Prose poetry: comparing texts

On the blog this week is a very modern exemplar of that unusual genre of literature, the prose poem. The term originates from the famous French poet, Baudelaire, who described his 1869 publication, ‘Paris Spleen’, as ‘Little Poems in Prose’.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines a prose poem as: "a work in prose that has some of the technical or literary qualities of a poem (such as regular rhythm, definitely patterned structure, or emotional or imaginative heightening) but that is set on a page as prose."

‘Chessiderata’ opens with a deliberate parody of Max Ehrmann’s famous prose poem, 'Desiderata'. Both pieces are overtly philosophical but whereas ‘Desiderata’ offers an unashamedly optimistic perspective on the Universe, ‘Chessiderata’ explores the darker side of life through the medium of the ancient war game of chess.

You might wish to read both of these texts with your students and then ask them to:

1. Analyse the ways in which ‘Chessiderata’ conforms to the prose poem genre.
2. Explain how the title, ‘Chessiderata’, and the accompanying picture are effective and how they link to the text.
3. Explain some of the thoughts and feelings that the author of ‘Chessiderata’ expresses about life.
4. Compare ‘Chessiderata’ with ‘Desiderata’ in terms of attitudes, use of language and structure.
5. Write a prose poem of your own in which you reflect upon an aspect of life which is of fundamental importance to you.

Copyright Brian Mitchell

This activity can be used to introduce students at KS3 to different types of literature and extend their abilities as critical readers. It is also suitable as preparation for the comparative and analytical components of GCSE.

Download: Chessiderata

Read: Desiderata

Peter Morrisson

Peter Morrisson is a teacher, author and director of animated films. He currently lectures at the Isle of Man College of Further and Higher Education. 

Secondary English - It's good to talk

"I could put you in the movies,” he leered whilst leaning across towards the attractive young woman who sat opposite. 

“Really?” She sounded unconvinced.

“Really!”

He placed an over-sized palm on her knee and smugly flashed a gold tooth in what he must have imagined to be a debonair fashion.  She flinched, as if about to be devoured whole by a snake.  It may not have been the reaction he was looking for, but it didn’t seem to deter him.

“I could make you a ssstar!” he announced emphatically.

She squirmed again.  It sounded uncomfortably like a hiss.

Imagine that you are sitting on a busy commuter train on your way home after another hectic day in the classroom, and you suddenly hear the above snatch of conversation. What do you do?

Roundly chastise yourself with, “I’m a teacher, and teachers don’t eavesdrop!”, then virtuously change seats and continue with your marking?

Or, if feeling somewhat heroic, do you take off the bifocals and charge in with, “Excuse me, madam, is this rather large, intimidating-looking man bothering you!?”

Or perhaps you take a mid-course, stay where you are, put on a convincing display of conscientious coursework correction and surreptitiously cast sly, sideways glances whenever you can?

If your reaction is the latter, then the above piece of dialogue has succeeded because it has clearly caught your undivided attention. And this is a good rule of thumb for writing effective direct speech – it should be interesting enough to captivate a casual passer-by!

As your students will be writing about 800 words for their GCSE creative writing assignment, they will only need a limited amount of speech.  The majority of the story will be narrative with some description.  However, good dialogue does undoubtedly allow characters to step right out of the page and burst into life.  It also enables the writing to become more multi-sensory and vivid, whilst simultaneously casting the reader in the undeniably tantalizing role of voyeur.  So, with all this in mind, the following tips might be of use to your students.

1. Effective dialogue should enhance the interest level of the story, e.g. by creating conflict, tension, suspense or humour.

2. Effective dialogue should convey new information to the reader and, therefore, it has to be vital and fresh.

3. Effective dialogue should reveal the personalities of your characters and, thus, the more interesting and varied your characters are, the more interesting your dialogue will be.

4. Effective dialogue should be short, sharp and to the point, so avoid wordiness.

5. When using dialogue, it is important to ensure that the reader always knows who is speaking. Beginning a new paragraph for each new speaker is helpful but you will also need to tag certain lines, e.g. he said, she replied.

6. But only tag when absolutely necessary so as to avoid needless repetition.

7. Tags should not be intrusive. Some authors say that you should avoid alternatives such as he retorted, she queried, he growled, and so on. In the hands of a good writer, he said and she said, if used sparingly, can become invisible.

8. However, others authors believe that these tags should be diverse. Instead of Lucy said, you could substitute Lucy remarked ironically.

9. Perhaps the answer is to explore what your favourite novelists actually do and then experiment in your own writing. Occasionally, you might use such variations as exclaimed, declared, whispered, stated, roared, etc. But, as a general rule, you might stick to a mainstay of said, replied and asked, and only use the others when they are most effective. Remember, tags should remain invisible and so should only be used when required.

10. This is what happens when you over-use them:

“Just stick with me," he confidently asserted.
"Are you certain?" she asked.
"Dead certain," he replied reassuringly.
"I'm not," she retorted, nervously laughing.
“I can make you a star!” he repeated.

11. One very effective trick is to intersperse brief flashes of narrative with dialogue in order to reveal what your characters are thinking and feeling, and in order to show what they are doing. This will help you to hide your tags. Or you can use beats. This is when you put in a narrative phrase to describe the character's reaction or movements and so identify the speaker without using a tag.

