Class Novel: Ella Minnow Pea

Text: On the fictitious and independent island of Nollop, off the coast of South Carolina, a quaint society takes pride in their historical ancestor, Nevin Nollop. His claim to fame? Inventing the sentence "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog", which is represented by a monument in the town square. One day a letter falls from the memorial statue, leading the island's ruling council to interpret this as a sign from Nollop that they should discontinue the use of that letter. At first this this seems easy enough to follow but as subsequent letters begin to tumble from the statue the council begins to exercise more and more power over the island's citizens.

Context: The debut novel of playwright Mark Dunn, Ella Minnow Pea is a 2001 novel that combines the epistolary genre with dystopian themes and elaborate wordplay. Released in October, the novel reflects a gentler approach to the typically-harsh dystopian genre, as befitting a pre-9/11 American context. The novel itself is structured as a series of letters between characters, and through the use of this conceit the author is able to reflect the shrinking alphabet of Nollopian society as the island council bans more and more letters.

Suggested Class: I think this would work fantastically as a Year 11 Advanced English text. Its themes mean it could fit quite easily into the Narratives That Shape the World module. The use of pangrams (sentences that include every letter of the alphabet) and lipograms (restricted writing rules based on the removal of a letter) also mean it could be a fun text to explore in the Reading to Write module. In either case, the novel also works well as an introductory point to the dystopian ideas explored in the Year 12 text Nineteen Eighty-Four. Alternatively, the novel would also work well with a strong Year 10 English class.

Ideas:

• Explore the epistolary genre. What does this mean in terms of the writer and reader? What are the cons and pros of a writer using this genre to tell their story? Why would Mark Dunn choose this genre in particular for his story? How does the island-setting and fictitious context of Nollop lend itself to this genre to make the use of letters seem like a natural fit? Why can Ella Minnow Pea only function as a novel and not as a film, television series, or even a play?
• Explore the dystopian genre. What is a dystopia? How do writers use dystopias to explore ideas of freedom, control, thought, action, government, and citizenship? How does Ella Minnow Pea's use of the dystopian genre suggest certain things about the aforementioned ideas? Think of examples of dystopian fiction and the elements of each society therein that have been tweaked... what would you change to create your own fictitious dystopian society? 
• Word games. As you read the text as a class, ask students to write summaries of each section using the rules of the book at each point. For example, after one letter disappears, students may not use this letter in their summary. Ask students to also experiment with lipograms, pangrams, and other constrained writing games:
• Reverse-lipograms, where every word must contain a certain letter or letters.
• Poetry that uses only one vowel.
• Aleotoric text: creating a piece of writing using elements selected by chance (EG. Ruling dice to determine what letters can't be used, pulling certain words out of a hat that must act as the theme of a piece of writing, etc.)
• Map: Map the town and its characters. This might seem rather basic but I think the complex rules of Dunn's text would require some visuals (showing who's who and where they're situated in relation to each other) in order to help students keep up.

Disclaimer: I haven't taught this text - I only read it a couple of weeks ago - but I totally would teach it if I had the opportunity!

Credit: Thanks to my friend Keira for recommending and lending me this book to read.

Creating Worlds - Setting in Imaginative Writing

Imagined and literary worlds are always, in some way, a reflection of the world around us. The bedrock of worldbuilding is a keen awareness of setting - and students need to understand that setting has a precise function if they are to use this element well. When I read a great book or short story, I will find myself transported to that setting and sometimes it will be the one thing that stays with me longest after  I finish reading.

An effective setting will do some or all of the following:

• Remain constant in the reader's impression of the story, even when it isn't being explicitly mentioned. This can be achieved through the consistent use of detail and ensuring that nothing occurs in the narrative to contradict the setting.
• Make use of a set of rules - is everything we read a logical extension of the setting? If the setting is an unusual one, then this needs to interact with the characters and narrative in a way befitting this. 
• Be aware of time and place. A setting should have a particular geography but there also needs to be an awareness of the time of day and year, which may shift according to the progression of the narrative. If it is the height of an Australian summer, for example, then the characters need to act in a way that reflects the constant and often oppressive heat that comes with this.
• Reflect theme or a key idea. The most effective setting will often interact with characters in a way that reveals a concept or message that the writer seeks to explore. 

When we teach setting within a schooling context we need to also think about the syllabus. By all means, students should be encouraged to write for pleasure and to explore their imagination without limit, and time can be spent on this in the junior grades or (if your school has them) English creative writing electives. But if we're looking at the pointy end of the curriculum (in my case, NSW), we do need to teach students how to write within the scope of the Craft of Writing module for the HSC, or for  English Extension 1. This means having the ability to write a short piece within 25-50 minutes (depending on the HSC question and course).

So with this in mind, I would ask students to also think of setting in the following way:

• The previously mentioned dot points still largely apply.
• Come to a decision about whether character or setting will take precedence. Both should reflect the idea the student wants to explore, but if the amount of examination time is particularly short (for example, a double-barrelled Craft of Writing question that requires a reflection as well as a piece of original writing) then I think a student will struggle to give ample space to both characterisation and setting. 
• If focusing on setting, consider how it relates to the idea we want to explore. How does the setting reflect genre? Why is the writer writing about this setting? What is the purpose? How can we ensure that the detail included is consistently relevant to the idea or theme? 
• Don't fall into the trap of fantasy worldbuilding - there is limited space in an HSC examination and we need to consider the stimulus and the parameters of the question. It's great to write an evocative setting but this isn't the place to delve into said setting's extensive history and geography.  

What follows is an activity that uses real world locations to provide inspiration. In NSW it could be used for Years 7-10 English, Year 11 Reading to Write, Year 12 Craft of Writing, or Extension English Literary Worlds. 

