Cognitive Buckaroo with Non-fiction

As we get closer to the end for our Year 11s, it is so common for us to throw (metaphorically)  everything and the kitchen sink at them. As they leave classrooms, we pile them up with different sheets to help. Each lesson tries to cover large feats such as the whole of a Shakespeare play in an hour. All fifteen poems in two lessons. Whole language papers in an hour. When we treat students like educational versions of Buckaroo, then there’s no wonder some students struggle. We are piling things on top of things. Cognitive overload is generally common sense. If I give too much to students, it isn’t effective. 

The problem in English teaching is that we have this strange relationship with cognitive overload. We see nothing wrong with spending a whole lesson exploring a line in poetry or even seven words in a line from soliloquy, but for non-fiction we treat it like something different. In fact, ‘exploding a quote’ is almost a standard lesson for literature lessons, yet for non-fiction we teach at speed  like there is no tomorrow. 

 

There are two things students need to generally know about non-fiction: 

[1] Writers openly say what they think and feel in non-fiction unlike in most fiction. Therefore, they need to actively work harder to spot the implied thoughts and feelings. 

[2] A writer’s attitude towards a topic will often change in a piece of writing. They might grow to like or dislike something. Or, they may even change their perspective on things. 

[3] Unlike fiction, non-fiction texts often have many narrative threads. 

When reading a piece of fiction, you are generally building up a jigsaw of the story, but this is quite different for non-fiction because you are building up more jigsaws. What the writer thinks/feels? What is the situation the writer is in? What is the topic? These contrasting threads are hard to piece together, because there isn’t a clear narrative to hold them together. You can see how exam boards pick mostly ‘narrative’ style pieces of non-fiction to help students. At least, if there is a narrative of a boat breaking down, then a student can follow a text logically. 

Students have a problem with pinpointing things in non-fiction because of cognitive overload. Fiction usually has some clear things in it that clearly standout. We usually rely quite accurately with students to spot in a poem or a story what is interesting. That’s not so easy with non-fiction. In non-fiction there is a massive amount of cognitive overload because so much is competing for attention. A feeling in the first paragraph is of equal importance to a feeling in the second paragraph. That’s why it is so important to help students to work on reducing cognitive overload of a text. 

I am indebted to the fantastic Laura Webb and her resources for this. I’ve tweaked it a little to help model things to students. I’ve included the worksheet here. We model to students how you can take three sentences from the text to form a good idea of what is going on in the text. This one from Laura is about begging. 

First, we take three lines from the text. One from the beginning. One from the middle. One from the end. 

Source A

I come now to speak of the other class of begging impostors.

I am sure the number has not diminished since then; my impression is, that it has, on the contrary, considerably increased.  

This will give the immense sum of 7,5001. per week, or 350,0001. per year, which these persons levy on a charitable public. 

 

Source B

And we are using a 200-year-old law to lock up homeless addicts for begging, in some cases sending them to already overcrowded prisons.

I met a guy in Brighton who makes about a fiver a day – the most he has ever made is £30.

Luke, a homeless man I met there, a former chef, is now an addict with mental health issues. The sergeant had little sympathy.

We explore the tone. What is the tone of each line? What causes the tone? Why do you think the writer uses that tone? 

From the example, students might pick up the snobbery and disgust of the phrase ‘other class’ or the adverb 'considerably’ reflecting the writer’s fears that this problem is out of hand in the first source. Students might pick up the varying examples of pity towards beggars by making things personal with a name or how little they make in the day. 

From this, students can actually make a reasonable comparison in terms of feelings. Both texts hate something. Source A hates the beggars as he feels they are criminals. Source B hates the attitude to the police and how the judicial system treats them. We could also make a connection about pity too. Source A pities the ‘charitable’ people who give money because it is wasted. Source B pities the beggars for they have some deep seated mental health issues.  

