Past Paper Questions?

Right or Wrong?

You can buy John Wooden’s book here.

Sooner or later, you’ll be inspired by a sporting analogy with teaching.

The big beasts of English have all done it: Daisy and David with marathon running, and now Alex has waded in with football coaching.

And all three of them agree. It is all about practising the constituent parts, not the whole. David and Daisy suggest not teaching essay writing till year 10 or even year 11.

Alex now recommends NOT doing full essays in exam preparation. Instead, do diagnostic retrieval practice. Work out the facts your students don’t know and mind those gaps.

This blows my mind.

Is my reaction a sign I am being emotional, rather than rational? As I always tell myself, I could be wrong. So, let’s find some evidence.

I can’t find any studies on the benefits of practising full essays, or full stories. I can give you some evidence that is measurable though.

1. Two schools I support do essays or language question 5s nearly every week of year 11. The first has the highest P8 of any subject in the school, and the English team has improved from -0.7 to +0.25, despite 3 changes of heads of department through promotion. The English team is ranked second in the Trust by how far it’s P8 exceeds the whole school P8.

The second is a UTC, full of students who think English is irrelevant. That has the second highest English P8 of every UTC in the country.

2. I don’t know Daisy’s P8. Her teaching experience was a long time ago. Her old school, Pimlico, is doing well. But English P8 exceeds the school’s by only 0.05.

Alex’s old school Huntington is average, with P8 of 0.1. English is 0.13, nearly identical.

David’s schools, Ormiston Academies, are below average, at -0.28. And English is no better. English does not out perform the average of the schools, despite his 3 year’s in post.

So What Sporting Analogy Works?

3. The greatest basket ball coach of all time is probably John Wooden. His approach to practice is legendary. Skills are broken down, scaffolded, then increase in complexity. He is the poster boy of drills, scaffolding and, of course, winning!

John Wooden never organised a basketball game as a practice, he only ever practised the component parts.

So, vindication for the Alex, Daisy and David analogy?

Not so. This is where their analogy breaks down. When did the basketball team test all their components parts in a full game? When did the drills get put into the whole

Once a week. A full match against opponents. And that would help determine next week’s drills. 39-40 weeks a year, every year.

Like I said, I could be wrong. You can read the English big beasts below.

You can buy David Didau’s book here:

And Daisy Christodoulou’s book here:

And Alex Quigley’s latest book here:

Or you can buy mine here:

(Amazon pay me about 21 pence if you buy any of these books through my links - so obviously I’d much rather you learned how to get your students to make amazing progress with my book.)

On the other hand, John Wooden has a much better track record than I do.