EAL response to literature displays

By Pete on November 5, 2024 • ( 0 )

I recently mentioned how our learners created a final display board in response to a unit on poetry. Here’s a screenshot of what our common assessment checklist looked like for the final product:

I could scrutinize here – there’s room for improvement with our wording and some criteria are subjective. That said, there’s a method in our madness in parts. The checklist provides a reason to teach (or reteach) language that was relevant to the topic (‘evoke’ or ‘evocative’, ‘poetic devices’), and language relevant to common success criteria in other subjects (‘originality’ in art, ‘engage your audience’ in English). A text like this is still a vehicle for instruction, but I’m not saying we exploit it enough that way. Anyhow, my colleague Becky and I were made up with how well this unit went.

At the same time as this Year 7 project, our Year 9s were studying a mini-unit on a short story (about a foodographer called Richard). I’d had some challenges motivating the learners during previous units. I found they were focused too much on the end goal (periodic assessments), without investing as much in the ongoing learning process. In response, I made the assessment a portfolio of task responses completed during the unit:

We had success with this. More focus lesson by lesson, a willingness to act on feedback. Realization that every pedagogical task is an opportunity to demonstrate understanding or learning, express a personal response, etc.

Our success with the poetry and short-story modules has made this display/portfolio approach a mainstay for us. It’s not that we ALWAYS use it for literature-focused units. After all, learners need to build some skills in more depth – response essays rather than just single paragraphs, longer persuasive writing/speaking, etc. However, even when it hasn’t formed part of our actual common assessment, it still features as a way to wrap up a unit. Like this reflective task leading to a display on Macbeth…

Notice our embedded Bell targets, haha. What I loved about this one is the whole process was done more for enjoyment, but the level of investment was whooooosh.

Anyway, we’re planning our common assessments for next month, each one lit-focused, and we’re finding hard to avoid the displays task again. Our Year 7s are all over Boy Overboard, the Year 8s are getting on board with Asimov’s Robbie, and Year 9 are getting into Animal Farm. We’ll need to avoid overkill with this task, but it’s tempting!!!

Why do we love this type of collated response task so much? I guess because:

it seems to engage the learners
it prompts review and enhancement
it’s a nice snapshot of learning across the unit for learners, parents, and a springboard for discussion
It’s good evidence for mainstream English teachers when we consider learners for EAL exit. It shows learners interpretations, understanding, misunderstandings at times…
It’s a good vehicle for other skills like self-correction, peer assessment, etc

Often, the variety of output provides proof that EAL learners are deffo as capable as other learners of engaging with authentic literature (adapt the task not the text and all that). We may have an adapted curriculum, but it’s one that I feel showcases our learners skills/knowledge. I hope it gets them genuinely interested in English literature too, and find it a pleasure to engage with.