Teaching Literature: a holistic approach

In this post I would like to discuss my approach to teaching literature at ALevel. As a department we decided to teach a film in Y12, in our case, El Laberinto del Fauno and a text in Y13, La Casa de Bernarda Alba. We chose this text because the themes portrayed in it are easy to understand and still relevant nowadays, so it is easy for students to relate to. 

When  choosing a text it is important to choose something that you feel comfortable with but, a text that has quite a lot of resources available for you to cover it, confidently, and which is not too long for students to read! 

Similarly, reading the text in class, aloud, is extremely powerful! As we chose a play, students play the different roles while reading during the lesson, which makes the reading interactive, while getting lots of oral practice! 

I also advocate for a bilingual edition, if available. When tackling a literary text, there will be lots of new vocabulary and having a page, translated into English by the side, saves valuable time while empowering students to learn new vocabulary.

A holistic approach versus a linear approach

In  a linear, traditional approach, students would read the text and then, the teacher will teach, via key passages, worksheets featuring short summaries and reading comprehension tasks,  the different aspects of the play. In a normal sequence that would be: Historical Context, Main themes, Literary Figures, Characters, Structure, Style, Message etc.. Although this approach is perfectly valid, I like to use it, only, at the end of the learning process. 

At the beginning, I want my students to have a holistic approach to the text, which I believe, makes them understand the literary work much more thoroughly and puts them right in the centre of the learning process!

In a holistic approach, students would also read the text in the classroom and prompted by the teacher, they will analyse the play, page by page, orally, in a class discussion.  

For this to happen, these are the type of questions I would ask them: 

What do you think this means? What does this represent? Why is this written the way it is? Which theme can we see here? What does this say about this character? How is the tension achieved? etc.. 

Students will take notes, highlight their text, look at the translation by the side, if needed, and will start creating Flashcards with our class discussions, incorporating key quotes/references to the text to back up their ideas. 

Why is this holistic? 

Because we study many themes at once as they keep appearing throughout the play. Students start creating a corpus of flashcards for the different elements of the play, which may appear at once and certainly not in a linear way!   From lesson one, students create their own study guide in the shape of flashcards. Students tend to make these flashcards for homework after key ideas have been discussed during lessons. By the time we finish reading and analysing the book, students have created themselves, a valuable, learning document full of thorough analysis and quotes! These lessons are carried out mainly in Spanish with the support of English, when needed. We also use mini whiteboards to put difficult ideas into Spanish. Students take photos of the ideas in their mini whiteboards, and will incorporate such information to their flashcards as necessary. Up to this point, we do not make use of any specific resources, just the book!

After this process, we study the text again, in the linear more traditional way! At this point, students bring their flashcards to lessons and using these, they lead the linear discussions: talking about and analysing the different traditional topics, guided by me, of course! At this stage we start using other external resources, such as the Zig-Zag series or the Hodder/Oxford Literature Guides as well any materials online. 

It is at this point that students start writing essays. 

This approach allows students to be the centre of the learning process, and be an active part of the lessons:

• They read the text
• They come with the ideas through discussions and my support, of course!
• They create their own study guide, through flashcards!
• They can, quite successfully, analyse the different themes of the play, which we study in the traditional approach to literature in a second round!  By this point, students have become the experts!

It takes me nearly a whole term, three lessons per week, to study the text, holistically and linearly. We always do this in the Autumn Term and we use the Lent Term to carry out timed writing sessions every other week. 

Language Show 2020 Presentations and Webinars

Thank you so much for the feedback I received today from both of my webinars in the Language Show. It has been amazing to read your comments, contributions and ideas! We learn from each other.

As promised the Webinars presentations and Videos are below.

Motivation and engagement in the MFL classroom: let's play, let's speak!

YOUTUBE LINK ON MOTIVATION

Stickability beyond the classroom: delivering high impact lessons via the use of IT tools.

YOUTUBE LINK ON STICKABILITY

How to Blend Learning?

Blended learning, we have definitely heard this term over and over again since the first lockdown when schools were shut, as the future of education. 

What is Blended Learning?

The way I see it, Blended Learning means that students learn through the combination of face-to-face and on-line teaching methods, all blended into one, to maximise their learning experience. In other words, learning occurs via traditional methods, such as worksheets, Question and Answer sessions, activities via a textbook or a worksheet, combined with the use of IT tools which, via careful planning, help students in their learning journey. 

When I think about Blended Learning, I think about the different spaces where learning takes place and the different ways in which such learning can occur. 

Why different places for learning?

Students do not just learn in the classroom, they may learn on the bus, at home in their bedroom or during a school trip. They can access knowledge from any space, as long as they are doing a learning activity, like the school trip example, or, most importantly, have a device from which to carry out learning! That's why when blending learning, I think carefully, where students can access different activities.

Why different ways of learning?

