Every Picture Tells a Story

There’s nothing kids, or indeed adults, like better than rummaging through a box of old photographs – not sure whether ‘rummaging’ through Flickr will ever be quite the same as a shoe box - but as a stimulus for creative writing a carefully chosen photograph is hard to beat, especially where it has a personal connection. Of all the writing I have encouraged youngsters to produce over the years, by far the most successful was personal writing, especially if it involved photographs from home. The huge success of social networking sites such as MYSpace, Facebook and Bebo, as well as the phenomenal number of blogs added daily to the global collection, are testimony also to that need we all have to create our own narrative in the world, to ‘tell our story’ in one way or another.

The Minishant team which won the Scottish Amateur FA Cup in 1960. Centre-forward Robert (Rab) Boyd is in the centre of the front row.

The power of photographs was once again brought home to me this week when I opened up my copy of the local Ayrshire Post and there on the sports pages was a picture of my dad’s 1960 Scottish Amateur Football Cup winning team, Minishant. I don’t remember ever seeing that particular photo, which was submitted by John Robertson, one of the surviving members of the team, and since my old man died twenty three years ago at the ridiculously young age of 52, it’s unlikely that I would ever have seen it otherwise. I was always a great believer in attempting to write anything I ever asked kids to write, so if you’d like to read my essay on Big Rab, as he was affectionately known, click on Slim Jim and the Big Man.

Further Ideas for Using Photographs in the Classroom

Talk: Ask kids to bring in a photograph which has a special significance to them, and tell the story in two minutes.

People in Pictures: Gather a selection of photographs of people. Issue them randomly to members of the class and ask them to ‘create’ the character – age, nationality, backstory, etc. This can be followed by developing a story where the character is the narrator or a character in the story.

Reading Pictures: A good exercise for teaching young people about the ways in which photographs can be manipulated to tell a story from a particular perspective. Use the cropping tool in PowerPoint to focus on a particular detail. In each subsequent slide gradually reveal more of the picture and discuss at each stage ‘what the photograph is about’.

Front Page Story: Follow on from the last exercise, this one is for older children. Present them with a collection of photographs and the text of a news story and provide a template for the front page of the newspaper. Divide them into two groups and ask them to cut the story to fit the space. Works well if the two groups are given different remits in terms of editorial stance, readership etc. Writing captions teaches the importance of anchorage in meaning.

Story in Six Pictures: Find six photographs, put them in a particular sequence, and write or tell the story. It is worth trying it with a random selection of photographs, with the challenge of making the connections, as well as choosing six photographs on a theme.

Story in Six Words: The writer Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in 6 words. The result was “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Try the same exercise using a photograph as the stimulus.

Powerpic: Use PowerPoint to create a narrative with pictures. To find out how to manipulate images in Powerpoint, add text and more have a look at these excellent training materials on the National Qualifications area of the LTS website.

Digital Narratives: Use digital images to create narratives with free online tools such as Comic Brush and Pixton and make comic strips from still images. Ollie Bray’s blog will tell you how. Another source of wonderful ideas is The Digital Narrative by Martin Jorgensen which will point you in the direction of everything you ever needed to know about creating stories from photographs.

Moving Image: Have fun by uploading a selection of digital photographs to RockYou and translate them into an animated slideshow or to Animoto where you can add your own soundtrack for a short video which you can re-edit as often as you like - ideal for recording classroom activities or events. To crop,edit, annotate or generally be creative with images I would recommend Picnik – fast, easy, fun and free!

There Was a Lad Was Born in Kyle

Two hundred and fifty-one years ago today, there was born in Ayrshire a literary figure who would come to be celebrated in some of the most far-flung corners of the world, but not always given the recognition he deserves in his own country. Today, Burns’ Suppers will be held across the globe, by and for exiled Scots and others, for whom the poems and songs of Robert Burns  are some of the best expressions of love, lust, frustration, patriotism, brotherhood, hypocricy, injustice and human frailty ever written. Jeremy Paxman dismissed his work as ‘dross’, Bob Dylan cited his poems – and in particular ‘My Love’s Like a Red, Red Rose’ - as his main source of inspiration, while it is believed that Abraham Lincoln was able to recite many of them off by heart. As far as heroes go, never was there a more obvious candidate for a big screen biopic, yet it is still to materialise. Consider how dramatic these two scenes, described by Catherine Carswell in her 1930s biography, might look if you were the director. The first describes the night of Robert’s birth and the second the funeral of his father William.