Students are taken on a tour of 20 slides - 2 for each setting - and asked to respond to them in a way that will get them started on the above journey. The questions below aren't fixed, they're just a way to get students thinking descriptively and, more importantly, conceptually. 

1. Describe what you see in as much detail as possible.
2. Boil it down to just one key idea that could be used in a piece of writing.
3. What sort of short story could you tell in relation to this setting?
4. What would this short story be about in a single word? (EG. Desperation? Survival? Hope? Secrecy?, etc.)

The slides can be found here - Creating Worlds.

Happy writing!

Disclaimer: The above activity was compiled specifically for this blog. 

Creative Writing: Reinforcing an Idea

One of the challenges of teaching Year 7 is that we often have to determine the level of understanding that a class is at. We may often find that this varies wildly from year to year. Students in metropolitan secondary schools are often drawn from a range of primary schools, and this variation in context can lead to ever-shifting permutations of Year 7 classes where students sitting alongside each other have come from different primary schools where curriculum has been interpreted and delivered in many different ways. 

In short, we can't really assume too much. 

Instead, we utilise assessment for learning - informal evaluation of student ability gathered through activities that act as a litmus test of classroom efficacy. We watch how students react and work with certain activities to gauge their ability level. We check for understanding. And then, after this, we engage to some extent in a process of universal design - re-adjusting how we pitch the lesson so that all students can access it in some way. 

Sometimes, or oftentimes, the general ability level of a mixed ability Year 7 class requires us to start from scratch so we can better understand what's happening inside the learning of our students. The activity in this blog is borne from such a context. It speaks to the idea that one needs to go back to basics to ensure that an intellectually-diverse collective of students are brought onto the same page. Even high-performing students with gifts for critical thinking will benefit from having things broken down to their components as this allows for new approaches that they may not have considered, or explains things they may have subconsciously wondered about. In the task below we are looking at one aspect of imaginative writing. With Year 7, or any mixed-ability class, I often find that it's much more effective to only focus on one skill or idea at a time.

In this case I'm aiming to teach the use of increased vocabulary to reinforce a theme or idea. This means that I won't get bogged down in spelling, or grammar, or sentence structure, or punctuation, or any number of other things. I want to look at this skill in a vacuum. I want to quarantine it off so I can examine it in on a plate of glass in the cold unyielding light of a microscope. And so students, who are looking at this microscope slide alongside me, can better understand how to "show their working" (to borrow a phrase from Maths). The time for synthesising a range of disparate skills is a whole other lesson - we simply just can't teach everything at once all the time; it's overwhelming for both the teacher and the student. 

Here is a PowerPoint that breaks down this skill through the use of a modelled paragraph - Make Your Idea Stick.

1. The goal is to get students to come up with an idea or theme and to then explore and reinforce this using a variety of words.
2. First, we model this with an excerpt from an age-appropriate novel. In this case, I've used Victor Kelleher's Taronga. The idea is that he wants to show his audience a version of the future where society has broken down and everything we know has been destroyed.
3. Give the students a copy of the paragraph from the PPT.
4. Students highlight any words that show that things have broken down, gone wrong, or been destroyed. Direct students to look for nouns, adjectives, verbs that demonstrate this. This will create a visual guide to a subject-specific set of vocabulary within the paragraph.
5. After students have had a chance to find their words, work together as a class to construct a highlighted version on the board with the 3rd slide of the PPT. The 4th slide of the PPT then has a completed one for the class to compare their collaborative version to.
6. Students then draw arrows from each word to the next, creating a text chain that ties the paragraph together and again visually demonstrates how subject-specific vocabulary has conveyed Kelleher's idea. 
7. The final step is for students to then write their own paragraph. If they're stuck for an idea it will up to the teacher to pick one for them, something different to the Kelleher model. It could be something like: a character is amazed by something they've seen or a character feels a sense of immense dread related to their surroundings or depict a world where modern technology was never invented. The possibilities are endless.

I'm a big fan of teaching students these text chains. The real name of this grammatical element of writing is 'lexical chain', and it exists in texts as a reflection of said text's overall cohesion. Well-developed or expert use of lexical chains improves clarity for the reader and 'builds the field' of a topic that is being explored. Teaching this isn't restricted to just English, I've used it also with History and Aboriginal Culture classes, and have seen it used really well in Science.  

Punk Punk - A Gallery of Subgenres

The -punk suffix genres can be a great discussion starter; there are various permutations and sub-categories that force or push stories in certain directions, and that writers experiment by combining elements to create new science fiction subgenres by leaning into particular aesthetics and ideas. 

Without taking retroactive classifications into account, the cyberpunk genre is unarguably where it all all started. Cyberpunk combines a dystopian near-future setting with a heavy emphasis on emerging technologies; in the 1980s this meant things like the internet, virtual reality, and practical body modification. Cyberpunk became a prominent subgenre after William Gibson helped to define it in his groundbreaking 1984 novel Neuromancer.

Just for fun, here are a range of other subgenres that have developed in the years since, each of which use the -punk suffix as a marker to let audiences know they are engaging with a fictional world. The various subgenres explore potential futures through highly specialised aesthetics - some of them are superficial in outlook, emphasising style over narrative, whereas others hone in on particular themes and concerns.

Steampunk: The most popular of the -punk subgenres (after the 80s/90s computer tech of cyberpunk) is the Victorian-era aesthetic of steampunk, which is perhaps as much about cosplay and fandom as it is about colonial-flavoured alternative realities. Think Jules Verne, The Golden Compass, some Studio Ghibli films.