From three lines alone, students can form clear ideas and can develop explanations around language choices. They can look at the rest of the text for ideas and technique,  but they have a starting point with non-fiction. And that is where the rub is. Students cannot tackle a whole text. They don’t do it for poetry or fiction, but yet when it comes to non-fiction they feel they need to. Half their time is spent searching for the bits to write about rather than thinking about the text. All non-fiction is seen as a block of text. We need to help them break it down. If we lighten the load a bit, the horse won’t buck and will get to where he / she needs to go. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris 

Symbolism, structure and chat

It is that annual time of year where I teach Question 3, the structure question, to students. The more I teach this question, the more I think we need to work more on symbolism in English. And, to an extent teach them the background knowledge to identify those symbols. Symbolism is what we think we do a lot in lessons. We look at poems and explore the symbols through similes, metaphors and personification in them. Yet, when we take out metaphorical language, students find it really hard to spot and discuss them. 

Every play studied has lots of symbolism embedded in it yet symbolism tends to be isolated to the language. A character giving a soliloquy on stage on their own is a symbol of isolation. A scene set inside can be a symbol of secrecy and a lack of transparency. A scene set at night symbolises something bad, sinister or that something is ending. An Inspector Calls being set at night is symbolic. It is all leading to a new ‘dawn’. There’s a reason it is set at night. The end of the old ideology.   

The problem we have is that students can’t get their head around the idea that symbolism is often not linguistic or figurative. It is structural. I think over the years we have become too focused on identifying techniques to the point that we have missed something powerful within our subject. The meaning around all choices a writer makes.  Over time, we have subconsciously created a hierarchy around choices that sensible choices around structure, positioning or content are neglected for something with a name. Something easily nameable. Something easily tested. Something easily taught. In fairness, something that is easily explained, but not something that is easily explored. 

Symbolism is fuzzy. In one context, an object can symbolise and then in another it can symbolise something completely different. Take the colour red. It can symbolise paradoxically positive and negative things. It can represent love and passion, but also it can symbolise death and danger. Our job is to help students see that duality and how it fits in the context of things at the moment. 

The reason Question 3 is such a difficult question is that you cannot explain it fully, because it is a question about exploring. It is why we see so many people tripping up on it. Let’s teach them about cyclic structures because we can explain that. That generates lots of students explaining a cyclic but not of them explore it.  

Let’s have a look at things in one of the past papers. The following images are from the ‘Labyrinth’ paper. 

The bottle of water is often skipped when students read this paper. However, structurally the bottle symbolises so much about the character. Water is a symbol of life. Here we see that character’s full potential and her hope at the beginning. At the end of the extract, we see how that hope and potential is running and at risk. One last drop represents her one last hope that she has in the situation. Yes, there is a cyclic structure, but in terms of storytelling there is so much going on here. The bottle is a symbol of her hope. The story is structured around her lack of hope or the slow dwindling hope she had. 

We can take that further in looking at other things described. 

Each one connects to the character’s personal journey. Usually students focus on the reader and how the reader feels, when actually they’ve missed the character and forgotten about the reader’s interaction with the character. The images above are all about lots of big things. They symbolise how things are against Alice. She is looking for something small and the odds are stacked against her. The plane is a symbol of her imminent journey home. The mountain is a symbol of the challenge before her. The flowers are a symbol of her but also her hope: small, delicate and time-sensitive. The boulders are a symbol of another obstacle, like the mountain, that is in her way. 

Then, we can see how the whole thing is put together. She starts with optimism, but that is slowly dwindling as the story progresses. 

That exploration is really important, but we aren’t allowing students to do it enough. Here is another example I used with students. This goes alongside the ‘Silk Factory’ paper. Here what is interesting is the use of domestic imagery and symbolism. It is used in the story to convey a sense of safety. We have repeated references to domesticity which provides us with comfort and a level of expectation. That is contrasted with the dangerous elements in the garden. 