1759

“The night of the birth coincided with a violent storm of wind and rain, through which the expectant father had to fight his way and ride the swollen Slaphouse ford for the midwife. It was one of those births about which legends are told: but the present narrative is not concerned with legends. The facts are enough. On 26 January – the morning after the birth – William, in spite of the weather, brought the parish minister from Ayr, and assembled for the baptism the needful witnesses, one of whom was his neighbour Tennant, a man younger than himself but already twice married and very fruitful. There was no custom to explain this haste. It was simply that William could not bear to wait one unnecessary hour for what he saw as the consummation of his life. The ceremony was performed in the kitchen, Agnes handing the infant to its father from the box bed, and he, after the Scottish fashion, holding it in his arms to be sprinkled, and uttering his vows aloud…

Day after day the gale continued. Along that coast such a wind could blow from the Atlantic that sometimes it uncovered the dead in their shallow, sandy graves. In this case however, it was the newborn that it exposed. For ere dawn on the tenth day a gable of the cottage fell and laid the kitchen open to the elements. William had to carry his family through the wet and roaring darkness to the nearest house where hospitality could be sought without loss of dignity – for in a land of large families and two-roomed dwellings it is no small favour to ask for a bed. Then in the inclement morning he went back alone, and set himself to repair the fault the west wind had discovered in his home.”

1784

“On the Sabbath evening the middle-aged and elderly women crowded into Lochlie’s kitchen to witness the coffining, finger William’s winding sheet – made from wool which according to custom his wife had spun in the first year of their married life – and enjoy tea and bannocks. Tea, though now drunk daily by the gentry, was still a luxury to villagers, and was especially appropriated to funerals. On the Monday the men came up in a body. Many were merely poor or curious folk who had no connection with Tarbolton but never missed a funeral if they could help it. When all had been in to the house by relays to eat and drink and take stock of the deceased’s possessions, the coffin, preceded by the beadle with his bell, was brought out, the stragglers fell off, and the procession, consisting entirely of men, formed up. The presence of the minister had preserved decorum among the mourners, and kept the proceedings from becoming, as they were apt to do, over-festive. Further, as William had wished to be buried at Alloway kirkyard within the walls that he had repaired, the bearers and true followers – distinguished by their muslin ‘weepers’ – had the sobering distance of twenty miles to cover. The coffin was tied to long poles slipped through the stirrups of two saddled farm ponies which walked tandem.

 

It was a busy day for Agnes. She had now to prepare a substantial meal for the faithful hungry ones who should later return from the graveside. But withered and bent as she was, none could do this sort of thing better than she, and today she had her two grown daughters to help her as well as Bell. This was something to be thankful for, as Lizzie Paton was sick and looking blue beneath the eyes. Her mistress knew well enough what ailed the girl. She hoped her husband had died without noticing anything. He would have taken it to heart. She herself was not unduly put about. Such things came to pass and they were vexing. But Robin was a good-hearted lad. He would marry the girl when her time came, if not before.”

Read Immortal Memory Robert Burns

Listen to Burns’ most famous poems

Reading Aloud – Not Only in New York

In recent workshops and presentations to teachers, both primary and secondary, I have suggested the importance of reading aloud in the development of literacy skills. To older readers, this will not exactly come as a startling revelation, but I believe that in recent years – probably the past couple of decades – we have largely abandoned the practice as soon as young learners are deemed to be ‘able to read’, or what a good friend of mine has described as competent at ‘barking at print.’

Admittedly, in those wonderful halcyon days when I was learning in primary school along with my forty-one fellow students, being asked to read aloud could be an embarrassing, and sometimes even humiliating, experience for some. It’s little wonder then that daily ritual of reading round the class has largely been abandoned (hasn’t it?).
Unfortunately, I fear that in rightly protecting the sensitivities of young people we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater, and forgotten the importance of a strategy which even as mature, developed readers, we often use when faced with a text which we find challenging, or which has been written especially to be spoken – think Shakespeare, or Dylan Thomas or Laurie Lee.

