Sunday 26 September 2021

School English assignments

Mulan has just finished her third unit study topic in her English class at Westlake Girls High School.

She started with a study of a Roald Dahl short story (they were partway through it when she arrived).  In Covid lockdown this was followed by a three-minute speech (videoed).  Most recently they've done a film/video unit, where the first half was a photography study learning different types of shots (using our camera at home).

The second part of the film/video unit was on the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding.  Mulan and I watched it together a couple of weeks ago, and Mama watched it later on her own.

As I wrote last year, for the past couple of years Mulan and I have been watching movies together.  We pick anything from classics, to pop culture, to thought provoking, to merely entertaining.  We talk about them together, laugh at the silly ones, and discuss the thoughtful ones.  In that time Mulan has developed her own sense of what is good and what is bad.

For the most part we complete movies to the end, but occasionally (rarely) Mulan decides that some are really too bad to bother continuing.  (Breakfast at Tiffany'sClueless and Top Gun were examples of movies Mulan considered too silly to bother watching beyond ten minutes or so.)

As Mulan watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding she was really not impressed.  I suspect that if it was her choice she would not have bothered continuing with it to the end.

Then she had to write two pieces for class.

The first was an initial impressions piece -- basically just a few sentences saying what she thought of the characters and so on, probably mostly to show the teacher that she had watched the movie.

The second piece just completed was more in depth.  She had to write two mini-essays joined together, each on an opinion she had about the movie and backed up by evidence then linked to her own experiences.

Schools appear to like to use the "PEEL" essay structure style, where the basic thought is Point, Example/Evidence, Explanation, and Link.  But it also appears that different teachers interpret it in slightly different ways.  This blog, for example, which topped my Google search, basically treats it as intro, two paragraphs in the body, and conclusion.  Mulan's English course apparently interpreted the Link at the end not as a conclusion linking back to the intro point but as a link to the writer's personal experiences (meaning that, strictly speaking, it wasn't an essay as it didn't have a conclusion).

Included in the assignment info pack was a example piece (on a different unit topic), which was in the style wanted and was supposedly of "Excellence" level.  Mulan said this was about 470 words long.

This was where things got problematic, because both Mama and I thought the example piece was very badly done.  I thought it only deserved a Pass.

In a nutshell, the huge problem was that the example writing slid off the topic.  It's Point (introduction) stated one thing, while it's Example/Evidence and Explanation sections (body) didn't elaborate on the ideas stated in the Point but instead discussed other ideas.

In other words, the example directly failed to follow the writing structure as required by the assignment question, and (more importantly) failed to be logically persuasive as the body did not give any evidence to support the stated opinion Point.

The writing style was adequately fluent but not brilliant.  The main thing the example had going for it was that it was earnestly nice and positive, giving the conventional (but simple) statements of good teenager-ness.

So, I wondered why the teacher/department/school thought the example was of Excellence level.

Is it that the assignment marking in general is easy?  For Year 10 maybe they are not expecting students to be able to write any better than that?  (But surely they'd want their example to at least answer the question?)

Or is it because this example, while not structurally or logically good, is ideologically appropriate, mouthing the right platitudes?

Or is it that the teacher/assessor simply didn't notice the failed structure/logic?  They were seduced by the decent words and failed to look further.

To be blunt, it may simply be that school teachers generally only have a bachelor's degree, and may themselves not be very sophisticated essayists.  They may have got average passes in their undergraduate university courses, and never really gained the skills of better essay writing.

(In my experience of marking undergraduate university essays at Auckland University, B or C grade passes may have these sorts of weaknesses to some extent; it is often only A students or once one gets to graduate level that this sort of essay writing sharpness is the norm.)

All this got me comparing the school English work versus Science/Maths work that I have seen Mulan completing to date.  My quick initial impression is that, relatively speaking, school Science/Maths requires a higher level of conceptual sophistication, while school English is not conceptually very sophisticated.  This leads me to wonder why the same degree of analytic precision cannot be taught/used in school English as it is in school Science/Maths.

On the other hand, for Mulan the English written work was more time consuming than the Science written assignment (similar word length) just completed.  (Mulan tells me that she finds Science/Maths easier than English.)  This was because, while the Science was conceptually deeper, the English was agonising because of the uncertainty of trying to articulate in words, with explanations, one's initial gut opinions.  It took some longish family discussions for Mulan to get beyond "the movie is boring!", "why?" "because it is!"

So, maybe that is the point?  School English is conceptually simple, because it is challenging enough to get the kids to put into words their thoughts, let alone learn the conceptual skills.  But maybe, just maybe, if they were explicitly introduced to analytical/conceptual tools they would find articulating their thoughts easier.

Anyway, Mulan submitted her piece a couple of days ago, writing about 900-ish words on two of her opinions of the movie.  Mama and I thought it was very good, and definitely solidly in line with university style essay writing.  It'll be interesting to see Mulan's teacher's comments on it.

UPDATE 28/9/2021:  Oops, we were wrong.  Mulan has been given another assignment on My Big Fat Greek Wedding.  This one is a close analysis of particular scenes, to understand how the emotional feel is built up by the camera angle, sound, lighting, etc.  Mulan is not impressed that she is still having to think about this boring movie (!), but otherwise all good.