Dieselpunk: Most of the -punk subgenres are heavily fixated on a particular aesthetic and its through this that the genre is defined. In this sense, dieselpunk presents alternative realities built from combustible engines and 1930s tech. See: Indiana Jones, The Rocketeer, the comic series Hellboy, the first Captain America film.

Clockpunk: Clockpunk is a subgenre that draws on Renaissance designs and iconography to present an alternative sci-fi realm that images a post-medieval world of light and strength. Think Da Vinci, conquistadors, 15th century Europe.

Rococopunk: This seems to be more stylistic than an actual genre of storytelling. It relates to a combination of cyberpunk and rococo/baroque fashion. One of the best things about the -punk suffix is that the suffix itself has the power to inspire bold new combinations of history and storytelling, with fandoms branching out to create their own costumes from the most flowery recesses of their imagination. When I hear 'Rococopunk' I mostly think of music videos like The Killers 'Mr Brightside' or Adam and the Ants.

Atompunk: When 1950s atomic-age aesthetics are used to present an alternative future with a decidedly retro look. Sometimes called 'Raygun Gothic', used to describe everything from The Jetsons to the original series of Star Trek or the film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Biopunk: Biopunk is a sci-fi subgenre that focuses on biotechnology and synthesised biology. Think David Cronenberg's films eXistenZ or Crimes of the Future, the animal-splicing of Island of Dr Moreau, H.R. Giger's monster designs. A genre that explores the blurring of lines between technology and nature, and the disturbing consequences that might ensue.

Solarpunk: An aesthetic built on a hypothetical utopian future scenario in which climate, environmental, and sustainability issues have been solved. It functions as both a subgenre of sci-fi and art, and can also be observed in the more speculative flourishes of architecture and town planning.

Formicapunk: This is a recent branch that demonstrates the way that the -punk genre tree will always continue to grow and revisit territory in new ways. Formicapunk leans heavily on retro-futurism and the stylistic flourishes of the 80s. Also known as casettepunk. You already know this look and love it.

Lunarpunk: A less-developed idea but one in which scenarios have been put forth where sustainable technology is combined with Wicca, supernatural, and pagan-esque iconography. 

Decopunk: Calling upon the aesthetics of the Art Deco movement, this subgenre combines 1920s architecture with sci-fu futurism... hello Metropolis! Aside from the superficial elements that contribute to a particular look, this subgenre also alludes to fascism and Italian futurism.

Feudalpunk: A personal favourite. Feudalpunk combines sci-fi tropes with medieval settings and scenarios in order to explore the intersection of society, control of knowledge, and the devastation of technologies beyond our understanding. It's not a popular subgenre but it certainly exists, see: A Canticle for Leibowitz, Gene Wolfe's novels, the original plans for Alien 3, Riddley Walker, and Dune.

Steelpunk: The uglier, updated, more industrial son of dieselpunk. Rivets, hardware, and pollution abound in this grimy post-apocalyptic permutation. Common in '90s and '00s visions of the future - see films like The Terminator, Mad Max, Robocop, The Edge of Tomorrow.

Silkpunk: A steampunk alternative that draws on Asian antiquity rather than the Victorian era. First identified by Chinese-American writer Ken Liu, this subgenre has been a point of contention in relation to accusations of cultural appropriation - with some Asian writers asserting that its co-opting by Western authors serves as a creative intellectual cousin to colonialism or exploitation. 

Elfpunk: Elfpunk transports fae and elven characters into a gritty urban setting - exploring a juxtaposition of the faerie realm with motorcycles, rock bands, and nightclubs.

Sandalpunk: This one combines technology and speculative worlds with alternative versions of ancient European and Middle Eastern civilisations. Examples include Stargate, various depictions of Atlantis, and 300.

Stonepunk: Stonepunk does the same thing as other -punk subgenres but with dinosaurs and/or a prehistoric setting. The Flintstones didn't set out to slot into this genre (it hadn't been invented yet) but it retroactively fits the bill! Perhaps more of a fantasy derivative than sci-fi.

Cattlepunk: This is the territory where sci-fi meets the Western - cyborg cowboys, robot horses, and super-powered railways abound. This genre perhaps exist mostly as an excuse to keep the tropes of the Western genre alive into the 21st century. Examples include Cowboys and Aliens, the comic East of West, the Will Smith movie Wild Wild West, Westworld, and the TV series Firefly.

And, as far as I know, that's pretty much it for the moment. There are others that don't feel as developed or don't seem differentiated enough from other genres (nanopunk, hopepunk, capepunk, oceanpunk, nowpunk, mythpunk) so I've left these out. Perhaps one day we'll see an Indigenous Australian approach that things like Cleverman could retroactively fit into (ochre-punk?) If you know any other -punk genres that I haven't mentioned, please let me know!

Disclaimer: This is an expanded version of a Twitter thread I wrote five months ago. Most of the images were sourced through Pinterest, where such things are shared and shared again in an endless recursive loop. If you are the artist of any of these pictures and would like credit or for the image to be removed, just let me know and I'll do that.

Happy Halloween: Tag Someone

Looking for something Halloweeny and fun as we nudge our way through the final term of the year? Today's post features a Stage 4 or 5-aimed story (depending on ability) that would work as part of a wider Horror-themed unit that aims to teach generic conventions, or even just as a stand-alone lesson focused on creative writing.  

Before looking at the story, students will need to be primed on short story structure. If they're not familiar, this could involve brainstorming or copying some notes that covers the following:

Structuring a Short Story

There are three main parts to every short story: a beginning, a middle, and an ending. These parts are referred to by these terms:

1. Orientation = the beginning. This should contain enough information for the reader to know what is going on, who the characters are, what the setting is, etc.
2. Complication = the middle. This presents a problem to be solved, increases tension, and requires a response.
3. Resolution = the ending. This is where the complication gets resolved.