This also allows you to place the dialogue in a world which has a physical dimension that the reader can perceive, thus making your writing more vivid. Otherwise, the conversation appears to be taking place in thin air, and this is much less interesting.

(Re-read the dialogue at the beginning of this article in order to see how the author has used narrative in both of these ways.)

12. However, do be careful. Just as you shouldn’t stifle a good free-flowing conversation by over-tagging it, neither should you kill it by putting too much narrative in between each spoken response!

LINKS:

1.  Scheme of Work

2.  Animation - 'Thunder'

Peter Morrisson

Peter Morrisson is a teacher, author and director of animated films. He currently lectures at the Isle of Man College of Further and Higher Education. 

Secondary - Plenary? No problem!

I hate to boast, but I have just been at a brilliant training course. The topic was Literacy Across the Curriculum and I have been truly inspired. The real test comes, though, when you try to put the theory into practice and find precious time to use all the new, whizzy ideas in the classroom. This can become overwhelming but I find that the best whizzy ideas are ones that require no fuss, or preparation, on my part. And most importantly they have to be ones that actually improve the learning of all of my students. Here is one of them: plenary boxes.

The idea: at the start of the lesson, students write down 'Plenary' in their books at the start of the lesson and leave a space of around 10 lines. This then enforces the idea of the plenary as a prominent part of the lesson from the off. At the end of the lesson (or even better, mid way through) students write down what they have learned in this space. They could also write questions that they want to ask the teacher or how they feel they are progressing. These 'boxes' then become the focus of the teacher's attention when checking and marking the books, opening up a dialogue with students about their learning and progress. Simple!

My greatest flaw in the classroom is planning too much and running out of time, which means that my plenaries can really suffer. Hopefully this strategy will focus me and my students on the role of the plenary in our lessons and support me in making time for it. Along with sorting out my poor timing, however, the potential impact on student progress is huge. Firstly, students are forced to engage with their own learning in a structured way; secondly, my marking can become much more focussed on creating a dialogue with students about their progress. Unnecessary marking avoided and Ofsted happy. Here's to more whizz and less fuss!

Naomi Hursthouse

'Daredevil vs the Hulk? It's just comma-sense!'

“You think using full stops is hard!?” I asked one group of GCSE re-sit students the other day as they grappled with just two simple tips on what to look for when locating the end of a sentence – those being, whenever you can hear a substantial one second pause and / or wherever two main clauses come together – “Wait till you get a load of the rules for using the comma!” Obviously, if we are still struggling with full stops by next term, then the comma is unlikely to get a look in.  However, should the long-awaited full stop revolution ever occur, I will boldly venture forth into a whole new set of starter activities featuring this agile little punctuation mark.

So, in a spirit of reckless optimism, I’ve prepared a slimmed down list of essential comma rules (do you know that there are over twenty in total?) and thirty sentences taken from the epic super hero clash referred to above which occurred in Daredevil, issue163. I’ve selected, and sometimes modified, sentences which not only cover all of the comma rules that I wish to focus upon, but which also tell the full story of this rollicking rumble.

If Daredevil isn’t your thing, then you could always adapt a classic text of your own choosing.  But for me, Daredevil has many of the elements of great literature: powerful characterisation (no, I don’t just mean the big muscles!), as much conflict as you could possibly wish for in a single sitting, and all served up with a generous helping of the most vivid imagery - much of which, thankfully, has been graphically illustrated for me, thus saving me the bother of having to visualise it for myself.  Of course, if you are already a Marvel fan, then your concerns might run in a different direction: “Daredevil versus the Hulk!? What happens after the opening panel???”  Well, to put your mind at rest, DD does survive, albeit after a spell of intensive care in City Hospital!

Should you decide to take the Marvel route, but feel the need to justify all of your literary choices by searching for deeper meaning, then you could encourage your students to imagine the much heavier, more bulky full stop as the Hulk of punctuation – massive and imposing … nothing breaks through it – and the nimble, much more versatile comma as the athletic Daredevil himself.  However, this might be stretching allegory a bit too far!

Ultimately, I hope to project three of these sentences onto my white board at the start of each lesson and ask my students to identify the relevant comma rules from the slimmed down list which, in this heavily idealised world of super heroes, super villains and near-perfect full stop usage, will have been glued into every exercise book for homework!

This abridged version of the comma rules is as follows:

Rule 1: Only use a comma when absolutely necessary; if in doubt, leave it out.  If you think of the sentence as a highway, then unnecessary commas are like bricks in the road.  They severely hinder the smooth flow of traffic.

Rule 2: Use a comma to separate two adjectives when the word ‘and’ can be inserted between them.

Rule 3: Use commas before or surrounding the name or title of a person directly addressed.  You should also use a comma when the inclusion of a name is additional information as opposed to being in the main flow of meaning.

Rule 4: Use commas to embed individual words that interrupt the sentence flow.

Rule 5: Use commas to embed clauses or phrases that interrupt the sentence flow.

