Alice, Mr Fisher, Rosabel and Hartop walk into a pyramid (I mean pub)…

I have been listening and watching quite a bit of Philip Pullman – I think he has a book out or something. Anyway, he got me thinking about storytelling and how we teach it. The more I teach the current GCSE for English Language the more I realise the mechanistic approach we have been using is ineffective and reductive.


Take ‘Freytag’s Pyramid’. I device used to teach the structure of a story. Personally, it is the dullest thing I have encountered when looking at story structure. It is basic. It is rudimentary. It is simplistic. Let’s plot ‘War and Peace’ on it, shall we? Look how a complex narrative can be simply pegged to a pretty pyramid. The pyramids are still around because they are heavy and robust and not something delicate and ephemeral. If ‘Freytag’s Pyramid’ is so special, then why don’t writers, and famous writers at that, go on about it all the time. J.K. Rowling boasting how the pyramid helped her achieve success with Harry Potter.


The problem with ‘Freytag’s Pyramid, and similar devices we use to teach storytelling, is that they are simplistic. Storytelling is subtle, nuanced and complex. That’s why students who read lots are able to pick up the subtleties, the nuances and the complexities of text. A lot of this comes with experience.


I have reassessed how I teach fiction across the whole of KS3 and KS4. That doesn’t mean that I talk about GCSE questions in Year 7. It means that I am places a stronger emphasis on narrative and, in particular, the construction of a story. Rather than just plonk a story in a class and hope for natural osmosis, I am directing my comments and teaching around storytelling. It isn’t pretty. It isn’t ‘terminology’ driven. It isn’t neat and tidy. But, it is about the art of storytelling. If we read like storytellers, then our writing will reflect this level of understanding.



The following are some of the things that I have brought to the forefront of my teaching in light of the new GCSEs.



Subtext

The subtext or, as I like to call it, ‘what is really really really going on’, is a key milestone for students to grasp. Getting students to see that the story isn’t just a teacher marking exam papers or just a woman in a hat shop is key for understanding. Yes, on the surface it is about a sad woman, but underneath it is about a class struggle or a loss of hope. What is this really teaching us about?


When a student understands the subtext of an extract, all the words, techniques or structural devices have a layer of understanding and an anchor to latch ideas on.

If struggling, I ask the students: What wouldn’t a seven year old get from this that I do?



Reader’s connection

Throughout my current reading of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ I was a bit silly whenever Capulet was in a scene. I’d say: good dad? Or, bad dad? The students would appropriately respond with good or bad dad depending on where it happens in the play. Recently, we went through the Hartop paper and ‘good dad/ bad dad’ reared its head. The connectivity to a character is key in storytelling. Yet, do we spend much time on looking at how a writer builds a connection subtly?


The whole opening of the Mr Fisher extract is designed to make us feel empathy towards the character. We need to keep going back to the connection with the text. Am I supposed to like or dislike this character at the moment? Look at the Hartop extract and you can see how at the start we are fooled into liking, but then that suddenly shifts to disliking the character.

Of course, we can build up the level of explanation when we get beyond like and like, but that way we avoid the ‘reader wants to read on’ or ‘hooks the reader’. We empathise with the character and so we want to see their situation change. We need to get students connecting with characters. Like or dislike?



World Building

I find this phrase much better than exposition. ‘Exposition’ is a dull, bland word. ‘World building’ is so much better. This is what writers do in the opening of any story and it is what we forget when exploring stories. How does the writer create a world? How does the writer build up the world around our protagonist?


Take the Hartop extract and you see the world build up through the van. From that van, we see poverty, family dynamics and power struggles from the description of the van and the people sat in it. He builds the world through the weather and the symbolism of the van and how people are sat in it. Compare this to the bus in the Rosabel extract. We see the world build through a bus, hat shop and a meal.


Recently, my Year 8s have been studying ‘Great Expectations’ and it is interesting that Dickens builds the world through a graveyard in the opening. A visceral image but one that says death, loss, family and faith.


How does the writer build the world? A simple question, but far more effective than ‘what’s interesting about the structure?’



