The Revolt of the Pendulum

For the past couple of days I have been distracted by the latest collection of writing from the man the New Statesman calls ‘the most accomplished essayist at work in Britain today’ – Clive James. In The Revolt of the Pendulum he demonstrates once again the ease with which he moves around his subjects, whether they are from popular culture, academic obscurity, or somewhere in between. It’s when examining the use of language though, his own and that of others, that he is at his most entertaining and illuminating, two qualities which the best teachers realised long ago often go hand-in-hand.

In ‘Insult to the Language’ James argues that the quality of English prose writing is deteriorating rapidly, especially in the ‘quality’ British journals, through a combination of bad grammar and general ignorance, especially of the origins of many everyday expressions or metaphors. ‘Usually when a metaphor slithers into imprecision, it is because the activity from which it was drawn is no longer current practice’, he writes. ‘Nobody gets the picture, because there is no longer a picture to be got.’ One example he offers is the expression ‘shot himself in the foot’, which originated from the desperate act of some soldiers in the First World War who believed that the self-inflicted wounds would exempt them from further action. Almost a hundred years later, the original association is almost lost, so that ‘shot himself in the foot’ has come to suggest clumsiness rather than cowardice.

In another of the essays, ‘John Bayley’s Daily Bread’, the author talks about ‘those desperate commentators, omnipresent now in our multiple media outlets, who must always advance an outlandish opinion because they don’t write well enough to make a reasonable opinion interesting.’ Ever mindful of avoiding the same mistake himself, he steps back from the precipice of outlandish opinion to offer the reasonable opinion, a practice that anyone learning or teaching the art of discursive writing would do well to observe:

‘The language has always changed, so to protest looks reactionary. If there were no reactionaries, however, deterioration would become galloping decay. In reality decay does not gallop, but we all know what a horse is even if we have not ridden one, so everyone realises, so far, that ‘galloping’ is being used metaphorically. When all the horses have gone, ‘galloping’ will just mean ‘rapid’…….The typical prose of the present has no past. Whether it has a future remains to be seen.’

Edwin Morgan 1920-2010

I just heard the sad news of the death of  Edwin Morgan, Scotland’s first Poet Laureate and last survivor of that iconic group of seven who revived our reputation as a centre for literature and the arts in the middle years of the twentieth century -

Edwin Morgan aged 89. February 2010. Photo by Alex Boyd

McDiarmid, Garioch, MacCaig, Crichton Smith, Mackay Brown, Sorley MacLean, and of course Morgan himself. Names to strike fear into the defence of any poetic opposition lineup.

The first time I met Edwin Morgan was when I was in my second year at Glasgow University and he became my English tutor. In my youthful ignorance I had no idea of course of his own significance as a poet, nor of his growing international reputation, but his tolerance of my ignorance of literature, and life in general, was a measure of the extent of his humanity. In years to come, like many other English teachers, I was to draw extensively on his hugely imaginative and wide-ranging poetic canon for classroom material – it never failed to engage the young people to whom it was introduced or to provoke a response, even from the least likely members of the class.

The next and only other time I met him was many years later. I had been invited by a couple of friends to Mauchline Burns Club‘s annual celebration of the life of Robert Burns, and Morgan was the guest speaker. After delivering a particularly erudite, and some might argue controversial, Immortal Memory, he was thanked by the chair and invited to deliver one of his own poems. Again, eschewing the easy option, given that the audience consisted largely of men brought up on a diet of whisky, haggis and rhyming couplets, he chose to recite The Loch Ness Monster’s Song, prompting one inebriated listener to exclaim, ‘Ca’ that f*****g poetry?’

I’m sure the man of letters didn’t hear it, but if he had, I’m equally sure it would have produced a wry smile, for the true mark of the man was not in the poetry but in himself.

The Loch Ness Monster’s Song

Sssnnnwhuf ff fll ?

Hnwhuffl hhnnwfl hnfl hfl ?

Gdroblboblhobngbl gbl gl g g g g glbgl.

Drublhaflablhaflubhafgabhaflhafl fl fl-

gm grawwwww grf grawf awfgm graw gm.

Hovoplodok-doplodovok-plovodokot-doplodokosh ?

Splgraw fok fok splgrafhatchgabrlgabrl fok splfok !

