How to prioritise knowledge when creating a GCSE English Literature unit plan
‘Memorable knowledge is the best route to academic achievement.’ Joe Kirby
Planning a knowledge unit for a GCSE English literature text is complex. While there are seemingly infinite possibilities in terms of quotations, tier 2 and 3 vocabulary, themes and context, there is a finite amount of time allocated to the teaching of a text. In schools with a two-year KS4, often a new text will be taught every half term meaning there are only 6-7 weeks within which to try to do the text justice and secure a deep enough understanding for students to tackle the challenging questions in the English literature exam (off-book, no less!).
One of the biggest challenges when planning a knowledge-rich unit in GCSE English literature is choosing what not to teach. Two important reasons guide this decision, as Joe Kirby explores here:
Memory is complex
When we re-encounter a much-loved literary text, we forget the number of subjects students study and the amount of complex content they grapple with every day. We get carried away and, before we know it, we are teaching intricate plot details and multiple complex contextual ideas, unaware of our own expert blindness. But we must ‘never forget what it is like to be a novice’ (Kat Howard and Claire Hill, Symbiosis). We cannot teach everything. We must, therefore, choose what to teach and, just as importantly, what we will leave out.
Knowledge is vital
In order to give all students the best chance of succeeding in their exams and in acquiring lifelong knowledge, we must specify, in very clear terms, what knowledge all children should learn. If we don’t specify this, the acquisition of knowledge is left up to chance (Josh Vallance, Knowledge-rich: what are we really talking about?). Prioritising what content to teach helps students who have missed weeks worth of lessons catch up, and equips students with SEND with the knowledge to succeed in the exam.
When planning a unit for a GCSE English literature text, I follow these steps:
Decide on the most powerful knowledge for the unit
Test out this knowledge using past exam questions
Sequence the unit
The rest of this blog post will explore step 1: deciding on the post powerful knowledge for the unit.
Deciding on the most powerful knowledge for the unit
The knowledge in a GCSE English unit plan could be grouped into the following categories:
The big idea: why does this text exist?
Plot
Character
Context
Theme
Structure
Quotations
Vocabulary (Tier 2 and 3)
The big idea: why does this text exist?
To help students develop a deeper understanding of the purpose of the text, we decided to explicitly teach reasons the writer created the text. This is a part of the disciplinary knowledge of the text - the bit that is up for grabs and up for debate - but we felt in our department that it gave students a helping hand to teach some interpretations explicitly as a starting point.
Example, from a unit plan for ‘An Inspector Calls’:
An Inspector Calls is about how people should be more responsible.
Priestley demonstrates that many wealthy people were irresponsible; they did not think enough about other people, which led to great inequality in society.
Priestley demonstrates that many wealthy people had double standards; they were happy to make judgements about others but unhappy to accept responsibility for their own mistakes.
Priestley uses the play to challenge traditional age roles and suggest that younger people will take more responsibility for others and can build a fairer society.
Plot
Even in a text with a relatively simple plot such as ‘An Inspector Calls’, it is challenging to select the most important plot details that will ensure students have a deep understanding over the text but are not overloaded with intricacies that over-complicate what is achievable within the time available. I always try to summarise the plot of the text in a maximum of 10 short bullet points. These will be the key episodes that will be taught in more detail during whole-class reading of the text.
1. While the Birlings are celebrating Sheila and Gerald’s engagement, an Inspector calls about a suicide.
2. On the inspector’s questioning, Arthur admits firing Eva from his factory but denies responsibility.
3. On the inspector’s questioning, Sheila admits having Eva fired from her job and feels guilty.
4. On the inspector’s questioning, Gerald admits having an affair with Eva and feels guilty.
5. Under questioning, Sybil denies responsibility for refusing to help Eva and blames the man who got her pregnant.
6. Under questioning, Eric admits to having got Eva pregnant and blames his mother for killing both Eva and their child.
7. Gerald, Sybil and Arthur think Goole was a hoax; Eric and Sheila criticise them for not learning the right lesson.
8. A final phone call says that a suicide has happened and that a police inspector is on the way.
Characters
Certain characters will be more crucial than others. In ‘An Inspector Calls’, for example, the Birlings, Gerald Croft, Eva Smith and the Inspector are the most important characters. Alderman Meggarty and Edna are, arguably, not as important. Certain students in certain classes may benefit from exploring the minor characters. But the minimum that all students will study across all classes will only include the most important.