Setting / People / Objects  

Most openings and stories start with these. In fact, it is often setting or people. Occasionally, you’d get an object. Understanding why writers start with these is key. Setting is about context and atmosphere. People is about understanding and connecting to a character’s experience. Both are key when talking about stories. The relationship between the two is interesting and helping students to see the choice to be made.


When looking at ‘Great Expectations’ the opening starts with people and then moves to setting. This is because Dickens wants us to connect with Pip first so that when the setting is introduced we are concerned about for him and worry.



Juxtaposition of characters  

Adding characters is key to understanding a story. Fred is introduced in ‘A Christmas Carol’ after a length introduction of Scrooge to prove that Marley isn’t the only person in Scrooge’s life. We are expected to believe this from Dickens’ opening of the book. Fred proves to us that there are people in Scrooge’s life who care from him and that he isn’t alone. Then, Dickens adds the men from the charities to the story and Dickens heightens how mercenary Scrooge is. Each character added to a story adds meaning to the protagonist.


Rosabel is an interesting extract as it deals with a clear foil. A character that makes our protagonist seem dull and boring. Less glamorous. We don’t see that until the woman with red hair appears. Then, we understand why. The egg and the flowers. We see the plain and the interesting. The two characters show an extreme contrast, which heightens how far apart they are and how Rosabel will never achieve success, in her eyes. Like the colour of her hair, success is determined from birth.


Students need to see that writers add character to help us understand the protagonist. They are a bit more subtle than goodies and badies.  



Relationships

If you understand the relationships, then you understand the subtext. The recent Hartop extract demonstrated this. It was all about the relationships between the characters. The squeezing out of the wife and daughter was key to understanding the relationship. This is made worse by the fact that Hartop makes his daughter go out in the rain and walk a considerable distance to get back in the van. We see how the women try to make everything fine. Clearly, they worry about ‘rocking the cart’. Alice’s ‘ironed’ stance reflects her fear and determination to not disrupt the status quo. She dare not put a foot wrong. The blood on Hartop’s hands indicates that he could commit violence.


If you look at how the Hartop extract works, we can see how the relationship is key to the extract. We empathise with Alice’s plight and as the text goes on we want her to escape and that’s what is engaging.



Inside / Outside Conflict

All characters have an inner turmoil. Understanding the inner conflict of a character is key. Alice’s conflict between family and freedom. Maybe she is ‘ironed’ and ‘clay’ because she fears how Hartop is going to react if she left. What would he do to the mother? Hartop’s conflict is between the money and family. Maybe he is a man that is losing in life and the business is struggling. He views success in terms of money and he clearly hasn’t got the money. Hartop has dependents and maybe they are the problem for him. They are a drain. Therefore, he is metaphorically pushing them out of his life. 


The characters on the exam papers so far have all had an inner conflict. They are quite subtle in the case of the Labyrinth extract and in some cases they are quite explicit, Mr Fisher.  Looking at what point we are in the inner conflict is interesting. Both Hartop and Rosabel are stories introducing the inner conflict. They are never resolved and that’s why they end quite bleak. There’s a bit missing from the story. The next bit is the ‘action stage’. They do something to break the cycle. They do something life transforming or they are rescued. Mr Fisher is different because we see the conflict resolved. His unhappiness and conflict is partly solved by one student’s work.

We need to teach students about character’s having inner conflicts and how those inner conflicts affect relationships and how they can be externalised or internalised in the story. The structure of the story is always wrapped around the character’s inner conflict.



Symbols

Everything is an opportunity for a symbol. I joked in the summer that I am going to town with flower symbolism as almost all the exams have featured flowers in some way. They are a relatively easy symbol. They represent beauty, nature or weakness. A lot of the time they link to the character. In Rosabel, the flowers are a symbol of how she wants to make her life better. She buys boring food, yet she purchases flowers. Something that doesn’t add much to her life but looks beautiful, highlighting the emphasis in the story on appearance and making a person better through their appearance (hats, hair, jewellery).



Grand Design  

Students forget about the end point. Where does the story end? That is the point that the previous paragraphs have been building up to. When we look at structure, we need students to think of the end feeling. What does the writer want us to feel at the end of the extract? Happy. Sad. Then, everything before it was leading up to that point. Everything. Every time detail. Everything is a crumb leading us down this path. 

