GCSE English Lit Shakespeare

[helpmum2003]

Just got back from Y11 parent's evening and would appreciate your experience of how Shakespare is taught.
DD is top set English in a private school in a class of 12. I queried that they haven't read the whole play (R and J) but as far as I could see fairly limited sections. The reply was that they only needed to read particular scenes that coincided with important themes.
I was shocked. I had discussed with a friend who is a teacher prior to going today and she felt it was not an appropriate approach for top set.
I would like to hear what your experience is.
Thanks!

I think you are being perhaps a bit disparaging towards reading the plays beyond.

rather than read through each by rote.
This makes zero sense.
Reading the plays is NOT rote learning. Teaching through the play is NOT rote learning.
What your DC's school has done in that class is ONE valid way of teaching a group of students. It is not superior to reading the play as a class.

For example, your DC is in a top set probably few SEND children, secure readers, very bright. Often top sets are more diligent and will do the preparation reading.
Doing what your child's teacher did with a middle-lower ability group with 15% of the class having SEN needs and a lower reading level would be a stupid thing to do.

A teacher taking the approach of your DC's class and applying it to another group on the grounds of 'it got lots of 9s' would be a silly teaching decision.

What people are questioning (rightly) on this thread is when schools teach a text lile this:
Context lesson
Summary & film
Key scene 1
Key scene 2
Key scene 3
4 quotations about each character
Watch the film again
Endless lessons on how to squeeze the students' limited knowledge to exam questions.
Lots of mock questions and formula based on the limited scenes.

piggy
It depends on the group if I'm honest.
My current y11s were a bit rubbish with it qhen they were in y10 until they realised that when i said 'i will teach assuming you have done it', I meant it. So after a couple of weeks of putting known lazy players on the spot they got the hang of it.
For me, I found it meant I could spend more class time working through the text in detail because they arrive with a general understanding so we don't need to read chapters in class.
The preparation tasks vary so it might be:
E.g. Find out about the features of the Victorian gothic genre. Read the opening of chapter 4 of A Christmas Carol. Complete the table on the features of the gothic you see.
Then when i come to teach they already have entry knowledge.

Agree on Great Expectations. Stupid choice of book.

Lots of schools only read extracts, I’ve taught in 2 of them. It’s not necessarily a method the teacher agrees with but, in the cases I’ve seen, it’s because there just isn’t enough time to get through the full texts. However, this was in state education with class sizes of 30. In a top set class of 12 students (state or private) I’d expect the whole text to be read.

What coffee said!

coffee and maisy that is how I am supposed to teach according to our SOW. No one who values actual teaching can actually do it!

We all have to do the same extracts for exam practice, regardless of ability set. It's daft but I am not HOD so I suck it up...

How is there not enough time to do whole texts? I never get that. (Not a criticism of you, more I don't get your HODs reasoning)

I teach lang and lit in 2 years and finish the course by Jan/Feb of Y11 leaving lots of revision time.

I'm at a decent comprehensive with classes of 30.

Coffee my DD1 was in classes of just under 30 in a state school and they most definitely found time to read the full text.

Time is all relative to how much time you have per subject. Last year we had 5 hours a fortnight!

We now have 9 but to be honest that law of physics - whatever it is - means I have just found more to fill the time . So still can't do Shakespeare in the allotted 6 weeks.

Next half term we have 7 weeks to do Eng paper 1 which none of us want or need...

I also don't like having weeks of revision in school because a) I think that should be done at home otherwise spoon feeding has become extreme and they build no independence and b) I'd rather teach it properly in the first place!

I'm a bit old school...

My last few schools we have 8 a fortnight.

Sounds like the issue is teaching 'lang paper 1, thrn a set text' etc.

We co teach. E.g. we'll do a paper 1 part B writing inspired by an image linked to the set text we are studying or when we do An Inspector Calls we look at paper 2 writing skills.
When i want them to do a 'to what extent' question, I'll use extracts of the set texts and select others from the same era to develop ideas.

I like having revision lessons. I teach the texts properly in full. Then when we are through the content we go back and study extra extracts for langauge linked by theme/topic to the set texts, we read critical perspectives on the set texts, look at the construction of academic essays in detail and look at how to express sophisitcated ideas. In a nutshell we do the aorts of things you can't teach until they are secure with the texts. We do loads on themes acroas texts and explore why certain themes are timeleas across the cannon etc.