I think we need to get exploration back into the classroom. We’ve become too obsessed with explaining that we’ve got ourselves in knots over it. Look at how our analysis has become knotted with paragraph structures. PEEL. PEE. PEETAL. What/How/ Why. Our discussion in the lessons has placed emphasis on the concrete. What technique does the writer use? Why has the writer used it? We’ve moved away from abstract thinking and that’s where symbolism comes in. You can teach explanations, but the student independently explores in English - with a little direction from the teacher. 

Building confidence in exploration starts with talking. Getting students to talk about images amongst themselves and exploring what they could mean is paramount. That talk gives them experience and confidence. The melting pot of ideas. Here’s a little discussion sheet I have created for Year 10 as we explore this question.

It isn’t a writing frame, but a discussion tool for them to articulate what they notice about images, symbolism and storytelling. It isn’t  perfect. It isn’t definitive. But, it is something to latch ideas onto. Let’s take a break from explaining and let’s open our lessons to exploring. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris 

I am ready for my closeup now, Mrs Writer.

There is a danger in English that we become the subject of extracts. Let’s look at an extract for Paper 1. Let’s look at an extract for Paper 2. Let’s look at an extract for unseen poetry. If there’s one thing we have in aplomb is extracts in English. I get that texts are the beating heart of English, but the constant trotting out of extracts doesn’t set pulses rising, or interest focused. Added to that we have some bizarre questions on the exam papers. I am looking at you, Question 2 and Question 3 on Paper 1. Questions that split something that is never really split on English exam papers. For decades, exam papers have always included language devices and structure devices under the umbrella term ‘methods’. Paper 1 bizarrely labotamises one from the other. Language and structure have always worked together, yet, like some messy royal divorce, the two are separate and cannot even speak to each other - let alone mention the other’s name. No, that is a structure term. No, that is a language term. 

Across the land, we are battling with this crazy question. We are having to separate structure from language. And, in no other part of the curriculum have we got this distinction. We don’t criticise students when they refer to a structure point when exploring a novel. Nor, do we criticise a student when they spot a language device in a poem. We reward the exploring of texts and not insist on a narrowing of focus. Texts are messy and assessments need to reflect that messiness. Otherwise, we are narrowing the focus, the teaching, the thinking and the ideas. Just look at the fact that they provide us with a bullet point to the questions. Is there anything more indicative that the question is the problem? This question is so messy that we need some bullet points added to it. If you cannot simply write ‘How does the writer make the setting scary?’ then there’s a problem with the question and not the students. 

I hate Question 2 and Question 3 with a passion, because they represent a massive problem with English. We have placed a ‘Frankenstein’s creation’ of analysis at the heart of the assessment system. The beating heart of the subject isn’t engagement and connections with literature, but a bizarre form of analysis which looks like some form of critical analysis, but it is far from it.This analysis monster is everywhere and dominating the collective consciousness. Instead of exploring texts meaningfully, we default to a perceived notion of what analysis is. We are shaping students to this analysis rather than thinking and connecting with texts. Instead of students noticing, exploring, digging in a text, we have defaulted to a subject that identifies, labels and categorises parts of a text. I hold Question 2 and 3 responsible for this. Instead of talking about what they notice in the extract, they have to separate things into language and structure points. The exam becomes a test of not their understanding of the text but their knowledge of if this is the structure or the language question. 

English is a unique subject because it allows all students and all levels of ability to engage, respond, explore and investigate a text. Having taught for years, you can see this. The weakest student in the class can often floor you when they make a point that is so profound that you haven’t even considered it. Yet, the exam system doesn’t support that and I blame the questioning. By being so detailed and prescriptive, the exam is holding a large number of students back on something they can excel in: responding to a text. 

