You Must Be Joking

A guy is sitting at home when he hears a knock at the door. He opens the door and sees a snail on the porch. He picks up the snail and throws it as far as he can. Three years later there’s a knock on the door. He opens it and sees the same snail. The snail says: ‘What the hell was that all about?’…………..Boom!

Three guys stranded on a desert island find a magic lantern containing a genie, who grants them each one wish. The first guy wishes he was off the island and back home. The second guy wishes the same. The third guy says: ‘I’m lonely. I wish my friends were back here.’

Two of the funniest jokes of all time, according to a team of researchers at Oxford University, who put them to a group of students at the London School of Economics and asked them to rate them out of ten. The jokes were from a pre-selected list of course, which makes the exercise less than useless, but nevertheless, jokes, and the ability to tell them, have been a part of our popular culture since God worried that Adam would be forever lost in the Garden because men hate to ask for directions, and most jokes are just another form of storytelling, which is at the heart of learning and teaching. Right?

How often, as a teacher, have you recognised in a young person the ability to tell a good story, to hold an audience rapt for minutes on end without script or prompt, and yet were never quite sure how the talent could be developed and nurtured? Well, fear not, because an outlet for that creativity is about to present itself, in the shape of a joint project from the BBC and the National Literacy Trust.

‘Comedy Classroom – Having A Write Laugh’ will officially launch on the 19th of April, and it isn’t just for extroverts. The project organisers are calling on teachers across the UK to get their students writing comedy – whether it be stand-up, sketch-writing or simply photo captions. And being the BBC, they have a huge collection of resources to help you on your way.

Footnote: For those teachers who think that telling jokes isn’t real learning, or for those who simply like ticking boxes, here are some of the literacy outcomes which may be enhanced by undertaking such an endeavour. Have fun, but be careful not to overdo it. Learning is a serious business, after all!

Speaking:

• Take a role within group discussions.
• Communicate clearly and confidently with an audience.
• Verbally evaluate the work of themselves and others.
• Be able to participate in discussions and presentations.
• Demonstrate they can gain, maintain and monitor the interest of the listener(s).
• Be able to discuss words and phrases that capture the reader’s interest and imagination.

Reading:

• Comment on the differences between spoken and non-spoken text.
• Consider why texts can change to be applied to specific audiences.
• Be able to prepare comedy pieces to read aloud and to perform, showing understanding through intonation, tone, volume and action.
• Demonstrate an ability to recognise different forms of comedy writing.
• Be able to assess the effectiveness of their own and others’ writing and suggest improvements.

Writing:

• Communicate meaning, adapting their style where necessary.
• Organise their ideas in an easy to understand, coherent way.
• Demonstrate an appropriate level of spelling, punctuation and grammar.
• Demonstrate they can draft and edit to improve their work as well as critique others’.
• Be able to plan, draft, edit and proofread.
• Be able to use relevant strategies to build vocabulary, grammar and structure.

See also:

 Eleven Jokes Only Smart People Will Understand

Top Ten Teacher Jokes

Best School Jokes Ever

Teacher, School and Education Jokes

 

 

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You WILL Survive. Popularising Shakespeare.

David Tennant in the stunning 2009 Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet

As it happens, I am one of those boring old traditionalists who believe that no school education is complete without some experience of the genius that was William Shakespeare. After all, if the purpose of formal education includes preparing young people for a rich and fulfilling life, helping them understand their place in the world, showing them that they are not the first person ever to agonise over the complexities of human relationships, then who better to turn to for guidance?

However, Shakespeare is a bit like maths at school. Badly taught, it can have a more profound effect than when it is taught well. ‘I hated Shakespeare at school’ is almost as common a refrain as ‘I was never any good at maths…….’.

Imagine the scene. As an English teacher you find yourself in the position of trying to convince a group of young people, many of whom wouldn’t know the difference between a sonetto and a cornetto – even if they did know that the latter was not originally an ice-cream cone –  of the beauty and relevance of Shakespeare’s sonnets. You will teach them, of course, about the Italian origins of the sonnet, its traditional structure of two quatrains and a sestet (14 lines in all), the regular musical rhythm that they will come to know and understand as ‘iambic pentameter’, and you will demonstrate along the way how Shakespeare was dealing with the grand themes of love and loss, of jealousy and revenge, of lust, hatred, fear and hurt. You may give them some very useful notes, or you may even ask them to make their own. God job done.

