The Little Bad Wolf and the Big Chocolate Cake

David Rose

          Last week I was talking about the importance of story-telling  to literacy.

          But more formal lessons are important too. This link will take you to David Rose’s site,where he explains some of the techniques he’s used, in Australia, to ‘accelerate learning’ across all backgrounds and ages.

          First, the teacher prepares a text.

          This means choosing a text which interests and engages the students and reading it with them. Terms new to the students are explained, and any background or context needed is also supplied. For instance, a wolf may be big and bad, but what is a wolf anyway? Students may never have heard of one before. (My aunt taught Black Country children of primary age who didn’t know what a cow was. They knew only one word for any kind of four-legged animal: ‘dog.’ I wish I could believe this would be impossible now, but I fear it's not.)

Not a dog. Pig fancier.

          After preparing the text comes a detailed reading of it. The teacher gives students a lot of help in identifying words and groups of words.
           For instance, say the class are studying the story of the three little pigs. The teacher might say: 'Let's look at the title first. That's this line at the top. It tells you what the story's about. It says, 'The Three Little Pigs.' Who can find the word 'pigs'?
     "Yes! That's right. It's the word at the end. Let's highlight it.
      "What kind of pigs are they?
     "Right! Excellent! They are little pigs. Can we find the word that says 'little?' Great! - let's highlight that one too.'
          And so on. Lots of looking at the text, lots of praise, lots of repetition of a fairly simple task. But the repetition is driving the lesson home. If you repeatedly search for and look at something, you are going to remember it. The students are being 'laddered' to improved reading. You don't leap from the ground to the roof of your house in one mighty bound - but you can climb up there, one rung at a time, on a ladder. And you're more likely to keep climbing if, at every step, you're given reason to feel pleased with yourself.

The late Michel Thomas

          This has a lot in common with Michel Thomas' method of teaching language. Thomas insisted that the student should be completely relaxed and stress-free. They should not attempt to remember what they were being taught, or do homework. It was the teacher's responsibility, Thomas said, to structure the lessons in such a way that the student learned. Any kind of stress or anxiety, he believed, makes learning harder. Haven't we all experienced that? I know that I can type fast and accurately if I'm alone, but if someone's watching me, I might as well be typing in mittens

          Above, I've used 'Three Little Pigs' as an example, and assumed that the children are quite young.  A considerably more difficult text might be used with teenagers, one far beyond their reading-age, but not beyond their comprehension, if all the references, metaphors and irony are explained.
          (Older, well-read people tend to forget, I think, about the perfectly natural gaps in the knowledge of younger folk.)

          Students highlight words and word-groups. My cousin asks his students to identify ‘Who or What’ words in red, ‘Process’ words in green, and ‘Circumstance’ words in blue.

Once upon a time there were three little pigs.

                  The little redhen and her threechicks baked a cake.

(Not having studied with Alan, I may not have this quite right, but you get the idea.)
          Students would be given detailed help with each of the above sentences. 'Now this sentence says that the little red hen and her three little chicks baked a cake. What's a cake? How do you bake one, do you know? (Either the students or the teacher explain these things.)
          'Now, what was it they baked? Yes, a cake! Can you find the word, 'cake' right at the end of the sentence? Can you find 'a cake'? Very good! Let's highlight that in red.'

          Once students are more familiar with the text, the sentences are taken apart and played with. Words are cut out, moved around, and used to make new sentences – either on pieces of paper or a computer screen. The students are spared the chore of writing and can concentrate on the words.

          Once upon a time there were three little pigs and three big wolves.

          The little red hen and her three fluffy chicks baked a big chocolate cake with chocolate icing.

          You can mix it up.

           Once upon a time there were three fluffy big wolves who baked a little chocolate hen.

 

          My cousin tells me that his students enormously enjoy this, producing long, long sentences. The pigs can be little and pink and dirty, the wolves can be big and grey and hairy and fanged. The cake can have chocolate icing, and sprinkles, and candles, and cream and a red bow. Without realising it, by simple repetition and gentle correction, the students are learning how language bolts together. The little red hen can become a giant blue hen, or an enormous green cat. The chicks can be yellow as well as fluffy, and there can be three of them or three thousand.

