I love the smell of red herrings in creative writing

I make no bones about it but I cannot stand ‘Freytag’s Pyramid’ for story writing. In fact, I loathe its very existence. It warps stories beyond all recognition. Makes storytelling a simple box ticking exercise and it is one that would put me off writing a story. For life.

Recently, I have been marking a set of Year 10 Question 5 responses. In the same week, I was looking at rewriting parts of our horror / gothic horror unit in Year 8. And, a simple case of happenstance made me join some cognitive dots. The Year 10s Question 5 responses were reasonable but they were not wowing me. Students had a picture of a beach and they were describing the sea and an island in the distance. There were some lovely bits of description and ideas, but they were flat and monotonous. They were full of bits of description and nice bits of description at that, but they were largely one tone. Flat. Now, it is easy to blame structure and a lack of ‘Freytag’s Pyramid’ but something was missing. And, for me, that was a puppeteer. Story writing is akin to being a puppeteer. You have a number of strings to pull with an impact on the overall story. Students need to have an idea of the strings and when and how to pull them. A large number of strings are not used, but one or two are. But it is the knowing when and how to pull a string that is key.

Anyway, I was planning some work for Year 8s. We spend a term looking at gothic fiction and within that I have wanted to explore how horror directors employ a number devices when filming. Here’s some of the things we are looking at.

Techniques employed by film directors and writers in horror films   

A false sense of security – the writer makes everything seem safe when in reality it is not

Anticipating the worst – the reader is expecting something terrible and they don’t know when it will happen

Dramatic irony – when the audience knows something the characters don’t

Empty space – the writer makes the setting empty so that we think nothing can affect our main character 

Jump scares – this is when –  BANG -you get a shock suddenly without any build up

Mise-en-scène – everything that is in the scene / setting –how things are placed

Nonlinear sounds – these are sound effects that don’t fit in with the story – they seem odd

Red herring – a false clue designed to put us on the wrong path of what is really happening

Slow reveal – this is when the writer reveals a key piece of information slowly and one bit at a time

Stock character – an easily recognised, and predictable, character for the genre – we can easily tell who they are from their clothes and behaviour

Subverting expectations – when the writer breaks the rules of what we expect to happen in the story

Suspense – a feeling of being anxious or excited, but unsure of the reasons why

Twist – this is a reveal and it changes everything we know about a character or story

Underexposure – where the writer using lighting / darkness to hide things

Unreliable narrator – the reader thinks they can trust the narrator but they cannot and they mislead them

We need students to be puppeteers in the writing process. Directors are puppeteers. They control the story. They help direct the story and how the story is told. That’s why I think it is important for us to develop story telling rather than, solely, story writing.  ‘Freytag’s Pyramid’ is about story writing but not about telling. Directors are focused on story telling.

Take our descriptive writing for Question 5. Here’s the picture we used:

How could you structure a piece of writing around subverting expectations?

Example 1:

Paragraph 1 – A beach is calm and quiet.

Paragraph 2 – A person steps their toe in the water.

Paragraph 3 – The reality is that they are stepping a toe in their bath at home. In a dull, tiny flat.

Example 2:  

Paragraph 1 – A beach is calm and quiet.

Paragraph 2 – A person is calm and quiet.

Paragraph 3 – Beneath the water several sharks are hunting and waiting for life.

Example 3:

Paragraph 1 – A beach is calm and quiet.

Paragraph 2 – A person steps their toe in the water.

Paragraph 3 – A person removes their headset to reveal that they are in the future – a world without light and nature.

Each of these structures would include complication, crisis and exposition but the story telling is key. How you structure the story hangs not on endless crises but around a structural device and how you use the device. That’s why I think, we as teachers, need to be thinking about how writers use a technique. Thought about how to use a device / techniques is imperative with helping students to use something effectively. The danger is that we give these devices to students and then expect them to use them without insight, understanding, knowledge, experience.

Let’s take another one of the devices employed by directors. How could you structure a piece of writing around a red herring?

Example 1:

Paragraph 1 – A beach is calm. Slowly a fin pops up.

Paragraph 2 – Something is moving in the sea while a person moves towards the sea.

Paragraph 3 – The person enters the water and the thing heads to them and dives between their legs. A herring. A waves sweeps the person out to sea.

Example 2:

Paragraph 1 – A quiet beach.  A person takes off their clothes and pile them up. They place a letter next to the pile and rest a stone on top of it.

Paragraph 2 – The person goes out into the sea and swim out to the deep.

Paragraph 3 – The person and returns. The letter has blown away.

I feel that we need to get better at talking about the structuring and creation of stories. We, often, through a lack of experience and knowledge paint story writing with big large brushstrokes. We need a more succinct and precise approach to discussing story telling. ‘Freytag’s Pyramid’ represents this exact problem. That are four billion ways to create a complication. That richness is neglected when reduced to a pretty picture.

There is an art to puppeteering. We want students to be sophisticated puppeteers when they write, but we teach them as if they have a sock puppet. They needs strings and lots of them. But, they need guidance on what the different strings do and how to manipulate the string to create a variety of effects.