Well, sometimes, and for some kids, yes. But, consider the potential difference it could make if you were to ask them to ‘be Shakespeare’ for a while. Write a sonnet as if your life depended on it, which his almost certainly did.

‘Too hard!’ they cry.

Well, OK. The language is challenging, 400 years down the line, the themes a bit adult. But how about if you started by actually giving them the content, and asking them to ‘translate it’ into a sonnet? Which is exactly what Erik Didriksen has done in ‘Pop Sonnets: Shakespearean Spins on Your Favourite Songs’ from publishers Fourth Estate.  Starting with songs from modern-day pop artists like Beyonce´and Taylor Swift, Didreksen has re-written them as Shakespeare might have done. And here’s the real payback, one of the things we struggle to impress upon modern-day students of the great man – the themes don’t really change!

Gloria Gaynor is given a Shakespearean make-over in Erik Didriksen’s ‘Pop Sonnets’

This technique, which is sometimes referred to in film education as ‘generic translation’ (see previous post here), can be a very useful strategy when trying to develop a better understanding of any text, as it allows the reader to think about what it would look like from the inside, in a different context and for a different audience, while demanding that they look more closely at the conventions of the genre.

Footnote:- While writing this blogpost I just happened to discover this excellent collection of resources from TES for teaching Shakespeare in the classroom.

See also Shakespeare’s Words

 

 

 

 

Gone To Girona

Next time I complain about the lack of space or the – inevitably futile – attempts of the crew to persuade me to buy lottery tickets on my cheap Ryanair flight to Europe, I may reflect on the fact that comfort is a relative term when it comes to travel, and I should be extremely grateful that from Scotland, for less than the price of a return train ticket to London, I can be almost anywhere in Europe within a couple of hours without leaving that (relative) comfort of my own well-padded seat.

Travel also happens to be the subject of a beautiful exhibition right now at the Museu D’Historia here in the heart of Catalonia. ‘Girona Through the Eyes of Women Writers (19th and 20th Centuries)’ is the brainchild of Cristina Ribot, whose study of the same name won her a scholarship from Girona City Council in 2013, and it provides a fascinating insight into the developing image of what is now a popular tourist destination. What makes it unique is that the picture is built up through the literary testimonies of 25 women writers of various nationalities, providing us with a snapshot of their own personal experiences and difficulties in an era when travel was a pastime almost exclusively reserved for men.

There were few women writers in the 18th and early 19th centuries, education and writing being largely male privileges which required both support and money. The elite tended to view women’s writing as worthless, and consequently publishers were reluctant to take the risk of publishing them, thus setting up the classic vicious circle which women found hard to break. One exception to this was in the genre of travel writing, though even here books were often published anonymously or under a male pseudonym.The expansion of the railways at the end of the 19th Century had led to a sharp increase in the number of travellers around the world, but it would not be until the 1950s when the concept and the term ‘tourist’ came into the collective consciousness. Up until then it was the preserve of the rich, and the early explorers featuring in the exhibition were no exception. Many titled ladies, particularly French and English, travelled to the Iberian peninsula, usually with massive amounts of luggage and accompanied by several maids. Being aristocrats, leisure was their raison d’etre, and they would travel for months at a time, most often by donkey, mule or horseback.

However, in an era when ‘female modesty’ was also a requirement, the journeys were not without hardship, as some of the voluminous dresses and headgear in the exhibition bear witness. Often the women had to disguise themselves as men, and carried umbrellas, not only to protect themselves from the sun but from unwanted advances and potential robbers. As an extra precaution, many carried pistols in their hand luggage.

The exhibition notes inform us that the women were “easily recognised for their airs of superiority” and that “they arrived in Girona with preconceived ideas about the country….As well as the information these adventurers provide about the monumental city of Girona, their stories also speak of what surprised and shocked them while in the city. They write of vivid memories, intense sensations and powerful emotions; they record ecstatic or unpleasant moments, great friendships or ill-fated loves. The individual experiences may differ, but taken together they for a nostalgic image of the city as it was, while reminding us of the role of these pioneers, who broke the social norms of their times in pursuit of their most personal goals.”