With all that in mind, I have changed my approach to Question 3 over the last few years. Along with reading short stories, I explore film clips when exploring Paper 1. Instead of introducing Question 3 with a trumpet, I start the work covertly. Throughout the whole time I teach the reading section, I watch film clips and explore the ideas in them, so when I get to the dreaded Question 3 students have built up their confidence already. We watch the clip. Then, I show them a storyboard of the clip. Next, I pick one or two camera shots and get students to explore the meaning behind the shot. Usually, I pick a shot that focuses on an object or people. For the objects, we tend to explore the symbolism of the object and how it relates to action or subtext. For the characters, we tend to explore the inferred thoughts, feelings and motivations. 

There’s no need to look at every shot and we certainly don’t obsess about beginning, middle and end. We simply talk about how that shot adds meaning to what is going on. 

Jaws: 

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW23RsUTb2Y

Camera shot 4. A masterclass in creating an ominous mood. You’ve got a child playing in the sand while a boy is searching for his missing dog. We have Brody, in the full clip worried that something is going to happen and this shot foreshadows what is going to happen and indicates that something has happened already, which he doesn’t know about. I also like this shot because it mirrors what is going on in the scene. You have two types of people: the worried/searching and the relaxed/playing. But, thinking of the writer’s masterplan, this is the clue that Brody has been looking for. A sign that something isn’t right. 

Jurassic Park: 

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc_i5TKdmhs     

Camera shot 4. This shot is so famous that it is often parodied, but I like it because it shows you how objects can be used by writers. The ripples of the water don’t just indicate the imminent danger of the tyrannosaurus rex but the sense of power it has. The creature is nowhere near the car yet it is having an impact on something small, tiny and insignificant. If this creature can create ripples on water from a distance, what can it do to the character when it is next to them? This is all about the build up and preparing us for meeting the creature.   

The Birds: 

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydLJtKlVVZw

Camera shot 6. Or, as I’d like to call it ‘I am smoking a fag!’. You cannot look at films without looking at some Hitchcock. This one focuses on a character totally unaware of the danger behind her. She is relaxed, calm and unaware of the birds amassing behind her. For this shot, we talked about dramatic irony and how that is used for effect here. Something Hitchcock does often. I like this clip because it matches a lot of what we see in the exam paper - a slow discovery. Here the character discovers she is in danger. 

 

All Quiet on the Western Front: 

Link: (sadly, they have removed the link for this one. I used Netflix to show this scene. Skip the school bits) 

Camera shot 9. This has been my favourite film recently and I really like the opening. Very powerful. The shot here echoes the number of soldiers killed but also how devalued they are. I like how the name labels on the floor echo the opening with the coffins. There’s a cycle to the process almost. 

Billy Elliot: 

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixgJMTmNOow  (contains swearing) 

Camera shot 7. For me, this shot is interesting because of the inferences you can make. The shot of Billy clutching the cushion reveals so much. Billy has had good news, but his reaction isn’t that of someone celebrating. The focus on the character reveals to us that he is scared about how his life will change. It suggests that he didn’t think he’d get in so he hadn’t prepared for it to happen. I think it is a great moment, because it reveals so much about the character without saying anything.

Schindler’s List: 

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-OpC6tnJ9c

Camera shot 5. This film had such a powerful impact on me. The scene here is interesting for what it doesn’t show. The director shows us a point of view shot of the children waving to their mothers. The act of waving reflects the innocence of the children and how they misinterpret the events. A wave is used to say goodbye. The children are waving goodbye to their mothers one last time. We see the mother’s faces yet we don’t see the children’s faces. 

The Sandman 

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Hz3QB31K_c (opening few minutes) 

Camera shot 9. If you have been teaching long enough, you’ll have seen ‘The Sandman’. An interesting and dark piece of animation. This shot I find interesting because it highlights how distant the boy is from safety. As the child moves through the house, he is moving further away from his mother and safety. The house is laid out in an interesting way which suggests that what we see here is the child’s perception and not the reality. 