Sometimes a story can move these three parts around; some stories begin with the complication and then have a flashback to an orientation. The resolution can also take one of the four main following forms:

• Cliffhanger: a story that ends by resolving one complication with the addition of a new one, or leaves a key question unanswered.
• Twist: something unexpected and surprising happens; usually foreshadowed.
• Reflection: the protagonist (or another character) thinks back on the events of the story and considers what they have learned.
• Circular: the story ends where it began.
  

Reading a Short Story

The story is only three pages long so it's easy enough to cover in one lesson with time for some follow-up. Read through 'Tag Someone' with the students (you would probably want to do this soon, I suspect the technology referenced in the story will become out of date before we know it) and then have some time discussing it a little. 

Story is here: Tag Someone.

Analysing a Short Story

Students then analyse the components with some connection to thinking about the horror genre in particular. The worksheet below covers the purpose of an orientation, how the complication functions as a reflection of the horror genre and the way it explores the fears of our times, and the type of resolution that has been used by the author. 

Worksheet here: Tag Questions.

If you have more time afterwards, students could be asked to start thinking of their own short horror story, the fear they'd like to explore, and how they would structure it.

Happy Halloween :) 

Disclaimer: The above activity was written specifically for this blog. 

Teaching Embedded Clauses

One of my favourite things to teach Year 7 or 8 is the embedded clause. It sounds boring but it's relatively simple and students always have fun with the idea of manipulating language in unexpected ways. Embedded clauses can be taught effectively in thirty minutes or so in just three steps.

Step 1: Model an embedded clause

An example, inspired by Louis Sachar's Holes but not actually in the text:

Mr Sir squinted in the moonlight, his hand wavering over his gun, and told Stanley to get out of the way.

The embedded clause in this case is the middle part of the sentence that sits between the commas. The function of this clause is to add additional information to the situation, and it turns the line from a compound sentence to a complex one. 

An easy way of explaining the clause to students is to ask them to remove it from the sentence and then read aloud what remains to see if it still makes sense. If it does, the removed section was an embedded clause and the sentence itself was a successfully complex one.

Students should copy the above modelled sentence, highlight the embedded clause, and label it as such. 

Step 2: Scaffolding an embedded clause

The next step is to provide a sentence without an embedded clause and to ask students where such a clause could be inserted. It's important to make it a bit silly to offset the dryness of an activity focused on grammar. Here is such a sentence:

Spaghetti O'Jones laughed and grabbed a hold of the tortoise.

Students will start to get a feel for this by nominating places where a clause could go. The 'his hand wavering over the gun' clause from the Holes sentence works well enough as an example for discussion purposes. The [ ] indicates potential places to add the clause, and commas have been inserted accordingly to show students how to potentially punctuate it as well:

[ ], Spaghetti O'Jones, [ ] , laughed , [ ] , and , [ ] , grabbed a hold of the tortoise , [ ] .

For the ones at the beginning and end, this can be an opportunity to talk about 'reversibility' with complex sentences. If the sentence still works with the clauses reversed then students can label it correctly as a complex sentence.

Anyway, students then pick one of the following clauses below and insert it in one of the above spots. 

• EG. Spitting pasta everywhere
• EG. Sneezing uncontrollably
• EG. Kicking over the daffodils
• EG. Something else of student's choice

I would take this opportunity to walk the room and read the new sentences students create, laughing or marveling with them at what they've been able to put together.

Step 3: Without Training Wheels

Students then use an embedded clause to create their own sentence from scratch. 

Disclaimer: The above activity was written specifically for this blog.  

Teaching 'Setting' with Holes

Setting/Characterisation is one of the criteria assessed in NAPLAN for the years in which creative writing is prompted. In fact, in comparing the Persuasive and Creative options for the NAPLAN writing section, this is the only real point of difference that comes up in the criteria. Without getting too much into it, Setting and Characterisation are conflated on the understanding that both of these textual elements require sufficient detail and a sustained approach across the length of the student's writing. 

I think there's something in this definition.

For example, if a student introduces their setting at the start of their piece, then we want to see them remember that this is the setting right until the end - and the writing should reflect this. If it's a freezing tundra then we want to see constant and varied reminders of this throughout the text, and we also need to see that events and characters within the text interact with this setting appropriately. 

The same is said for characterisation. If a character is dressed in a cumbersome pizza slice suit, then we  need to read about them sweating throughout the story, or the way in which the suit restricts their movements, and that other characters comment on the bizarre appearance of this pizza slice protagonist.

In Stage 4, I have on occasion used the novel Holes by Louis Sachar to teach the literary concept of setting. This can be done across the first 45 pages in relation to the story being set in Texas's Chihuahuan Desert. Before I demonstrate some of the ways this can be explored, here's a quick paraphrasing of what Stage 4 English says about setting:

• EN4-1A contains a content point that asks students to recognise and analyse the ways in which setting interacts with events or characterisation. 
• EN4-2A contains a content point in which students are encouraged to use textual evidence related to setting when justifying a point of view.