One of these early explorers was a Scottish lady of means, about whom little is recorded, other than that she was a writer and an artist of some note. Lady Sophia Dunbar’s ‘A Family Tour Round the Coasts of Spain and Portugal’  published by William Blackwood in 1862, contains only a passing mention of the city of Girona (its remarkable early-17th Century cathedral), but is much more expansive on the tribulations of the journey from Girona to Barcelona:

“The roads now became execrable, full of holes, heavy clay and mud, through which our mules struggled and plunged. Our diligence (public stagecoach) lurched like a ship at sea and it became darker and darker. We felt very anxious as to our long lone road leading through rivers, mire and mud; at one time we came to a dead stop, caused by eight mules being all down at once. After much confusion and noise, they were got up, and constrained by thrashing and abuse to renew the struggle; for some miles we continued to go on in the same manner, making some tremendous lurches, from which we miraculously recovered our balance; at last fortune deserted us, we lurched, quivered in the air for a second or two, and went over.”

Fortunately, no serious injuries are sustained in the incident, except presumably to the poor abused mules, and Barcelona is eventually reached:

“The streets of Barcelona being extremely dirty, we looped up our dresses; this caused the old women to rush out of their houses or shops at us, and pull vigorously at our skirts; it was difficult to appease them, or make them understand that our dresses were purposely worn so. The woollen mantas of Catalonia are very handsome. The men wear these over their shoulder, much as Highlanders do a plaid. They are striped, the colours rich and brilliant, scarlet predominating.”

In the middle of the 19th Century bull-fighting is prevalent across Spain and Portugal and, as you might expect, our traveller has some observations to make on a subject which provokes an emotional response to this day:

“The picadors, or horsemen, the chulos or men on foot, with gay-coloured cloaks, and the matadors or killers, are dressed in gorgeous antique costume, and certainly have an imposing effect; but the poor bull, lately taken from his native pastures, in the prime of his youth and strength, being a four-year-old, is roused, and made to rush into the middle of the arena; here he halts, and stares with bewilderment and surprise at the assembled thousands, who greet his arrival with clapping of hands. From the middle of the arena, the bull was soon provoked to make desperate charges, right and left, at chulos and picadors, the former showing the greatest activity in vaulting over the palisades, or escaping into the narrow side-niches, where the bull cannot follow. The picadors receive the charge of the bull by meeting him with the point of their lance, which is a short knife on the point of a pole about eight-feet long. With this they meet or catch him on the shoulder, which always mitigates, and often completely checks, his charge. The bull sometimes avoids the lance, and it is then he gores the horse, or sends him and his rider sprawling in the dust. Cut and goaded with the lances of the picadors, and exhausted by fruitless charges at the gay cloaks of the chulos, he at last yields to the lords of the creation, and looks out for the entrance through which he had been admitted…”

‘A Family Tour.…’, one of the 25 works curated for the exhibition, was re-published in 2009. It can also be downloaded free from the Internet Archive by clicking on this link.

If you have the good fortune to be passing through Girona between now and the 27th of September, make sure you visit the exhibition at the Museu D’Historia De Girona, Placeta de l’Institut Vell, 1
17004 GIRONA.

Footnote: In 2010, the Catalan Parliament agreed, by an absolute majority, to ban bullfights involving the death of animals and the use of goads: banderillas, picas, and estoques. The law was passed thanks to a citizen’s legislative initiative (ILP) promoted by the civic associations that obtained hundreds of thousands of signatures in favour of animal rights. However, the approval of the law was strongly criticised in centralist media and political spheres, who considered the ban to be the result of anti-Spanish feeling.

Movellas: Reading and Writing on the Move.

First there were novels. Then there were novellas. So what else would you call an online publishing house, a meeting place for aspiring  young adult writers, dedicated to the writing of extended prose pieces and aimed at the mobile generation? A place where you can pick up the latest writing tips, practise your skills by emulating your writing heroes and share your work with a sympathetic audience? I have written before about the hugely popular, but largely ignored – in educational terms – world of fan fiction (see Harry Potter and the Fan Fiction Factory). Now there’s a new kid on the block in the shape of Movellas, and it is causing quite a stir in the literacy world. Writing in this week’s Guardian newspaper, the editor of book review website Omnivore, Anna Baddeley, explains how the ‘startup’ has attracted the support of The Reading Agency and the innovation charity Nesta as a result of its ‘dedication to boosting creative thinking, team working and literacy skills’. The site, which was set up in 2012, already has in excess of 200,000 users, 75% of whom are girls, an imbalance the founders hope to shift as they move into the world of ‘story games’. As it becomes more difficult for teachers to motivate young people to write, is this perhaps the trick that they are missing?