That’s why the writer in the Hartop extract describes the isolated landscape and the bad

weather.There’s no prince in shining armour ready to save Alice. She is on her own. It is up

to her to change the situation.We need to see this isolation from the start. The weather

attacking the van is just a metaphor for Alice. Match that with Rosabel.The egg and the 

violets are discussed in the opening because at the end we see the contrast between Rosabel 

and the lady with red hair. Rosabel is the egg and the other woman is the violets.

That’s why I think the ending is key. Look at the end point and look to rest of the story to see

how it links together. When making a jigsaw, you look at a picture of the finished image to 

help you construct it. Look at the end point and work back.   

Note none of these things are about how to answer the question on the exam paper. This, for me, is the knowledge we should be working on in KS3 to help students understand texts better in KS4. This is what we should be looking at more and more. Instead, we have been looking at the questions but not focusing on the learning. What sort of things do students need to learn about stories? What would help them to understand stories better? I think the above would be a start. There are so many things I could mention and I haven’t. Maybe, I will do at one stage, but we’ll leave that for another story.  





How does one get better at teaching storytelling and fiction? Simple: just read more. Read things you’d normally read. Read things you wouldn’t normally read. Read anything and everything.

  

Alice, Mr Fisher, Rosabel and Hartop walk into a pub and started to read a book. They all agreed that the book helped them. Hartop learnt that there’s more to life than money. Rosabel learnt that the beautiful people lack personality and integrity. Mr Fisher learnt that he wasn’t alone. Alice learnt that archaeology isn’t the job for her.  



Thanks for reading,

Xris  

What have the Maths Department ever done for English?

This week, I had the pleasure of covering a Maths lesson period 5 on Friday.

With my pile of mocking marking under my arm, I arrived to find the cover work on the desk. Hoping for an hour’s worth of marking, I instructed students to complete the work from the sheets provided. Then, I took it upon myself to have a go at the task. I was hooked. As a result of this, I nabbed a visualiser from another classroom and started to teach the lesson on increasing and decreasing numbers with percentages.  Not one single mock question was marked. Instead, I challenged the class to beat me in answering the questions and used the visualiser to feedback the answers. 


I don’t deny it, but I am envious of Maths. They had one sheet and it covered a whole lesson and it contained numerous examples of practice and numerous chances to spot errors and clarify misunderstandings. I am slightly envious of how easy and systematic it was. I am a big, big, big fan of systems and having an approach that is used consistently in subjects. If you have some aspects of English lessons systematic, it gives you a whole big space of room in lessons to be creativity and unsystematic. Have a system for spellings, vocabulary, knowledge learning and you can have a whole lesson spent being creative with ideas or stories.


Personally, I think being systematic in English lessons is like swear word. Any desire to be systematic is beaten down with a poet’s silk cravat or an author’s frilly bonnet. It usually takes about four seconds maximum for the opposition to refer to Gradgrind and start quoting him to you. Then, tears form in their misty eyes as they start emoting and thinking of the poor ‘ickle children, bless their hearts, who don’t have any enjoyment in their lives. That one lesson where the teacher lets them have boiled sweet to describe something will be the lesson that will transform their lives far more, in their misty tearful eyes, than any systematic approach to learning. The big bad meany teacher is stealing all the funny wunny from the, bless their hearts, poor ‘ickle children.’ 


Students love Maths. They love it for many reasons and I can see why as I go through Friday’s cover lesson. Mainly, it is the systematic approach to work.



Task  1: Increase the number by 10%.

Students had 15 numbers and they had to increase the number by 10%.  

The students first had to work out what ten percent of the figure was and then added it.

This was mirrored in the next two tasks.



Task 2: Decrease the number by 10%



Task 3: Increase the number by 5%, 15% or 20%.



As a teacher, I timed them and we feedback the answers after the allocated time.



From an English position, I found the whole process really interesting, because I was doing it with the students. It was interesting because I was watching the development of a system. After fifteen goes the students had trained themselves with an approach to solving the problem. Usually, when we get students to do something like this in English we usually get them to do a maximum of ten. I’d say we rarely go for more than ten because it seems like too much. Here I could see why it is so important that a student does a large number of attempts otherwise how do you embed it. I have hundreds of texts books for English and none of them make students go beyond five or ten questions on one subject. You see – it is ingrained in our thinking. The ‘ickle child, bless their hearts, can’t cope in English with ten of those pesky questions. Make it five, God bless them.



