading questions about the content and techniques of the three poems). But I pushed on. . . 2. . . . and promptly forgot to spend enough time doing the explicit preliminary work about what Inductive Reasoning is, where we use it in everyday life and what the steps are. The main reason for this was that, due to their interest (excitement, even . . . ) in the complex reasoning processes as a whole, at the end of a lesson on abstracting, we'd gotten into a discussion on the difference between Inductive and Deductive Reasoning, so in the back of my mind I felt we'd 'done' the first part properly, when we hadnt. 3. We agreed that in a Crit Reading scenario, the 'observations' we draw from the texts would take the form of interesting quotes that seem to saying something meaningful and could help us conclude what the poem is expressing or attempting to make the reader think and feel. So the students gathered quotes, inferred conculsions about the writer's purpose and audience, then checked the conclusions against other interesting observations/quotes. 4. It went OK but not as well as the abstracting or classifying (prob due to the reasons above). It felt at times a bit too like a different way of scaffolding I was trying on them, rather than the handing over of the reasoning tools to the students. Maybe it was simply that they needed this higher level of scaffolding at this stage. What was cool, though, as with the other sessions, was that it did result in a bit more of the serendipidous (sp) moments when students made the unexpected connections without being directed towards them. 5. In this refelction, I've also remembered what I had originally intended to do, which was to do it on a smaller scale too. . . for each quote, we could make literal observations about it (i.e. it uses a metaphor, the language is simple, a word is repeated from ealier etc) and from these observations try to draw conclusions about HOW the quote conveys its meaning and WHAT the purpose of the quote it (i.e. it's meaning). Duh. Next time then.

__Plan for Wed Week 1: **Classifying** billions (felt like it as I was cutting and laminating . . . ) of vocab words to do with Critical Reading__ 1. The idea is to give them ownership of the way they can a) remember the key elements of analysis (like metaphor, tone, purpose, audience, evidence, title etc) that they need to address in their responses, because they're in a grouping made by them, rather than me b) understand some of the more complex relationships between the different elements in order to deeping their understanding and analysis

2. I'm also thinking in terms of CRPs (complex reasoning processes) when organising their __revision sessions__ on single texts, paired texts and poetry texts. The obvious ones are to get them doing **classifying** of quotes in response to an essay question (selecting and grouping in different ways, depending on the essay question), **abstracting** (going from particular to general and from general to particular) as a way of getting their heads around relating an essay question to their textual knowledge (as the Stage 2 English Studies questions are horribly abstract, a real hurdle to some kids), **inductive reasoning** as a way to look at familiar texts in a new way (the observations here will be statements or questions about particular or literal things they've noticed in the text: why does Edgar lead on Goneril and Reagan? Lady Lazarus seems proud of her perfomance, which students then see if they can come to one conclusion about the 'main meaning' of the text based on the most striking observations.)

__**Description and Reflection: Wed 14th Oct: lesson 2: critical reading: classifying**__
 * Task:** Range of vocab relating to crit reading (both technical terms such as 'tone' and broader ares such as 'purpose') cut up and laminated. Students in groups of 2 or 3 to lay out and classify in 'meaningful' groups that they'll find it easy to help them think about in depth and remember the terms. I stressed the importance of following the steps (i.e. picking one term and describing its attributes, then finding another) rather than the way they've done it in the past which is grouping several at a time without clear articulation.


 * So?:** timing worked well: after 1 hour of feedback and presenting revision timetable, the kids were into doing something very student-directed. They weren't phased by the huge number of terms I'd cut up and laminated (57 in total)and ended up with some good insights. Most interesting thing was the difficulty they had in articulating the 'attributes' of a term (much discussion was had about the attributes of a sentence fragment), and how, when they began to do it, how they were able to think in more depth about the different ways in which the term/technique operated in a text. They had wanted to whizz on by this stage and 'get the grouping done', which gave me an insight into one of the things stopping them from writing in-depth analysis of the technique's operation in a specific example. The forced 'what are the attributes', 'why might it fit here better than here' questions really helped them stop and smell the roses.

I also found I was doing a bit of teacher-scaffolded comparing to get them the identify the attributes (they struggled with allusion, so I asked them to name the common attributes the allusion and analogy shared, and then the attributes that made them distinct from each other.

1. I'm going to explicitly teach comparing as a way to help them 'get started' on understanding something (this will also help with paired text revision; 2. We're going to get the laminated terms out again next wednesday's crit reading lesson and do some random classifications and get them thinking about what might link them all. 3. Doing some inductive reasoning today on The Crucible.
 * What Next?:**

From collecting 'observations' about the text's literal details (making statements and asking questions about characters, settings, context, purpose, theme, technique) students used the inductive reasoning process to draw one major conclusion that they try to support and refine by looking for more observations from the text. Reflection: first part went well, some interesting conclusions. Didn't have time to do the last, important 'checking conclusions' bit. I'm liking the fact that this is really getting them to develop their own materials rather than simply work within the limits of my scaffold.
 * Thurs 14th Oct: Crucible revision: Inductive Reasoning**

Students had collected quotes and vocabulary words relating to the the play as homework. Their job was to respond to an essay question by setting up 'idea areas' and then gathering observations in the form of quotes into each 'idea area'. From then, I wanted them to use inductive reasoning on the quotes to come to some kind of conclusion about the 'idea area' (the lack of which is a major weakness in their arguments and essays). Again, they did the first part well, but we ran out of time to really push the developing of and checking of conclusions.
 * Fri 15th Oct: Crucible revision and essay writing: Inductive Reasoning**

Students developed an A3 page of integrated study notes on the relative key info they need to remember about Author/context/purpose, setting, characters (prot,antag, others) title, symbolism/imagery, literary/other allusions, themes, genre specific techniques. They then picked one area of information, wrote a literal statement, abstracted it and saw if/how that abstraction could be turned into a literal statement relating to the parallel area in their second text. Reflection: They find this the hardest of the 3 complex reasoning processes I've taught them, but it may well be a key to them working at a higher level in coming to the broader conclusions about the thematic issues of single and paired texts. Feel very much like I could have started this earlier in my teaching of the paired texts, but it's still of value here to get them kicked out of habitual and narrow thinking patterns about their texts, an important part of revision, to look at things in a fresh light.
 * Mon 19th Oct: Paired Text revision: Abstracting**

Yay 1:** when talking about a rule to remember with using quotes, a student contributed how important it was to check the assumptions of what they think a quote means; another student supported this by saying 'use **inductive reasoning** to check the assumptions. . . " Yay 2: I gave them a test to see how many of the 57 crit reading vocab terms they could remember (they wrote their answers in the groups they'd put the terms into last week) and suggested they look at the ones they failed to remember. When asked to think about things they could to with the ones they'd failed to remember, one student (a different one from Yay 1) suggested **classifying** them to help understand better.
 * Wed 21st Oct: Crit Reading Revision: no explicit teaching of complex reasoning processes but . ..