Deep Learning or Distraction?

 It's March, so it's time for the Year 7 French Exhibition at the local Windmill arts exhibition centre.

Every pupil in Year 7 creates an artwork and describes it in French. Then it goes on display to the paying public.

The idea is that from the beginning, pupils can use their French creatively, for a real purpose and for a real audience. In 2011 we won the European Language Label for an MFL curriculum built around creative outcomes for every unit. This post outlines how it was part of a LinkedUp project between schools, using tangible outcomes as a driver of pupil engagement and deep learning.

The idea of Deep Learning is that it should be creative, personal, collaborative, involve time outside the classroom, and have a real purpose beyond the classroom. It should have an outcome that is big and important. There should also be a creative process where the pupil makes decisions crucial to the success of the project.

The opposite view, which is much more in fashion at the moment, is that all this is a distraction. That we shouldn't have to motivate pupils or show them the relevance of what they are studying. Instead, we decide what is important, we break it down into explicit steps, and they learn by memorising and being tested on it.

Through this shift in thinking, we have kept our curriculum and examined it in the light of the changing fashions in ideas. We have rewritten the booklets to make the teaching of grammar and phonics more consistently explicit for all teachers in the department. The question is, do projects like the Windmill Exhibition now feel more of a distraction than a driver of deep learning?

How could it be a distraction? Here's why: 

• What if we are focused on the product not the process? So there's a deadline and we skip over important learning because we need to get the picture and the text done.
• The pupils' attention might be too directed towards the meaning and not enough towards the forms of the words.
• What if the pupils' descriptions bring in random words that they are never going to need again? When we should be teaching carefully selected vocabulary that exemplifies grammar patterns and which they will meet over and over in a carefully programmed way.
• What if pupils are trying to say things they can't? So they fall into error but we gloss over it because they are "communicating well."

I think all of these considerations do need to be taken into account. In fact this Unit of work very much brings you up against them. But while they are things to be aware of, they are not things that mean we should abandon the approach.

Here's an example of one of the exhibits:

You can see what the grammatical objectives of the unit are: Word order, gender, adjectival agreement, prepositions.

Here's a page from the booklet using describing shapes and colours to work on the concept of gender and why French sentences need it:

So what is really happening in a curriculum that asks pupils to use their language for a purpose? From the "Deep Learning" point of view, they are taking ownership of their language, relating it to things that are important to them, and taking responsibility for the quality of work that is to be presented to an audience.

But from the point of view of well-sequenced grammar teaching, it also works. Asking our pupils to be creative is exactly what drives the need for grammar. Grammar, by definition, is what allows you to say an infinite number of things, not just repeat what the teacher has taught you. They may decide to draw a pirate ship or an astronaut or a daffodil or a heron. Good. The possible plethora of random items they put in their pictures is grammar in action.

The description of any one of the artworks looks simple. Stating what is in the picture, the size, the shape, the colours, the position. But the fact that hundreds of pupils can all produce their own unique version using the French that they have been learning, is what you want from grammar learning. We teach definite and indefinite articles, gender and and word order, precisely so that pupils can use any nouns and adjectives they chose. This isn't wasteful low frequency fluff. This is the whole point of teaching grammar. Grammar is creativity.