           Sentences can be turned round. A tasty chocolate cake was baked by three little chicks and a little red hen. There were three little pigs once upon a time.
          Sentences can be formed by words on a card (or by dragging words about on a computer screen.
          The farmer rides his horse.
          The horse rides his farmer.
         Such reversals cause great amusement - these games are fun!
          The cards might have folding sections - or if the computer might offer a choice of other phrasings. You can then unfold a section - or drag in a phrase - to make:
          The horse was ridden by the farmer
           The farmer was riding his horse.
           The more I learn about these methods, the more I learn how complex and demanding devising suitable teaching materials is - but with this approach, the onus is on the teacher to make learning easy and relaxed for the student. And it works!

           Spelling is tackled by being broken into ‘startings’ and ‘endings.’

          So you can take the starting, ‘str –‘ and add -eet, -ing, -ap, -ong.

         To the starting 'ch', using cards or computer, you can add - ick, -urch, -um, -ap, -ina, -ip.
          The teacher draws attention to these 'startings' and 'endings' repeatedly. Repeatedly. Drip, drip, drip. It's the teacher's job to take the trouble, not the student's job to memorise by rote.
          The colour-coding and the use of images and games where words are moved to match the pictures exploit the fact that our memories are far more visual than verbal.
  

          Once the students can all read the passage fluently and understand it, they move on to writing.

          They are set the task of writing a passage closely based on the one they’ve studied in such detail. Notes are made on the board, and the students collaborate, supporting each other, and being supported by the teacher.
          They discuss the purpose of their writing - remember, reading and writing are social activities. Is the purpose of their piece to instruct, to pass on factual information, or to describe atmosphere or feelings?

          Using the notes, and working together, the students write their own version of the text.

          Next they move on to individual writing. Working alone, they write their own version of the text they’ve worked on as a group. Stronger students may move to this stage earlier, while the teacher continues to help the weaker ones.

          The final stage is Independent Writing. Here each student is set the task of writing a new passage, but one similar to that they’ve been working on - that is, a series of instructions or a description. They will use many of the words and phrases they have learned during the previous stages.

          The students then move on to a new text, and the cycle above is repeated. Of course, many of the words and phrases they’ve already learned will be used in the new text, and the students’ knowledge will be reinforced. Their confidence will increase as they encounter words and phrases they recognise.

Alan Hess

          This method has been found highly effective in both Canada and Australia – and my cousin, Alan Hess, has seen for himself, over the last four years, what an improvement can be made in the standards of both literacy in students’ own language and the speaking and understanding of a foreign language.

          In a relatively short time, it ‘ladders’ children up from having weak language and literacy skills to a point where they can ‘read to learn’ with confidence.

           And also read for pleasure, of course. What writer could fail to be enthused by the idea of a growing market of eager readers?

          Just for interest, here's a link to a fascinating Horizon programme about Michel Thomas and his teaching methods.

          This week Blott is in memory of Alan George Price, 1928-2008.

 

The Importance of Story

          Okay, Christmas is over. Frivol is over. I want to return to the subject I was talking about before the mince-pies.

          Let’s be clear about one thing. Learning to read is hard.

          I remember a friend, a very educated woman, talking about a branch of her family that she obviously didn’t waste much love on. She’d heard that a distant twig of this branch had become a teacher. “It’s the first I knew that they could read!” she said.

          I’ve heard lots of variants on this joke. The subtext is: reading is easy, it’s kid’s stuff, something everyone can do. Therefore, if you can’t read, you’re stupid. I used to be a volunteer tutor at an Adult Literacy class, and I know how much this sneer hurts adults who find reading difficult.

          And it’s based on a fallacy. Reading is very, very hard.

          When someone immediately reads a sentence they’ve never seen before, they are, almost instantaneously, cracking a complex code, and converting shapes into sounds.

          A musician who sight-reads music is rightly admired, but someone who sight-reads a sentence is doing something only slightly less difficult.

          Because it’s a relatively common skill doesn’t make it easy. Driving averagely well is also a common skill, but no one assumes that’s it’s a doddle to learn or that it’s ’kids’stuff.’

          I’ve read that it takes about eight years to learn to read fluently. Because those of us who master the skill usually start very young, we tend not to remember its many difficulties.

          Those who don’t learn so quickly enter secondary school with a low reading age, and education for them becomes a worsening struggle. They’re made to feel failures, even if they are not told so outright. Hence the acute embarrassment often felt by my friends in the Adult Literacy Class.