By number fifteen you have the pattern formed in your head. By number fourteen, I knew what to do and I was securing my knowledge of the system for getting the answer. Task 2 was interesting because it is a slight change in the system. Instead of increasing we are decreasing. Interestingly, students made a mistake. They continued to increase instead of decrease. Once they discovered this mistake they could easily rectify it. However, it showed that students made assumptions based on the pattern for Task 1. Then, they repeated the process fifteen times again, allowing them to build up the knowledge of how to decrease a number by ten percent. Both tasks were working on the same system but working on slight variations.



The final task added an extra layer of complexity by changing the percentage number which meant a further calculation. Therefore, they were repeating the same calculation from Task 1, but this time they had another step to do before they reached the answer.  



So, what is the relevance to English? I think we are missing out something huge in terms of teaching and it fits in with Direct Instruction in English. We don’t get students to practise enough in lessons. We, in my opinion, place too much emphasis on the explanation rather than the development of systems. Take commas. We’ll bring out the comma lesson occasionally to address a problem. The lesson will feature lots of explanation and a bit of practice. Then, with the next piece of writing we do with them we question our ability to teach as it seems the class have forgotten that lesson you did on commas that involved a boiled sweet. Simply we don’t do practice like Maths and that is our downfall. We view practice as boring. Boring for the students as they are doing the same thing again and again - bless their poor ‘ickle hearts. Boring for the teacher because they have got to mark the work. 


Practice isn’t a dirty word when it comes to creative writing but it is a filthy word when you place it anywhere near grammar and construction of sentences. People yawn when they refer to a SPAG lesson. It has been ingrained in our brains that it is devoid of fun, interest and excitement. We often apologise for the lesson, yet these lessons could be some of the biggest deal breakers for students. Look, you can have a boiled sweet if you do this work in the grammar lesson.


The Period 5 cover lesson on a Friday has made me review how I use practice in lessons and specifically from a grammar position. Therefore, I have created a resource, which will need a bit more polish, to help build this practice element in lessons. For fun, I have based it on commas and decided that students need to work on commas. They need to work on where to place commas in a sentence. The structure of the resource models the Maths one. You set the system up and students have to repeat the system fifteen times. Each task slightly modifies the original system. However, repeated practice is key. I have attached the resource here for people to see here. 


https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_Dfni6beeNMEZVaG7j4d7kBR9CBnS3wM/view?usp=sharing

Rather than spent time explaining, I am going to get students to do the task and then correct if they have it wrong. After all, these students will have had numerous explanations of how to use a comma. This is about learning through practice rather than through explanations. We want it to be an automatic process and this takes practice – something we don’t give enough time to, because it stifles creativity. Are we really developing the system? Are we committing a system to memory? 


We’ve all seen videos of the Mathematical gifted children who can do a billion sums a minute. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had something similar in English? A child who can quickly add a comma. I think we can, but first we need a massive overhaul of how we practise things in lessons. MFL and Maths are experts on this and I think English teachers need to visit their lessons to see what we can steal from them. And, umm, maybe save us some time with planning and marking. 


Thanks for reading,

Xris  

Being word friendly or porous

We all know the importance of vocabulary. We all know that ‘tier 2’ words are a sticking point for students. We all know that students will struggle to read some texts without a good level of vocabulary.  The problem is the method in which we use to teach that vocabulary to ensure it is of benefit and not just simply a case of cramming them full of impressive vocabulary. Or ‘WOW words’.


I feel that as teachers we need to be more porous to words. By that, I mean we should be prepared to make the words an important part of the lesson, planning and discussion. How many times in lessons do we ask students for the meaning of a word? How many times in a lesson do we stop a lesson for a discussion on the use of one word? How many times do we stop a conversation with a student and we question them on their choice of words?

What does lanced mean?

Why did the writer use silently instead of stealthily?

Why did you use the word ‘it’ to describe the Tom?