Zgra kra gka fok !

Grof grawff gahf ?

Gombl mbl bl-

blm plm,

blm plm,

blm plm,

blp.

Amble GPX

A mean-looking Amble GPX Project Team

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of returning to the beautiful Northumberland coast to check up on the progress of the young people of Amble and their highly ambitious GPX project.The aim of the project is to create an online community-based game, using GPS technology and geocaching techniques: a very sophisticated treasure-hunt to you and me! The game will be designed to encourage local people and visitors to discover a bit more about the history of this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Although played via the web, players will actually follow a trail through Amble and the surrounding countryside as well as exploring the vibrant coastline, finding answers to the clues they are given through cryptic photos, video clips and puzzles accessed from their computer. Answers are then typed in or photo-evidence uploaded via computer or mobile phone, making the game not only active but highly interactive as well.

Facing a barrage of questions from The Literacy Adviser

For the past twelve months the young people have been expanding their own knowledge of the local area, while at the same time developing their interviewing techniques and coming to grips with new technologies such as digital photography, video editing and sound recording: A number of experts, both amateur and professional, have been enlisted to guide and advise the group.  The project has reached an exciting stage, with plans in place to release a pilot version very soon, and discussions are already taking place about future mini-games and mobile apps. The official launch of the full version is scheduled for July 2011.

A flyer designed to promote Amble GPX

Just under a year ago I was contacted by the project’s manager Anna Williams, and asked if I would interview the youngsters and monitor the effect of the project on their literacy skills, a requirement of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation who are funding the project. At that point I spoke to them about what they hoped to gain from their involvement in the project and some of them were less certain than others. Watching them make a group presentation on the project this week, and listening to the way in which they handled a barrage of questions, it was clear that any of the earlier doubts or uncertainties had clearly vanished. I’m looking forward to my next visit already!

If you would like more information about the Amble GPX project please contact Anna Williams at the Amble Development Trust (editor@theambler.co.uk)

Midsummer Madness

What a wonderfully uplifting story in The Guardian this week about Grasmere Primary School’s outdoor production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Not a ‘version’ of the play mind, nor ‘Shakespeare for Children’, but a full-blown production involving all 46 children in years 1-6.

Way beyond the capabilities of the average ten-year-old you may think, but in fact, far from fearing that the children would be unable to cope with what is an extremely demanding challenge for adults to pull off, the headteacher Johanna Goode put faith in ‘Shakespeare’s ability to talk to everyone’, a faith which paid high high dividends for the children, staff and parents of the small community set in the heart of the Lake District, and surrounded by the ghosts of another of England’s literary giants. What makes the story even more inspirational is that these children are not some priviliged elite, but the kind of children you might find at every other school in the country; a third of them are regarded as having ‘special educational needs’.

Reading the story I was reminded of an episode in my own teaching career. I had taken up my post as Depute Headteacher in a new school, and was pleased to discover that it would still involve some teaching duties ( a practice with which not all of my colleagues agreed, and which I understand is still the cause of much debate in secondary schools today). A few weeks into the term I was reflecting smugly on my ability to engage my fourth year class (15-16 year-olds) in the delights of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and happened to express this satisfaction at a departmental meeting. Sitting back to receive the accolades of my fellow teachers, I was met by a few seconds of silence, before the head of department asked with a mixture of shock and revulsion, ‘Don’t you know that Macbeth is a fifth-year play?’

This comment stuck with me – as you can tell – because it demonstrates everything that is wrong with an examination-driven curriculum, when young people ‘study’ Shakespeare from a page rather than a stage, and when we restrict the young person’s natural curiosity and creativity by pre-determining what we think they should be able to do at particular ages and stages. This is why I am so fully supportive of a curriculum which puts the learner at the centre, is described in terms of outcomes rather than inputs, and which sets ambitious targets  for all young people, no matter how challenging and messy that may be in the short term.

Read the full story, and watch a short film clip of Grasmere Primary School’s Midsummer Night’s Dream here.