So reading aloud should not be seen simply as a way of demonstrating an ability to ’say the words’ but should be recognised as an important strategy in developing comprehension and higher order reading skills, as well as a celebration of the joys of language, and it should be encouraged at all ages! Recently I came across a programme on Teachers’ TV which does just that. It is presented by John Scieszka, author of The Stinky Cheese Man and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs* among other things. I have included a short extract from the film, in which he talks about reading for fun, the importance of graphic novels, ‘reading’ pictures, embracing new technologies and the value of reading to your kids and having them read to you. You can see the full half-hour programme by clicking here.

*The True Story of the Three Little Pigs is a good example of a classic story given a modern twist. Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes is another one which appeals to young people. Updating with a humorous take, or setting a familiar story in a different time or location can be a creative writing challenge which young people respond well to.

If It Matters, It Matters

The most frequent question I am asked when I tell people what I do for a living is, ‘Does handwriting still matter?’  To be honest, over the past few years  my responses have gone from ‘not really’ to ‘of course it does’ and everything in between, but as you can probably guess it’s something which has regularly caused me sleepless nights. So, having thought about it for a long time, the next time somebody asks me the question my answer will unhesitatingly and unequivocally be, ‘If it matters it matters’.

Let me explain. First of all, when parents and teachers and politicians and others talk about the standard of writing produced today, some of them are thinking of the legibility of the handwriting, others are thinking of the grammatical structures, and a few are thinking about the quality of the ideas. The first of these aspects of writing may well be related to the others, but on the other hand it may not. To digress slightly, I remember when I was in primary school many, many years ago and we started our first scrawling attempts at handwriting on a wooden-bordered slate which had lines on one side to guide the writing and was blank on the other side for our drawings and sums: it was cleaned using a small piece of sponge which we kept in a plastic container and regularly topped up with water. In Primary 7 we learned ‘italic writing’ as a treat and the teacher sent off for special fountain pens which had our names inscribed on the side. I won a prize for italic writing and I was pleased as Punch. Today, the only handwriting I do is to scribble some notes on a shorthand notepad while talking on the phone, or to jot down the URL for a website, or a password, or the ingredients for a recipe. Sometimes when I read it back I can’t decipher my own writing. Does handwriting still matter?

Not long ago, the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, received praise and criticism in almost equal measure, when he wrote to the mother of a soldier who had been killed in Afghanistan. The handwriting was barely legible, and the letter contained several errors, including the spelling of the soldier’s surname. It’s the thought that mattered above all, said many, and the fact that he took the time from a busy schedule to write a personal letter to a grieving mother. Did it matter that the handwriting was poor, and there were one or two minor errors? Yes, I think, is the answer, because he decided to write it rather than have it word-processed. Yes, because he was either unaware that it contained errors or he didn’t bother to have it checked, both of which are inexcusable as soon as he had decided that it mattered. Finally, a key question. Did it achieve its purpose? Apparently not, as the recepient was deeply upset, which was not exactly the purpose of the letter. So, in the final analysis, when the next person asks me the question, ‘Does handwriting matter any more?’ my answer will be, ‘If it matters, it matters.’

My Top Ten Films of the Decade

Thanks to Andy Wallis for the inspiration to post my top ten films of the decade, a bit of an indulgence but what the……. it is that time of the year for making lists and there’s nothing we boys like better, so here goes. Please enjoy and feel free to respond.

1Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself Directed by Lone Scherfig

 
2 Talk to Her Directed by Pedro Almodovar

3 Les Choristes Directed by Christophe Barratier

4 The Lives of Others Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

5 Man on Wire Directed by James Marsh

6 City of God Directed by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund

7 The Beat My Heart Skipped Directed by Jacques Audiard

8 Atonement Directed by Joe Wright

9 Brokeback Mountain Directed by Ang Lee

10 Amelie Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

I Want to Tell You a Digital Narrative

Writing in this week’s TESS, Peter Wright, president of the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association, offers a six-point plan to ‘rescue’ Scottish education from the doldrums in which he claims it to be currently stuck. Some of his ideas I happen to agree with, such as his recommended class size maximum, but on the subject of improving literacy he has this to say: “It must be defined as the ability to read and write. The current fad, which defines it as the ability to access texts in all their forms, must be shelved.” On this I couldn’t agree less.