Context
It can be challenging to select the most important contextual factors, as so much seems relevant. However, this is where I feel the concept of ‘core’ and ‘hinterland’ knowledge is helpful. In order to understand the purpose behind Priestley’s play, students must understand that Priestley was a socialist and that he was angered by the class divide in England. This would be considered ‘core’. In lessons where students are first introduced to Priestley’s intentions, they might read excerpts from his ‘Postscripts’ or from other texts such as ‘An English Journey’, as examples of his attitudes. This would be considered ‘hinterland’. The reading of the excerpts serves the core knowledge about his attitude; students are not expected to remember specific postscripts or specific biographical details about Priestley. Here are the contextual details considered core in my ‘An Inspector Calls’ unit plan.
In 1912, there were obvious divisions between classes: upper, middle and lower.
In 1912, if people fell ill or unemployed, there was no benefits system to help; they had to turn to private charities, such as Sybil’s.
In 1912, women were seen as the ‘weaker sex’. Women were not allowed to vote until 1918.
In 1945, after two world wars, class and gender divisions started to change. At war, men of different classes fought side-by-side and, at home, women kept the country running by working in jobs they hadn’t been able to do before.
Stretch:
In 1945, the socialist Labour party came into power and established the welfare state - a system in which the government looks after the poorest in society.
First performed in 1945, An Inspector Calls would have reminded the audience of the way Britain was in 1912 in order to push for more change. Socialists (including Priestley) saw that there was still a lot of work to do.
Theme
Again, selecting which themes to teach is a challenge. In certain texts, there are so many possibilities. Examination boards don’t define the themes, so it can be tricky to teach key themes well with limited time, and still ensure that students can tackle many different thematic questions. Teaching the most versatile themes and teaching students how to transfer this knowledge to different exam questions helps navigate the challenge. An example is the theme of responsibility and the theme of morality. Students can be taught the theme of responsibility. They can learn that, through the characters’ actions, Priestley demonstrates that many wealthy people were irresponsible; they did not think enough about other people, which led to great inequality in society. The same applies to morality. The characters who learn responsibility also learn morality. The characters who remain blind to their responsibility, also remain blind to their morality. Students can therefore see a question on the theme of morality and apply what they’ve learned about the theme of responsibility. Here are the themes considered core in my unit plan:
Responsibility: Through the characters’ actions, Priestley demonstrates that many wealthy people were irresponsible; they did not think enough about other people, which led to great inequality in society.
Class: Priestley highlights the inequality in 1912 society. He also demonstrates that many upper class people had double standards: they behaved badly themselves, but continued to look down on the working classes.
Age: Priestley uses the play to challenge traditional age roles and suggest that younger people will take more responsibility for others and can build a fairer society.
Women: Priestley explores inequality between men and women through the way Eva Smith and Sheila Birling are treated.
Quotations
Tackling a closed book exam is no mean feat. Selecting quotations that all students will learn is vital in ensuring all students are adequately equipped for the exam. Leaving students without quotations committed to memory is leaving them without adequate knowledge. Selecting quotations, just like with other knowledge in the plan, helps teachers to focus recaps on the most vital knowledge. Selecting 20-25 quotations rather than 100 means students are exposed to the smaller selection far more frequently, learning how to adapt the knowledge to different exam questions, and committing the quotations to their long-term memory. An excellent example of a versatile quotation is ‘pleased’ from the opening stage directions. It’s a great quotation because:
It’s only one word, making it easy to remember!
Writing about a stage direction enables students to demonstrate their understanding of the text type and use subject terminology
Writing about a stage direction enables students to demonstrate their awareness of Priestley as a writer
It applies to multiple characters
It is relevant for character development and character contrast: Sybil, Arthur and Gerald remain content at the end of the play after the inspector is revealed to be a hoax in contrast with Sheila and Eric, who feel ashamed.
I always aim to select two or three quotations for each character, which are also relevant to themes. These quotations are considered core in my unit plan:
All Birlings apart from Eric
‘pleased’
All Birlings/setting:
‘champagne’
‘heavily comfortable house’
Arthur Birling
‘look after himself and his own’
‘I refused of course’
‘unsinkable’
‘Thousands’
Sybil Birling
‘Girls of that class’
‘I was perfectly justified’
‘Look for the father’
Sheila Birling
‘Mummy’ ‘daddy’
‘I started it’
‘I guess we’re all nice people now’
Eric Birling
‘Why shouldn’t they try for higher wages?’
‘Hellish’
‘You’re beginning to pretend that nothing really happened’
Gerald Croft
‘We can keep it from him’
‘I felt sorry for her’
‘Everything’s alright now, Sheila. What about this ring?’