Rule 6: Be very careful when using embedding commas in conjunction with words like WHO, WHICH and THAT (relative pronouns).  If the information is essential to the reader’s understanding of the subject of the sentence (i.e. the person or thing being referred to), then the information is not additional and thus does not interrupt the sentence flow. In such cases, the information should not be embedded and so the commas are unnecessary.

Rule 7: When starting a sentence with a subordinate (weak) clause, use a comma after it. Conversely, do not use a comma when the sentence starts with a main (strong) clause followed by a subordinate (weak) clause.

Rule 8: Use a comma when beginning sentences with such single word sentence-starters (introductory words) as: ‘However’, ‘Alas’ and ‘Conversely’.

Rule 9: Use a comma when beginning sentences with short phrase sentence-starters (introductory phrases) such as ‘On occasions’, ‘From time to time’, ‘On the other hand’.

Rule 10: Use a comma to demarcate (to separate) clauses if it will help avoid confusion or make the meaning clearer and easier to understand.

Rule 11: Use commas to separate direct speech from narrative.

Rule 12: Use commas to separate items in a list.

Basically, most of the above could be summarised as follows.  Use commas:

• when beginning a sentence with anything other than a main clause
• in order to demarcate (separate out) extra / additional information which is not in the main flow of meaning
• in order to separate words, phrases and clauses when it is necessary to make the overall meaning of the sentence clearer for the reader

FINAL NOTE:

• A comma splice is an error caused when two sentences are separated with a comma instead of with a full stop.
• A run-on sentence is an error caused by placing two sentences together without any form of punctuation at all.

Thus, as is often the case with tales of mystery and suspense, this final reflection brings me full circle to the point at which I began:

“You think using full stops is hard!?  Wait till you get a load of the rules for using the comma!”

Download class activity here

 Peter Morrisson

Secondary English - Escaping the Ego-sphere

It may sound like something out of Dr Who but, if anything, the Ego-sphere is the polar opposite of the Tardis.  It might look pretty big from the outside but it’s an extremely limited dimension when you are stuck inside it.  So what are we talking about here?  Well, it’s an alternative reality, a sort of hyper-space in which the only thing that shifts faster than the speed of light is the individual’s attention span.  

Unfortunately, it is inhabited by many (though certainly not all!) of our teenagers  and can result in them becoming so disengaged from reality that they often fail to make the grade, both educationally and socially.

Considering the cocoon of self- indulgence that a significant number of children are brought up in by our society – heavily protected rights, scarcely enforced responsibilities – this is hardly surprising.  Nor is it surprising that a European table of children’s well-being published in 2009 ranked the UK 24^th out of a total of 29 countries.

The factors highlighted as responsible for this lamentable situation were mainly socio-economic.  However, as any sane psychiatrist could tell you, extreme ego-centricity, especially when combined with a reluctance to engage in any productive activity, is a guaranteed recipe for personal unhappiness.  If you give no real meaning to your life, then it stands to reason that your life will have no real meaning.

So, can our children be rescued from the Ego-Sphere and helped to get safely back down to planet Earth?

Well, at one time, the solution to the twin evils of egotism and indolence was religion … which is perhaps why students from more traditionalist countries tend to be more educationally dynamic and socially productive than many of our own youth.  But in an increasingly materialistic society, in which the national concern is not spiritual advancement but the pursuit of so-called ‘material well-being’, the remedy may lie in how we approach the teaching of such humanities subjects as English.

Of course, this is not a new idea, but it is well-worth a revisit.  As Matthew Arnold declared well over a century ago:

“Good poetry does undoubtedly tend to form the soul and character; it tends to beget a love of beauty and truth in alliance together; it suggests, however indirectly, high and noble principles of action, and it inspires the emotion so helpful in making principles operative.”

So, next time we are studying a text prescribed by some examination board, and preparing for some lofty assessment task that requires a dry academic analysis via Point, Evidence and Explanation, let’s also try to remember that great literature affords a profound insight into human nature – both that of ourselves and of our fellow human beings.  It may sound dreadfully old-fashioned, but it teaches the difference between right and wrong by frequently portraying tragic life outcomes based on the poor decisions made by self and others, outcomes which we would often do well to consider on a deeply personal level.

Perhaps, in between the hustle and bustle of exam preparation, we could find some time to encourage our students to really think themselves into a character’s situation and consider:

• What is the nature of my dilemma?
• How did I get here?
• Is it my fault I got into this mess?
• Can I get out of it without causing indefensible injury to somebody else?
• What harms have I caused?
• What kindnesses have I done?
• What do people think of me?
• Are their views justified?
• And, most importantly, has my life been of value?

Basically, it’s called empathy – the practice of regularly trying to view the world from another person’s perspective. And some sage advice to all of those imprisoned in their own oppressively limiting, very personal little Ego-spheres – and not all of them, by any means, teenagers  …  I’m no saint myself!  – why not give it a try?

Peter Morrisson

Tumbling Dice

I recently attended an English conference for secondary and primary teachers, in my county. It was a fantastic day and not just because of the rare opportunity for a trip out. One of the sessions I attended was called Active Learning in Literacy and focussed on interactive activities to improve student talk in the classroom. One of these activities involved playing with dice. Now I am really quite lazy, so when it comes to making resources, if I can’t create it on my laptop, then I usually don’t bother. However, I really liked this idea because it managed to inspire a group of cynical teachers, during their post-lunch-slump, to talk with enthusiasm. And if it did that, then I believe it might just work with my year 10s.

