Thread by @Missis_SCS

Today I read my students' books, and had one of those moments where you feel humbled by what lovely work they are doing. Here's a thread on why it seemed significant:

I've been teaching for thirteen years now, but still feel like I am learning so much... 1/14

Teaching English @bedsfreeschool and the culture of professional learning @advschools means I have become far more intentional about what I do. This is partly because I am weighing up all I am learning about how people learn, and partly because... 2/14

the culture here enables me to see and focus more forensically on what students know/don't know. I then have the freedom to respond accordingly. Because I've had this class over a few years, I am able to see how each tiny step we've taken is building up to something... 3/14

I have a particular class in mind, and I've blogged about the work I'm doing here: thedustytsundoku.wordpress.com/2019/05/03/dir…
This way of teaching was incredibly different from how I was used to teaching, and really pushed me out of my comfort zone. Reactions on Twitter echoed my own doubts... 4/14

I understood other teachers' concerns I was killing creativity through rote learning, drill and kill, but I also knew that there are lots of English lessons where the spark of creativity you hope to inspire just doesn't ignite, and I felt it was because... 5/14

not all students can take the leap into creativity, awe and wonder without explicit teaching of the tools to get there. I felt I needed a method to deconstruct and explicitly teach all the things that felt innate to me or to "top set" students, in the hope that one day... 6/14

these students too would become highly creative. So yes, things were highly structured, there was loads of repetition and lots of set answers I wanted students to answer in a set way. This wasn't because I wanted to control their voices or make them puppets to my opinions... 7/14

it was because I wanted to develop that "fingertip knowledge" for students to grasp at when they need it. I also wanted to be able to quickly and accurately assess they all had the answer - much easier if we all say the same thing. And most importantly, I wanted them to... 8/14

know the rules inside-out, so they could be confident in knowing when to use them, when to bend them and when to break them. This is English after all - as our art teacher says we must build our cage before breaking free.

So, back to the student books I was reading... 9/14

I think I can see it happening. My students, who last year were struggling in English, are not only getting every question right when I ask them about their literature texts, but they are expressing their knowledge in their own words. They are going beyond a superficial... 10/14

obvious answer and offering up some really interesting ideas. They are combining, blending, synthesising what they know to create something new. Despite me giving them a tight structure for writing, their writing is less formulaic than it was. They sound more mature and.. 11/14

I would go so far as to say in some instances their creative writing is absolutely beautiful. I'm not sure I've ever seen a year 10 class blossom into KS4 students quite so quickly and confidently. Reading their books today, I felt really humbled by their trust in me... 12/14

They have all done what I asked them to do over a period of time. They came with me and as a result, their own voices are now shining through. I don't want to be complacent - we still have lots to do and much to achieve, but I really do feel excited at what is happening... 13/14

And this makes me look forward to every lesson with them!

A thread of this length probably merits a blog! I'll be talking about this more @researchEDBrum on 7th March and will follow up with a blog on what happens when the intervention ends.

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