“Taking to heart the maxim that reading for pleasure is vital to a child’s educational attainment, the company’s founders believe that encouraging young people to write about their passions and share those stories with others can have a positive effect on literacy.”

LOL. What Exactly Do You Mean?

There are certain ‘truths’ which become established through simple repetition; if we see and hear them often enough they must be true. One such truth is that the more technological society becomes, the less literate its citizens will be. This is the kind of thinking which had the crime-writer Ruth Rendell claiming in a Daily Telegraph article this week, without a shred of evidence, that reading was becoming a minority activity, something which she said ‘strikes terror into her heart’ (thereby employing the kind of hyperbole which I hope she is able to avoid in her writing).

The number of text messages sent by phone users in Pakistan 2007-2013

This is the same near-hysterical reaction which greeted the advent of text-messaging or Short Message Service (SMS) in the 1980s, and which has accompanied it ever since. Developed in the Franco-German GSM corporation by Friedhelm Hillebrand and Bernard Gillebaert, the idea was to transport messages on the telephone signalling paths when there was no other traffic, and in so doing make optimum use of existing resources. In order to fit existing formats, message length had to be restricted to 128 bytes (later improved to 160 seven-bit characters), though based on his personal observations of postcard and Telex messages, Hillebrand argued that 160 characters were enough to express most messages succinctly. Today, SMS is the most widely used electronic data application across the globe.

In this TED talk from April 2013, the linguist John McWhorter argues that not only is it a myth that texting is destroying the English language, but the mistake we make is in thinking of texting as a form of writing at all. In his opinion, it is more closely associated with speech, and as such its informal structure is quite appropriate. Far from being a dumbed-down form of language, in the ‘fingered speech’ which we call texting we are seeing what McWhorter calls an ’emergent complexity’ in the ways that writing and speaking overlap. Another important theme which emerges from his talk, and which he shares with David Crystal (see later), is that most reasonably-informed people, including young people, are still quite capable of distinguishing between formal and informal language, and recognise the need to switch between them for different purposes, something which traditional grammarians used to refer to as ‘appropriate register’.

If McWhorter believes that ‘texting’ is a kind of sophisticated amalgamation of speech and writing, the eminent Professor of Linguistics David Crystal goes further in a way, by arguing that texting is also good for the development of language skills: in order to express yourself precisely and unambiguously in a very limited space, you need to understand something of the structures of formal grammar and the rules of spelling. In the most definitive study of the phenomenon to date, Txtng. The Gr8 Dbt., Crystal shows how to interpret its mix of pictograms, logograms, abbreviations, symbols, and wordplay, looks at how it works in different languages, and explores the ways similar devices have been used in different eras. It will surprise many to discover for example that the texting system of conveying sounds and meaning goes back a long way, all the way in fact to the origins of writing – and he concludes that far from hindering literacy, texting may turn out to help it. Here he is on the BBC TV programme It’s Only a Theory in 2009, debunking a few of the myths about texting,

A few common misconceptions about text messaging, according to David Crystal:-

1. Texting is done by kids only. It doesn’t take much time or effort to demonstrate that this just isn’t the case.

2. Kids fill their text messages with abbreviations. In fact, only around 10% of words used in text messages are abbreviated.

3. These abbreviations are ‘a modern thing’, invented by kids. Not true.

4. Since kids are leaving letters out, they don’t know how to spell. As Crystal sees it, if you don’t know how to spell it, you don’t know what to leave out.

5. This poor spelling finds its way into essays and examinations, leading to a generation of illiterates. Again, not true. Most young people recognise that text language is inappropriate in the context of formal assignments.

6. Most text messages are pointless. Think about it. Even the  proverbial ‘I’m on the train’ text has a point, and the point may not be explicit. ‘I’m on the train’ can often mean ‘I’m thinking about you at the moment’.

A more modern relative of text messaging of course is Twitter, the social networking site which requires users to ‘tweet’ a message in 140 characters or fewer. Much has been written about the benefits of Twitter in the classroom, for both students and teachers, but until now this has focussed on the social aspects of the medium, specifically on the importance of networking, sharing ideas, showcasing work and finding resources. Much less has been said about the benefits of tweeting in terms of language development. If you believe, as I do, that a crucial aspect of reading, writing and speaking effectively is the ability to summarise, you begin to understand the wider significance of texts and tweets. However, that is another post for another day. In the meantime remember that, as educators, our role is to help young people to a better understanding of the medium, not to control the message.