          Our education system expects children to enter secondary school with a reading-age matching their chronological age, and, in secondary school you don’t ‘learn to read,’ you ‘read to learn.’

          If you can’t read, your formal education more or less comes to a halt. Schools become Aversion Therapy Units, putting children off education for life.

Brunel

          I have always revelled in the knowledge that if something interests me – Neanderthals, say, or brochs or rievers – ‘there’ll be a book on it.’ If I hadn’t been one of the lucky ones who went through school with a high reading age, I probably wouldn’t even have heard of most of the things that interest me. And though I haven’t done much with my fluent reading, how can we ever know what potential is being lost in the thousands of children we fail to teach to read fluently? How many mute inglorious Miltons and potential Brunels are we throwing away? It’s a huge waste and a national shame.

          Before Christmas, I was blogging about some of the teaching methods being developed, based on Michael Halliday’s theories. These methods aim to bridge the skill-gap between children who start school with thousands of hours of experience with books and language, and those children who start with much less. (To read the earlier blogs on this subject, go here.)

          One way is for schools to provide the experience that might be lacking at home. Instead of being constantly tested and graded, children should be read to, and told stories. Poems should be learned, songs sung.

          I’ve heard adults say children ‘waste their time in school. They only listen to stories.’

          Hearing stories is not a waste of time. Stories have, for millennia taught communication. They enlarge vocabulary and range of expression. A child who learns how to structure a fairy-story will understand better, years later, how to structure an essay – and even, how to order their own thoughts to make better decisions.

          And all this story-telling and poetry listening should be as pleasurable as possible – because, if it isn’t, then the children switch off their brains, and you’re wasting your time and breath.

          Indeed, that’s one of the reasons that story-telling has been used, for millennia, as a teaching aid – to gain attention, to hold attention, and to be memorable. (The Good Samaritan, for instance, The Ant and the Grasshopper – even The Little Engine Who Could.)

          I quote the Ontario Ministery of Education (these methods have been successful in Canada.) ‘Becoming a reader is a continuous process that begins with the development of oral language skills and leads, over time, to independent reading. Oral language – the ability to speak and listen – is a vital foundation for reading success.’ 

Illustration: Kai Nielsen

        And where that foundation hasn’t been provided at home, the school must provide it. Tell them stories! The Brothers Grimm, The Little Red Hen, The Gingerbread Man. That masterpiece of suspense, The Billy Goats Gruff.

          This is not ‘just play.’ This is not ‘wasting time.’ The frequent hearing and discussion of these old stories extends vocabulary, and demonstrates a whole spectrum of possible emotions and responses, from grief to gratitude, from rage to forgiveness, from fortitude and determination, to despair, to devotion. They teach pronunciation, rhythm, alliteration – and various modes of speech, from the everyday to the archaic and formal. Stories do all this, and more, and they do it pleasurably, so that children beg for more.

          Gradgrind was, as Dickens pointed out, wrong. Stories are not mere entertainment, they are not a waste of time.

          Story-telling is the seed-bed of eloquence and literacy.

          And here's Blott in 'Twelfth Night.'

In Conversation with... Ian Parks

          Today, I'm talking with Ian Parks, a most likeable chap, who I met when he took over from me as Royal Literary Fellow at De Montfort University.

          Sue Price: The impulse to write something, for me, is always connected to a story. There's always a 'What would happen if - ?' The story might extend itself to include beautiful descriptions, musings on the meaning of life, and so on - but it always begins with a story, and the story is always the backbone.
           So poetry mystifies me a bit. Most of the poetry I like - that makes my hair stand up - doesn't tell a story at all. (Though I'm very fond of The Scholar Gypsy, by Mathew Arnold, which does.) I can't understand where you start with a poem. Can you tell me? Where does the first impulse come from?

Ian Parks

           Ian Parks:The poem begins as a feeling and not an idea. For me at any rate.

          Certain words might circulate around an experience or an emotion. Sometimes that's as far as it gets, but if the individual words spark associations, and if those associations generate more language then we're looking at a first draft.  Unless you're a narrative poet - in which case you're more likely to be led by similar considerations as a fiction writer.