Practice is key in learning and making progress. However it can be tedious to do such practice in just one way, say via worksheets using paper and a pen. This can be the case for young learners, who are bombarded with stimuli and immediate feedback experiences via technology at all times: you like a series, you binge it and watch it all! Accessing information and learning via videos, online images or collaborative tools can be extremely engaging and productive.

Blended Learning, allows me to take the learning experience outside the classroom if and when students or I choose to do so and teach in many different ways, which in the process, allows me to revisit content over and over again from different angles, without a feeling of repetition or dejá vu. This experience, in exchange, engages my students, makes them more independent, more involved in their learning process and, ultimately, makes their learning more in tune with their 21st century experience.

How to Blend Learning?

Planning a sequence of lessons:

• First of all, I  would advise to have a vision of what you would like your students to achieve by the end of series of lessons and move backwards from there. For example, to be able to talk about their holidays last year.  
• Secondly, think about what elements do your learners need to get there? This means structures, including vocabulary and grammar. A Sentence Builder with the potential sentences that students should be producing/understanding by the end of your sequence of lessons can be extremely powerful or just a model text. 
• Finally, think about how are we going to take them there? What steps do we need to plan for the students to practise and embed our planned structures? It is, in this final step where we can blend learning!

Elements for blending learning

• Use an online platform with your students so that you can share your planned activities, aka, learning steps, with them: Google Classroom, Firefly, Onenote/Classnote, Teams are the most common platforms, I believe, schools are using. 
• Plan the activities for your lessons and think, at each stage, which and how IT tools can assist you and your students to enhance the learning experience. For this I have a list of potential IT tools that I could use at any stage. You do not need to use them all but it is important that you are aware of them.

In my case my Blended Learning IT tools ready at my disposal are these:

In the centre I have Microsoft 365 as the core of my blended learning classroom:

Onenote

Teams (for remote teaching)

Onedrive

Flipgrid

Forms

Sway

Word/PPT

These main apps are supported by Firefly (our School Virtual Learning Platform) which I use for online libraries for my students, not class specific, and Smartboard Software for the delivery of in-class lessons.

Finally there is a wide range of apps and tools that I can use for my teaching and students' learning: 

LearningApps, Quizlet, Wheel of Names, Flippity, Loom, Peardeck, Memrise, Genially, Quizizz, Edpuzzle, Padlet, Canva, Mentimeter, Wooclap, ClassroomScreen,Thinglink or Wordwall.

For ideas on how the different tools can support Sentence Builders and the learning experience, click on the following post.  

For How to videos on how to use some of the apps above, click on the following post.

I use, Onenote (Class Notebook) to share the links to these online activities with my students, who need to bring their own device to my lessons. I share my lessons with students weekly. Consequently, students have access, via Onenote, to all worksheets we work with during lessons and to links which will take them to different interactive activities which need to be carried out during lessons or at home, for reinforcement, or as part of homework. 

A normal set of lessons (3 in this case) looks like the example below on Onenote. As you can see there are classic activities such as Battleships (which I could photocopy if I want to) but also links to other interactive activities like Flippity or Wheel of names, to be carried out orally in pairs, or in writing. Reference materials, such as the formation of the past tense in Spanish, are easily shared this way too: 

I teach normally, using my Smartboard, and when prompted by me, students access their Onenote and carry out the online activities with blue links. If using Microsoft apps, such as Word, Forms, Flipgrid, or Genially and Youtube videos, the apps appear automatically embedded on my onenote, which is visually nice! Depending on the activity, students may work on their own, but also in pairs, like in the case below, where Y9 students accessed a Genially interactive game and played in pairs:

Students can also work collaboratively via the Collaboration space on Onenote or a Padlet or Google Document. This is great for brainstorming of ideas on a given topic.

Homework, may include a video, which can be embedded into Onenote, which I have previously recorded with Loom (screencasting) where students need to follow instructions and complete a series of activities directly on Onenote in the box supplied:

Homework can be oral practice, via the Insert Audio function on Onenote, which allows me to carry out a dictation, ask questions which students need to answer, or just repeat after me for pronunciation work. In the example below, students had to click on the Quizizz activity for practice, before listening to my questions which they had to answer using the audio insert on onenote: 

By blending learning and having a platform (Onenote) to share my online activities, as well as worksheets, with my students, I can create Learning Libraries, with resources for specific classes to which students have access at all times, in all spaces.  The resources will also include a wide range of activities using different tools. They are all under Content Library and are classified in different Tabs. See the example below from my Y11 Onenote: 

The way I blend learning is by maximising the use of a wide range of online resources in the classroom, via Onenote.  

Students can access their Onenote, and their interactive personalised activities in lessons but also in any other space (bus, home, library). The online, interactive tasks allow learners to practise key vocabulary and structures (sentence builders) in many different ways and shapes, making the learning experience innovative, catchy, memorable and sticky, just like the different social media platforms, so embedded in our students' lives, do! The difference is, that I use technology not just for entertaining the kids but to enhance their learning experience in all different ways and spaces!