Further Reading:

Download the Creative Education Twitter Guide for Teachers here.

Write It Out Loud

Anyone who knows me will know that I am a big fan of reading aloud as a means of developing understanding as well as promoting enjoyment in reading. It is commonly accepted that when children are read to on a regular basis by an adult, their chances of success in formal education increase dramatically; there are very few children who do not like listening to a story or a poem being read to them with great expression by an able reader. Some of the best teachers I know will read to their students daily, demonstrating to them the benefits and the joy of that shared experience.

However, there is another, arguably more significant role for reading aloud which is often overlooked, and that is its use by students themselves as a strategy to improve writing. Teachers seem more reluctant in the age of technology to encourage reading aloud as a strategy, particularly for older students, though ironically it is the ready availability of technology which makes recording and listening simpler than ever before. As this presentation from Peter Walsh at McMaster University in Canada neatly demonstrates, for those students who do not yet have a firm grasp of language and grammar, reading their work aloud, either to themselves or to someone else, allows them to hear their weaknesses, whereas simply re-reading with the eyes often has little or no effect when it comes to better writing. A further benefit to this technique is that when the developing writer is struggling to find the right expression, reading or speaking their thoughts aloud before committing them to paper can often make the difference between acceptable and accomplished.

More Than One Way to Tell a Story

“All stories have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order”

Jean-Luc Godard

Queneau's iconic Exercises in Style

Very few people would dispute that there are some literary texts which are universally recognised as ‘classics’, some of the works of Shakespeare being obvious examples. What educated person could regard their education as complete without some experience of the works of the greatest writer in the history of the English language, whose lines have entertained, enlightened and moved us to tears for over four hundred years? Yet no other writer in history has had their texts re-worked in so many ways, from stage to film, musical to rap, ballet to opera, film to graphic novel. In 2010, members of the Royal Shakespeare Company, in association with Mudlark, an internet and TV production company, presented a version of the play Romeo and Juliet entitled Such Tweet Sorrow as an improvised real-time series of tweets on the micro-blogging site Twitter, during which the performers engaged with the audience as well as each other, using YouTube to communicate images and video text.

What endures through all of these re-workings are two things: the beauty of the language and engagement with the narrative. But while the poetry and the flowing prose is undoubtedly Shakespeare’s, the story almost always isn’t. Versions of the tale of ‘star-crossed lovers’ for example had been entertaining readers and audiences for centuries before Shakespeare ‘borrowed’ it from Arthur Brooke’s narrative poem – itself translated from the original Italian – and embellished it for the Elizabethan stage to mixed reviews (the diarist Samuel Pepys called it ‘a play of itself the worst that I ever heard in my life”).

The attraction of the narrative of course isn’t simply that we find it entertaining or ‘dramatic’, but that we are able to recognise in it some universal truths about the world and about ourselves, whether that truth is about age, death, love, lust, family obligations, gender roles, loyalty, or any of the narrative’s numerous other themes. To put it simply, it has many lessons to teach us about the meaning of life.

The narrative of Romeo and Juliet itself dates back at least as far as Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe in the first century AD, a story of forbidden love which contains parallels to Shakespeare’s story: the lovers’ parents despise each other, and Pyramus falsely believes his lover Thisbe is dead. The Ephesiaca of Xenophon of Ephesus, written in the 3rd century, also contains several similarities to the play, including the separation of the lovers, and a potion that induces a deathlike sleep, but the earliest known version of the Romeo and Juliet tale which we might recognise from the events of  Shakespeare’s play is the story of Mariotto and Gianozza by Masuccio Salernitano, in the 33rd novel of his Il Novellino published in 1476. As Christopher Brooker would have it, Romeo and Juliet ‘unfolds precisely through the five stages of the tragic cycle’ and thereby fulfils the criteria for one of the seven basic plots.

As the example of Romeo and Juliet amply demonstrates, there is more than one way to tell a story, but how many are there exactly? In 1947 the French poet, novelist and mathematician Raymond Queneau made a humorous attempt to answer the question in Exercises in Style, a collection of short narratives in which the author retells an apparently unremarkable story in 99 different ways. Standing on a crowded bus at midday, somewhere in Paris, the narrator observes one man accusing another of jostling him. When a seat becomes vacant, the first man takes it. Later, the same man is observed in another part of the city with a friend who is advising him on the style of his overcoat.

