Starry Night

Starry Night by Van Gogh

This week I continued my exploration of inquiry based teaching in my Year 7 English classes. We are currently working on a poetry unit and I thought that this provided a great opportunity to put into practice what I had learnt from MoMA. As it turned out, there was much more to it than just a beautiful piece of art.

I started the week with the simple inquiry question: “What is poetry?” They were mostly silent to begin with but once people started mentioning types of poems, the names of poems and poets started flowing. It was also interesting to see the technical language they used such as rhyme because it gave me a good insight into how much work will be required to teach them analysis skills. This tied in well with the course I have been doing on differentiation and it was pleasing to see the two ideas intersect.

I then followed this mind mapping activity up with a hands-on poetry experience. One of my fears when I teach poetry is that students think poetry is either incomprehensible garbage or just a laundry list of technical terms applied to words, lines and stanzas. I remember at school how much fun I had discovering poetry through the work of William Carlos Williams and I wanted them to know that poetry is accessible and fun. So, with a pen in hand, we headed out to the school oval with a 5 senses scaffold (created from a 5 sense picture of Google images). My idea was simple: experience the oval and write a poem about it. After a few brief instructions, with most students ignoring my pleading to “please do this activity by yourself”, I had them touching and eating grass, sniffing the breeze, examining the various items left on the oval and gazing upwards at the sky. We then headed over to some tables and wrote. Unsurprisingly, many of them chose to write acrostic poems but I told myself that next time I would push them to write something more ‘proper’ because I didn’t want to be too restrictive this early on.

The next day, having already successfully written one poem, I decided to try the activity again but using Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting. I got the idea from the MoMA education page using their theme based categories. Not only was the painting visually appealing, particularly the way the stars are portrayed, but it captured a wonder I hoped would inspire the kids. Moreover, I decided to team teach the lesson with my colleague as we both had reduced classes due to a school activity.

Using the same 5 sense scaffold, together we elicited responses to the painting. Using that great question of “what else do you see?” we were able to generate an extensive list of items and feelings. I was really impressed by the way the students could see different interpretations in the painting, such as the hills being a tsunami or wave, and the interactions the painting generated as students were keen to share their ideas. In fact, they were so keen to share that we had to remind them to share with the class rather than just blurt out answers to their friends. Next we got them to write a 7 to 10 line poem about Starry Night.

I was amazed!

The quality of the work they produced was out of this world – and only 1 or 2 acrostic poems in sight. From poems about drowning to trips down some filled alleys, the students were able to use the 5 senses to create moving poems as diverse as the class itself. Moreover, everyone was able to complete the task and I didn’t hear a single complaint about poetry being boring or too difficult. I especially loved being able to share some of the poems with the class as both of us teachers discussed how our childhood memories effected our own poems. The highlight though for me was the work of a Chinese student who is just learning English and the wonderfully natural way he crafts his poems. He often asks for help because he sees himself as weak in English but every poem of his I read amazes me with its grace.

Thus, inquiry based learning once again came up with the unexpected and rewarding. The painting and activities is definitely something I will reuse plus this way of getting the students to write poetry is really effective. Rather than complaints about poems being too boring or difficult, artwork allows them to express what they see in the work and how they interpret the world. The results so far have been wonderful and I have the pleasure of putting their poems together in a book for the class. Just like the glistening, golden stars in the painting, my students really showed me how they shined.

Time to Meet Your Maker... Model

There is one good reason why every high school in Australia should have an iPad or laptop program for every student: differentiation.  Not only does this technology provide opportunities to support every learner in the classroom but they make implementing a differentiated curriculum that much easier.

For those educators who have been living under a rock for the past couple of years, differentiation is

“the recognition of and commitment to plan for student differences. A differentiated classroom provides different avenues to acquire content, to process or make sense of information and ideas and to develop products. The goal of a differentiated classroom is to maximise student growth and to promote individual student success.” (Tomlinson 1999)

In essence, differentiation is ensuring that you modify:

•  what you teach
• how you teach it, and
• how the students show you they understand

for every student. While this may seem daunting, it is something teachers naturally do every day in the classroom. From a slightly more complex question to a small extension task, these are great examples of modifying the curriculum to suit a particular student’s needs and abilities.

Recently I started an online PD about differentiation in order to get more skills in this area. One of the models of differentiation they used was the Maker Model and I used it this week to teach my Year 7 English class film analysis skills. Essentially, the Maker Model focuses on:

• Content – varying the level of abstraction and complexity of concepts covered
• Process – giving students alternative methods to complete tasks as well as different types of graphics organisers
• Product – allow students to demonstrate mastery through a variety of forms
• Learning environment – student-centred and flexible areas that encourage independent learning

Using this as a template, I tried to design a lesson where my best kids could push themselves to deeply analyse the ideas and techniques behind the film we were studying while also providing my lower ability kids with the chance to successfully write an analytical paragraph. In terms of content, the Maker Model helped me focus on the bigger concepts behind the film as well as the task. So rather than just add more clips for my better kids to analyse as I might have done, I tried to choose clips with different themes that showed different aspects of the message of the film. While each student had to write an analytical paragraph, I used the process and product elements to really differentiate what I was doing. Hence, I had students completing everything from 1 properly structured paragraph through to mini-essays. Thus, rather than have my better students finish early and become bored, I was able to keep them on task and occupied for the whole lesson. Importantly too, it pushed them to make connections between the themes and film techniques and hence engage their higher order thinking skills in a meaningful way. Finally, I was able to utilise the student laptops to allow them to work individually or in pairs to view the clips and type their responses.

In terms of the actual lesson, it turned out to be a success. My introduction and explanation of the task definitely needed work, especially in distributing the tasks (which I could have used the laptops to do), but once the class got started they were quiet and on task for the whole lesson. I really enjoyed the opportunity to work more one-on-one with the lower ability students as well as seeing the higher ability kids embrace the challenge I set them. In particular, two students who usually get all their work done but I don’t really extend all that much, were a little surprised when I gave them the mini-essay task but were animatedly talking and writing for the whole lesson. Moreover, they asked more questions than usual and I was able to teach them some new technical terms that I wouldn't cover with the rest of the class. On the other end, all my lower ability students produced an edited, structured, analytical paragraph and were beaming with pride because they had completed all the class work. So all up, every student was engaged and on task for the whole lesson as they developed their film analysis skills.

The important thing for me from this experience was that using a structure like the Maker Model made my differentiated class more focused and effective. Sure, I have been differentiating my lessons for years, but the Maker Model helped me see my lesson content and procedures in a new light and thus be able to better tailor my differentiation for my own purposes. It is a model I will use to plan differentiated lessons in the future and I think it is definitely worth a try.