Concept-Based Learning in English
Every two or three years Cambridge, in their wisdom, decide to change the texts we can teach in IGCSE Literature. Sometimes this can be a burden but, on this occasion, we used this as an opportunity to make some changes to the way we approach S3 and S4 English. Changing two of the three texts at the same time gave us an opportunity to adjust the way we taught our subject.
As a department we decided to move away from ‘teaching content’ and focus on concepts, ideas and issues; that is, moving away from a linear style of teaching and learning that can very easily happen in class (especially in language and literature based subjects) and towards a more personal, reflective and independent style of learning. The concepts - seven in total - were linked to the new IB specification: identity, culture, creativity, communication, perspective, transformation and representation. Part of this process would involve more ‘assessment as learning’ techniques and more IB-style concepts, terminology and lesson ‘phases’.; this began with last year’s S3 (now in S4) and has continued into this year with the new S3s.
Over the course of the last year we have had mixed results. Some activities worked well on the surface but subsequent feedback suggested flaws in our approach; for example, feedback from last year’s ‘Shakespeare in the Park’, where students had to produce a creative response to a section of the play, suggested that we, as teachers, still didn’t ‘let go’ and allow students to explore the task with complete freedom. Similarly, using IB-style questions for the end-of-year exam for S3 showed what we had suspected as a department for a while; many students were able to bring in ideas about both the texts they had studied but were unable to explore the theme, concept or idea beyond a superficial level.
This year, changing two of our texts have allowed us to develop a long-term scheme of work and plan for the year. Lessons have been designed for 1984 that reflect our change in approach. For example, we have tried to emphasise the importance of students taking greater ownership of their work and spaced retrieval through the use of a journal where students can build a portfolio of resources that are linked to the course concepts and related to real life examples and scenarios; through this journal, we are also encouraging the use of Harvard referencing and the importance of finding reliable, trustworthy resources. Another example can be shown through more flipped learning exercises which link the concepts and themes we are interested in developing to the reading students have done outside of class; for example, an investigation into the amount of security cameras and their locations around school led to a wider discussion in the following lesson about the role of surveillance in 21st century society and how this compares and contrasts to the main character’s observations in 1984.
In our next update for the blog we will review student feedback to some of the changes we have made and reflect on other activities, lesson ideas and resources we have created for the IGCSE course.