That statement is wrong on so many counts. For one thing, ‘the ability to read and write’ is in itself meaningless, as it immediately begs the question, ‘the ability to read and write WHAT?’  The ability to read, and the ability to access texts in all their forms, are not mutually exclusive. The use of the word ‘fad’ is simply a sign of a desperate man in search of an argument.

I have written before about the blurring of the lines between reading, writing, listening, watching and talking, and about the development of digital narratives which appear to be breaking down the divisions between books, films and computer games. Inanimate Alice is a particularly exciting example of a multimedia, interactive narrative which combines digital photographs, video, printed text, drawing, painting and sound. The narrative is progressive and increasingly complex, not to mention absorbing and engaging. For a range of other good examples of digital narratives in development, and a wonderful range of materials and suggestions for creating digital narratives I would suggest you visit Martin Jorgensen’s definitive website The Digital Narrative – Finding Your Story with New Media and its close relatives The Lightning Bug, where young writers are provided with a host of ideas to inspire and support them in their efforts, and Building Community in Your Classroom, for teachers who are keen to introduce new technologies into their classroom but don’t quite know where to start.

I have also been excited recently by computer games such as Samorost and Machinarium, which have a narrative structure, but little or no printed text. They are described as ‘games’ but have a definite narrative or story – even although they have very little or no printed text - which only becomes complete or obvious after the player has solved all the puzzles and the plot has been resolved. These games are visually quite stunning and provide the perfect stimulus for discussion and for the creation of text, including the writing of stories. Beyond these however, it is difficult at the moment to find computer games which have a strong narrative element, rather than simply providing a context for interactive learning and social integration, commendable as both of these aims undoubtedly are. Ultimately, it’s the quality of the narrative which counts, and at the moment it seems to me there are very few games which are able to provide this. The problem for games developers is perfectly summed up in this very funny presentation from Daniel Floyd of Animation Mentor.

 

The Jury’s Out

Met some really good people (and dedicated English teachers) yesterday in the Jury’s Inn in Glasgow to discuss the development of literacy in the context of Curriculum for Excellence. At least that’s my interpretation of what they were there to do, as I was delivering the course on behalf of an organisation called Creative Education, who had advertised it as Implementing the (sic) Curriculum for Excellence in Literacy and English, which, you will realise if you have any understanding of the thinking behind Curriculum for Excellence, doesn’t actually make sense. Implementing Literacy and English in Curriculum for Excellence would make a bit more sense, but not much, which is why I prefer to use the word ‘developing’. This may seem like splitting hairs, but I think it’s a crucial distinction to make.

The respective roles in the secondary school - of English teachers and other subject specialists - in supporting the development of literacy in young people, was a topic which raised some lively debate (and one which I have commented on before  (see post on November 25), as did the discussion of the literacy framework itself.  Are we ensuring that young people encounter a wide range of different types of text in different media as described in the Principles and Practice paper? How can we begin to assess progress within each of the outcomes?  What is English, when you remove the literacy outcomes? Is it literature? In that case, do we need to redefine literature? How can we, individually, as a department, or as a school, move forward with the notion of literacy as the responsibility of all teachers and turn it into a reality?

In answer to the last question, I would suggest that the following moves are an absolute requirement, and in many schools of course these things have already happened:

• Make sure you have a truly representative cross-curricular group working on literacy policy development
• Make sure the person leading it has drive, enthusiasm, passion, true leadership qualities and a vision of what the ultimate goal might be (not much to ask)
• Make sure the policy is informed by the whole community
• Try to move forward as a cluster, developing a common language and common understandings with primary colleagues
• Begin to look at ways of giving ownership of literacy development to the young people themselves, including responsibility for recording of progress

The description of the curriculum frameworks as a series of outcomes and experiences, rather than a list of inputs, is what makes Curriculum for Excellence radically different from school curricula before the 21st century, in that it puts the focus on the learner. One simple way of encouraging responsibility in the learner and linking the idea of literacy across learning, is for every young person coming in to S1 to have a personalised ‘Word’ book in which they record new words and definitions in all subjects, helping  them to see the links between subjects, and making them aware that there are words which can have different meanings in different contexts.

