Getting started with the new GCSE

 The first half term with the new GCSE! Wishing maybe I'd brought some books home to illustrate some things in this post. But then again, no thanks. I'll leave it all at school if you don't mind!

For French, I put in place booklets for Module 0 (before starting the textbook) and to accompany Module 1 of the book. This was to make sure teachers and pupils were focusing on the transferable core of language and the high frequency non topic language. And working on what pupils can DO with their language as much as on knowledge of language.

This didn't leave me much time to plan the Spanish Scheme of Work or resources. Our French scheme of work is flexible and will be constantly revised as we discover what the new GCSE is actually like. The Spanish scheme of work is even more flexible. I'm just using the old one and changing things as I go! This is also because they basically start Spanish in Year 10. (Year 9 have one lesson a week after school.) So I'm really concentrating on building what the pupils know and can do. With lots of shortcuts and synergies across topics. An accumulation of language and the ability to deploy it is something that I am not prepared to throw away; because it works!

So I started with the topic of Holidays. Not the topic that comes first in the textbook. I wanted to start with a topic that is really strong on the key aspects of the course. Pupils' repertoire of opinions, reasons and references to past, present and future. Key vocabulary for time reference, qualifiers, description. Holidays is great for this. Plus it allows us to look at places in Spain and tell exciting stories. Rather than obscure navel gazing and invasion of pupils' privacy, trying to construct something on a marginal topic like Your Use of Communications Technology. Once we have the core snowball of language, we can easily scoop up things like Technology later on. But it's not the topic I want to start with when I'm trying to get the snowball to gel.

All of my Year 10 can confidently give opinions and reasons. Including other people's opinions to set up a conflict. They can narrate where they went, what they wanted, what people said, what was happening and what happened. They can do this for an amusing incident at an aquarium. Or a theme park. And transfer it to other topics we've not even done yet, for example talking about a lesson in school. There are plenty of posts on this blog looking at exactly this. If you're not familiar with it, here is a good example. It shows how the old GCSE lent itself to this approach. The requirement to "narrate" is no longer there in the new GCSE criteria. But the Conversation now requires pupils to talk for twice as long on one theme compared to the old GCSE. So I am keeping this approach! Plus it contains all the grammar my Year 10 beginners need to have at their fingertips.

Here they are improvising on the idea of different activities for different weather conditions. And including the class's pet obsession which now appears in every piece of work anyone does: rubber ducks!

Going to Cromer and playing on the arcades

As well as the core repertoire, you can see the high frequency vocabulary for time references and qualifiers shining through!

Again, this is something that I always taught. This non topic language is absolutely vital in the out-going GCSE where AQA will give 0 marks for a Reading/Listening answer that doesn't contain words like almost, part of, most... Again, if you aren't teaching this language for the old GCSE, here's a post that will open your eyes!

So what has changed? One important thing is the apparent reduction in topic-relevant vocabulary. I am hearing this from the French teachers too. Teaching Technology without having all the technology words as central. Or in a future unit, teaching TV habits without having all the types of programmes listed. Of course you can still teach pupils how to say, "I have my own youtube channel" even if channel isn't on the list. But you don't set out with the principal objective being for pupils to learn those topic words. It's no longer central.

What are we teaching instead? Well, from the first part of this post, you can see that I am teaching core powerful cross-topic repertoire plus high frequency non-topic words.

You can see this best if you continue to teach with the old textbook together with the new one. There are exercises which look similar, but which show the key differences. For example in the Holidays unit, the old textbook has a listening/reading exercise on accommodation. It contains youth hostel, cruiser, guest house, luxury hotel, campsite... The new textbook has hotel, flat, campsite.

In speaking and writing, the focus is on what you can say about a hotel or a campsite. Not learning all the types of accommodation. In listening and reading, the focus is on the exact detail of the qualifiers. In fact it always was. But now I don't need to feel guilty for skipping youth hostel because I knew we weren't going to see it again ever and it would be forgotten within days.

Here's the list of words my pupils extracted from the Reading/Listening texts on transport and accommodation:

Not a single transport or accommodation word there! And it's prominently located on the inside cover of their exercise book. Because that vocabulary is going to be useful in every unit. I'm hoping that every sub topic doesn't yield that much key vocabulary, because we're going to run out of room on the yellow covers, and because I've told the pupils that this vocabulary will set them up for the whole course. Unlike youth hostel, I am certain they will see these words again and again in Listenings and Readings. In fact they already have. And have another look at the plastic duck writing above and see how these words mesh with their core repertoire for Speaking and Writing.

Plenty of "topic" words have stuck with pupils. This kind of concrete topic vocabulary is easily lapped up. Chubascos stuck literally by me telling them they didn't need to learn it anymore. But our main focus has been on the non topic words.

One last thing on using the old and the new textbook that brings this out. Having worked on accommodation or transport with the new book, you can do the exercises from the old book. And use this to show them how the vocabulary works. But also to show them how AQA questions tend to work. They are NOT comprehension questions in the sense of giving an answer about the information in the text. They are language testing questions where you have to demonstrate you can show your knowledge of the words and structures.

Use the listenings from the old book. Give the pupils the comprehension question "answers" (he stayed in a youth hostel etc). But show them how for AQA this isn't how they view the exam questions. You can see in this example, I gave them the questions. And I gave them an insufficient answer. You can spot these because they have been marked by a cross. Their job is to listen and give the full AQA compliant answer.

What the pupils have to do is focus on the detail of the language around youth hostel, not the youth hostel itself - this is no longer in the exam. What they are listening for is the detail:  near the beach, quite, very, small, a bit. These are the words AQA have always wanted pupils to identify if they are to get the marks. And there they are, right there in the old textbook. But we were being distracted by guest house and cruise ship.

