Challenging texts – Why using them benefits all
A more ambitious approach to text selection, and rationales for using them in English lessons, will benefit pupils of all abilities…
- by Bob Cox
Have you ever gotten in a knot working through a lesson plan – realising that just when you thought you were done, you needed an extension opportunity for advanced learners?
What if, instead of thinking of these more difficult learner activities as a bolt-on to your lesson, you considered a higher-level approach for all children from the start?
Every school has high ambitions for its pupils. But it’s not quite so simple to embody this ambition in an English lesson.
How can we challenge pupils and ensure creativity becomes a cultural norm in school? And is it ever possible for us to pitch the work high, and still make it accessible to everyone in the class?
My team and I regularly visit schools across the UK. We’ve observed numerous examples of schools who have, with our help, asked and found satisfactory answers to the questions above. Here’s how it works.
Big principles first
Though it may seem counter-intuitive, try reversing the way you think about lesson planning. Consider the most advanced elements first. Abandon bolt-on extras and focus on the hardest possible level of understanding and writing to which your class might aspire. This is essential for ambitious approaches to flourish, as expectations remain high for all.
This process is also much more coherent when scaffolded around quality literature. Comprehension, fluency, vocabulary explorations, reading to writing routes and oracy are all enhanced via the scope and power of a complex text.
Ultimately, we want children to comprehend texts in this deeper way. We want them to use that understanding to help them excel in writing. Take a look at this extract from a Year 6 pupil at Doncaster Primary Academy:
His suit and tie are so tight that his big bull-neck hangs over his white shirt. This startling white shirt only emphasises how red his fierce face is. In the centre of this raging redness is a broad nose with flaring nostrils. Although his eyes move slowly, they see everything: a child not doing their work; a child whispering to the person in front of them; even the child who dares to briefly look him in the eye.
The pupil’s writing has been influenced by:
- his academy’s rich curriculum
- a great teacher
- his depth of prior reading
- a keen response
But the stimulus material has been vital, too. Here’s a small sample of the text he was reacting to, an extract from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women:
Mr Davis had evidently taken his coffee too strong that morning; there was an east wind, which always affected his neuralgia; and his pupils had not done him the credit which he felt he deserved: therefore, to use the expressive if not elegant language of a schoolgirl, ‘he was as nervous as a witch, and as cross as a bear.
The ‘quality text to quality writing’ link gives you the chance to teach specific concepts – like these character descriptions – using sophisticated models, and to improve writing via reading as the four modes of language – speaking, listening, reading and writing – run concurrently.
Many theorists have reinforced this view over the years, including Margaret Meek. In her book How Texts Teach What Readers Learn (1988), she said: ‘If we want to see what lessons have been learned from the texts children read, we have to look for them in what they write.’
Teach to the top
There is no definitive list of the concepts we need to teach in English, but a good way to think about it is that with each text, you want to pull out a specific literary technique, rather than just rattling through a reading. For example, you might want to teach how to build tension, how structure has supported meaning, or features of effective personification.
You can use a simpler part of the text with one pupil and a more challenging part with another, but by focusing on a specific approach, every child is learning about the same concept.
There are also some vital mindsets and strategies that I have observed across schools that successfully ‘teach to the top’:
- School leaders believe that all pupils are entitled to a challenging curriculum, and take action to make this happen.
- Schools provide CPD that explores subject-specific details and approaches. In contrast, some schools have digested principles around high aspirational thinking very well, but they have not engaged in how different subjects need different disciplinary knowledge. For example, what an excellence-for-all approach looks like in science as compared with English. This is essential.
- Coaching advice complements exciting curriculum developments to assist teachers’ knowledge acquisition and learning. This isn’t connected with performance management.
- SLT encourage teachers to maintain ongoing reading of literature and mastery of the texts they use. The deeper the knowledge of the teacher, the less planning you need and the more confidence grows.
- Schools devise a clear action plan for approximately one to two years – with periodic evaluation – to highlight the rationale for an ambitious curriculum and stages for achievement.
Challenging texts
I have been privileged to see many teachers discover the joy and scope that challenging texts offer for daily learning. It might be a picture book with a fascinating concept, like a wall which apparently offers protection from enemies on the other side, as in John Agee’s The Wall in the Middle of the Book, or the remarkable variation on fairy tale and myth in Andri Snær Magnason’s The Casket of Time, in which the language, style and sheer invention of the text itself offers opportunities for new learning.
In the end, it is you, the teacher, who makes the difference, who intervenes with that much-needed support and scaffolding, who inspires, who cares and who laughs with your pupils. High-quality English texts offer so many more openings for this to happen.
5 steps to ambitious learning
- Use challenging texts – with access strategies as appropriate – as a norm and they will eventually cease to seem harder to you or your pupils.
- Use challenging texts for reading aloud and improving fluency.
- Continually self-reflect and engage with others and in CPD sessions on the impact evidence coming from your lessons. Evaluate periodically using your school’s performance indicators rather than simply ticking boxes and delivering a set package.
- Chunk stages of knowledge acquisition. This makes complex texts manageable to the memory. Harder concepts may actually stick more reliably because of the hard thinking, talking and repeating ideas.
- Use excellent models of writing from various periods and locations, from picturebooks to contemporary literature; classic texts to poetry.
Bob Cox is the author of the award-winning Opening Doors series. The latest installment, Opening Doors to Ambitious Primary English is out now.
