The Beginning Of The Journey

The beginning of the journey

Previously published for PiXL

The main reason that I work as an examiner is very simple really. I love reading what students have to say about a text - how they engage with it and see it from their point of view. Great literature is very much like a passport - it can help transport you somewhere else altogether and sear the memories of that journey into your mind forever.

One of my roles has been to construct exam papers, the most liberating part of which is creating a mark scheme containing the caveat ‘some might…’ in the indicative content. Because that’s the thing - you can create a mark scheme and second guess the type of comments a student might make. However, I know every year without hesitation, that students will comment on things that I won’t have considered. Even after reading thousands of responses to Twelfth Night, for example, over the course of the years, a student will say something so perceptive which will remind me how brilliantly imaginative they can be when they have the confidence and security of text knowledge.

But how do you introduce students to A level English literature? How can you start then on the journey to brilliance? There’s a wealth of resources and support out there for GCSE (quite rightly so of course) but all too often, A level English literature is overlooked. We sometimes assume that our students are going to turn into mature, engaging writers during the six-week summer holiday, which of course is rarely the case. Sometimes, they even pull into the layby and have a snooze…

To become a confident articulate writer at A level takes some work, but as a starting point, here are a series of four short lessons (with PowerPoints). The lessons follow on from each other with further resources and activities contained within the ‘Going Deeper’ booklet. The materials are designed to be non-board specific and aim to cover the following things:

1. How to take notes - A YouTube clip included, and in light of this, students consider the poem Maude Clare and then apply this knowledge to The Explosion making notes of their own.

2. Textual knowledge - an obvious one, but so fundamentally important. As an examiner at both AS and A level, I frequently read responses from students who clearly don’t know the text very well and instead attempt to subvert the question to write about something they do know about, or even produce a pre-prepared essay response from memory. This never pays off!

3. Structure-in the PowerPoint, structure is considered with an extract from Othello as an example and some links to an RSC’s filmed rehearsal of a key scene.

4. Context. Returning back to Maude Clare from Session 1, students are taken through the relevant contexts of the poem and encouraged to link this to enhance their reading of the text. As is the case at GCSE, bolted on context rarely yields results.

These are simply starting points which give them a passport at the start of their A level studies– or, if you like, a way to put some petrol in the tank. Combined with knowledge of their destination and the will to keep driving forward, our new sixth formers will soon be travelling at the edges of the speed limit.