Similarly, many departments and schools already include elements of self-assessment in their recording and reporting systems, which is a good place to start in establishing responsibility and ownership in the young person, as they begin to record a portfolio of evidence towards recognition of their achievements.

At the end of the course one delegate (who was generally very complimentary in her evaluation of the day) commented that it had raised more questions than answers, which I took to be an expression of disappointment; but if it raised the right questions I think I would settle for that.

I would like to thank Alastair, Avril, Cara, Claire, Heather, Hilary, Karen, Kate, Lorna, Martin, Michaella, Paul and Roz for sharing their own views and experiences so willingly in a spirit of openness and collaboration.

Thirty-Three Ways to Read a Poem

“As regards Dumfriesshire, whither both fame and notoriety had preceded the newcomer, the figure of a poetical farmer was rather an object of suspicious curiosity than of neighbourliness.”

Thus wrote Catherine Carswell of the poet Robert Burns when he took over the tenancy of Ellisland Farm near Dumfries in 1788. Fortunately, neighbourliness and hospitality were much more in evidence from the good people of Dumfries and Galloway when I went visiting them this week. First stop, on Tuesday, was the very attractive new Castle Douglas Primary School on Tuesday (I’m sure the heating in your lovely games hall will be working again soon!), to work with primary staff from across the region, before moving on the following day to contribute to the staff development day at Lockerbie Academy, where the secondary staff  and their primary colleagues had come together to discuss Literacy Across Learning, and to begin to lay the foundations for a cluster-wide approach to literacy, which will ensure that their pupils are well prepared to deal with the complexities of life in the 21st century. What impressed me most when talking to the cross-curricular literacy group was the willingness of the staff to get to grips with some very challenging issues, for the sake of the common goal of providing the best possible experience for every young person in their care. I thoroughly enjoyed both sessions and appreciated the very positive response to the workshops.

One promise I made - which is a pleasure to keep, as I think it demonstrates the fact that developing common reading strategies which apply to all media is the way forward - is this one. In Tuesday’s session, after some input from me on reading strategies, the staff were issued with a text which is fairly commonly used in upper primary or lower secondary schools – A Case of Murder by Vernon Scannell - and given the following task:

 “Rather than asking pupils to answer a set of questions on the poem, how many alternative lessons could you come up with, using the seven reading strategies, to develop and demonstrate an understanding of the poem and poetry in general?” 

The results, not surprisingly, were highly creative, rich and varied, so I have collated them (all 33 of them) below. Feel free to add more!

Thirty-Three Ways to Promote Close Reading of A Case of Murder by Vernon Scannell

 Predicting

• Provide title and first line. Discuss what might follow.
• Read up to ‘he loathed all that’. Write and/or discuss what might happen.
• Provide title and last line. Predict what happens.
• Read poem up to ‘under the stair’. Write possible ending before reading actual ending.

Asking Questions

• Groups generate own questions which arise from the poem. Groups swap questions for further discussion.
• Ask pupils to discuss what one single question they would ask each of the characters.
• Use ‘surprises’ grid to list all the surprises which occur.

Making Comparisons

• Talk about own ‘guilty secrets’ (could be risky!)
• List the stories/characters in fiction this reminds you of.
• Find other poems/stories with the same theme and compare against agreed criteria.

Looking for Patterns

• List and count the words which are used more than once
• Use Wordle (www.wordle.net) to re-order the poem and pick out most significant words
• Find all the rhyming words.
• Use highlighter pens to highlight adjectives (descriptive words)

Making Pictures

• Draw the cat. Draw the boy.
• Storyboard the poem in 6 pictures.
• Create cartoon version of the poem using online cartoon maker such as Comicbrush.
• Draw character MindMaps for the boy and the cat.
• Draw the murder scene.
• Draw something to represent each of the emotions found in the poem. Discuss most appropriate colour for each.

Summarising

• Write the boy’s diary/blog entry for that day.
• Issue the poem with the title removed. Ask pupils to write the best title. Discuss and compare with original.
• Write the story of the poem in 6 words/50 words/140 characters
• Write the newspaper headline as it might appear in the local paper.
• Write the newspaper story.
• Write the poem as a story in your own words.