Tuesday 21 September 2021

Schooling in lockdown

Here in Auckland, our Covid Level 4 lockdown ends tonight, after five weeks holiday working from home.  We've still got at least another two weeks in Level 3 lockdown, which for us means almost no change.  (It's getting doubtful that any of our pre-booked school holiday activities will happen in two weeks' time.)

In that time our family has used the car twice -- once to get a Covid test and once to get a Covid vaccine.

That's a big change for us.  In normal life we use the car most days, driving to the various activities that the girls do -- ballet, rock climbing, swimming, music, gymnastics, athletics, etc.  "Homeschooling" is not a very accurate name for what we do; I'm not the first to suggest it should be called car schooling.

So, how's our schooling in lockdown going?

One difference for us is that our exercise is now all home-based.  Mulan has Zoom ballet lessons five days a week.  Miya has rock climbing and dance Zoom lessons.  Our dining room is a dance studio, while our dining table is in the lounge acting as a jigsaw puzzle table.

We go for runs around our local area and do various conditioning exercises at home.  On the downside my hands are getting soft from no rock climbing; on the upside my golfer's elbow is coming right with no rock climbing.

The girls both have music lessons over Zoom.  Mulan has recorder lessons, while Miya has clarinet, saxophone and trumpet lessons.  Miya is continuing to prepare for her Trinity Grade 4 clarinet exam, which is still planned for late October.  As part of this, we've signed her up for aural test training at e-music maestro.

Miya's deskwork remains the same.  She continues doing Khan Academy and touch typing.  She's still only primary school aged, so it's more about natural in-context learning and inculcating good attitudes.  We do stuff quizzes, and the children use kahoot to set their own quizzes.

This lockdown Mulan and Miya have started online gaming with the cousins, playing monopoly, gartic telephone, scribblio, psych, forge of empires, etc.

But the biggest change is that Mulan is back at home learning with us, instead of going to school.

Before lockdown hit, Mulan had a total of 17 days at Westlake Girls High School -- just enough time to start getting used to school life.  Now she's doing lockdown schooling.

I've heard it said that lockdown schooling is homeschooling.  It really isn't, for one important reason.

Essentially, homeschooling is about the parents/caregivers being the final decisionmakers on what gets taught.  This includes:

(a) Deciding what sorts of knowledge, skills and values are truly valuable to pass on to the children, 

(b) deciding what methods will work best to teach each child,

(c) deciding what order and amount to teach the knowledge/skills/values,

(d) deciding what lesson content to use to develop the knowledge/skills/values, and

(e) assessing what the children do, which then feeds back into the above.

With lockdown schooling, parents/caregivers do none of this.

All that lockdown parents/caregivers do is oversee or help with the completion of the work that the schools have supplied to the students to do.

And this is what we are doing with Mulan right now.

Mulan is connected to her teachers online on her new computer, where they tell her what she needs to do.  As part of our normal family life Mulan tells us what this is.  We then work with Mulan on this as much or as little as she needs.

At one extreme, Mulan's school maths is so easy that we haven't been involved at all in any of her maths learning during lockdown.  She simply does the required work quickly on her own and submits it, getting full marks every time.  (I've suggested that since lockdown is continuing for longer we should get back into doing Khan Academy maths with her; it would be a shame for Mulan to go backward with her maths just because school is not challenging her enough.)

For Mulan's other subjects we have been involved to some extent.  For her longer writings (English, music, science, etc) we typically read and give advice after she has written them, though sometimes we also talk through the ideas before she starts writing.  With the music composition, Miya helped out (Mama and I were useless!).  Miya also helped with the photography unit for English.

According to Mulan, what she has been learning over the past five weeks in lockdown is of a similar amount to what she was learning during those 17 days at school.  The main difference for her is that she says that she spends maybe three hours each day working on it rather than the full school day.  In other words, lockdown learning is, for Mulan, much more time efficient that school learning.

Nonetheless, Mulan says she would still rather be at school than do lockdown learning.  For her, learning at school in the social environment is more enjoyable that learning at home.  Even though school uses up more hours it seems that it is worth it.  And also, lockdown means missing all the other out-of-home activities we do; returning to school means also returning to ballet, swimming, gymnastics, athletics, etc.

From my point of view, lockdown learning is working better than homeschool learning, in the sense that Mulan is very responsibly taking charge of what she needs to do and calmly getting it done.  I've been very impressed with how she's gone about things during lockdown.  When she was homeschooling, if I had have told her to do the same thing she would have mucked around and tried to avoid getting it done.  I think partly she enjoys teasing me (she wouldn't dare tease her teachers in that way!) and partly it is hard to get started on something that is initially slightly out of one's comfort zone.  At least for Mulan, having an outside person setting the tasks is the key.

Having said all that, lockdown, for our family, has been a much-enjoyed quality time together.  We all get on well, and it has been wonderful to have Mulan around home again during the day.  As much as we'd like lockdown to end, and get back to all the fun outside activities, it really isn't that bad at all.