We need to teach students how to use each string. In fact, we, ourselves, need to be clear about how to use each string. It is not enough to spot a string. You have to know about the length, the connection, the amount of pressure, the position of a string. 

Thanks for reading,

Xris

Home or remote work – why it is the school’s responsibility and not the teacher’s responsibility

We love a pattern. Look at tea leaves and we try to see a pattern that reflects our future. Look at your toast and you try to see a divine image in the burnt bits. Look at the news and we try to see a conspiracy behind the patterns of events.  


We love searching for meaning in the unconnected and disjointed fluff of our lives.

Leadership teams look at the reward system to see where there are problems and issues relating to events in the classroom. They look at a spreadsheet to judge the behaviour in departments, year groups, lessons and for teachers. They look to see where support is needed or things need monitoring. They look for patterns in the behaviour.

The problem we have is that a lot of our behaviour systems clump different elements together. Behaviour is often gauged through a numerical figure. That might be a percentage. Or a simple number. We then identify types of students based on this one figure. Good student. Naughty student. Or, effective teacher. Not effective teacher. The problem is that we lump class behaviour, outside the classroom behaviour and homework. A figure combines everything. We don’t separate the three different parts of behaviour in schools. In the classroom. Outside the classroom. Work at home.

As a teacher, I am responsible for the behaviour in the classroom, but I cannot be held responsible for Tim smoking behind the bike shed - unless I lent Tim my lighter. However, as class teachers, we are expected to be responsible for the work done in the classroom and at home. So, in essence, we have a responsibility for the behaviour at home. Let me just repeat that again: we have a responsibility for the behaviour at home. Like some deity, I am expected to have power that ensures that students complete work in a bedroom that isn’t tidied, because they haven’t listened to their parents when they asked them to tidy it. My teacher powers are to be so powerful that they move through walls, buildings, gardens and get a student to work at home. At the moment, I am doing my teacher stare at the window, hoping that my Year 10s will do some of the work I have set them.

I think the way we treat and clump homework to what happens in the classroom is so problematic. My teacher power does weaken as the student leaves the classroom. How can I be responsible for what a student does at home? And, more importantly, why should I be held responsible for a child’s behaviour at home? And, even more importantly, why should I be held accountable for a child’s behaviour at home?


Remote learning has drawn this out in to the public. Teachers are setting work and not every student is completing it. Whose fault is that? Whose responsibility is it?


Homework consumes a lot of any teacher’s time, effort and energy in school. We are setting it. We are checking it. We are chasing it. We are hunting it. We are, in some cases, begging for it. Some time spent teaching is spent on homework. Some time spent planning is spent on homework. Why don’t we have a system that alleviates this burden from teachers. Why are Maths chasing the same students that the English department are chasing ? Usually, if a student is poor at doing homework for one subject, then they are usually poor for most subjects. Yes, they might be getting a repeated message, but is a time effective one. How much time has it taken?  Wouldn’t it be better if one person addressed the homework issue, rather than the English, French, PE, Geography, DT and Mathematics teacher?

Remote learning, I hope, has changed the landscape of homework. It has made homework a whole school issue. A whole school responsibility. Our school is collectively looking at students not engaging with remote learning. Then, we have a team of leaders calling home to ask if any support is needed or guidance needed. It is not blaming or accusing, but simply highlighting and helping issues. This model for me is the one we need to take forward after the lockdown. Teachers flag the patterns and it is the school’s responsibility to address and explore the patterns. That collective responsibility I think is a massive shift. It is realising that the work is not just the responsibility of the teacher, but the responsibility of the whole school. The whole school should be monitoring homework for patterns.

I also think remote learning is going to do something phenomenal in how we deal with work on top of lessons. At the moment, we have a huge data exercise. Schools are generating a massive data picture. We are, in effect, creating a data picture of the students that work outside the classroom. Aside from individual problems, we are going to see how over several months how students engage independently with work. We have a building a picture of how independent they are. Or not.

We are able to build a picture of who in Year 7, 8, 9 and 10 will need pushing and monitoring. We are able to build a picture in each year of who ‘might’ not revise for exams. We have a picture of the students who rely solely on lessons for their progress. We have a whole school picture of something we rarely have had in the past. The homework picture has always been isolated to the teacher. It is the teacher’s concern and nobody else’s. I think we need to change that.

Lots of people are talking about gaps in knowledge when the students return but maybe we should look at the gaps in engagement. Those should be the patterns we investigate when we return to school.

Make homework a whole school issue and not just an issue for the one tired teacher who is doing everything else.  Chasing homework is so time consuming. We never deal with the underlying issues. A teacher can’t do that on their own. A school can though!


Thanks for reading,


Xris

Putting stories back in the curriculum

It is Sunday, so it is hymn number 423:



All things bright and beautiful,

All characters great and small,

All things wise and wonderful,

The writer made them all.



Each little voice that speaks,

Each little person's fling,

The writer made their glowing colours,

The writer made their tiny wings.  



Books. I love them. The short books. The long books. The lost and forgotten books. The cherished books. The unpopular books. The easy books. The complicated books. I love them all.