Evaluating

• Make a list of the excuses the boy might use for the cat’s disappearance.
• Conduct the mock trial of the boy for his crime.
• Write an alternative ending (in the style of the author?)
• Stage mini-debate on the reasons for writing the poem.
• Write the story from the cat’s point of view.

 

Finally, make a podcast or videocast of the poem. Rehearse and READ IT ALOUD with as much fluency, understanding and expression as possible!

Literacy for All

The idea of literacy development as the responsibility of all teachers, one of the core features of the curriculum reform in Scotland, is a challenging one for many secondary English and non-English specialists alike. While the perception of the English department as a service industry for the rest of the school, ensuring that young people are proficient in reading, writing, grammar and spelling, is almost a thing of the past, for some English teachers the thought of other subject specialists ‘teaching’ language skills is a threat to their own professionalism and perhaps even a dereliction of duty. At the same time, while many non-English specialists had happily embraced their role in the development of literacy long before the birth of Curriculum for Excellence, many others are reluctant to accept the responsibility, believing it to be somebody else’s job.

The language of the science outcomes demands sophisticated literacy skills

Arguably, the tensions described above were an inevitable consequence of the decision to maintain, more or less, the curriculum areas which existed before the review and, broadly speaking, the same departmental structures, to the extent that not even the nomenclature was up for debate – how relevant for example is the title ‘Home Economics’  for an area of study which is actually more relevant than ever in terms of healthy eating and wellbeing, but has a title which is not only years but decades out of date? Likewise Religious and Moral Education, which certainly needs to drop the ‘R’ word, and probably the ‘M’ word as well if it is to be taken seriously, since surely it is in fact Philosophy if it is being done properly.                

The same  is true to a great extent of English and English teaching. As someone who was proud to describe himself as an English teacher for many years, I was never entirely clear about my role, and I’m not sure that anyone else was either, the title itself suggesting …well, everything under the sun really. Was I teaching literature, or language, or media studies, or grammar, or spelling, or handwriting, or theatre?  The answer of course was all of them, and more or less in the order of priority which suited me and not the learners. It was great fun but somehow lacking in focus.

Unfortunately, the opportunity to rectify this confusion has been missed this time around, or perhaps was seen as a step too far; so instead we have two separate frameworks, Literacy and English as well as Literacy across Learning, which leads anyone outside of the educational establishment, and even some of those inside it, to the conclusion that there are literacy skills taught by English teachers and another, possibly less important, kind of literacy which is the responsibility of everyone else. (In actual fact the additional responsibility English teachers have is for the the study of literature, which is a separate matter).

This continued separation of roles is an artificial construct, and is not helpful. However, when you look at the language of the outcomes for all curriculum areas, the responsibilities seem clear enough. If I am a science teacher, for example, and a third level outcome for a learner in science says “I can produce a reasoned argument on the likelihood of life existing elsewhere in the universe” that would suggest to me that I have a responsibility not only to provide opportunities for that to happen, nor even simply to assess the extent to which the learner is able to do it, but to teach the skills required to produce a reasoned argument (which might include research skills; the ability to distinguish between fact and opinion; notetaking; summary; editing; presentation skills; dealing with feedback and many others). If I feel unable to do that at the moment, there is a definite and specific training need, and it is one which should be addressed as a matter of urgency. Unless, of course, your understanding of the responsibilities is different from mine.

Phone Book Gets Literal

The merging of digital technologies and traditional storytelling took another leap forward recently when Japan’s Mobile Arts Lab announced the PhoneBook, which works by inserting the Apple iPhone into the pages of a story book, allowing the child reader to interact with the changing background, or to change the background of the story by tilting the book. The creators of the book claim that most iPhone apps are targeted at adults, while this is an opportunity for parents to connect with their children through the age-old art of storytelling with a modern technological twist. The combination of print and visual media is yet again forcing us to re-think our familiar and  once discrete worlds of books, pictures, films and music, as well as blurring the edges between the processes of reading, watching and creating. What strikes me when watching the film clip is that while the book would seem to lend itself to rich discussion and the beginnings of a growing vocabulary so vital for literacy development in the early years, it’s the quality of the dialogue between the parent and the child which will determine that – the technology, as always, only provides a richer context.