The activity: Each group was given a foam dice, with a plastic cover over it. There were slips of paper on each side of the foam dice. On these slips were the pictures of six different characters from a short book (that we had read at the beginning of the session). We were then asked ‘What would the character say?’ and when we rolled the dice, had to write a relevant sentence for the character we ‘rolled’.  After that, we shared our sentences and discussed which ones we agreed with or disagreed with, before extending our sentences.

What I really liked about this activity were the possibilities it presented. It was a fun way-in to discussing our inferences about characters in the text but the potential for use in different contexts is huge. I can see this working with comments from the perspective of different characters in a novel; comments about quotations from a text; comments about themes from a text; and many more.  It could also easily be differentiated, with more challenging quotations/ perspectives given to more able groups of students. Most importantly, as we all know, meaningful student talk helps to create meaningful student writing.

I have now adapted this activity to use in the next few weeks with my year 10s, when we study ‘Of Mice and Men.’ I am sticking to a character focus to begin with and will use it as a starter after studying chapter 4 (with Curley’s Wife, Crooks, Lennie, Candy, George and Steinbeck as the dice-sides). Hopefully it will help my students to engage with the different perspectives in the novel and begin to unravel the different tensions at this point in the story.

With any luck, this dice-game will be a safe bet.

Naomi Hursthouse, October 2012

Download dice templates here!

Reading Journals for the Lazy Student and the Busy Teacher

I am determined to do Reading Journals properly this year. Every year I start with enthusiastic fervour and ask my students to keep journals of their personal reading. I then give out exercise books, talk about various ways of keeping track of and depicting their reading and then promise to check up on them. And by around October they have disappeared quietly into the Great Educational Abyss of Good Intentions. So, I have decided this year that I need to keep them simple, manageable and easy to track.

My ‘revolutionary yet simple idea’ (ahem) is that my students need to record one quotation a week from their reading. They then need to do something with it e.g. analyse the language; illustrate it;  write about what they learn from it; write about its significance in the text as a whole; write about how it has ignited their own thinking about life etc.

By taking out the aim of mapping their reading of a whole text and zooming in on a few details, I want to force my students to do two things: 1.To engage with what the writer is actually saying and how they are saying it; 2. To reflect on their personal engagement with what they are reading. This type of journal will not (necessarily) track a student’s reading of whole texts but it will hopefully make them start to read with inference and reflect on what a writer’s words mean to them. It will also hopefully be less onerous and more manageable for them to complete each week.

The next step is how to keep track of this. I intend to set aside one starter a week (5-10 minutes)in which students will swap books and read through each other’s work. Students need t o then award each other a mark out of 5 for creativity, effort and analysis. The journal-keeper will then need to write a brief sentence saying what they want to try out in the following week that they haven’t done before. I might even add in a competitive element (for the sake of the boys in my class) and introduce a prize at the end of each term for the student with the most points.

What I am really hoping to do is to get my students thinking about their personal response to their reading. It is an incredibly difficult area to teach but it is becoming more and more necessary if we want students to succeed (at GCSE and A level). But more importantly, it is surely we are all in this business in the first place- to help students become reflective, engaged readers.

Naomi Hursthouse

A Planning Activity for Extended Writing

I don’t know about you but I can’t count the number of times when I have told my students that they MUST plan in the exam. And now their plans have become an essential step in the Controlled Assessment process, it has become even more important. We all know that planning will produce a better structured piece of writing but convincing our students can be another matter entirely.  Part of the problem lies in the fact that many of us don’t teach students how to plan. And maybe that stems from the fact that we weren’t taught ourselves. When it comes to planning, we have all been expected to ‘just get on with it’.

But that just isn’t good enough. If we are finding this a problem in English, then it is sure to be a problem elsewhere in the school, which means that bad planning or lack of planning could be affecting our students’ chances in a variety of subjects. If we are looking to tackle Literacy across the Curriculum, then I think this is an excellent place to start. What follows is an activity that I have used to start students thinking about how they plan and how that affects the end product of their writing.

The attachment contains three examples of planning: the pizza plan, the list and the mind map. I start by giving my students a piece of writing to read (usually an exam or controlled assessment essay).  I then give them the ‘Example Planning’ sheets and ask them to choose one and use it to write the plan for the essay they have just read. We are then able to discuss the merits and demerits of each plan (e.g. the pizza plan forces them to think about the cyclical nature of their writing; the mind map allows them to get their ideas down quickly on paper but without numbering can lack direction or cohesion). We then move on to talk about how well planned the piece of writing was (e.g. Are there any gaps in the argument? Is it too repetitive? Do the introduction and conclusion link together?). The final step is to give them a topic and get them to choose their preferred method of planning. A lot of my students have opted for a combination of the mind-map (to collate ideas) and then either the list or pizza (to refine them).

What I really like about this activity is that it opens up a discussion on planning and the impact of how we plan. Once students begin to see how planning affects structure then it becomes easier for them to see a reason for doing it. And the more practice they get then the easier it becomes for them to ‘just get on with it’.