Touch of Evil 

Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhmYY5ZMXOY

Camera shot 8. This clip is interesting because it weaves two elements together. We have our protagonists having a chat whilst walking and then weaved in this chat is a car that keeps appearing and stopping. Again, we have dramatic irony at play here, but also this camera shot puts these two couples together. This moment highlights how close to the danger our protagonists are, but also how easily it could be our protagonists in the car.  Often we have an element of danger in the extracts and the danger weaves in and out of the plot. This clip is interesting for that. 

North by Northwest 

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ8tNdxxHUU

Camera shot 4. This one is a simple case of misdirection. What we think of as being the danger isn’t dangerous. The shot here looks like the protagonist and antagonist in a face off, when it isn’t. The clip highlights how we search for danger in a situation. We go through numerous things - a car, a man, a bus. Then, the danger comes. 

The ‘burbs

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpga1vtS3tA

Camera shot 5. This shot is a combination of object and character. We have two characters in conflict, as reflected by their opposing standing positions. They face each other. Notice how they align and stand together when they are of a similar way of thinking. Of course, the bone has lots of symbolism here and key to defusing the conflict. They have replaced one conflict with an even greater conflict. A murder. 

I could have easily written more about each film clip, but that would be overkill. Exploring one camera shot is enough to form ideas and meaning. There’s no need to interrogate every shot. What we want is students to explore how the focus affects the meaning. Sometimes, what isn’t focused is equally as important to what is focused on. Engaging with stories and ideas should be key to what we do. A student’s response to a text needs to be paramount. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris 

P.S. Please share any film clips that you find work. I am very grateful to a colleague who has helped me source some of these clips. 

Infer, infer, they’ve all got to infer for me

 'The ability to make inferences is, in simple terms, the ability to use two or more pieces of information from a text in order to arrive at a third piece of information that is implicit.'

'one of the underpinning bases of inference is vocabulary’

Anne Kispal 2008 

During the Birmingham ResearchEd talk I gave on reading, there was a small interruption. One of the stewards arrived to find out if there was an owner of a Jag in the room. Nobody responded and casually made a joke about what we could infer from that piece of information. 

• The person is blocking another person in the car park. 

• The person has left their lights on. 

• The person has quite a bit of money. 

• The person likes status. 

In fact, there are quite a number of inferences I can make and some might be bordering on supposition and not really grounded inferences. What that one point highlighted was the amount of previous knowledge needed to build that one little inference. You need to know that a Jag meant a Jaguar car. You need to know that if people ask about a car then there’s usually several reasons why. You need to know that Jaguars are quite a flashy and expensive car. There’s a lot of information needed to build up those inferences. That’s why I have built cars and car manufacturing into a unit of work. I am joking.

I have taught for several years now and at the heart of reading and English teaching is inferences. I can teach students everything under the sun, yet when students are on their own, they need to be able to infer something from the text, independently. On their own. Unstructured. Unaided. In an exam. Or, in real life. When we read a poem, we make inferences. When we read a novel, we make inferences. When we read non-fiction, we make inferences. We are constantly making inferences about elements in English. 

Let’s boil the types of inference we make in English to a more precise level. 

[1] We make inferences about a character / setting or thing in a story. 

What do they think, feel or really mean?  This is usually based on tone, language, body language or actions. 

[2] We make inferences about a reader’s thoughts or feelings towards a text. 

What is the reader thinking at this point?

[3]  We make inferences about the writer’s intent. 

What do you think the writing is trying to say about X here? 

Those three pillars of inference are what we focus on a lot in English. We could add more, but, for the time being, three is enough for now.  Across our Trust, we are tracking how these elements are taught over KS1 to KS3. We see that inference and the ability to make inferences is a huge milestone in education. We are working on the decoding element and reading fluency, but inference, for us, is a massive leveller for students. It is what stops students from making big leaps in their thinking. If a student struggles to, independently, make inferences from a text, then they often can’t get to the next rung on the ladder. Skimming and scanning does not get you far. There needs to be something more. 