So, as we can see, by the time students are in Years 7 and 8 they should be looking at the more complex ways in which setting operates as an element within a text and be able to use their knowledge about this when analysing said text. Here are three ways in which this can be addressed in relation to Holes:

Activity 1 - Stretching Our Creative Muscles

1. Before the students even have a chance to read Holes, I ask them to spend 10 minutes writing about their own setting for a story. Free reign is given here, students can set their story anywhere, anytime. I usually walk around the room and give students a range of options to prompt their imagination - do they like the beach? Bushwalking? Perhaps they'd like to go to an alien world, or a frozen wasteland? Haunted houses, grimy cities, and ancient civilisations all get a look in as well.  
2. Then we go off and do something else for the bulk of the lesson. I like to let their descriptions sit for a little bit, perhaps while the class does one of the other setting-related activities.
3. At the end of the lesson, for about 20 minutes, I then direct students to read through their descriptions and monitor how they used vocabulary to build a setting. This means highlighting any adjectives they've used, and circling any imagery that relates to four of the major senses (sight, smell, sound, touch). Students then come up with an additional 5-10 adjectives or sensory imagery that could have been used in their description.

Activity 2 - Purpose and Complexity

1. Read the opening chapter of Holes as a class and then discuss what sort of setting this is. Students collect together any details that let them know what this setting is, and reflect on what impression Sachar wants the reader to get.
2. Then we read on until we get to Chapter 3, where the protagonist Stanley Yelnats is travelling to the Juvenile Correction Facility at Camp Green Lake via bus. There is a part in this chapter where Stanley thinks about where he is going and expresses gratitude that he will at least be able to go for a swim in the 'Lake'. 

Stop here and explain what irony is. I look at three types of irony and usually a little bit of discussion will get students to recognise that sarcasm is one of these - this is a good way of starting off.

• Verbal Irony: Also known as sarcasm, this is when someone says something that is the opposite of what they mean.
• Situation Irony: This is when we expect something to happen in a story only for it to be subverted or flipped by the writer.
• Dramatic Irony: This is when there is a disconnect between what the audience knows and what a character knows. When the audience knows more about something than a character this can create tension or humour.

    3. I ask students here to consider how Sachar has used dramatic irony. The answer is the bit where            Stanley thinks he is going to be able to swim at Camp Green Lake. Thanks to the opening chapter         (which features no characters and only focuses on setting), the reader is aware that this lake is                 completely dry - although Stanley is not. We see now how setting interacts with character and                 the novel's structure in a more complex fashion than students perhaps realised, and the teacher can         help make it clear here that the entire purpose of the opening chapter was to allow the reader to            know about the setting before Stanley does.

Activity 3 - Textual Evidence

1. Students read Chapters 5 to 7. If you wanted to do this in the classroom, I find that this will take about half an hour. This works well if you read to the students (which is valuable for a whole range of reasons) because the second half of the lesson then has the students working more independently. 
2. After finishing Chapter 7, we look at Reinforcing Setting. That is to say, how has Sachar continuously made references to the setting and shown how this setting impacts on the characters? Students will at this point be asked to gather 8 quotations from Chapters 5 to 7 that demonstrate this.
3. For some students, this could be the first time they've been asked to identify quotes as a form of textual evidence. With that in mind, I think it's useful to give students the page numbers so they don't waste time aimlessly flipping through pages and disengaging altogether. I do the first one for them so they can see exactly what they need to do (NOTE: the page numbers refer to the edition of Holes pictured above. Even though the cover may be the same, be aware that some page numbers may differ a tiny bit due to different printings having slightly different font size):

• P.17, "They were dripping with sweat", this shows the way in which the setting is affecting the characters.
• P.19
• P.21
• P.26
• P.28
• P.32
• P.35
• P.36

What I find interesting about this last activity is that some students will pause and ask how a character being thirsty relates to the setting, and this allows for discussions of more subtle uses of setting beyond "It was dry and hot". 

 

The above activities can of course be adapted for use with a variety of other novels too.

Disclaimer: The above activities were adjusted specifically for this blog. 

Random Rules for Writing

NaNoWriMo

Late last year I threw myself into NaNoWriMo. If you're not aware, this stands for National Novel Writing Month and is a fun (fun?) exercise that favours quantity over quality. Madness, really, but for an English teacher it's a worthwhile activity. Have you ever encouraged students to use lightning writing strategies? I see it as being akin to that. 

This was my third attempt at NaNoWriMo. The first time, in about 2009, I barely wrote 2000 words before running out of steam. I spontaneously decided to write an Australian Gold Rush era novel about a bushranger who teams up with a Chinese miner to fight monsters. Then I realised that, without a plot or any substantial time for research, I was just punching words out into the dark, so I gave up. 

The second time was in 2016 and, perhaps learning from my mistakes, I opted to just journal about my memories. I got to about 25 000 words out of the required 50 000 word count. It was easier because I could approach things episodically and in a non-linear fashion. To be honest, I can't remember why I didn't get any further... it's most likely that I probably got too busy with work or just lost interest. 

In 2020 I was prompted by a friend to undertake the challenge again. Well! I managed about 30 000 words this time and then things got too busy again. I became a Head Teacher Teaching & Learning at a new school and filled in as relieving Head Teacher TAS/CAPA for Term 4 and, well, it was a tremendous experience and I had to put aside my NaNoWriMo project. Luckily, with not much doing in the holiday break before we go back, I've managed to get back to the novel and momentum has thankfully continued. 

Writing the Novel

In my life as an aspiring writer I've attempted to seriously write a novel two other times (outside of NaNoWriMo). The first one, which I undertook in my pre-teaching life, took me about ten years. By the time I had finished writing it my life had changed so much that I was no longer interested in it. I looked at it and decided that I appreciated the experience of putting it together but that it just wasn't me anymore. 

The second one was a much more ambitious attempt and remains unfinished - it fell by the wayside after I became a permanent teacher in 2014. I can see myself going back to it at some point but I'll no doubt completely rewrite what I've got. I had already switched from first person to third person while expanding my outline and I'm still unsure where I sit with the kind of narrative voice I want to use on this one. The world has also changed a lot since 2010 (when I started writing it) so there's that to think about too. 