Inspector Goole
‘[Cutting in massively]’
‘Misery and agony’
‘We are responsible’
Stretch:
‘If men will not learn their lesson, they will be taught it in fire, blood and anguish’
We teach specific techniques in relation to quotations.
For example, we teach dramatic irony in relation to ‘unsinkable’ and ‘fire, blood and anguish’. We teach contrast between characters in relation to a number of the quotations.
All students learn these techniques. It isn’t left up to chance.
Structure (stretch)
We added this section to our unit plan for top set students and found that our students were writing in a much more sophisticated way about Priestley’s approaches than they were when we used to analyse individual words within his quotations.
Opening: Priestley opens with an engagement party in the Birling household. This celebratory mood highlights how arrogant, wealthy and self-satisfied the Birlings are: ‘pleased with themselves’.
Sequence:
The Inspector enters during Arthur Birling’s monologue in which he boasts of his capitalist values.
Eric enters at the very moment that Sybil Birling orders the Inspector to ‘look for the father’
Gerald leaves while Sybil and Eric are being questioned. This allows him to discover that Inspector Goole is not real.
Gerald suggests the Inspector’s arrival was a hoax and Arthur Birling calls to test that, allowing Priestley to reveal the older generation’s irresponsible reactions.
Tension: When Sheila discovers Gerald’s affair / when Sybil realises that Eric is a drinker and got Eva Smith pregnant / when Gerald suggests the inspector wasn’t real / when Arthur Birling and Sybil Birling are delighted that the inspector isn’t real
Ending: Priestley ends with Arthur Birling receiving a call from the infirmary reporting the suicide of a young girl and stating that an Inspector will arrive soon to ask questions. Priestley ends on a cliffhanger, leaving the audience wondering how the characters will respond the second time an Inspector calls. Will they take more responsibility?
Vocabulary
Often in unit plans, tier 3 vocabulary is identified but may include a list of all literary terms that students have been taught throughout their KS3 and KS4 curriculum. Tier 2 words are often left out. We selected Tier 3 vocabulary to revisit explicitly in relation to specific moments in the text. We made a decision to select versatile tier 2 words that would help students to write about several characters. Many of our students do not already have this vocabulary at their disposal; they need us to teach it to them. When I first taught ‘An Inspector Calls’, I took it as a given that students understood the concept of responsibility. As we progressed further through the study of the play, it transpired that many students did not have a deep understanding of this concept. Since then, responsibility has been added as a tier 2 word that is explicitly taught and revisited multiple times throughout the unit, given that it is so key to students’ understanding of the characters’ actions and Priestley’s message. A great example of another powerful tier 2 word when studying ‘An Inspector Calls’ is moral/immoral. Here are the tier 2 and tier 3 words I include in my unit plan:
Tier 2
arrogant - behaving as if you are better or know more than other people
ashamed - feeling guilty or embarrassed about something you have done
inequality -an unfair situation in which some people have more than others
moral - behaving in a way that is good and right
responsibility - either: someone/something that it is your duty to take care of Or: accepting you played a role in something that didn’t turn out well
responsible - either: knowing that it is your duty to take care of someone/something
OR: accepting you played a role in something that didn’t turn out well
Irresponsible - either: not feeling it is your duty to take care of someone/something
OR: not accepting you played a role in something that didn’t turn out well
prejudice(d) - an unfair feeling of dislike for a person or group because of race, sex, religion, class, etc
unsympathetic -not showing any care for someone else’s suffering
Tier 3
stage directions - the notes in the text of a play which say what the actors should do or how the scenery should be arranged.
dramatic irony - when the audience knows something the characters don’t
cliffhanger - a part of a play that is very exciting or frightening because you are left for a long time not knowing what will happen next.
suspense - feelings of anticipation, discomfort or excitement about what will happen next.
Stretch:
hypocrisy - pretending to have qualities, beliefs, or feelings that they do not really have
socialism - a political belief in greater equality and fairness for all, looking after poorer people in society
capitalism - a political belief in individual wealth through hard work, accepting that there will always be people in society who are better off than others
welfare state
In summary, these are the key takeaways:
Knowledge cannot be left up to chance. We must choose what knowledge we will teach.
We don’t have infinite amounts of time, so we must choose what to prioritise.
Beware the curse of expert blindness! Our students are novice learners.
Plan the content and the sequence very carefully.
Test the content, keep seeking feedback and keep evolving it as it’s taught.
Thank you so much to Joe Kirby for providing me with the inspiration and guidance to design a unit plan in this way, and to all the amazing curriculum thinkers who I have learned from.
Also, thank you to you for taking the time to read this very lengthy blog. If you’ve made it to the end, I salute you!
Comments