It worked for me: key stage 3 cameos
Contents | Picturing the
past 
Talking history
A challenge faced by Ian Brown from the history department at Matravers
School in Westbury, Wiltshire was to help the pupils produce quality
talk in lessons to match the high standard of their written work.
The strategy
The history department employed a number of tactics to improve the
quality of pupils’ oral work. The use of focused, motivating and
open questioning was fundamental part of the department’s teaching
strategy. In addition a number of specific approaches were used across
the department.
-
‘Go for 5’ – pupils are challenged to produce
up to five responses to a question, for example name five Presidents,
five colonies, five causes of the First World War.
- ‘Just a minute’ – a motivational plenary activity
in which pupils have to talk for the given amount of time on the lesson
focus, for example ‘How did the Plains Indians live in harmony
with their environment?’
- Thinking time – pupils are given silent thinking time before
responding to teacher questions.
- Using encouraging gestures/words to develop answers – for example
following a pupil’s one-word response the teacher adds ‘…because…?’
But the strategy that had the greatest impact on the quality of the pupils’
speaking skills was the ‘Brainometer’.
The Brainometer
The Brainometer is a multi-coloured, mobile, adaptable display consisting
of headings and transparent plastic pockets into which text cards are
slotted. It is used at appropriate times in lessons to model different
types of oral responses (see Figure 1). The Brainometer is partly structured
around ‘Bloom’s taxonomy’. It is based on the assumption
that, just as pupils need models of effective writing in history, they
also need models of quality oral responses. The Brainometer provides a
framework into which different questions and responses can be slotted.
Once pupils have become familiar with the Brainometer and its function,
they see it a useful tool to support their thinking and speaking.
Figure 1: Diagram showing the main features of the Brainometer
Introducing the Brainometer to the classroom
Abstract terms such as ‘identify’, ‘explain’
and ‘analyse’ are meaningless to the majority of pupils without
concrete examples to accompany them. It was felt that the best way to
introduce the Brainometer was to pick a non-historical topic such as The
Simpsons that would be familiar and fun for all pupils.
The lesson began with a question ‘Who is the best character in
The Simpsons?. (At this point the Brainometer was not in sight.)
This was a deliberately simplistic question that could be answered with
a ‘blurted’ one-word answer. The teacher then asked each pupil
in turn for their answer, ensuring that they had enough time to formulate
a fuller answer if they wanted to, but without prompting them to do so.
To a suitable fanfare the teacher then introduced The Brainometer and
explained that its purpose was to help the class produce better verbal
answers. The question ‘Who is the best character in The Simpsons?’
was displayed in the question pocket. Examples of different answers given
by the class were slotted into the answer pockets (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Answers to ‘Who is the best character in The Simpsons?’
Identify – Homer!
Describe – Homer. He is bright yellow, fat
and bald. He is very lazy and works at the nuclear power plant.
Explain – Homer is the best character in
The Simpsons, because he always does the wrong thing, for
example he works as the safety officer at the Springfield nuclear
power plant, and yet he knows more about the contents of the doughnut
machine than he does about his computer.
Analyse – There are many good characters
in The Simpsons, but Homer is the best. Marge and Lisa
are very sensible, and Maggie is too young to do anything. Barney
is funny, but he only really has one joke (drinking too much and
burping). However many things have happened to Homer. He has been
a boxer, met Presidents, gone into space and has even been shot
out of a cannon…
Evaluate – It is impossible to say which
the best character is as it all depends on individual opinion. For
example if you are a young boy you might feel Bart is the best because
he is most like you (he reads comics and likes skateboarding). If
you are a housewife Marge might appeal to you because… What’s
more, the characters and the programme have changed over time. When
it started in the early 90s, Bart was the main character. However
Homer’s character has developed into the central figure now
with most of the storylines revolving around him… |
The teacher read through the answers starting with the ‘Identify’
pocket, and challenged the pupils to explain why the answers were positioned
where they were. Information from the ‘Advice’ pockets helps
with this (see Figure 3). The teacher then encouraged the pupils to think
about the position of their own answers. Some pupils were quite surprised
to discover how many of them had simply blurted out ‘Homer’!
Figure 3: Advice pockets for ‘Which is the best character
in The Simpsons?’
Identify – These answers are not wrong,
but they are little more than one of Barney’s burps!
Describe – This is a better answer because
it describes Homer a bit.
Explain – This is much better because a
reason is given to help explain why Homer is the best.
Analyse – This is starting to get really
clever because a number of reasons are explained and comparisons
between characters are made.
Evaluate – Wow! Brainbox! There is no straightforward
answer – even to such a simple question. Here personal opinions
are discussed as well as explaining changes to The Simpsons
over time. |
In pairs or small groups pupils were then asked to produce new and improved
answers and the teacher pointed to the Brainometer as the ‘temperature’
of their answers began to rise.
Using the Brainometer to support pupils’ historical thinking and
speaking
The Brainometer was first used in a history lesson with a mixed ability
year 8 class of 25 students. As part of a wider enquiry question ‘Why
did Charles lose the Civil Wars?’ pupils were investigating the
Battle of Marston Moor. Pupils used information packs to design a battle
strategy, drawing out their plans on large pieces of sugar paper, which
they then explained to the rest of the class. At the end of the speaking
activity the teacher explained the actual strategies of the two armies
at Marston Moor and pupils were able to compare these with their own predictions.
With support from the Brainometer pupils’ presentations were of
a high quality. Instead of simply blurting out ‘cannon here, pikemen
there’, all groups described their formations clearly and then went
on to explain how the tactics would work. Some of the later presentations
even started to analyse how they would expect their army to perform if
pitched against some of the others in the class. The pupils explained
esoteric strategies in detail such as ‘flanking movements’,
and ‘crushing cavalry circles’. Because pupils had been able
to see how they were talking, and how we wanted them to talk, they were
no longer giving one-word blurted answers but were talking in paragraphs.
Improved participation
The history teachers at Matravers School were surprised that the Brainometer
produced such instant results. It was as if the pupils already knew subconsciously
how to verbalise their thoughts, but simply needed a diagrammatic tool
to support their speaking. Of course not all pupils instantly began to
produce evaluative responses, but the general level of verbal participation
improved markedly – and very quickly. Similar results were found
in other year groups studying a wide range of historical issues.
Since then the Brainometer has been regularly making appearances in lessons,
sometimes as a silent reminder in the corner, and at other times as a
central learning tool. For example year 10 were asked to produce answers
at a specific level for ‘Who is the most important person in the
history of medicine?’ with only the advice pockets filled for them
to see. Once their answers had been given, pre-prepared answers were slotted
into the pockets which pupils then compared with their own responses.
By modelling the language of discourse for the pupils, the Brainometer
is helping to improve the quality of their oral contributions in history
lessons. They are gradually becoming more articulate historians and verbally
confident young people.
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