Finding a Different Approach

So, for NaNoWriMo 2020, how was I going to manage writing an entire novel in a short space of time without boring myself? My first step was committing to a fictional novella. I've written a lot of sentences - in blogs, articles, textbooks, short stories, poetry - and I felt like I needed shake things up in my approach. So I came up with some random rules to stop myself from falling back on certain things. These were things that I either felt like I tended to rely on too much, or things that become roadblocks when I try to write. 

This is what I came up with:

• No direct speech. The only way I was to convey dialogue is through reported speech. 
• Each chapter reflects one day only.
• There can be no references made to the past. This includes referring back to anything that happened the day before. Each chapter only focuses on that one day.
• Maintaining a mixture of past/present tense to reflect the short distance of time between events portrayed and the subsequent writing of each journal entry. 
• Minimal reference to how the narrator is feeling about anything.
• Why have a compound sentence when two simple ones will do?
• Keep punctuation simplistic too. This means no hyphens, no ellipses, no brackets, and definitely no semi-colons!
  
• Each entry should make both direct and indirect references to the writing process employed by the narrator (rather than turning into a straightforward fictional narrative). 
• All of these rules are sacrosanct and must be stuck to for the entirety of the novel. They will never be broken. Except for the times when they are. 
  

I found that these rules became much more of a blessing than a restriction. I actually finished my first draft and I don't hate it :)

Guided Storywriting

Hi, how's it going?

I hope you're well, and I really do mean that - this has been a tough year for everyone and being a teacher in the public system looks like it might only become more challenging as we move into 2021. I've long been a big believer in free education for all but I know how hard it is not to feel demoralised and disillusioned sometimes when working within this system. What's that adage... nothing worth doing was ever easy? 

Teaching isn't easy. 

So, fellow teachers, I hope you're all kind on yourselves as we move into Term 4 of 2020. I hope I can be kind on myself too! Today I thought I'd share a stand-alone worksheet that worked well with my mixed-ability Year 8 classes in that nebulous part of the year where we were all trying to get students back on track after everyone isolated during NSW's first COVID wave. This lesson was designed to focus the students on building their literacy skills, and it bought me some time so I could continue planning some longer term work for my classes.

Guided Storywriting - Worksheet.

The first half of the lesson involves students filling in an open-ended cloze passage that comes with annotations that 'guide' the sort of answers that will work best. This is useful for students who aren't yet at the point where they can generate ideas in sufficient number, and helps them ascertain what categories of words work well in particular contexts.

The second half of the lesson contains some Super Six Strategies to extend student comprehension, and this includes visualisation, connection, and monitoring/summarising activities.

Have a nice term! :)

This Is How It Starts...

I wrote this journal entry at the beginning of April after a brief trip to do some groceries. 

A time ago I wrote many songs and zines about life in Western Sydney. They were pieces of hyperbole, filled with cynicism and invective, and presented a world on the precipice of armageddon. Now, in light of the exponential spread of COVID-19 and the impact this is having on society, those days seem unexpectedly idyllic by contrast.

Like the steadily-climbing whine of a bomb dropping from far above, the past few days have inched by for me with accumulating anxiety. I've been home with the flu, and the realisation that we lacked defrosted meat for tonight's dinner led me out to Coles to do a quick shop.

The car park was fine. The store looked fine.

But inside is a different story. The penny drops when I walk into the chicken aisle and the freezers are nearly completely empty. People come rushing after the staffmember as he unloads precisely eight lots of chicken breast onto the shelf, the only ones available, and there is a quick and silent scramble. As I move through further aisles I note further absences... no rice, no pasta, no noodles, no eggs, no long-life milk, no toilet paper, no tissues, no chips, no pies.

I stop to listen to the cursing opposite me.

"There's no fucking pasta."

Another voice, louder, "Mate, watch your mouth. There's kids around."

The first man, tall and of scowling angular head, raises his own voice, "I don't fucking care. There's no bloody pasta."

Louder still, the smaller bloke, "Watch your mouth, there's kids around!"

"You want a piece of me?"

The two are suddenly standing staunchly against one another. Everyone in the aisle freezes where they are, necks twisted, faces bemused. The loudspeaker issues a request for security to Aisle 6.

As I move through the rest of the increasingly spartan store I notice that everyone is warily watching each other. A woman at the self-serve checkout pushes her jaw unnervingly close to the cashier who's come to see why she is making a commotion, "What are you gonna do? C'mon then!" And outside, a man leans into the window of a car and jabs his finger at the driver while yelling something unintelligible.

During my journey across the store, I see an older guy in a Guns 'n' Roses T-shirt lecture at least three different staff members (in different parts of the store), telling them that everyone is inevitably going to catch the Coronavirus and we should all stop worrying. He tracks his way back and forth across the store, seemingly not there to actually buy anything, like a New York sidewalk preacher-bum with an 'End is Nigh' sign strapped to his chest.

I clutch my bags close and make a straight line to my car.

Galway Man: Stage 5 English

Hello and how are you? It feels like only yesterday that the 2019 school year was just starting and now here we are in Term 4. Before you know it, the last assessment tasks will be done and dusted, reports will be written, and students will start thinking about building forts in the woods and riding their BMXs down to the river (kids still spent their summer holidays doing that, right?)

In the last few weeks of Term 4 I usually find myself needing a few stand-alone lessons. It's important that these lessons don't feel like 'throw-away' content... when students cotton on that you don't attach value to what they're doing then they'll tend not to value it either. The antidote to this can be to work on the skills needed for ongoing success in English.

