In Part 1 of this two-part blog series, I explored these four advantages of booklets:
They avoid duplication in planning and reduce teacher workload.
They free up teachers’ time to plan explanations and demos, anticipate misconceptions, sample student books and plan feedback lessons.
They provide clarity and consistency for teachers and students.
They encourage deep thinking and are excellent CPD.
Other excellent bloggers have also explored booklets from different angles:
In this blog, I'll go into some detail about how I use booklets in English lessons, using an example from a 'Romeo and Juliet' booklet that I use with Y10 students.
Planning (before the lesson)
The beauty of having the booklets prepared and printed in advance is that the deep thinking around lesson content, sequencing, vocabulary, scaffolding and writing instruction has already been completed, freeing the teacher up to think carefully about verbal explanations and live models. Before each lesson, I follow these steps:
Read any articles or extracts that I will read with the students, underline key points I wish to accentuate, jot down student-friendly definitions for words I might need to explain if they haven’t already been defined. I will use the key points I have underlined as a basis for cold-call questioning or choral response in the lesson. This should take no longer than 5 minutes.
Complete all tasks myself, such as recaps, understanding checks and other short tasks. Doing this usually takes 5 minutes and means I can quickly spot where misconceptions may arise and jot notes for
Plan my live model for the complex writing task. The majority of lessons in my booklets contain a writing task, either a sentence, a paragraph or a larger composition. Either way, live modelling is really important. The booklet might contain a pre-prepared model, which will help jog my memory about what the end aim is for the students. But nothing beats a live model that has been thought about carefully before its delivery. I might write my response myself in a word document or on paper and decide which elements I am going to hone in on with my class. This will be different for each teacher depending on what the students in that class particularly need support with.
This takes about 20 minutes in total, which is far less than it would take to plan a lesson from scratch!
2) Delivery (during the lesson)
Note: all examples for this blog post are taken from booklet C, which is used with lower prior attaining students. We created three booklets for the three different KS4 sets, which drew upon the same core knowledge but sometimes contained different articles, tasks and explanations to support the teacher in pitching the content for their classes (you’ll find examples of Booklet A, B and C in the resources section of my blog.)
Each booklet contains a recap task for the start of the lesson. These have been carefully planned either to activate knowledge that will be revisited or applied in the lesson, or to ensure the most useful content is revisited most often. In GCSE booklets, recaps also recall knowledge from previously taught texts so that students repeatedly revisit these throughout the course. Students complete the recap in silence at the start of the lesson, after which answers are read out, and students complete corrections in green pen. The recap, like every task, includes an extension.
Recap: complete these quotations
‘d______ marked l________’
‘Peace! I h____ the word as I h____ hell, all M_______ and thee’
‘Part, f_____!’
‘Your l______ shall pay’
‘E________ other b________’
‘A s________ to the world’
‘D_________’ (the way Lady Capulet addresses Juliet)
‘L______’, ‘l_______’ (the way the Nurse addresses Juliet)
‘M_________’ (the way Juliet addresses Lady Capulet)
Extension: write a sentence containing these words:
passionate
fate
patriarchal
aggressive
honour
When vocabulary is introduced, Isabel Beck’s strategies from ‘Bringing Words to Life’ are applied. I will ask students to repeat the word back to me and we will also spell the word out loud, letter by letter, which is a strategy I learned from teaching ‘Spelling Through Morphographs’. It’s important that the students can pronounce and spell the word.
Task 1: New vocabulary: witty
Definition: funny in a clever way
Correct examples:
Robert’s attempt at a witty comeback fell flat because no one understood it.
His witty conversation made him very popular.
Mercutio is a witty character because he is always making jokes with his friends.
1A: Incorrect examples.
1. They described him as witty because he struggled to crack a joke.
Discuss: Why is this incorrect? Rewrite the sentence in your exercise book.
2. The witty lady made foolish jokes.
Discuss: Why is this incorrect? Rewrite the sentence in your exercise book.
1B: Discuss this image: why is this quite a witty joke?
When we read in class, I always use Lemov’s ‘Control the Game’ strategy and have students follow along with a ruler. This ensures all students focus fully on reading and builds reading confidence and stamina in all students. Line numbers enable me to pause to discuss and pick up swiftly from where I left off. All text (with the exception of extracts from the novel/play/poem) is edited/written with Peps Mccrea’s principles in ‘Memorable Teaching’ in mind; the text is lean and clear and contains supporting images, where useful.
1C: Read this information about Mercutio with your teacher.
Mercutio is a very witty character. He often makes jokes with his friends. His jokes are clever because he often plays around with the words they’ve said, turning them into a funny joke. He also often makes jokes about love and sex because he doesn’t take love and relationships very seriously. Shakespeare’s Elizabethan audience would have found Mercutio’s character extremely witty. They would have laughed a lot at his jokes. Shakespeare uses Mercutio to provide moments of comedy (fun and laughter) within his very tragic play.
