Conceptualised revision for GCSE English Lit

Everyone who follows me on Twitter knows I am a bit obsessed with Lit Crit...I am even writing a book on how to use it for Routledge which will be out early next year. I also run the YouTube channel, GCSE Literature Boost, where I broadcast mini lectures from some of the UK's most brilliant academics on some of the GCSE texts and CPD Conversations with the Inked Scholar where English teachers come on and have a chat about some specific subject knowledge with me. I love to study. Three Masters degrees and 3/5 of the way through a Doctorate and I am already thinking about what PhD or Masters I might study next! My area of expertise is teaching the most able and I have facilitated really exceptional results with the kids I teach, resulting in me being given a whole school role as Challenge Coordinator, where I train staff in all curriculum areas how to model excellence in their own subject area and really challenge the most able to strive towards achieving Grade 8 and 9. Why am I telling you this? Because it all gives you a bit of context as to why I have spent this year thinking about how I can better tailor revision for my more academically able students. 

I have blogged before about why revision in English can be a bit ineffective but I think that for the most able students, who know the plot, characters, quotes and context really well, the endless drudgery of just repeating stuff they have already learnt again can be a bit unfulfilling and isn't really encouraging the kind of conceptualised thinking and exploratory responses we are trying to encourage. 

As a Literature Paper 1 examiner, the kind of responses I sometimes see in Lit frustrate me. Sometimes they are too heavily reliant on identifying word types or techniques which doesn't really add to their analytical meaning. Of course, analysing the use of a particular verb or semantic field can be really useful in Literature - as long as students talk about how that particular word choice contributes to the presentation of a character or theme. For me, Literature is all about big ideas, the text as a conscious construct and what the play/novel/poem is a vehicle for. 

I had seen many schools having half termly lectures with pupils, so I wanted to do something similar for revision with my top set. I started by mapping out some of the more high level ideas in the texts and then finding some academic journals about these topics. I then made videos that I called 'Big Lectures' which spelled out some of the big ideas and concepts that students could refer to. I didn't just want to flood them with high falootin' ideas though, so that students could play 'bullshit bingo' and not really say anything worthwhile 😂 I wanted to make the links to these high level ideas really specific and create a list of tasks that students could complete as part of their revision, after each lecture. 

The process I followed was:

1. Students watch the videos and complete a Cornell Notes style page on what they had learned, with guiding questions, including a section for them to fill in on how they could use the learning and a section for them to consider how the text is used as a vehicle for the writer to impart a message. The notes pages look like this:

2. They then re-read some scenes that linked to the big idea/concept and highlighted and annotated it with a focus on the new learning. 

3. They then tracked the development of a character that relates the the big idea/concept and choose three quotes to analyse with layers of meaning which show that character's development.

4. They will then move onto context and at the end of the video on the task page, there is a question on how the new learning links to a contextual issue they have previously explored. 

5. Finally, they will complete some exam practice on a question that they can show off their new knowledge embedded into their analysis.

Even though the lectures are really challenging, there is also a small further conceptualised task to have a go at on each lecture as well - just for those students who really want to push themselves!

I have only made two of these for Macbeth so far because Covid and CAGs...but I do plan to make a whole suite of five of these for each of the key texts at GCSE. Impact wise, the responses I have had from students have been so much more sophisticated, with students coming up with a great concept in their thesis statements, which demonstrate a really high level idea they have learnt in the lecture and following that all the way through their answers.

If you would like to have a look for yourself please see here.  The videos take ages to make as I read about 3-5 journals to gather the ideas and then do about twenty takes so I don't sound like an idiot! It has completely honed the way I revise for Lit in the run up to the exams. What is more, students can watch them as many times as they like. Hope they are useful!