Students have to revise the material at home, learn quotations etc but I love the space to recap, look at things from new perspectives. Students value it too.

I have 120 minutes a week with my year 11s.

Blueemeraldagain
That is shocking.

2 hours a week.

Are you teaching FE resit or are you an 11-16 school?

Still reeling from the idea of 17 9's in a single class at a non selective. The P8 must have been through the roof! We got 11/145 and are in top 100 schools. Very impressed, and slightly deflated. Had been preening myself on my 9/28!?!?

Wow, 17 9s is amazing! In DS's year (a comp with above average progress 8, admittedly with quite a deprived intake/ 72% of pupils speaking English as a foreign language) he was one of just 2 to get 9s in English Lit and I think 10 or so got 8s from an intake of around 300. Similar figures for maths and English Language too - only one 9 in English Language and I think 3 or 4 for maths. I was under the impression 9s were rare...

9s are rare. In my superselective (year group 100) 3 students got 9s in Lit, Lang and Maths (there were a few who were, quite frankly robbed by rubbish marking in the Language but 'twas ever thus). I am astounded at the 17. I would expect a school like that to be capitalising on their success and offering training to others! You'd make a fortune!

Oh, and 120 minutes a week for both English exams? Awful. we have 180 minutes with years 10 and 11. I only work three days a week and I see my year 10s every day I'm in. I think we get sick of the sight of each other!

Yes I am also amazed by 17 9s.

DD's school is a comp in a middle-class leafy area and from an intake of about 220 there were I think seven 9s; one in maths, two in Eng Lang and 4 in Eng Lit.

It was broadly similar in the school where I work (comp, v mixed intake) - one 9 in maths and four in English lit or lang. In both schools, one student got 9 in both English lit and lang.

I think targets of ten 9s (hich is what a pal of DD's in yr 11 has) are totally insane (but that's another thread)

Maisy that is EXACTLY what I keep saying we could and should be doing. Wistful sigh.

The first bit, I mean, about the skills. It's just common sense.

I know piggy.
We are also a non selective comp with an insane number of 9s in our department (higher than the 17). We were stunned.

I teach in a school for boys with social, emotional and mental health difficulties. We are 11-16. We have a 9:30-2:30 day and incorporate a lot of intervention/therapy time. The students can't cope with much more. It is tough but I feel the Lit syallbus informs their (crucial) Lang grade (as well as their lives, of course).

They enjoy the Lit content more than the (dry) Lang stuff.

igcse Macbeth here. (Not sure why someone was asking whether igcse or gcse above).

MY DS's whole year group read the whole text and, as another poster said earlier, have read a novel, a Shakespeare text and a modern play since year 7. They read it in its entirety with a mixture of class time reading/re-enactment and homework reading and are also shown "film" of various Acts in the play to re-enforce scenes and themes.

Their igcse works are Macbeth, An Inspector Calls and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe plus poetry (seen (16 rather random) and unseen . All of the set texts (novel, modern play and Shakespeare) are "shorter" than some of the other texts than the school could have studied which I think is useful. I totally agree with Piggy that Great Expectations is too long. (I did it for O level)!

I think it is a real shame if they don't read the whole text as it doesn't inspire a love for literature.

Maisypops which shows that your school's way of teaching is working. I am glad of this because it sounds like how DS (current year 11) is being taught!

haha - there were 17 9s for Eng lit, 1 for Eng lang, and 2 for Maths.

All 17 lit were from the same top-set class. Shows what a difference one teacher can make.The teacher was amazing, he sparked a passion in the class, encouraged debate, taught them how to debate and how to analyse by using a variety of texts.

DD has moved on to a grammar school for A level (one is of course English Lit) - her teacher for GCSE does not do A level, her analysis skills have already been noted.

That's amazing Beyond - shows what a great teacher can do, as the other results sound similar to ours. How brilliant he must be and how great he must have felt on results day :D kudos to him, hope he doesn't plan to leave teaching!

DS read all of everything. He seemed surprised I had asked! They started by reading together in class, once they were in the zone, they were instructed to read certain bits between lessons.