Naomi Hursthouse

Pass it on - a literary analysis activity for groups

Trying to find new ways to get my students to (a). Analyse texts and (b). Work together is a constant struggle. But then I remembered the ‘Pass it on’ game. This game usually involves drawing a picture- one person draws a head, passes it on, the next draws the body and so on. What usually results is a weird and wonderful monster of different ideas and linked parts. This sounded like a winning combination for literary analysis to me so I decided to give it a whirl in the classroom.

You need:

•         to put your students into groups of four
•         four different coloured pens for each group
•         a photocopy of the same passage for every student.

Begin by reading the passage together and discussing it. Then each student (with a different coloured pen) underlines what they think is the most important word in each sentence/line. The passage is then passed on to the next student. They then annotate the underlined words, explaining why they are important, the layers of meaning etc. The passage is then passed on to the third student. They annotate any remaining words and add to the previous annotations. Pass it on. The fourth student adds points about anything they disagree about on the page (e.g. why an underlined word is not really important or a misreading in the layers of meaning). Finally the passage is passed back to the ‘owner’, who reads the annotations and writes a paragraph summing up the significance of the word choices in the passage.

What I really like about this activity is that it makes the students engage with the text but also with each other’s ideas. It forces them to make choices about what they think is important in the text but also to try to justify another person’s choices. It is a great way to start exploring alternative interpretations in the classroom which will hopefully lead to the creation of some weird and wonderful monsters in your students’ essays.

Naomi Hursthouse

Secondary English- Short Story: I am G.O'D!

Gerald O’Driscoll snatched a rather tired looking sandwich from the canteen vending machine and raced back to his desk.  ‘Let there be light!’ he wryly muttered to himself as he entered his office – and there was.  His laptop instantaneously projected a gently pulsating lipstick pink halo onto the huge plasma screen which covered the full length of one wall. This was accompanied by the simultaneous streaming of ethereal music subtly combined with a soothing undercurrent of shy, girlish laughter - and all synced to greet him each and every time he made a reappearance. It was a divine touch!  

Of course, this complete and utter self-glorification was merely the machine obeying Gerald’s pre-programmed commands to simulate a gesture of obsequious adoration as soon as its facial recognition software registered his remarkably unprepossessing figure shambling in through the door. Still, given his desperation for approval, this gross piece of synthetic self-worship temporarily satisfied a deep-seated desire by turning itself on with all the heartfelt animation of a lover’s smile … which was, after all, highly appropriate, there being no other lover in his life.

Now aged thirty three, Gerald was a programming genius beyond compare who could work miracles with a just a single line of code.  He had been obsessed with computers since childhood and, for the past decade, had been employed as one of a host of experimental programmers for Universal International, a global conglomerate and world leader in the increasingly controversial field of cyber reality … and yet he had remained profoundly unfulfilled.  The anonymity galled.

However, during the past three years, he had finally found his mission and his life had suddenly radiated with meaning.  He had been summoned forth from the bitter wilderness of obscurity and elevated to overall responsibility for an ultra-top-secret project – the development of a revolutionary games console which employed a processor so advanced that it would take gaming into a realm in which the current Triple 6D innovations of Universal’s chief rival would become obsolete overnight.  Gerald’s role was to oversee the evolution of operating software so powerful that it would practically breathe life into this super-sophisticated piece of kit.  Although he couldn’t entirely predict the outcome once the prototype was activated, ten or even eleven dimensions seemed entirely probable … at least, according to the maths.

Such was the brilliance of Gerald’s vision, and such was the extent of the company’s financial investment, that the project had expanded to encompass the combined talents of approximately twelve hundred of the industry’s top programmers, all working on discrete units of code in various far flung corners of the globe.  Nobody but Gerald, and one other colleague, had any idea what the assembled design would produce. Secrecy was imperative. The stakes were so enormous that Universal would either dominate all aspects of the cyber reality industry for decades to come … or else go bust in the attempt.

Gerald nonchalantly swallowed the final mouthful of the lifeless canteen sandwich, barely registering the mingled blandness of the low fat filling encased within the unsalted bread.  Health and Safety had become so predominant that its influence could be felt deep within the bowels.  Still, now wasn’t the time for idle lamentation. The clock was ticking and the moment of creation would soon be upon them. He hastily typed an email to the one other person who was fully aware of the history they were about to make:

To: Zeus From: Gerald O’Driscoll Subject: Urgent The final algorithm deployed six days ago is about to unify the trillions of lines of separately developed computer code from all of our programmers across the entire globe.  In a matter of minutes, we will be ready to go live. Get up here at once! G. O’D

                                 

Click, and the summons was sent.  That should bring the big lug running!

As he waited for Zeus to make his way up to the seventh floor, Gerald allowed himself a few moments of smug satisfaction. The revolutionary new console with its even more revolutionary software may well be light years ahead of anything ever previously created, but the basic concept was as old as time itself - that familiar (but guaranteed) recipe for success, Good versus Evil.  How many times had that old chestnut been used? But this time, it was going to be given a spin unlike anything that had ever been witnessed before.