Schools of the Future

As schools across Scotland break up for the long summer holiday, there will be some who look forward to next session with a sense of excitement and anticipation, thinking of the opportunities afforded by the new Curriculum for Excellence for innovation and creativity, some who are happy to put it out of their minds until it happens to them, and yet others who will see it as a threat to what is, for them, a comfortable status quo. In this thought-provoking TED talk about the future of schools and schooling, Charles Leadbeater examines how our formal education system and structures evolved and why they won’t be relevant for very much longer, challenges a few sacred cows, such as the belief in the superiority of the Finnish education system and attempts to replicate it elsewhere, and argues that radical innovation will come through deprivation and lack of resources rather than a wealth of riches. He also contends that real learning starts from questions, problems and projects rather than knowledge and curriculum. Sound familiar?

21st Century Learners

I know that many of you who regularly read this blog are engaged in one way or another in trying to turn the vision of  Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence into practical reality in schools and classrooms across Scotland, whether you are a class teacher or a school manager or working to support teachers in some capacity. If you are currently struggling with what a 21st century curriculum might look like, how you might organise the school day more efficiently, how young people prefer to learn, how learning could be more collaborative or more active or more relevant or more contextualised, how you might make use of new technologies, how you might involve the local community more, or what young people think ‘learning the basics’ means, you could do a lot worse than listen to this group of  youngsters  describing what learning in the 21st century means to them. They aren’t Scottish, and I’m pretty sure they won’t be aware of Curriculum for Excellence, but for me they are describing almost perfectly the spirit of the authors of that curriculum blueprint. They are from Ringwood School in Hampshire, which just happens to be the school where a good friend of mine, Andy Wallis, has recently been appointed Subject Leader in Media Studies, excellent news for Andy, and as those of you who know Andy will agree, very good news for the school. This was ringwoodmedia‘s entry for the ESSA Manifesto for Change Competition in 2009.

Up Cloze and Personal

One of the most popular activities in schools for developing reading comprehension, is what is known as ‘cloze procedure’, where students are given a piece of written text with a number of words deleted, and using the context clues and their knowledge of syntax, they have to decide on the most appropriate words to fit in the spaces. Most teachers of literacy are familiar with the idea, but I wonder how many realise that the term ‘cloze’ derives from ‘closure’, comes from the Gestalt theory of the psychology of the brain - often described in simple terms as ‘the whole being greater than the sum of its parts’ – and dates back to 1953.  

Until now it has been time-consuming to construct these exercises, but not any more, thanks to the ingenious Cloze Test Creator, which allows you to create your own cloze reading texts in minutes, and gives you the flexibility of deleting the kind of words you want to test. I am indebted to Aniya (aka The English Teacher) for bringing this to my attention, and to Jeffrey Hill, an English teacher at the Normandy Business School in Le Havre, from whose wonderful The English Blog I unashamedly ‘borrowed’ it.  Watch this short video tutorial and you will see how simple it is.

More Questions than Answers

For some time now, I have been discussing with teachers the fact that, by the time they reach secondary school, most young people have stopped asking information-seeking questions, and have resigned themselves to simply trying their best to answer them. In fact the whole business of developing the habit in young people of asking questions is so vital that it is one of my Seven Reading Strategies for reading success.  I am therefore very grateful to Richard Byrne of  the amazing Free Technology for Teachers website, for the link on Twitter earlier this week to this TED talk by Dan Meyer, who is a high school maths teacher in the USA. In a way that I’m sure most teachers will recognise, Meyer explores the notion that young people have been switched off maths in particular, and learning in general, because we are providing too many of the answers for them.

Look out for an extended version of this blogpost, on the importance of questions in the classroom, appearing in TES Scotland in the near future. In the meantime, if you are looking for effective questions to stimulate classroom discussion and questioning, try these links.

Fermi Questions - named after the Nobel Prize-winning Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, who was well known for solving problems which left others baffled.

Little Book of Thunks - a great source of questions to stimulate thinking and discussion.

Philosophy for Kids - ideas to generate discussion and critical thinking.

The Critical Thinking Community - where teachers can learn about the development of critical thinking skills.

50 Best Blogs for Literacy Teachers

I was surprised and delighted yesterday to be contacted by Samantha Miller of Online University Reviews in America, to tell me that The Literacy Adviser had been included in their 50 Best Blogs for Literacy Teachers. I’ve had a look at the other forty-nine and selected a few of them to give you a flavour of the exalted company which I am more than happy to be keeping. Blogging from outside the USA, which let’s face it is quite a big place, makes the inclusion on the list that bit more special.