Look at the GCSE Paper 2. It is full of students making inferences. Paper 1 adds in character inferences and inferences about the reader. 

Question 1	Question 2	Question 3	Question 4
Use inferences when deciding if something is true or false	Explain two inferences about a given topic	Make an inference about the writer’s thoughts and feelings Make an inference about the writer’s reasons for the choice.	Make an inference about two writers’s thoughts and feelings Make an inference about each writer’s reasons for the choice.

If I am honest, there has never been any explicit CPD about inferences in English. There’s been some programmes on inference training yet during all my time in teaching there’s been very little talk about it. Infer from that what you wish. I’ve had training on how to make Shakespeare engaging or how to incorporate ICT in my classroom, yet I haven’t really had any training on reading. CPD is often related to lots of ‘nice ideas, but where’s the pedagogy?’. 

If I am going to help students get better at making inferences, and more credible and convincing inferences, then I need to understand a bit more about how inferences are formed and how we can support them. Me asking a question alone doesn’t make students better inferers (eww - don’t like that phrase). Informing a student that a statement is supposition and not an inference helps them to reevaluate that original statement and build a better inference. Let’s mock up an example to prove a point. 

Student: I think that the Jag belongs to a headteacher. 

Teacher: Where’s your evidence for it to be a headteacher and not a consultant? 

The question leads students to explore the evidence they have and refine their inference. But, we don’t address supposition in lessons enough. If we think of how we discuss texts, a large part of the time is building inferences and not interrogating inferences. If there’s any supposition, we tend to seek out another idea from the same or a different student. We don’t interrogate how the student led themselves to that idea. In fact, we don’t interrogate inferences full stop. I’d argue we rely on students making so many inferences in lessons, yet we focus on the answer rather than the process. We listen out for good inferences and praise them with the idea students will repeat the process naturally or through some kind of osmosis. 

To explore the process of inference, all teachers need to know something about the process. Skimming and scanning is problematic and dominates schools, but all exams and teachers want students to make ideas about a text and not just find bits of information. The following is a simplification of key terms in Anne Kispal’s 2008 report on inference and it makes a good starting point for this aspect of reading.  

When does the inference take place? 

Online inference - during the process reading 

Offline inference - after the process of reading 

For lots of teachers, we make inferring a large offline experience. We have read the text and now let’s have some ideas. That’s why questioning in the reading process helps students. It models what we naturally do: build up a range of inferences during the reading process. If we are going to model effectively then we need to model the build of inferences during the process. 

Where in the text is the inference?  

Local inferences - a specific line or phrase 

Global inferences - whole text 

Good readers will use a combination of local and global inferences to build an idea. And some even more effective readers use precise local inferences to address inconsistencies and contradictions. Some of our weaker readers rely on just local inferences and we, as teachers, need to model how an idea can be constructed globally and locally. 

What in the text is being connected?  

Coherence inferences - a inference that links knowledge across a text 

Elaborative inferences - gap filling inference - using prior knowledge to form an inference 

Elaborative inferences are, usually, what we think of when we discuss inferences. Coherence inferences are probably the most underused and considered aspects of reading. We do it so automatically when reading a story, yet for non-fiction is a massive aspect students need to master. What does the ‘it’ and ‘this’ refer to? When we’ve read a story about a character called Tom, we get it is Tom the story refers to when the pronoun ‘he’ is used. Yet, in non-fiction you don’t have that narrative simplicity or support and you’ll have a cast of twenty people and twenty things to attach ‘this’ or ‘it to. ’ 

So once you have that understanding of inferences we can help support students better in lessons. We can put emphasis on students making online and not just offlines inferences. We can ensure students make local and global inferences. We can support students with coherence inferences across a text. 

Then, we can interrogate precise inferences and discuss them as practitioners. What would you infer from a line? What would be a good inference? What do students need to do to get that good inference? What skills and knowledge are they using? 

Here’s one to start off with. It is from Neil Gaiman’s ‘The Graveyard Book’ and it relates to a murderer wearing a type of glove.