A page from Matt Madden's 99 Ways to Tell a Story

Using a variety of styles ranging from the sonnet form through Cockney rhyming slang to mathematical formulae, Queneau’s work is both comical and experimental, a tour of literary forms and a demonstration of playful invention. The text became a cult classic and was the inspiration behind a similar experiment more than half a century later, when the graphic novelist and comic illustrator Matt Madden, in homage to Queneau, set out to explore the same idea using visual narratives in 99 Ways to Tell a Story. In a fascinating series of drawings which questions the very definition of narrative, Madden stretches the limits of the comics genre by telling the same story from different narrative perspectives and in a range of styles including maps, graphs, ‘Public Service Announcement’ and even ‘Paranoid Religious Tract’.

Experimenting with very short stories in the way that Queneau and Madden have done is a fun and engaging way to teach young  learners about narrative, and because the basic plot has to be as simple as possible, it is an inclusive exercise – everyone can try it. Similar success can also be found in setting young people challenges such as the Six-Word Story (where the writer has to compose a powerful story in only six words), the Six-Picture Story (the same exercise using six randomly selected pictures) and the 50-word mini-saga, in which writers have to compose a story of epic proportions in exactly fifty words, not a word more and not a word less.

For more on this topic see previous posts Every Picture Tells a Story and Stornoway Saga.

Running and Reading (The Key to Life)

“For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. At least that’s why I’ve put in the effort day after day: to raise my own level. I’m no great runner, by any means. I’m at an ordinary – or perhaps more like mediocre – level. But that’s not the point. The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.”

These are the words of Haruki Murakami in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, the brief but hugely revealing insight into his life as a writer and a runner, and I was reminded of them yesterday when I came upon this Will Smith video being referenced by a few of my friends on Twitter. I love the message it sends out to young people and I think it would make a great start to a school assembly or health and wellbeing lesson.

Harry Potter and the Fan Fiction Factory

Teachers, and perhaps especially teachers of English, understand how difficult it often is to convince young people that writing is a worthwhile activity. This is especially true where there is little incentive beyond ‘this will improve your final grades’ – always the last resort of a desperate teacher – but I wonder whether the opportunities afforded by access to the Web have just introduced a whole new set of  challenges as well as opportunities. Could it be that unless teachers can guarantee a real purpose and audience for those youngsters who are already motivated to write – possibly via wikis and blogs – they will increasingly look elsewhere for more meaningful outlets?

In Convergence Culture – Where Old and New Media Collide, the American author Henry Jenkins considers the shift which new technologies have brought in the way we think of our relationship to media, and how the skills we acquire initially through play may have implications for how we learn, work, participate in the political process and connect with other people around the world. Dismissing talk of a ‘digital revolution’, he prefers instead to think of a ‘digital evolution’ where popular storytelling increasingly takes place across different media platforms (transmedia), in a world where passive consumers have been replaced by active  participants or ‘players’.

In the chapter Why Heather Can Write, Jenkins examines the phenomenon known as ‘fan fiction’, and the ways in which it exemplifies the new media landscape. On fan fiction websites like Fiction Alley for example, the largest of a number of websites dedicated to fans of Harry Potter, young writers come together to write, collaborate and share stories about their favourite characters, and sometimes to invent new characters of their own. New writers are mentored by an army of unpaid volunteers known a ‘beta readers’ – a term derived from the world of technology where ‘beta’ means ‘in development’ – and criticism, while it is always positive and constructive, is also focused and direct, dealing with issues of grammar and style as well as plotlines. The beta readers are also contributing authors and what all the writers have in common is that they are looking to improve their work, not simply to have it praised. On another fan fiction site, FanFiction.Net, beta reader Cat Foxglove describes her strengths as ‘Very picky about grammar and continuity. If tenses constantly change, words are continually misspelled, or the very flow of a story contradicts itself, I have no problem saying so.’ Night Monkey, who describes herself as a college writing major from Pennsylvania has written 23 stories for Batman and Dr Who, and says in her beta profile, ‘I’ll read just about whatever you’d care to give me, but I would prefer humor above all else. I’m also, oddly enough, a fan of horror. If you do fanfiction based off (sic) books, there’s a good chance I’ve read or at least heard of it. I’d be tickled to work with Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or Stephen King fanfiction. I won’t say no to Twilight, but don’t bring me senseless crap.’