They were about to unleash a cyber universe into which Gerald had pre-programmed a seemingly impossible set of evolutionary jumps and some very elusive laws of physics that would keep the more intelligent of the hapless inhabitants periodically believing that they were on the verge of a great scientific breakthrough ... but, frustratingly, never quite able to crack the code. The irony amused him.

Furthermore, he was going to fill this simulated parallel universe with all the misery that his twisted genius could devise. If people thought things could be tough in this one, wait till they saw what he had in store for the deluded self-believing inhabitants of this new cyber reality. And the masterstroke, which would sell the whole thing in truck loads, was the facility for the consumer to send lightning bolts of arbitrary injustice on these unsuspecting creatures with just the click of a mouse!

Gerald sighed with immense satisfaction.  It had been an exhilarating, but exhausting week – he’d even had to come in on the weekend just to finish the job off.  Still, tomorrow was Sunday and so he could take a well-deserved break and enjoy a complete day of rest.  Gerald’s self-satisfied musings were cut short as the athletic Zeus suddenly loomed large in the doorway, having just effortlessly sprinted up a mountain of stairs. 

‘This is it,’ said Gerald eagerly reaching for the on-switch.

 Zeus drew an impressively deep breath, then abruptly halted Gerald with an imperious raising of his hand.  ‘Such a momentous occasion … Before we start, we should give it a name.’  He took a crumpled piece of notepaper out of his pocket and solemnly read aloud: ‘The Live Interactive Freewill Experience!’

Gerald looked doubtful.  It was too much of a mouthful and could detrimentally affect sales.  Also, he had to make it perfectly clear who was ultimately in charge.  ‘I’m thinking something more snappy; perhaps just a single word.’  He pondered for a moment.  ‘What about L.I.F.E.?’

‘An acronym? Very clever.  I like it.  Yes, let’s call it Life!’  It was perfect; all existence summed up in just one word. Zeus grinned. It was an excellent beginning.

The two men exchanged one last long and very meaningful look, then Gerald pressed the switch.  There was a sudden surge of power, a mighty hum, swiftly followed by an array of lights which encompassed all the visible colours of the spectrum and which sent vertical bars of heavenly glory shimmering along the full length of the room. The gigantic plasma screen momentarily turned black.  And then, without warning, there was a sudden blinding flash followed by an almighty explosion.

‘Wow,’ said  Zeus. ‘Quite a bang!’

‘The bigger the better!’ retorted Gerald with a genuine sense of awe. ‘But there’s something missing … it lacks opening credits.’

Even at a moment like this, his enormous ego doggedly came to the fore. Hastily, he jotted down the title which needed to be synchronised with that initial explosion, all to be enshrined in towering pillars of flame:

LIFE       …     by        …        G.O’D!

 ‘Another acronym,’ mused Zeus. ‘Well, it’s got a certain ring.’

There was a second gigantic flash, much larger than the first, which bathed the entire room in a celestial golden glow and which took Zeus quite by surprise.

G.O’D smiled.  It was just the First Phase of a pre-programmed universal expansion. Contentedly, He watched the screen … He noted the light and, with much satisfaction, He saw that it was good.  

Peter Morrisson

Secondary English- Using the power of the "mind's eye" to help students to write more creatively

‘Picture a scene’ – often the opening gambit from the accomplished raconteur to an enrapt audience or, indeed, from the skilful hypnotherapist to the troubled mind in search of peace … it’s a good starting point for a creative writing exercise. There is much that could happen within a single scene which could form the foundation for a first-rate short story.  The trick is to make the concerted mental effort to actually ‘picture’ the scene you intend to write about before embarking upon the potentially wondrous transformation of translating that set of images into words.

Of course, it is difficult to precisely define the ideal length of a short story, but one useful definition is that it should be able to be read in a single sitting.  For classroom purposes, 600 – 1,000 words would seem ideal.  However, in the hands of an unskilled writer, a narrative of this length often looks more like a synopsis, a blurred outline of racing events which could in reality have been evolved over many chapters in the hands of a much more astute author.  Students would be well advised to make a close study of a couple of quality short stories before beginning to write.

Having thus encouraged your charges to gain an insight into the importance of depth over breadth, you might then explain to them that their first task is to plan out in detail the specific features of the scene that they wish to develop.  So, before ‘putting pen to paper’, they should:

• envisage a powerfully dramatic single event

• break down this one event into the many small facets which will ultimately combine to make it so climactic

• create an in-depth character study of the main character, or characters, but just as a short story should not be overloaded with events, neither should it be overloaded with too many personalities all jostling for close-up

• understand that they may only be able to reveal a fraction of the overall complexity of their main character(s) in so few words, but can still make these revelations potent by allowing them to hint at hidden depths which could later be developed were the short story ever to expand into something more substantial

• visualise a setting which will add considerable force, meaning and atmosphere to the singular event which is to be depicted

At this juncture, it might be both enlightening and entertaining to play a powerfully dramatic scene from a film of your choice and ask your students to use the ideas above to ‘reverse’ plan it. If done well, they should have a substantial series of bullet points.  After all, before the scene that you have just shown them was filmed, it was initially story boarded and then premiered inside someone else’s head.   Once the initial planning exercise for their own short story has been completed, each student should then take the enormously personal imaginative leap of streaming it through his or her own mind as if actually editing the rough cut, perhaps even re-running it several more times from various angles, or from different perspectives.   A few flashbacks are, of course, entirely permissible.   