There’s lots out there about vocabulary and people are trying to find their own little way or system for imparting vocabulary. However, there’s so many words and so little time. Being porous to words is the key. If a teacher is porous to words, then the students will be. Students don’t need endless lists of words that they might never ever face or use in their own reading, writing and speech. They need to be a sponge with vocabulary, meaning that they must have the ability to suck up a word and store it.


This blog is about the ‘sucking up’ part of vocabulary. I am going to talk about a lesson which, for me, is about being porous and sucking up words. I am going to simply explain what I did and why I did it.



Part 1:

The class have been working on ‘Of Mice and Men’. At the start of the lesson, I gave students an extract from the text and gave them a few minutes to think about the words in read and what do they mean. Then I selected students to tell me what a word meant.



Extract 1
Lennie begged, "Le's do it now. Le's get that place now."

"Sure, right now. I gotta. We gotta."

And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it close to the back of Lennie's head. The hand shook violently, but his face set and his hand steadied. He pulled the trigger. The crash of the shot rolled up the hills and rolled down again. Lennie jarred, and then settled slowly forward to the sand, and he lay without quivering.

George shivered and looked at the gun, and then he threw it from him, back up on the bank, near the pile of old ashes.

The brush seemed filled with cries and with the sound of running feet. Slim's voice shouted. "George. Where you at, George?“



Students are unprepared to give meanings to words. Historically, I’d say we have generally shied away from using students to generate the meanings of words or providing definitions. We’ve provided glossaries and given our personal meanings of words, linking to our first holiday as a child and the obscure etymology of the word that will only be of use to a person watching ‘University Challenge’ episode 4 in 1982. 


This task was interesting because without preparation students are pretty bad at giving definitions.


What does the word ‘begging’ mean, Sue? 


Umm. It means begging. You know. Like you are begging for something.


Often or not, the students repeated the word in their explanation and showed me how difficult students actually find defining words. This carried on with the rest of the words. It got to the point where some students we quite frustrated that they used hand actions to enable the meaning rather than repeat the word steadied. Clearly, there’s room for some work there on explanation and clarification.



Part 2

I then gave students another extract. This time I asked them to do two things. Think of a synonym to use instead of the word. Think of a definition for the word here. Each pair had a particular word.

I read aloud the extract twice. The first time when I got to a focus word they said a synonym. The second time they said their definition.



Extract 2

The deep green pool of the Salinas River was still in the late afternoon. Already the sun had left the valley to 

go climbing up the slopes of the Gabilan Mountains, and the hilltops were rosy in the sun. But by the pool 

among the mottled sycamores, a pleasant shade had fallen.

A water snake glided smoothly up the pool, twisting its periscope head from side to side; and it swam the 

length of the pool and came to the legs of a motionless heron that stood in the shallows. A silent head and 

beak lanced down and plucked it out by the head, and the beak swallowed the little snake while its tail waved
frantically.

A far rush of wind sounded and a gust drove through the tops of the trees like a wave. The sycamore leaves 

turned up their silver sides, the brown, dry leaves on the ground scudded a few feet. And row on row of tiny 

wind waves flowed up the pool's green surface.

As quickly as it had come, the wind died, and the clearing was quiet again. The heron stood in the shallows, 

motionless and waiting.

Another little water snake swam up the pool, turning its periscope head from side to side.

Suddenly Lennie appeared out of the brush, and he came as silently as a creeping bear moves.



This for me built up their confidence around the use of language. It adds some problem solving element. They heard me push to develop the definitions in Part 1, so they knew they had to avoid repeating the word in their definition. 


Personally, I’d say students are far more comfortable with providing a synonym rather than defining words. Verbally, we don’t define words in our everyday conversation but we do use synonyms. What was the person like? Small, petit, tiny. We do this naturally because we sort through our brain for the right word for the context. X doesn’t fit so I will use Y. Y is not quite right so I will use Z. We scroll through words.



Part 3

For the final part of the lesson, we narrowed the focus on one particular line from the extract. This part was about connections. We connected the words to different aspects. We recapped the word’s meaning and possible synonyms. Then, I used a PowerPoint to show words to build connections.



A silent head and beak lanced down and plucked it out by the head, and the beak swallowed the little snake while its tail waved frantically.   