This relationship between learner and mentor, based on the trust of peers on what is effectively a shared journey is, by definition, quite different from the formal teacher-pupil relationship found in school and allows the young writers to experiment with their craft within the safe confines of a pre-existing fictional world. For many of the writers who contribute to the fan community, the journey begins by simply reading the efforts of others, before they are comfortable enough to submit their own stories. Once they are committed however, the feedback provides the incentive for them to develop and improve. They quickly come to regard themselves as real ‘authors’.

Critics of fan fiction argue that it is unoriginal and imitative, but as Jenkins points out, this kind of ‘apprenticeship’ model is common in other cultural spheres, and historically young artists learned their craft by initially imitating the great masters, sometimes contributing to their work, before establishing styles, techniques and content of their own. Whether the same conditions for writing can be created within a formal school setting, is a different matter. Again, as Jenkins points out:

“Schools have less flexibility to support writers at very different stages of their development. Even the most progressive schools set limits on what students can write compared to the freedom they enjoy on their own. Certainly, teens may receive harsh critical responses to their more controversial stories when they publish them online, but the teens themselves are deciding what risks they want to take and facing the consequences of those decisions.”

Armed with this knowledge, it might be tempting for teachers either to write off fan fiction entirely as inferior or worthless (despite its massive popularity), or to wholeheartedly encourage their students to get involved and even to join them in the endeavour, but the growth in such online communities raises a number of questions for teachers and schools.  Could it be that part of the attraction of fan fiction writing and its devotees is that they are outwith the formal structures of the education system? Should teachers simply accept that there are some elements of a young person’s literary (and literacy) development which should be left alone, and, whether or not teachers embrace the new orthodoxy which determines that we are all learning together, will there always be a gap between formal and informal learning? I’d be interested to hear your views.

Stornoway Saga

Over on John Connell: The Blog, John, thought-provoking as ever, raises the issue of ‘non-writers’ who have a responsibility for teaching writing skills to young people:-

“How many teachers teaching writing have ever actually tried their hand, successfully, at sustained writing of any sort: journalism, report-writing, essay-writing, short story writing, writing a novel….whatever?”

Alfie introduces me to his favourite beach

It’s an interesting question, the kind which often comes up in a sporting context. You know the one, ‘Does a football manager need to have

been a successful player in order to be a successful manager’? My answer to that would be no, but they at least ought to have played the game on a fairly regular basis.

The subject of writing, coincidentally, was also the focus of a transitions workshop I was leading last weekend in Stornoway with an enthusiastic group of primary and secondary teachers who had given up their usual Saturday pursuits to reflect on their own teaching practice. First of all I asked them what they had written in the past week, and then to consider what they asked their students to write. The point of this was not to shame teachers into thinking that they should all be writing short stories or novels or essays, but simply to remind ourselves that when we ask young people to write an extended piece of prose, we are asking something of them which is pretty demanding, and I think it is reasonable that we at least attempt it with them. Incidentally, I read somewhere that for most people, most of the writing they do will have been done by the age of sixteen.

Chancing my arm somewhat, I then introduced the concept of the mini saga, and told the group that they had fifteen minutes to complete one. Not only that, but since lunch was arriving in approximately fifteen minutes time they would have to complete their mini-saga before being allowed to eat it. Imagine my surprise when, far from telling me where to go, they set about the task in complete silence, completed it on time, and in some cases were eager to read them aloud, to the appreciation and loud applause of their colleagues. The moral of the story? Teachers need opportunities to show off the remarkable range of talents they have which led them into teaching in the first place.

If you are unfamiliar with the mini saga idea, the challenge is to write a complete story, of epic proportions, in exactly 50 words. Not 49 or 51. It is a very effective way of teaching narrative, grammar, summary skills and word choice, as well as having fun! With thanks to a great bunch of people on Lewis, and a special thanks to event organiser Liz Sutherland (@doglaunchers), PT English at The Nicolson Institute, for all her hard work before, during and after the event. Thanks also to Alfie, her dog, for introducing me to the beautiful beach at Tolsta on Sunday morning. Sorry I broke the ball launcher Alfie, but promise I’ll bring you a new one next time I visit.

With kind permission I have published the group’s mini sagas below. Why not try one yourself and I’ll add it to the anthology!!

For more examples of mini-sagas and competition details check out the Young Writers website.

