An Inspector Calls: the scheme in five minutes

Transcript

Introduction0:00

This is Between the Lines, and this is the walkthrough of our An Inspector Calls scheme of learning. I'm Hannah.

The scheme at a glance0:07

An Inspector Calls is written for Literature Paper 2, Section A, the modern text. It's 31 lessons of sixty minutes, which is about seven to eight weeks, with three levels of support throughout. The lessons run in five sequences: Context and the opening, lessons 1 to 7; Sheila and Gerald, lessons 8 to 13; Mrs Birling and Eric, lessons 14 to 20; The Inspector's exit and the ending, lessons 21 to 26; Themes and the exam, lessons 27 to 31. There are five assessment points. Four of them are Feedback Loop kits, in lessons 6, 12, 19 and 25, each followed by a feedback lesson, and the fifth is the end-of-unit essay in Lesson 30, with its own feedback lesson after it.

One lesson0:54

Let me show you with Lesson 4, A hard-headed man of business. The big question is: How does Priestley make the audience distrust Mr Birling? Apply is about fifteen minutes, and it has two parts. First you explode one quotation together. In this lesson it's "unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable". Before you reveal anything, students try the four empty boxes on the first explode slide: method, zoom in, effect, purpose. Then you think aloud through the full version. The method is dramatic irony and repetition, because Birling says the word twice to sound certain. The word to zoom in on is "absolutely", it removes any doubt, so Birling leaves himself no way out if he is wrong. The effect: the audience knows the Titanic sank on its first voyage in April 1912, so his certainty makes him look foolish. The purpose: Priestley wants his 1945 audience to stop trusting Birling early, because if he is wrong about a ship he may be wrong about how society should work. That is the whole analytical move the exam rewards, done out loud, once a lesson, for the whole scheme. Then the hinge question, on mini-whiteboards. Mr Birling says "there isn't a chance of war". Why does Priestley give him this line? The right answer is A: to make an audience who lived through two world wars doubt everything Birling says. And this is the bit I'd ask every teacher to use. The handbook tells you what each wrong answer means. A student who picks B has missed the dramatic irony, so you ask what happened in August 1914 and start them on Securing. A student who picks C has taken the context as the plot, so you remind them that the whole play takes place on one evening in 1912. The hinge question is how you decide, in thirty seconds, who starts on which level of support. That's what it's for.

Three levels of support2:46

Master is the last twenty-five minutes, and it's where the three levels do their work. Everyone in the room answers the same task. In Lesson 4 it's: How does Priestley make the audience distrust Mr Birling in Act 1? Securing, aiming for a 4, gives a choice of exact quotations, here "unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable", "silly little war scares" and "community and all that nonsense", a worked example on a different quotation, and sentence starters for What, How and Why. Strengthening, aiming for grades 5 to 6, gives prompts instead of starters: a clear point for What, a quotation with a method named and one word zoomed in on for How, and a Why prompt asking what the 1945 audience knew about 1912, 1914 and 1939 that Birling did not, linked to what Priestley wants them to think about his selfish views, with a checklist. Soaring, aiming for grades 7 to 9, gives a debatable statement to argue with: Priestley makes Mr Birling a figure of fun, so the audience laughs at him instead of fearing what he stands for. How far do you agree? Two paragraphs, the second beginning with an alternative reading. Same extract, same question, same standard. Only the scaffolding changes.

Feedback Loop kits4:01

Four times in the scheme, the Master phase is a Feedback Loop kit: a twenty-five minute progress check that fits inside the lesson. You place the paragraph in one of the six AQA levels, using our indicative content for this task. There is no raw mark, and that's deliberate. A six out of thirty tells a student one thing, that they got six. A level, in AQA's own words, tells them what the paragraph does now and what the next one asks for.

Every scheme, the same shape4:28

That's the An Inspector Calls scheme. The same structure runs through every Between the Lines scheme, so a teacher who has taught one has taught the shape of all of them, and a student who moves classes mid-year lands in a lesson they recognise. Lesson 3 of every scheme is free at btl.education if you want to show a colleague what a lesson looks like before they open the folders. Thank you for watching, and I hope your classes enjoy An Inspector Calls as much as mine have.