Slide 1 – Connections

Reminds me of

Echoes

Links to

Mirrors

Makes me think of

Foreshadows



Slide 2 – Purpose

Question

Highlights

Emphasises

Understands

Prepares

Draws attention to



Slide 3 – Effect

Think that

Feel that

Understand that

Imagine that





This started students on thinking of the words’ connection to the text and the rest of the text. We were connecting it to the reader’s thoughts, the writer’s intention and structure. It made for an interesting discussion on the symbolic identity of the heron and snake. The heron was possibly George, Lennie or even Curley’s wife. There was talk of the ‘lanced’ reflecting what George does to Lennie and the pain and violence associated with the word. We also talked about ‘lancing’ a boil and how that could be what George does.

For me, once they had the concrete aspect of meaning secure it made the students far more confident when talking about the connections with the rest of the text. This staggered approach helped a lot of my students build up understanding.



Overall, the whole experience for me has highlighted how we make assumptions about words and their meanings. We assume students know certain words and assume that they can articulate a word’s meaning. In English, we often ask students to comment on the language used by the writer. That often entails looking for patterns or easily recognisable techniques. We miss a large part of the understanding when doing that. I talk a lot in lessons about ‘false confidence’. Complex words provide students with a false confidence in the subject. Because they can use complex words they feel that have mastered things. We know that English is vast and complex as a subject that the subtle, nuanced meanings could be hidden behind one word.  Every word is important. Take the use of the word ‘it’ instead of ‘murder’ when Macbeth comments on killing King Duncan. Students need to be sponges for words and we have got to make active processes in lessons that allows this. They have to be part of the definition learning and clarifying. We have to keep going back and keep asking for the meaning of words. Something we have lost over time. Yes, we might do it here or there, but do we regularly ask students to give meanings to words?


Do students have false confidence around vocabulary because we have made too many assumptions about them? I bet when looking at the extracts above people thought some of the words were easy. I bet people were thinking that some of the words are not challenging students. I bet people were thinking that the words would never develop a student’s vocabulary.


Look at a glossary provided for texts. It is interesting. There’s an assumption that the reader knows some words and an assumption that the reader doesn’t know some other words. Should we so easily make that distinction in the classroom?


Maybe, we should be stating that any and every word is game in the classroom. That’ why the simple definition of a word is paramount. Asking students to verbally define words in the classroom is the starting point for making a word porous environment. The choice of words is important. Students need to be exposed to all levels of word. Timothy, define the word ‘exposed’. Martha, explain to me what the word ‘porous’ means.  



Thanks for reading,

Xris

Jumping because of the shark – Tension

Teaching creative writing is something that constantly interests me. It is such a complex and interesting element of English lessons. This week I have been exploring tension in writing and getting students to effectively create tension. 


Students often struggle with creating tension because they rely on ‘jump shocks’ at every given moment. Therefore the writing reads like somebody is saying ‘boo’ at the end of each sentence. BOO! Or, they tend to load their first sentence with the words ‘death’, ‘blood’ and ‘murder’ so any sense of build up or atmosphere is burst like a balloon. Then, there are about fifty billion ‘suddenly’s or ‘and then’s punctuating the sentences. It is a large struggle for them. Not matter what you do they really struggle with making writing tense. They can make things sad, happy, creepy, but tense is another thing.


So this week, I was looking at tension with my Year 8s. They are writing their own horror story.  One lesson concentrated on the old staple ‘Jaws’ and the opening of ‘The Graveyard Book’ by Neil Gaiman. We compared how each one in its own way created tension or suspense.


The next lesson concentrated on the crafting of tension. We started with lines from ‘Jaws’. Students had to decide how the writer created tension through the one line. Often the problem students have is unpicking tension from the whole text. Hence why we get it makes the reader want to read on. The initial focus was on what makes tension in this one specific line. What could we imitate in our own writing?

Together, we came up with some ideas. These are just a few of them.

Then, I gave the class these sentences.



The boy walked down the path.

The man followed him.

He wanted to kill him.

The boy turned around and spotted the man.

The man walked faster.

The boy was really worried now.

The man had a knife in his hand.

It had blood on it.