This lesson below is a Stage 5 activity that I usually use for Year 9 as part of a genre unit focused on creative writing. It can also double, however, as something that can be used to help students develop specialised literacy skills at any point in Stage 5 - for example, the ability to identify genre through recognition of common motifs and generic conventions used, the ability to monitor a text for adjectives and adjectival groups, and utilising comprehension skills to predict the direction a text will go in.

Context

Teaching Stage 5 English in a mixed ability classroom often means working with a broad range of students. Differentiated curriculum can take many forms when we teach and, perhaps most often, it tends to come into the classroom in a flexible rapid-response form via the teacher adapting to the fluctuating levels of ability exhibited by individual students. 

One of my favourite forms of differentiation is the the lesson planning process adapted from the Gagne model and used by GERRIC. This involves creating material that targets three separate tiers of ability within the classroom - mainstream material for the core of the class, adapted material for those who may be struggling to meet outcomes, and extension material for those who may be considered gifted. It's important to acknowledge here that 'extension' doesn't mean extra work, it should instead take the place of work undertaken by the main core of the class.

Another thing to acknowledge is that it's near impossible to differentiate every single lesson of work in this way as it essentially means doing three times the work. Instead, it's worth aiming to just do this every now and again so that you can assess what level your students are working at and evaluate how they cope with material that more specifically targets their ability level.

The Lesson: Galway Man

The crux of this lesson is a short horror story called Galway Man. This piece has been designed as something that should be suitable for a Year 9 class exhibiting a range of different abilities and behaviours.

What this means is - it's relatively short to allow for engagement of students who struggle with attention in the classroom, and it's written in a way to allow accessibility for students who may have reading levels as low as those typically encountered in Stage 3. It's important to push student reading levels by exposing them to material that will challenge them but this is something that should be done purposefully and not all the time. If we're looking to build things like vocabulary, sustained understanding via extensive comprehension of cohesion, or an ability to parse sophisticated sentence structures then, of course, we should be challenging students with texts beyond their usual reading scope. However, if we want to work on introducing students to other skills like understanding symbolism and imagery, or the ability to explain genre, then we need simply-constructed texts that can allow for these things to be the focus.

Resource: Galway Man - short story.

The Lesson: Pre-Reading

Before reading the text it might be worth doing a quick check of student understanding regarding the phenomenon of bog bodies as this is the main idea behind the 'horror' of the text. These bodies are human remains that have been accidentally preserved for thousands of years after being submerged in swampy peat-heavy marshland. Bog bodies tend to occur in Western Europe and date from the Bronze Age.

Resource: Pre-Reading - PowerPoint Presentation.

The Lesson: Post-Reading

Students can undertake one of the activity sheets after reading the short story. There are two ways to approach determining who does which sheet:

1. Hand out the three different levels of sheets according to which students you think fit into the 'core', 'adjusted', and 'extension' groupings of ability. If any students question why they can't have a different sheet then, by all means, let them have a go at the sheet they prefer. If they find it too easy then you've both learned something, if they find it too hard then at least they challenged themselves.
2. Let students pick the sheet they want to do - I usually place the sheets on a table underneath the whiteboard with arrows pointing down to the three piles labelling them as 'Regular', 'Hard', and 'Hardest'. It can very educational for the teacher to see which students pick which one. 

The sheets roughly correspond to the same pattern of learning broken into 4-5 sections.

• Prediction: After students have been taken through the pre-reading PPT, ask them to think about what a short story called Galway Man might be about. Students then compare their prediction to how the story turned out.
• Adjectives: Monitor the text to locate and isolate adjectives/adjectival groups.
• Character or Flashback: Students actively consider the process of characterisation. This looks different on each sheet - ranging from a visualisation activity to an opportunity for students to draw explicit connections between a character and his purpose in the text. Some sheets may add or replace this with an examination of the story's use of a flashback as a structural narrative device.
• Genre: Students identify the ways in which the story fits into a specific genre, developing increased awareness of the significance of code and convention.

Resource: Adjusted Activity sheet
Resource: Core Activity sheet
Resource: Extension Activity sheet

Craft of Writing: Stream-of-Consciousness, Reported Speech, and Anadiplosis

Here is one more installment of some Craft of Writing mini-lessons before the HSC examinations are upon us. These are mini-lessons designed to support students in practising writing craft all year-round. Below are three writing techniques or elements that can be brought into close-up to make the craft of writing more explicit for students. 

Stream of Consciousness 

What is it: In psychology this refers to a person's thoughts and reactions and the way they can be perceived as a continuous flow. In literature it refers to an author's attempt to represent this by an uninterrupted stretch of the character thinking, uninterrupted by dialogue or a traditional narrative.

Example:

• "Should he cast by type or against type? Uglies in parts that call for beauty, a gorgeous hunk for Caliban? Put them into roles that will force them to explore their hidden depths, or are those depths better left unexplored? Challenge the audience by showing them well-known characters in surprising and possibly disagreeable guises?" - Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood.

Why use it:

• Developed by a group of early 20th century authors to put the reader inside a character's head and demonstrate greater depth of characterisation.
• Can convey to the reader a greater sense of a character's motivation in regards to the narrative.
• Authors can use it to explore a character's past through glimpses of flashbacks.
  

Quick Activity: Pick a supporting character from Hag-Seed or The Tempestand write a paragraph (using stream of consciousness) that explores their feelings mid-way through the narrative. 

Reported Speech

 

What is it: There are two kinds of speaking in literature. Direct speech refers to speech that takes place in quotation marks, such as "Hey, what's up?" The other kind, reported speech, refers to a character paraphrasing or reporting what a character has generally said.

