The Teaching and Learning Cycle (TLC) is a method of boosting students’ literacy skills in the classroom. It supports and scaffolds students’ learning by means of a four stage cycle aimed at building confidence though prior knowledge, modelling, group work and independent work. It can be used in a single lesson or the process can be carried over several lessons. It is a strategy that was developed under the LILAC scheme (Language in Learning Across the Curriculum) for EAL students, but it has seen applications in many non-EAL contexts.

TALCOn the 6th of January, the Literacy Coordinator of the school where I teach conducted a seminar on TLC. Rather than explain to the teachers in attendance what TLC is, the Literacy Coorinator decided to demonstrate it to us in an English Language context by instructing us to play the part of students. There were 4 main stages to TLC: 1. Setting the Context, 2. Deconstruction & Modelling, 3. Joint Construction and 4. Independent Construction.

First, we were asked to identify a text. It was mentioned that we should not expect students to jump straight into writing before the main concepts and ideas of the topic were discussed in “every day talk” because that stage acts as an vital bridge for students to move from the concrete to the abstract.

In the second stage, we were invited to make a list of stylistic features, formats and linguistic features which would justify our response. We went on to have a short discussion about the register of the text, and identified it to be a film review which was partly formal and journalistic with a scattering of informal, conversational language. We had a further discussion about why functions are required in the text.  For example, why does a film review need a title, a header with details such as length, main stars and rating information, what kind of jargon and specific terminology are required in this medium and more importantly, why is it alright for a film review to be written in a mixture of formal and informal langauge?

In the third stage, we were asked to jointly construct a film review in groups of a film that we had all seen recently. We chose a scribe and then the rest of the group discussed different ideas about how to frame the film, what aspects of the plot were important to mention in view of the particular frame that we chose, and what aspects of the film counld be left out to ensure that appetites to see it would be whetted.

Finally, we ended the session talking about how we would implement the final stage either in the same lesson, for homework, or in a further lesson by getting students to write their own review on their own.

Application in my lessons

Throughout the seminar, I was constanly thinking about how I could apply TLC to my MFL class. At first, I thought that this specific structure would be very difficult to apply in KS3 or KS4 MFL as the level of conversation needed for this discussion was quite high. KS5 classes would be the only students who could deal with high level texts. However, I managed to come up with ways to adapt the strategy for use in my KS3 classes.

I have a very difficult year 8 Spanish class which I’ve mentioned before in this blog and I find it difficult to get the writing as they have quite a low level of ability

I first asked them to briefly think about what kind of things they would need to write about if they wanted to write about their holidays and then asked them to discuss what things they had done on holiday. As a class, we came up with a list which included features such as: where you went, including city and country, how you got there, who you went with, what kind of accommodatuion you stayed in and how long you stayed there, what you ate, what you drank, the sorts of activities that you did while there, what the weather was like and whether you enjoyed it or not. I wrote these features on the board and then asked for a show of hands which I picked at random to verify that students understood how to express these particular things in Spanish.

I then presented them with 2 texts written by 2 imaginary children who went on holiday and I asked a series of differentiated questions based on the texts to check understanding. I invited them to try to recognise how many of the 10 features that we discussed were actually present in each model text.

I then provided them with a model for constructing a joint text in groups of three. I instructed them to make their holiday as weird as possible, (for example saying they went to the mountains to ski, they stayed in a tent and it was very hot). I paired more able students in groups with less able ones in order to support those students in the group discussion.

We shared the stories at the end of the lesson with the students taking turns to read out each sentence out loud and then for homework I told them to use the model to construct a text about a real holiday that they had been on.

All groups were able to build a paragraph about an imaginary holiday by the end of the lesson which I was quite surprised about because of the usual distraction that often takes place in that lesson. The homework was of a similar quality, even though not all students go the opportunity to be a scribe during the lesson. the learning objective had been achieved and the students were able to independently contruct their own texts. the TLC strategy was a complete success and is definitely one that I will be using in many more of my future lessons with lower set classes and one that I will attempt to extend to other classes as well.