Larry Ferlazzo’s Website of the Day : Every day, Larry Ferlazzo blogs websites of particular interest to the ESL, ELL, and EFL communities, making it an excellent and indispensible resource.

 PainInTheEnglish.com : This very delightful blog explores “the gray areas of the English language,” shedding light on the subjective, perpetually changing nature of human speech.

 Grammar Girl : Mignon Fogarty’s extremely popular blog and podcast at Quick and Dirty Tips answers extremely common grammar questions as well as those pertaining to some of the more esoteric corners of the language.

 Language Log : Teachers and students alike who harbour a love of grammar, the history of communication, phonetics, and other related topics simply must read over (and bookmark!) Language Log.

 The Grammarphobia Blog : Both the blog and the surrounding website make for an excellent reference for teachers and students alike who find themselves baffled by some of the oddities in the English language.

 The Punctuator! : With punctuation being one of the most confounding elements of any language for anyone, it pays to understand all the whats, whys, and hows behind the marks.

 Literacy is Priceless : Bon Education founder Anna Batchelder blends together her love of technology and teaching literacy to offer teachers an excellent, comprehensive resource on promoting reading and writing.

 huffenglish.com : Another blog on the intersection between technology and education, focusing its energy and resources on issues regarding how they apply to teaching English.

 Free Technology for Teachers : Although Free Technology for Teachers targets educators in most subjects, there is enough here to engage and interest those emphasizing literacy to warrant its inclusion on the list.

 The Elegant Variation : The Elegant Variation exists as one of the top literary criticism blogs on the web, helping visitors learn how to hone and apply their reading and comprehension skills

 A Year of Reading : Two seasoned veteran teachers – each with over 20 years of experience under their belts – blog about their thoughts regarding the children’s and young adult books they encounter along the way.

 The Book Bench : Indulge in The New Yorker’s highly literate look at the world of reading and writing and the ways in which it shapes society for better or for worse.

 Flashlight Worthy : Flashlight Worthy, though not structured like a traditional blog, fills a definite niche in the online literature community. Any parents, teachers, students, or bibliophiles looking for reads that fit their needs and wants can easily immerse themselves amongst the listings containing hundreds of specialized recommendations.

View the whole list of 50 here.

A blog is only as good as the extent of the networks you create of course, and this particular blog would be much poorer without the steady stream of ideas from those I follow on Twitter, and the blogs I look at on a regular basis, which are listed under the heading ‘Blogroll’ at the bottom of the right-hand panel.

Stitched in Time

There’s more than one way to tell a story effectively, and some of them are almost timeless. Just such a one is The Girl on the Wall: One Life’s Rich Tapestry by Jean Baggott, an intricate autobiographical piece of embroidery consisting of seventy-three interlocking circles, one for every year of the author’s life.

Detail from Girl on the Wall tapestry (click to enlarge)

Baggott, who was born and raised in the industrial town of West Bromwich, and describes having lived her life feeling ‘completely unimportant’, took 16 months to complete the tapestry, which depicts the major events of the second half of the twentieth century as well as the minutiae of her own life, demonstrating in the process that even the most ‘ordinary’ person has an interesting story to tell.

Some of the most vivid stories within the story are those depicting the austerity of the war years of her childhood, a mother whose inverted snobbery prevented her from taking up the grammar school place she had been offered, her subsequent attendance at the local secondary modern which she generously describes as ‘OK’ but where she was assessed by her PE teacher as ‘a great useless lump of lard’, and the story of the local war veteran, held prisoner by the Japanese, whose elation on returning home to his loyal wife quickly turns into an inability to cope with the psychological damage, and ends in a sad tale of domestic abuse.

It would be understandable if this were to turn into a grim memoir of difficult times, but Baggott, who started the tapestry after the death of her husband and the departure of her two grown-up children (the idea came to her on a visit to a stately home while studying for the university degree which had been denied her in her youth) never allows the hardship to overshadow what is effectively a celebration of the ordinary pleasures in life.

 The video clip of the the author talking about her life and the making of the tapestry would make an excellent starter for discussion or creative writing.