Literacy Transitions CPD – Saturday 16^th April 2011

50-word Mini-Sagas

In the beginning … God saw it was good, paradise even to those within.  BC, AD, the ice age, stone age, iron age, the dark ages, the Renaissance, rebirth – for what?  Fast forward; earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, infernos, wars – the supreme conflict of the nations: Armageddon.  Is this all there is?

The writer gazed out of the window, seeking inspiration.  A van pulled up and screeched to a stop.  The editor piled out of the van, entered the building and pointed a gun at the writer’s head.  The writer, reluctantly, submitted his 50-word essay, dreading the inevitable consequences.  The editor fired.

The sky darkened suddenly and seemed to get darker still.  It was no storm cloud yet it evoked the same feeling of foreboding.  She noticed the strange quiet – no shouting, no jostling, the market stalls busy a moment ago, suddenly silenced.  Shockingly, she felt herself lifted by the dragon’s claws.

 Once a girl yearned to become an artist.  Everyday she painted everything around her.  Her pictures became lifelike and she often lost track of time.  One day she looked up and asked her parents, “What’s for tea?” but only the paintings of them remained to look back at her.

The princess was missing.  Things couldn’t be worse.  Tristram recalled the King’s words. “Find her,” had been the gist.  The note had followed days later.  “We have your daughter – £10,000 for safe return.”  So here he was, sword in hand, having battled her captors.  Their blood was on the ground.

Jackets on, bags on shoulders, Miya and her friends waited.  The infants had been met, hugged and taken away. Now their parents would come.  The ache in Miya’s stomach was spreading – it was more than hunger now.  Teachers with worried faces whispered “catastrophe”, “nightmare”, “disaster”.  Waiting, patiently, silently, in vain.

The boy on the floor wept.  Beside him, discarded, lay a sword, smudged with red – the evidence of the crime.  Fate called him here; his destiny yet unknown.  Slowly he got up, weary of his battle.  He was victorious.  But then, a roar from behind him sounded.  It wasn’t over.

 Stop thief!  I couldn’t believe it, my hard earned money had vanished!  Downhearted and dismayed I consider what to do next.  Turn once again to a life of crime or beg from disinterested others?  My conscience whispered swallow my pride – ask for help – the baby would suffer – so I did!

 Following a childhood crammed with fairytales and love-conquers-all film endings, Esme found her own prince in Paris.  She fell in love.  He omitted to mention his wife!  Despite the lies, they eventually married and had a daughter.  Esme never read her fairytales!  They did not live happily ever after …

 A simple spartan cottage, isolated, framed in the lonely, barren landscape by purple heather and sweeping russet hills.  A man, alone, tired, stands outside.  A shadowy figure approaches on horseback and dark clouds gather overhead.  He always knew his time here was short.  His freedom has come to an end.

Erik the Bold left his icy homeland with a group of warrior to defeat the sea-monster that terrified  his people.  One night the creature appeared and unleashed its fury.  Erik, with mighty courage, fighting for his life, cut the monster’s head.  He was hailed by all in his homeland, forever. 

 Rainbows filled the skies.  They poured their jewelled droplets onto the earth.  The earth.  He knelt down in the dirt and dug his clear, new nails into the ground.  The earth smelled good.  Here was potential.  “Earth,” he said.  “Ground.  Dirt.”  “World,” he said.  He stood up.  And walked forward.

Inga fell into bed and tossed and turned on the hard mattress, considering her future.  Should she stay on this small farm in Småland or move to America with her brother’s family.  Prospects in Sweden were poor but the journey ahead was treacherous.  She would never see her parents again.

Ellie’s face flushed with confusion and humiliation.  Blinking rapidly but pursing her lips hard together she stood rigidly, only vaguely aware of her mother’s irate words washing over her.  She didn’t understand.  Her mother had said she could have the chocolate – so what if they hadn’t reached the checkout yet?

Hands hovering over the keys.  ‘Delete’ beckoning right.  ‘Send’ glowing red to the left.  Brriinngg!  Startled she clicked ‘Send’.  Gasp!  Hands frozen over the keys she stared at ‘Delete’.  Too late.  The email telling them she was leaving had gone.  Brriinngg!  The phone continued ringing as the door finally slammed.

The slaughter over, the Viking longboats rested on the beach.  Lars surveyed the firth from what would be Thingwas.  Beside him stood Mord.  “It’s time,” Lars said.  He called the council.  “Here rules Morda,” Lars intoned.  All turned to see not a warrior but warrioress – first queen of the north.