Examples:

• "She's insisting on greenery, she's making him eat kale" - Felix indirectly conveys Miranda's dialogue in Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood
• "When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease." - From the short story 'The Story of an Hour' by Kate Chopin.
  

Why use it:

• Allows for the narrator to retain 'control' of the story; what the audience 'hears' is only what the narrator tells them. This can also reinforce an author's attempt to create an unreliable narrator.
• The author can use reported speech to blend dialogue and action together more seamlessly.
• Creates a greater distance between the reader and the events of the text, and can help to condense time into smaller amounts of text.
  

Quick Activity: Pick a segment of The Tempest or Hag-Seed that uses direct dialogue and rewrite it as a short paragraph that shows both direct speech and reported speech.  

Anadiplosis

What is it: A rhetorical form of repetition in which the last word or clause of a paragraph/sentence is repeated near the beginning of the next section of text. The word 'anadiplosis' comes from the Greek word for 'doubling / folding up'.

Examples:

• "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hates leads to suffering" - Yoda in The Phantom Menace, directed by George Lucas.
• "It begins, I think, with that act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing" - 'Redfern' speech by Paul Keating (1992)
• "Don't blame me, blame me fucking hormones" - Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood
  

Why use it:

• To emphasise the significance of a particular word or idea.
• The changing placement of the key word or clause in question helps to shift the way a reader thinks of it. 
• Can show a chain of events / cause and effect when used multiple times in close proximity.
• Allows writers to sometimes indicate multiple meanings associated with one word.
• Can make a suggestion or an order more effective when delivered with authority.

Quick Activity: Write a short persuasive speech that includes an example of anadiplosis. This speech should be about why the voting age should or shouldn't be lowered to 16. 

You can find all these together on one handy sheet below:

• Writology Issue 8

Happy writing!

Extension English 1: Literary Worlds

Hi students (and teachers!), here you will find materials associated with the Extension English 1 Common Module Literary Worlds, as presented at the Central West HSC Enrichment Seminars at Denison College, in associated with Charles Sturt University.

This is the PPT on Literary Worlds.
This is the booklet of material that goes with the PPT.

Practice makes perfect!

Craft of Writing: Hyperbaton

Hi there! Here's another mini-lesson to support an integrated approach to Module C: Craft of Writing, this time focusing on the literary device of hyperbaton. 

Hyperbaton

What is it: Meaning to 'transpose', hyperbaton refers to the rearrangement of words into the less expected order. Writers move words around or reverse the clauses in a sentence.

Examples:

• "When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not" - Return of the Jedi, directed by George Lucas.
• "As you from crimes would pardoned be, / Let your indulgence set me free" - The Tempest, William Shakespeare

Why use it:

• Can deliberately startle or confuse the reader, forcing them to consciously reorder the words and build the meaning in their own head.
• Used in poetry to reorder the words so that rhyme and rhythm can be maintained.
• Refocuses the reader on specific phrases and words.
• Can be symbolic in upsetting the expected order of things.
• In the right hands it can add a sense of literary weight.   

Quick Activity:

Create a conversation between two characters in which one uses hyperbaton. Consider the kind of person this would be and describe them. 

Craft of Writing: Asydenton

Module C: The Craft of Writing is undoubtedly the most different element of the new HSC syllabus and, as such, has understandably provoked the most anxiety. As we (the teachers) hurtle towards our first HSC exams based on said new syllabus there are a whole range of questions that are circling around the way Craft of Writing should be taught. 

One such question is: parallel to the other modules or as a module of its own?

Our school has opted to do it as a module of its own in Term 3, however, in preparing for this there's still a lot of room for building student efficacy in regards to their writing ability. One idea that I've taken to heart was Karen Yager's suggestion at the 2018 ETA Conference that we focus on short writing activities as a settling routine at the start of lessons. 

I love the idea of mini-lessons so I think this will work well or is at least an interesting approach to trial for 2019. I'm thinking the following routine will be a great starting point:

1. Introduce students to a writing device/element - this can be something they're already familiar with, or something that they're not. The important thing is that it's treated like something completely new and is explained in detail. I try not to assume anything when it comes to prior student knowledge.
2. Students read over how the writing device works and are then given a fairly open-ended 6 minute activity in which they must test it out. 

I try to match up the device with texts that the students are exploring in the other modules but this isn't absolutely necessary every time. I'm also not expecting the students to memorise these devices - what's important is that they test out using it in their own writing and see if it's a good fit for them. Not every student is a literary sophisticate; they aren't all reading voraciously (even if we yearn for them to!) so they won't have a subconscious command of literary and rhetorical devices at their disposal when writing. What we can do instead is expose students to a range of these devices in isolation and then let them apply them in the context of activities that will build their craft. This will stretch them as writers, regardless of whether they can memorise the obscure names that a lot of these devices go by.  

Here's one example of the information students would get:

Asyndeton

What is it: Essentially, this Greek word means "unconnected", and refers here to the removal of connective conjunctions from a sentence. Phrases are no longer joined by terms such as "and", "or", etc. 

Examples: 

• A character describing the nature of some families - "a Drinking Streak, a Gambling Streak, a Mean Streak, a Funny Streak" - To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
• "We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans" - Winston Churchill's 'We shall fight on the beaches' speech from WWII.

Why use it:

• Removing conjunctions such as 'and', 'for', 'or', and 'but' leads to increased emphasis/attention on particular verbs and nouns.
• It can give the impression of speed, or create an erratic and hurried rhythm.
• Often used in speeches and rhetoric to control the rhythm of words, and to force increased attention from the reader/listener as they are forced to consciously or subconsciously fill in the gaps with their own connectives.

Quick Activity:

Write a reflective paragraph about your morning that incorporates asyndeton.