Annually, there is always a discussion about books in the GCSE English curriculum. Rightly so, we should question and interrogate the choices made. Yet, the discussion on the GCSE texts becomes a hurricane for the whole English curriculum. It pulls in Years 7, 8 and 9 in its path. Everything is forgotten for the sake of the GCSE texts. I know I teach a Shakespeare play, a Dickens novel, a play written by a modern writer and a selection of poems for GCSE, but I also teach other books for the English curriculum. Ideally, those GCSE texts are studied in one specific year. One year. The course might last two, but the time spent on individual books is shorter.


We need a good hard look at how reading is used in the classroom, because I think we are in danger of making the same mistakes as before and just transposing a model from previous exam systems on to the current one.


We are in danger of having book dysmorphia.


We need to re-evaluate how books and stories are used in the classroom, because I think we have become warped into thinking that every book we read in English should be studied and analysed in the way we do books at GCSE. In fact, I’d say that the model for studying books, in English, is the GCSE model. Spend a term on it. Read a bit. Do a bit of work. Repeat again and again. Then an assessment at the end to ensure that the student has a good knowledge of the text.


If we follow the GCSE model of studying books like that (I am still traumatised when I taught ‘Holes’ – that book takes a year to read), then no wonder we don’t read many books in KS3. You are simply blocking off two terms to read one book. We are eking out the interest for weeks at a time. When you look at other things in the curriculum to cover, you can see why people don’t teach several novels in a year.  This is the problem. We need students to read more, yet our curriculum works against this. Instead, we rely on private reading or tutor times to plug the gaps, when we could be looking at our own curriculum to aid this need for more reading and more stories in lessons.



I feel there are two types of book in the English classroom. Don’t think for a second that I being elitist and snobbish about the two types. I view each type of books as equally good and each with their own literary merit. And, yes, you could study them both using the GCSE model. However, I think some books lean closer to analyse and some books lean closer to reading for pleasure / exploration of ideas / issues.



Type 1 – Texts to analyse

Year 7:  ‘A Treasure Island’



Your Type 1 books are meaty, weighty and call for the level of analysis you’d do with GCSE texts. Enjoyment stems from the story and engagement with the language of the text.



Type 2 – Texts to experience as stories  

Year 7: ‘A Monster Calls’



Your Type 2 books are powerful, poignant and need to be read and enjoyed. They don’t need to be stopped and started all the time. Enjoyment stems from the story and engagement with the ideas of the story. They might have an issue or complex emotional conflict.



The predominance of Type 1 books and the associated methodology with them means that the speed, pace and consumption of books is lost. We don’t race through books. We stumble. We limp. No wonder reading has a bad press in teenagers, because if they view reading in the same light as we study books over a term, then I too would be questioning my enjoyment of books. What, before I read this chapter, I have to match up the meanings of words? Books can be just read. Books can be just discussed. Books can be just enjoyed.


Again, our treatment of books follows the GCSE model. We must at some point write on paper something about how language or structure has been used in the novel or we haven’t taught them something. What if the reading of a book and the teaching from it isn’t something you can easily assess? What if it is the culmination of reading several books over several years?


This year, I tried to change the way I used novels in lessons. I looked at how I could change the way we used novels in the classroom. So, I put more texts in. When studying Gothic horror, we read a Real Read version of ‘Dracula’ and discussed the story. Then, we’d carry on with our writing of our Gothic story. No analysis.


Also, at the start or end of the lesson, I’d read a chapter from a book. That book went on for a term or more, but engaged them. They were hooked, and, surprisingly settled at the start or end of a lesson.  They listened. And, they listened. When, I asked them about the story, they could offer ideas and predictions. They were engaged in the story. Oh, and I only needed one copy of the text because I was reading out aloud.


For next year, we are reading with each KS3 class we are aren’t changing our Type 1 texts, but we are adding five Type 2 books. We are adding more story to lessons. Our plan for Year 7 is to read the following:

Ghost Boy – Jewell Parker Rhodes

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit – Judith Kerr

Trash – Andy Mulligan

Jessica’s Ghost – Andrew Norriss


We’ll be reading them a bit each lesson. The teacher reading…and the students listening. A collective reading experience. We are putting the story back in lessons. Yes, there might be something interesting about the language or the structure, but the students will hear a story and engage with the story and listen. We are now looking at our Year 8 and Year 9 texts. Why not try to teach students four more books in a year? Do I want the experience students have of a year to be dominated by one book? Plus, if the student’s only experience of reading takes place in the English classroom, then lets give them loads of reading experience. After all, that’s mainly what distinguishes the able and not so able: reading experience. Why don’t we just make the reading experience better for students?


I love stories. Part of the reason I read so much is that I love reading stories and experiencing stories so much. That’s why I read everything and anything. The more exposure to stories, the more chances we have to ignite the spark. Yep, the GCSEs are the goal post, but you can some great passes and tackles before you score the goal.



Reading is the best thing in English lessons. We need to tell each other that is fine to just read the book. It is fine to not have something written in your book after reading. It is fine listen to a story and not be interrogated about the writer’s techniques. It is fine to just read. It is fine. Just read.



Thanks for reading,



Xris