The boy reached a dead-end.

He was dead.



They then had to rewrite the piece of action, but they had to build the tension. It generate discussion about the opening and how it starts, in the current form, quite tense and so they needed to reduce the tension in the opening so they could build it up.


Here’s an example:


It was a sunny afternoon. A boy was skipping down the lonely street. Distracted by his music he didn’t notice the clouds darken above him. It began to rain. He pulled out his ear plugs with a huff and heard footsteps behind him. He looked back and didn’t see anything. As he carried on, he heard footsteps again and picked up his pace. The footsteps got faster as well, like someone was following him. He looked behind and saw nothing and slipped in a puddle. He fell on the floor and saw a shadow hover over him with an object. A sharp object. Then the darkness took over.


For me, I like the subtle gradual changes in the mood and I quite like the shift from happy to tense in the second sentence:


A boy was skipping down the lonely street.


I also like the use of pathetic fallacy. The great thing is that the student was forced down an avenue by the rigid context they were writing for. They had to resolve a problem on their own rather than adapting the story to suit their needs. Instead they had to adapt their writing style. This happened quite a number of times with the group. Here’s another example:


The young, innocent boy wandered down the stone path. Little did he know, his life was going to change that day – for the worse. He had a sudden feeling that something was following him. The boy nervously turned around, to see a kind, timid old lady, minding her own business. Relieved, the boy continued to stroll down the path. However, once again, he felt someone watching him. Paranoid, he decided to quickly glance behind him, once again. Nothing. Then a cat jumped down out of the tree. His mind was set to rest. It must have been the cat.


A shadow lurked out from behind the tree about to pounce on its prey. Stealthily, the figure creeped towards the young boy. Oblivious, the boy sat down on a bench to rest. That was when it all happened. Every inch of the figure’s blade brightly reflected a large beam of light, almost blinding the young child. Every step the shadow took, the more the blade beamed. With a final scream, the blood clotted blade buried itself in the boy’s stomach. It was all over. Silence. No witnesses. No one to help him. No hope.


The great thing about the whole process was the discussion about choices. We discussed how to hide the identity of the man. We discussed how we could fool the reader. We discussed how we could gradually build up the tension… subtly.


I suppose what I liked about the whole process was the rigid approach of the writing. All too often creative writing dictates that students have so much freedom and choice, yet rarely do we put students in a situation similar to the A-team. You have a van and barn full of stuff and you have to get yourself out of the situation. The problem solving nature of writing. All writers do it. Work to solve a problem. We all know about the problems Spielberg had with the shark prop on ‘Jaws’. His creative problem was the shark, yet he solved the problem by hiding the shark as much as possible, which helped add to the tension.


Maybe there is scope to add more ‘problem-solving’ to writing. After all, the majority of analysis in English surrounds ‘writing solutions’. We are reading the writer’s solution to problem they had in the story. We are constantly asking students to explore the writer’s choices, yet do we put them in that situation enough. How would they describe this?



A teacher is fed up of marking.

He is bored of life in general.

He lives on his own.

He misses the old days. 
He thinks students have lost their creativity.  

He reads a piece of work which makes him happy.

His name is Mr Fisher.      



How would you convey Mr Fisher’s internal conflict? Maybe, putting ‘story problems’ at the centre of lessons would benefit all. It would support their creative writing, but also it would support their understanding of texts. A text is a solution to the problems a writer had in conveying ideas to the reader. When looking for a solution, the writer would have to consider what the reader would think or feel. Something that is rewarded in the top bands for the GCSE exam questions.



Thanks for reading,



Xris

Segueing descriptive writing

Currently, I am working with Year 8s creating their own ghost or gothic horror story and again it has flagged a problem students have with descriptions of settings. Here's a typical example. 

Moonlight stared down on the street.  A path stretched ahead winding its way. Amongst the houses there was an empty corner. Empty apart from one figure.  The lamppost stood frozen stiff, thin and alone. A cat walked along the path. The house stared back with eyes so red.

Typically, students list everything and a setting becomes a visual description of item and object that is in the location. Now this alone isn't a major problem, if students effectively transition between the items effectively. Yet, many don't. For ghost stories, students describe everything that could be possibly creepy in a setting. Oh, if you are unlucky they will use the adjectives 'eerie', 'creepy' and 'mysterious' next to each object in the setting. They chuck everything at the reader with the hope that readers will be creeped out. 