Your students are almost ready to begin.  But before unleashing their by now tightly pent-up creative energy upon the page, it would be well worth reminding them that the art of short story writing also involves being able to use words in such a precise and vivid fashion that the film rolling on the inner screen of their own minds will also play with the same HD quality in the minds of their readers.  A judicious use of adverbs and adjectives will definitely help to create the required number of pixels per square inch but, equally, do warn them not to overdo it or else they run the risk of slowing up the narrative, thus causing the picture to judder.

Finally, you might usefully replay your own personally selected video clip one last time in order to highlight the impact that can be created by a few lines of well written dialogue.  Then, hopefully, readers will not only be able to visualise your students’ creations, but will also be able to hear the sounds of their voices as they burst into life on that marvellously illuminated silver screen which exists within us all … the mind’s eye!

Included downloads:

• Exemplar short story: I am G.O’D!

• S.O.W (attached) which translates all of the above ideas into a series of preparatory lessons.  

Peter Morrisson,

July 2012.

Secondary English - Targeting Reluctant readers

With the renewed push on reading for pleasure in schools, come many exciting opportunities for enthusing our students about books. But what do we do with those really reluctant readers? You know- those ones who try to get away with only reading the Guinness Book of Records or with flipping through the first three paragraph of any novel you place in their hands. Unfortunately there is no easy answer but one thing that definitely seems to have an impact is creating Reading Role Models in the school.

I have seen this working in a variety of ways in several different schools. A ‘Get Caught Reading’ competition for staff and student, with a prominent display of photos showing everyone reading in unusual places, can help to raise the profile of reading. It is important to get staff involved in this too, to model to students that this is not an activity just forced onto students by teachers but something that we all do and enjoy. I also know of a school who enlisted staff to visit form groups and speak about their favourite books and reading habits. Choosing the right staff (not English teachers) is imperative. Getting popular, usually male, teachers on board can open the eyes of the most reluctant reader to the idea of reading as an ‘acceptable’ pastime.

Enlisting older students can also have a really positive impact. At my school, we have recently started a paired reading programme, in which sixth form students read for ten minutes a week with some of our unwilling readers in years 7 and 8. Their job is to help build their mentees confidence in reading aloud but also to take an interest in their reading by discussing their reading habits and recommending books.  Already we have had some very positive feedback about this programme from students, parents and form tutors who are pleased to see the positive influence the sixth form mentors can have on these students and their feelings about reading.

We all know that getting our disinclined readers to read is going to continue to be an uphill struggle. However, if we model our enjoyment of reading as a whole school, then we can help to create a culture in which it becomes the norm for our students rather than an activity for the few.

Naomi Hursthouse

Secondary English - Extended writing with reluctant writers

At a school I visited recently, the teacher was faced with the challenge of getting some rather reluctant, low level 4 Year 9 boys, to complete a piece of extended writing. The primary focus was WAF 4 – structure and organisation.

The first thing that the teacher did, which would break all of the Ofsted ‘rules’, was to NOT tell the students the purpose of the lesson. Brilliant. Or madness, you might be thinking? Well, he had a reason. What he did instead was to give the students this photograph, of a little boy sitting on a bench in the park. And a piece of paper. The instruction was to just write down whatever came into their heads.

He then gave them this sentence starter:

A little boy sits on a bench.

Students wrote this down, and were then asked to think about what the little boy is wearing, what is on his feet, whether he is carrying anything, what might be in his pocket, what he might be looking at, the expression on his face, and so on. After a while the teacher stopped talking and the students wrote a few ideas down. He then stopped them: just before they wanted to stop.

The second sentence was displayed:

The bench is in the park. 

The students were told to start a new paragraph with this line. Again, the teacher gave them some ideas: the weather, the time of day, what is around the little boy, what kind of bench it is, and so on again.

And again, they were stopped with:

From time to time, he sees / hears / smells…

This was followed by:

The little boy thinks about / remembers… 

Then:

Suddenly…

And finally:

It begins to get dark. The little boy… 

This group of extremely reluctant, quite challenging boys wrote, solidly, for an hour. Towards the end of the lesson, one suddenly looked up, looked around the room, looked at the teacher and announced very loudly: ‘Do you realise we’ve just written two pages in paragraphs?’ He then turned to the teacher and said ‘You know what you’re doing, you, don’t you?’ This was a really lovely moment to watch.

Sarah Darragh
English Teacher and author of A Bridge to GCSE English 

Secondary English - The Language of Metaphor

Teaching the language of metaphor can be a real hurdle, even with the most able students. Sometimes we can forget that in an average day, our students have had four or five blocks of learning in subjects where content tends to drive the curriculum – when they arrive at their English lesson, hoping to be given some ‘things to learn’ to help them pass their exams, it can be quite disconcerting to be confronted with the ‘what do you think?’ approach that English teachers know works best. Because we teach a skills-based curriculum, especially at Key Stage 4.