Task 2: Read the extract with your teacher. This extract is from Act 1 Scene 4 and takes place on a street in Verona.
Mercutio mocks Romeo for being so depressed about Rosaline. Mercutio encourages Romeo to dance at the ball and to have sex with other women in order to move on from Rosaline. Time: Sunday evening
Task 3: Read this information with your teacher.
I build understanding checks into the booklet as I think that questions are often more effective if planned in advance. After students have completed the understanding check, I’ll ask for a show of hands for each question answered correctly. This show of hands should enable me to see, at a glance, which questions have resulted in misconceptions and need to be addressed before moving on. Book sampling at a later date will enable me to double check.
Task 4: Check your understanding. Underline the correct answer.
1. Why does Romeo say that his love ‘pricks like thorn’?
A. Because he loves Juliet but she does not love him back.
B. Because his love for Rosaline causes him pain.
C. Because his love for Juliet cause him pain.
D. Because he is very happily in love with Rosaline.
2. Which word from Romeo's complaint does Mercutio turn into a sexual innuendo?
A. 'Love'
B. 'Prick'
C. 'Rose'
D. 'Thorn'
3. What does Mercutio mean when he says ‘prick love for pricking’?
A. Forget Rosaline; go and fall in love with someone else.
B. Forget Rosaline; go and have sex with other women.
C. Forget Rosaline; go and have sex with Juliet.
D. Forget Rosaline; go and fall in love with Juliet.
4. Why does Mercutio’s joke seem witty?
A. Because he has turned Romeo’s words into a sexual joke.
B. Because he has advised Romeo to go and fall in love with Juliet at the Capulet ball.
C. Because everything he says is very funny and clever.
D. Because he is a funny character who doesn’t take love seriously.
There will almost always be explicit writing instruction in the lesson (based on ‘The Writing Revolution’ - see my other blog posts here, which explore this in more detail.) These tasks are edited depending on which booklet they are in (A, B or C). The live model would be planned in advance and would be delivered using an “I do-we do-you do” approach, introduced by Doug Lemov in ‘Teach Like a Champion’ and explained well by Andy Tharby here.
Task 5: turn these fragments into sentences
Mercutio seems w______ when he mocks Romeo for…
When Mercutio says ‘prick love for pricking’ he is being witty because…
Mercutio takes the word ‘prick’ from Romeo’s words and turns it into a...
Shakespeare’s use of sexual innuendo would have made Elizabethan audiences…
Extension: expand the sentences
Model:
He implies that Mercutio is more interested in sex than love.
When? Early in the play
Who? Shakespeare
How? Sexual innuendos ‘prick ‘tender thing’
Expanded sentence: Early in the play, Shakespeare implies that Mercutio is more interested in sex than love by using sexual innuendos such as ‘prick’ and ‘tender thing’ in Mercutio’s speech.
He presents Mercutio as witty.
When?............................
Who?.................................
How?..........................................................................................................................................
Expanded sentence (exercise book)
He contrasts Mercutio’s character with Romeo’s.
When?............................
Who?.................................
How?..........................................................................................................................................
Expanded sentence (exercise book)
Lessons end with a written accuracy check. I explain to the students how many marks can be gained through writing accurately in the GCSE, and how important written accuracy is when applying for college courses and jobs in the future. In any written tasks they have completed, students self-check the capital letters and full stops, and tick or make any corrections. We chose in our department to focus on these basics as so many students were still getting this wrong, (particularly mid-sentence capital letters: Elizabethan audience: Catholic Verona; Christian religion), but some teachers chose to add in more challenging checks with top sets, if they felt the basics had been mastered.
End of lesson checks. Check that:
Every sentence starts with a capital letter.
Every sentence ends with a full stop (except for questions and exclamations).
Capital letters are only used for unique things, the word 'I' and starting sentences.
In green pen:
Tick each correct capital letter, full stop and spelling.
Correct each incorrect capital letter, full stop and spelling.
3) Review (after the lesson)
The booklets are constantly being reviewed and improved. While teachers use them, they add comments, which can be acted upon when the booklet is reviewed, before it’s taught again. Booklets are also discussed in department meetings. Following discussions and feedback from teachers in my department, we moved from one booklet per year group to a three-booklet model, which enabled us to adapt content and tasks more effectively for our different classes (though there was a minimum entitlement of challenging knowledge that would be taught to all classes). Most booklets have been reviewed and improved at least three times, and will inevitably go on to be edited again! I think it’s really important to always see them as a work in progress.
Key Takeaways:
1. Booklets have many advantages, such as:
reducing teacher workload
freeing up teacher time to plan explanations and demos
providing clarity and consistency across a department
encouraging deep thinking around curriculum planning
2. A booklet is only brought to life once it’s in the hands of the teacher; teacher planning prior to delivery is essential.
3. Booklets are always a work in progress; make time to review and improve booklets after teaching with them.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this blog!
My next post will explore how I create a unit plan for a GCSE literature text.
Previous posts have explored:
You can find full booklets on my resources page.
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