          For me, notions of what the poem might be 'about' don't start to arise until most of it is written. In that sense, the poet can only see the picture as it emerges. Every poem follows a different trajectory. Keats famously said that poetry should come as natural as leaves to a tree - and then drafted and re-drafted tirelessly until he made his work look as if it involved no work at all. I don't think that was merely to 'get it right'; rather, I guess he was feeling his way intuitively into what the poem might mean, what sort of shape it might make on the page and in the mind.

          The metaphor I hold in my mind is one of something coming to the surface: you perceive it to be there but only gradually grasp its dimensions and its implications. It's difficult to trace the poem back to its origins which are often subsumed in a pre-language state'; that is, the poem begins in the heart and relocates to the head. Finally it ends up on the page where it takes on a strange, unpredicatable life of its own. When I look back on poems I wrote twenty years ago I can't remember where they came from.

Susan Price's Ghost Drum

         Sue Price: I sort of know what you mean. That is, I’m familiar with a finished work having meanings that I, as the writer, never knew were there. When I wrote ‘Ghost Drum’ I was only conscious of ‘making up’ the kind of scary fairy-story I’d always liked myself, with a wintry Russian setting, and witches, shape-shifting bears and ghosts. When I finished it and read it, I saw all kinds of meanings in it – the imprisoned hero, in his dome room at the top of a tower, locked inside for life – was that a metaphor for the way we’re each imprisoned in our own skulls? And the magic in the story was the magic of creativity – of words and music.

          I’d followed the images, the pretty metaphors, and found words for them without stopping to think what they might mean.

          Is that something like what you mean when you say that the meaning of a poem is something that doesn’t arise until it’s written?

          Ian: That's it, yes... I was leading a poetry writing workshop the other day and we were taking a close look at Thomas Kinsella's worksheets for his poem, Mirror in February. It's obvious that he put a lot of hard work into developing that poem, trying to follow its lead rather than imposing his own ideas onto it.

          Apart from the fact that they were amazed at how many drafts Kinsella had gone through (there are twelve) most of the people there were heartened to see that arriving at a finished poem can often be a struggle; a struggle that goes on 'behind the scenes' as only the final version is released.

          The other striking thing about those worksheets is that the germ of the finished poem is in the first draft - if you can call a few scribblings on the page a draft! The process that goes on between first draft and finished poem represents the poet's attempt to articulate to others what has been there from the beginning. After all, a poem isn't an idea but, as I say in one of my poems a 'thing made out of words'. I think, too, that sound is very important here. A poem on the page is only half a poem, to paraphrase Dylan Thomas. And something of the impulse to write comes out of the tension that arises between what the poem might 'mean' in semantic terms and what it might 'mean' when it's voiced; the emotional sound of the poem.

          So: lots going on at all sorts of levels. Returning to your initial question, Sue... My feeling is that poems come out of nowhere - or appear to do - and that it takes effort and, sometimes, experience to haul them up into the light of day.
___________________________________________

          Ian said I could publish one of his poems here:

Beach Hut

It’s thirty years since I undid the lock
to spend a rented summer under glass –
a space no bigger than my bedroom now,
the skylight slanting, sunlight through the planks.

Blue meant a day for swimming in the sea;
grey for reading till the weather cleared.
One room where everything I needed was to hand:
bare floorboards, faded rug, sand in my hair

and in my jeans. It was a year of rioting,
of running battles through the city streets,
of looted shop-fronts, shattered glass,
cars overturned and burning in the road.

The rumour of it didn’t reach me there.
I spread my sheets, slept on the floor,
hung a rusted oil-lamp from the beam,
convinced the answer could be found

in solitude and in the distant sound
of waves as they came rippling to the shore.
The place was a ramshackle wreck
held up by a lick of yellow paint.

At night a big ship loomed against the sky
and from its bright and polished deck
someone I imagined lit a foreign cigarette
and smoked it slowly, leaning on the rail.

Just once I saw a torchlight flashing back.
But mostly it was dunes, resilient grass,
the dog-eared books I read then threw away –
the narratives I didn’t want to share.

The days grew shorter. Cold set in.
The beach huts emptied. I grew bored.
Rain drove in every morning from the sea.
I packed my rucksack, caught a train,

sped inland through a landscape changed
to find the world not waiting anymore;
back to the city with its new façade
and the headlines I’d ignored.

          Here's a link where you'll find more about Ian and his poems. 

          And here's his book, Shell Island, on Amazon. 

        And here's Blott.