So far so good. I have some things to share in another post related to unexpected questions and the different requirements for the Role Play, Read Aloud Questions and Conversation Questions. But the biggest difference so far is it allows me to continue to teach exactly how I taught the old GCSE, but without worrying so much about cutting corners on youth hostel and lists of topic vocabulary. Because building what pupils can do with a core repertoire is much more important.

Cognitive Science in Practice

 In a previous post I wrote about the Cognitive Science ideas that are so current in schools today. I characterised them as being uncontroversial, fairly obvious, and as giving no actual precise answers as to how they make teaching and learning go better.

That post wasn't really attacking the Cognitive Science. It was about the dangers of the right wing Knowledge Curriculum which is using the Cognitive Science as a Trojan Horse. More on that toxic Knowledge mutation here. 

The Cognitive Science has been pulled into this in two main ways. Firstly as cover for the toxic Knowledge mutation. And secondly by the "Research" mutation. Instead of research into the messy complexity of teaching and learning, this has come to mean a policing of teaching and how it conforms to a neat and very basic model of learning. 

None of this is the fault of the Cognitive Science. So in this post I will try to set the record straight a little and find a middle way!

When it comes to the Cognitive Science, I think that being basic (fundamental), uncontroversial and vague are positives. Yes, even vague. The sooner we can get away from polarised models and magic bullets, the better. True research is in the messy middle ground. Cognitive Science tells us, for example, that the balance between challenge and pupils being overwhelmed is a vital sweetspot. It doesn't tell us how to find this. Of course not. But we look for it in every lesson. Teaching and research into learning ought to be about looking at this rich interplay, not a tidied up version with arrows, outlines of heads and memories forming as a spark across a synapse.

Here's an example to get us going.

When I use dual coding to teach food vocabulary in French, I have used these pictures.

As in comfy chair

As in moooootard

[Ironically the only magic bullet Cognitive Science offers is misunderstood to such an extent that I am often told this is NOT in fact dual coding.]

Pupils doing a single transition taster lesson in French in July of Year 6 still remember most of the words when we come to do them 8 months later in March of Year 7. From a single lesson. So dual coding works - go back and click on the link above if that makes you want to read more.

But it doesn't work equally well for all the pictures. Jam works great. This particular picture for moutarde doesn't. And if you pay attention in the lesson, you will see why. There is always a pupil whose immediate reaction is to shout out, "Why is that cow pink?" And the answer is because I really liked the picture, I thought it would be fun and maybe even memorable. And then the Cognitive Science whispers, "Too memorable." Too memorable and too distracting. The pupils have remembered "pink cow" not mooootard. So time to try a different cow picture that's less the centre of attention.

This applies to everything. Not just pictures. What is helpful? What is attractive? What is distracting? Like the Millennium Falcon, we are stuck in some kind of traction beam between attraction and distraction. The Cognitive Science can alert us to our fate, but we still have to figure it out for ourselves on a case by case basis. Sometimes you can just bypass the compressor. And sometimes you have to fly straight at the Imperial cruiser and hide until it jettisons its trash.

And it gets really quite complicated when we move away from just images. Our whole approach to teaching languages comes into question:

Authentic texts. Genuinely engaging, interesting and meaningful? Or leading to a superficial reading based on guessing, alienating pupils who need to understand the words, are overloaded by the content, and aren't that interested anyway? Attractive or distracting?

Using language to communicate, be creative, express yourself. Is this exciting or overwhelming? It brings with it the overload of having to think up what to say, and having to interact with other people. And incredibly complex decision making of how to express yourself using the limited language you have, balancing accuracy and communication. 

We don't need Cognitive Science to tell us this. We know that all these aspects need developing: learning the language knowledge, and learning to use the language. But we should listen to the Cognitive Science here. Because it is trying to escape from the paralysing  Knowledge Curriculum tractor beam paradigm of "Novices and Experts." Learners can and should be learning to develop how they use their language. Because we understand the Cognitive challenges that are in play here. We don't give up on it and say that learners can't use their language until they are "Expert." We know to break down the demands and develop knowledge of language and how to deploy language, working on both.

Grammar or Meaning? When I teach pets to Year 7, I know that un and une, and j'ai and je n'ai pas de are more important than chien in terms of their French over the next 5 years. But I also know that for pupils at this stage, links and patterns internal to the language are insignificant, compared to links between the language and the real world. Their real world. When they go round the classroom asking, Tu as un hibou qui s'appelle Archimedes ? until they find that person, I know they are practising phonics, gender, the verb to have for asking and answering, negatives, question forms, how to interact... But from their perspective... They are finding out who has an owl!

Like the pink cow, I need to watch and make sure that it's not a distraction. But without this, it's not language learning. It's memorisation of some sounds and letters with no meaning other than that they can be translated into English. But the kind of meaning that means referring to reality - the reality in the classroom, the reality of the owl - that needs to be in the balance too.

And when I teach je n'ai pas de... Cognitive Science doesn't tell me how to do it. Should I explain how it's formed, with Mr Apostrophe eating the letter e? Or should they learn it by chanting it over and over to a video of an accelerating steam train? Should we meet it when we do the grammar of the verb to have? Or should we do it when we are doing a dialogue and someone finds they need to say, "I don't have an owl"?

We do all those things. But in what order and in what balance? Cognitive Science doesn't tell me. Experience tells me. Trying it and coming back to it again tells me. Constant observing and monitoring tells me. Talking to the pupils about it tells me.

And that's just fine. Cognitive Science isn't the answer. It is a question. A dynamic question of balance that is never going to be answered and which will always be asked in every single lesson, every single day. In every single classroom of real pupils and real teachers being human beings.