This week the class have been rewriting their settings because they sat in the category of chuck everything at the reader. Prior to this lesson, we had been looking at atmosphere and how atmosphere is created implicitly rather than explicitly in writing. Along the way, I have distinguished horror writing from ghost stories simply by saying 'ah' and 'ooooh'. Added to this we've distinguished the structure of ghost story writing as 'oooh', then 'ooooooh' and finally 'oooooohhh?'. Or simply put as 'strange, stranger, strangest'. A simple way to get students to see that ghost stories are not about outright scaring, but a series of odd occurrences that build up.

With the Year 8 class, I broke down the original description to starting point, middle point and end point. 

Moonlight stared down on the street. 

The lamppost stood frozen stiff, thin and alone. 

The house stared back with eyes so red.

Then as a class we spent time looking at how we could transition between moonlight and lamppost and then lamppost to house. In our discussions we talked about music and segueing between one track and another and how DJs (get me down with the kids) segue between tracks by picking a similar beat or drip feeding one track on to another and fading the other one out.  

Moonlight stared down on the street.

It was looking, gazing, focusing on one thing. 

A lamppost. 

A solitary lamppost. 

The rest of the world was hidden under a blanket of oozing and spreading ink. 

The lamppost stood frozen stiff, thin and alone. 

Its meagre light battled against the majestic power of the moon, yet the oozing darkness held it back. 

Soft rays of light sheepishly slithered away from the post, defeated. 

Amongst blades of wet, cold grass the rays snaked and twisted until it hit something large and unmoveable. 

The house stared back with eyes so red.

  
The group and I attempted to polish it and look at paragraphing it. 


Moonlight silently stared down on the street. It was looking, gazing, focusing on one thing.

A lamppost.

A solitary lamppost. Like a lost child. Like an abandoned toy. Like a forgotten bag.

The rest of the world was hidden under a blanket of oozing and spreading ink.  
Empty blackness.

The lamppost stood frozen stiff, thin and alone. Its meagre light battled against the majestic power of the moon, yet the oozing darkness held it back. Soft rays of light sheepishly slithered away from the post, defeated. Amongst blades of wet, cold grass the rays snaked and twisted until it hit something large and unmoveable.
The house stared back with eyes so red. 



The group noticed that the transitioning between objects generated the most interesting writing for them. It was where the sparks of creativity came. The problem solving element of writing. How do we connect moonlight and a lamppost? How do we connect a lamppost to a house? As you can imagine, it sparked quite a bit of discussion and exploration. Some jumped the gun and tried to get a monster in at each stage, which we had them to rethink. We want 'ooh' not 'ahh', Tom.

Then, the group had a go at one of their own using the following points: 

The candle flickered in the wind. 

A pale bedsheet covered a sleeping form. 

The darkness under the bed opened its mouth. 

Here's one that the class created: 

The candle flickered in the wind.

Light danced across the room, like a graceful and slight young girl. 

It pirouetted across the floor amongst the unrecognisable objects

Often it skipped  and jumped over the larger objects and cast a shadow instead.

As the light dance in the wind, it briefly decided to use the bed, in the middle of the room, as it’s dancefloor.

A pale bedsheet covered a sleeping form.

Unaware of the flickering light.

Snuggled away from the light, the figure created their own cave of darkness.

Briefly, ever so briefly, the light tickled the figure’s face as it danced.

Still the figure slept. Still. Unaware.

The darkness under the bed opened its mouth.

The great thing about this approach, for me, was that it forced the students to be imaginative in filling the gaps and segueing from one object to another. The segueing created most of the atmosphere and automatically interesting choices of words and technqiues. The start, middle and end were just tentpoles for the larger thing. This is certainly something I am going to use with Year 11 for Question 5. 

Now it is your turn. How would you transistion between these three things? What would you put in the gaps? Answers on a postcard or Tweet. 

The trees swayed in the breeze.

The path snaked amongst the trees.

Amongst the natural sounds of the forest, I heard a branch snap. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris