This 1 Technique Creates Top Grades
What if?
What if…
These are my favourite two words in teaching. I still don’t use them enough.
Let me show you why they are so powerful when teaching literature texts.
You teach students that Macbeth’s hamartia is his ambition. You list 5-8 quotes and events which prove that this is so.
Then you ask students:
What if Macbeth’s hamartia is Lady Macbeth – his love for her, and her ambition?
Give students 5 minutes in pairs to try to find evidence they would use – including those 5-8 above – to prove that this is so.
You then have that discussion, and students form some kind of written record of their thoughts.
Now you ask:
What if his hamartia is masculinity? What if all men would behave in the same way when faced with the witches’ prophecies?
Go again.
This would give your students a much, much deeper understanding of the characters and, more importantly, Shakespeare’s ideas.
More importantly still, they would develop analytical and essay writing skills.
Even more importantly, they would develop a real sense of what being a literature student actually used to be. Perhaps we might restore English A level – the most popular subject choice in 2012, the 12th most popular in 2022.
Easy What Ifs
What if Scrooge is a two dimensional character, whose sudden transformation feels forced and unlikely?
What if Scrooge has plausible psychological reasons both for being a miser, and for gradually transforming?
What if Hyde is the an attack on scientific experimentation and the damage science has done to Christian faith?
What if Hyde is made evil by Christian suppression of natural desire, and the obsession with labelling this as sin?
What if Shakespeare intended the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet’s love to be cautionary tale, warning parents to supervise their children and servants much more closely?
What if Shakespeare believed the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet was the control of patriarchal society over love and sex?
Every answer a student comes up for either of these will match the grade 7+ criteria. Every idea they have to justify why one interpretation is better than the other will match the grade 8+ criterial.
The skill of essay writing will then simply be how to combine enough ideas and evidence to prove their ‘what if’.
How will we train students to write these essays?
What if we also gave them full essays arguing 2 opposing points of view and asked them to justify which one is a better interpretation?
What if we asked them to write a one line summary of each paragraph?
What if they used these to write an essay arguing why one interpretation is better than the other?
Then students would understand exactly how to include their alternative interpretations in an essay to gain grades 7-9.
Other Subjects
This what if approach works in every subject.
What if we change the value of X to -15? - Maths
What if we increased the nitrogen by 40%? - Science
What if we made city centres traffic free for 20 hours per day? - Geography
What if Napoleon had invaded England instead of Russia?
You get the idea. - History
Curriculum Leadership
What if all of KS3 languages banned writing as a classroom activity?
What if for KS3 DT, art, music, PE and drama, writing is banned as a classroom activity?
What if we had to teach from booklets, and could only use PowerPoint for images or video?
What if SEND student didn’t receive a smaller curriculum, but a larger one - with extra practice before and after school?