What can we infer from the fact that he wore gloves made of the ‘thinnest lambskin’? 

Answers on a postcard or Twitter. 

I will be carrying on this reading thread in the next few blogs. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris 

P.S. The document I refer to can be found here. Effective Teaching of Inference Skills for Reading - Anne Kispal (2008).

https://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/EDR01/EDR01.pdf

Creative Writing – More Pixar than Eastenders!

Oh what a crazy time it is. I think all of us are in this blur of quickly teaching, quickly assessing and quickly marking work for Year 11s. We decided to end our time with Year 11s by focusing on creative writing and speaking and listening. Two areas, at least, students enjoy and so, hopefully, they will end with a positive experience of English than us battering them over the head with a Paper 2 exam.

Anyway, here are a few things that I have found useful in teaching Year 10s and Year 11s.  

Nuanced Storytelling

My mantra with Year 11s this year has been: emotionally complex and structurally simple. Or, more Pixar than Eastenders. A lot of students tend to veer to spectacle rather than emotions and relationships and that’s why I place emphasis on Pixar. Whilst I know that the stories can be complex, but the driver for the storytelling is emotion. I admit – there isn’t a Pixar film yet that hasn’t made me go all misty eyed and emotional.

To get students thinking of emotionally complex and structurally simple stories, I show them two short films, ‘Dear Alice’ and ‘The Present’. Two simply structured stories. A girl drawing on a bus. A boy receiving a present – a puppy.

 CGI Animated Short Film: "Dear Alice" by Matt Cerini | CGMeetup - YouTube

The Present - OFFICIAL - YouTube

Often students rely on multiple characters in multiple settings experiencing multiple events. Starting with these two stories helps to show students that less is best. The story stems from one simple event. We discuss how the emotions of the character and how they change over the course of the story. The AQA reading extracts model the kind of writing students should be aiming for. Structurally simple but emotionally complex. A teaching finding a brilliant piece of work. A shop worker being insulted by a customer. A daughter dealing with a controlling father. The emotions are borne out of a small event but that have many consequences.

To take things further, I use the short film ‘Pharoah’ to explore subtext and symbolism. The story tells of a girl taking on the role of Pharoah and challenging existing attitudes towards punishment. I like this film because on one level it is a about a girl dealing with power, but on the other hand it explores the idea of challenging old beliefs and systems. Students are then able to see that storytelling can be political and exploring parts of society, whilst telling a personal story at the same time.

CGI Animated Short Film: "Pharaoh" by Derrick Forkel, Mitchell Jao | CGMeetup - YouTube

 

Structuring a story

Students get caught up with structuring a story. They either narrate a story so simply or they try to include every trick in the book. Flashforward. Flashback. Multiple narration. Dual perspective. All in the first paragraph. Two films I like to show for structure are ‘Snack Attack’ and ‘WiNDUP’.  Both stories have interesting reveals of the reality of the situation. The reveal in ‘Snack Attack’s’ happens at the end and makes us evaluate the whole story. It challenges our, and the old woman’s, perspective on young people.  The reveal in ‘WiNDUP’ happens within the first few minutes and is shocking, because it simply changes the genre of the story. We are not watching the film we expected in the first few minutes. I like both stories because they use ‘this isn’t what you expected to be’ in different ways. They use it to change our feelings. They are not used simply to shock but to change our feelings. That control of feelings isn’t really used much by students. It is part of the reason ‘it was all a dream’ is problematic.

‘WiNDUP’ serves another purpose. It helps students to see how you can structure a dual narrative without the need for hundreds of characters and events. A girl lies in a coma and her dad plays a musical instrument to help her wake up. The girl in a dreamworld is trying to find her father. I say again: emotionally complex by structurally simple.