One of the poems in the AQA Moon on the Tides Anthology is a great piece of polemic called ‘Checkin’ Out Me History’ by John Agard. This poem prompted one of the best lessons I have ever had the privilege to see in terms of opening students’ eyes to the ways that the language of metaphor is open to interpretation.
It started with the word ‘beacon’ on the board. The whole-class activity was to simply throw ideas at the board (this was done with sticky notes, but could be done in a variety of alternative ways) about what this word might suggest. At the end of five minutes, the board was full.

Students were then put into pairs. Each pair had a sheet of A3 paper with one of the following phrases from the poem. Their task was the same – five minutes to come up with as many ideas that their phrase suggested. At the end of five minutes, the A3 paper was passed to the next pair…and so on.
• see-far woman
• of mountain dream
• fire-woman struggle
• hopeful stream
• to freedom river
• a healing star
• a yellow sunrise

The activity lasted for the whole lesson. At the end, the instruction was to choose one phrase which the students had particularly liked, and write a paragraph explaining what the use of that phrase suggested about the ideas in the poem. As you might expect, the results were astonishing.

The most significant part of the learning experience for the students was that their ideas have weight and merit, and that one of the key aspects to becoming a successful Literature student is having the confidence to explore their own ideas – that there is no ‘right answer’, and it is always what the student thinks that is far, far more interesting than what the teacher thinks!

Sarah Darragh
English Teacher and author of A Bridge to GCSE English 

Secondary English - Imaginative Writing

We all know that the burden of marking and assessment is particularly heavy if you’re an English teacher. And yet one of the things that keeps us going can be those little moments of frisson when we read something that one of our students has written that is just fantastic. When we’re just captivated by the description, or the idea, or the character… when we feel that we’re in the hands of a real burgeoning writer at work.

It might not happen very often. But on those rare occasions when it’s happened to me, I can remember feeling rather humbled and wishing that I could encourage more students to be that creative and imaginative.

When getting ready for some Year 10 creative writing recently, a colleague mentioned in passing a starter activity he had experimented with which had yielded some really enthusiastic responses. The basic idea is that you put a simple grid on the board:

Age	Male	Female
5-7	1	2
15-18	3	4
30-40	5	6
60-70	7	8

You also display the following questions:

• What is on their feet?
• Describe their hands.
• What is in their pocket?
• Where are they going?

Students nominate a box from one to eight. They have to use the questions to fill in the box. If something interesting appears, the teacher’s job is to try to ask some leading questions to draw out more information. The student’s job is to say whatever comes into their head. This is often started as a whole-class activity, but can also be done in small groups equally well – when the class are comfortable with the idea.

My colleague was right. I tried this with one class – as a starter activity – and an hour later we were still going. The students came out with the most incredible ideas: the depth and sensitivity of their imaginations seemed to just take off!

Sarah Darragh
English Teacher and author of A Bridge to GCSE English

Secondary English - Dealing with A02 English Literature

As an examiner for English Literature, it’s fair to say that one of the most prevalent phrases used by students in response to poetry is: ‘the enjambment helps the poem flow’. This is closely followed in over-use by ‘the poet / writer does this to create an effect.’ Full stop.

Of course, poets  do, indeed, use enjambment to ‘help the poem flow’. And they do a lot of other things to ‘create an effect’. This is unarguable. However, bald statements such as these, which are a very, very common feature of exam responses at notional grade D and below, are such a shame if the student doesn’t then go a little bit further… stressed and harried examiners have been known to actually talk to the script itself, asking the student ‘What? What is the effect? Why is it there?’ In one now-famous exam response, the student had actually said ‘He does this to create an effect’ thirty one times in their essay. Without once explaining what the effect was, or what the writer’s themes or ideas were. This was ‘technique-spotting’ at its extreme, of course, but quite a good example of what can happen when students are industriously attempting to do what they think they have to do in order to achieve marks in English Literature exams.

The Literature Assessment Objective to which these type of statements refers is, of course:
AO2: Explain how language, structure and form contribute to writers’ presentation of ideas, themes and settings

In Stevie Smith’s The River God, for example, of course the enjambment ‘makes the poem flow’. That’s one of the key structural techniques, and most students can see that this is a very effective use of enjambment. They can see that she is using structure to deepen the creation of her persona. However, once students have identified the technique, what are they then going on to do with it? Might they, for example, talk about where the enjambment stops – where the end stops are and why Smith might be deviating from the use of enjambment in order to foreground some particularly strong ideas? Might they look at the use of enjambment to really intensify the effects of the two monosyllabic statements: ‘Go’ and ‘Now’, and the ways that the positioning of these two within the enjambment suggest a subconscious command? Because if they do this, then they are starting to analyse the use of structure and how it contributes to meaning, which will enable them to access much higher notional bands than D.

Teaching glossaries of literary techniques can have a place in the Literature classroom. It is arguably a fundamental part of opening students’ eyes to the language of poetry. However, unless students link the technique they want to talk about to some investigation of what the actual effect might be, and how it impacts on meaning, they will produce the kind of frustratingly limiting statements like the ones above.

Sarah Darragh
English Teacher and author of A Bridge to GCSE English