Snack Attack - YouTube

WiNDUP: Award-winning animated short film | Unity - YouTube

 

Feelings and symbolism

Controlling emotions in writing is something students have problems with. They often sound like that Facebook friend when writing as each line expresses an emotion of some kind: I walked through the door, nervous, bemused and worried. I heard a sound and then felt worried for my life. A lot of bad writing I have seen from students is this kind of thing. The overly emotional style of writing. Every event produces an emotion, which the student feels the need to articulate. Largely, this happens because feeling writing like dialogue is largely easy to do, but difficult to master.

I have recently been looking at Clare Wigfal’s ‘When the wasps drowned’ and this extract resonated with this particular problem.

We heard her screams from inside. I was standing at the sink, barefoot on the lino, washing up the breakfast dishes, soaping them lazily as I watched the light play on the bubbles. Tyler was curled under the kitchen table pushing a toy truck back and forth, smiling at the rattle of its metal wheels. Her screaming, the way it broke the day, so shocked me that I dropped a glass, which smashed on the tap and fell into the dishwater below. She was running in circles round the garden, shrieking, a halo of angry wasps blurring her shape, her pigtails dancing.

For the first few moments I just stood, mouth agape, watching her through the grime of the kitchen window not wanting to go anywhere near Therese or all those wasps. As I ran to the back door, Tyler rose and toddled after me. I remember him laughing as I turned the hose on her – he thought it all a joke. Dripping with water, her sundress clinging to a polka-dot of red welts, Therese continued to scream into the afternoon. Around her on the grass, wasps lay dark on their backs, legs kicking, wings too sodden to fly.

When the Wasps Drowned by Clare Wigfall

In the hands of most students, this would have emotions all over it. In fact, it mentions shock but then mentions very little else. No ‘I thought she’d die’ or ‘I froze with panic’. Wigfall’s extract is great for me because it is on the right side of the emotion dial. Students need to learn how to use emotions effectively and not chuck them everywhere.

 

Character

Students largely tell you everything about a character in the first paragraph: Ted was a balding, acholic whose life left him for a younger model after he didn’t want kids. Plus his favourite crisps as Wotsits. Frontloading of character detail is so common. It is like the character detail is superfluous and the plot is the most important thing. No matter how much emphasis on the importance of character it is still told in blocks. That’s why I like the story ‘Umbrella’. The tale of a refugee boy whose father leaves him at an orphanage. For me, this story shows you how to drip feed characterisation throughout the story. We see why the boy is angry and upset over the course of the story and not in the first scene. In the hands of some students, we see: The orphan boy snatched the umbrella because it reminded him of his father who abandoned him.  

UMBRELLA | Award Winning CGI Animated Short film - YouTube

Another film I love for character 'Hair Love'. This starts with a more likeable protagonist but we see towards the end her motivation and the causes for her behaviour. Both 'Hair Love' and 'Umbrella' follow a similar structured style. 

Hair Love | Oscar®-Winning Short Film (Full) | Sony Pictures Animation - YouTube

Finally, a last thing I get students to think of is three images for the mind’s eye in the story. What are the three things you are going to describe in the story? I think over time we have devalued imagery in storytelling because of the easy task of drawing a storyboard of the text. Poetry creates images for the mind’s eye easily and quickly. In fact, poetry is largely based on one image and uses that image to make us think or feel something. That’s why I get students to think of the three precise and visual images to tell the story. Often, these things are symbols or objects, but they can be an expression or an action.

We looked at one story together as a class. It was about a boy running away from home. His sister catches up with him and tries to convince him to stay. We picked out three images to tell the story: a shoe, a silhouette of them against the sun, a hand being offered. These images become anchor points for the story telling and characterisation. They also become the focus for the writing. These are the images that need foregrounding above the rest.

A lot of these films I use for the reading section of Paper 1. I especially use them for exploring structure and make the starter for lessons. We then discuss based on three screenshots taken how the director structures the story. What is the focus? Why has the director focused on that thing then?

  

Thanks for reading,

Xris