My Creative Partners project is all over bar the shouting – I have to attend something called a wash-up meeting next week! Don’t you just love modern management jargon?! I have learnt a great deal from the project and could rant at a few politicians about a variety of educational and social issues as a result. But as a writer who works in schools I am fascinated by what I observed about little children and what, for them, constitutes a story. Tomorrow I will be working in a different school and will work with gifted and talented children from years 1-5 but the teacher, although she wanted me to work with year 1 and 2 wasn’t quite sure what she wanted me to do with them – something about writing stories and having fun – but she wasn’t sure what. And suddenly, I didn’t know what to suggest. I explained that from what I have observed, small children have nothing like such a strong sense of the structure of a story as adults do. This ought to be obvious, I think. We presumably learn the structure of story gradually over the years as we read and hear more and more of them. Some of us enjoy stories that break the rules, where the basic structure is experimented with and the ‘rules’ are broken – I do myself. David Mitchell’s ‘Cloud Atlas’ is brilliant in my opinion – Sarah Water’s ‘The Night Watch’ is less successful but I admire the attempt to subvert the structure. Others hate all that – many are the moans I have heard about the ambiguous ending of ‘Atonement’. But when I was 5 or 6, I was still absorbing how stories worked – I certainly couldn’t have explained that a story had a beginning, a middle and an end, let alone that there was something we could call a ‘build-up’ and a ‘resolution’. I know I wrote stories that went on until I got fed up with them and then they just stopped. And why not? Stories are entertainment and for little children, lots of action is entertaining – so they make up stories which go ‘and then...and then...and then...’ and that’s fine. When they get a bit older, they start noticing that things have got a bit ridiculous and so there are a lot of ‘I woke up and it was all a dream’ endings. To me, all this is a natural part of the process of absorbing a norm of our culture.
So why on earth are younger and younger children having ‘story structure’ drilled into them? I am part of the process because I am frequently asked to talk about story planning and I co-operate because I am always happy to share my experience of my craft and to try to meet the needs of those employing me. I can do a good, fun and memorable workshop on story planning and story structure and I think it’s perfectly appropriate for children who have had a rich and lengthy experience of story. But for younger children? No – surely it is better to let their idea run riot, their imaginations roam freely, for them to enjoy the glories of ‘and then... and then...and then...’. My 5-7s youth theatre group is devising a delightful little play this term in which Monkey meets the Emperor Master in the jungle and is taught Kung Fu because he is being sent on a quest to save the moon which is being eaten by the Astro Rat. On the way he encounters the Crocodile King, Howler Monkey and his friend Marmaduke, a mad Scientist and some helpful Stars. As you do. My adult brain has been much challenged by encouraging them to bring this amazing quest to a satisfactory conclusion which makes sense! I don’t think they would mind at all if it didn’t! They are simply enjoying the journey, adding in more and more adventures for Monkey.
So that’s what I think I’ll be doing with the Year 1s and
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By: Meg Harper,
on 6/14/2010
Blog: An Awfully Big Blog Adventure (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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By: Meg Harper,
on 4/10/2010
Blog: An Awfully Big Blog Adventure (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Meg Harper, Creative Partners, Creative Learning, Creative Partnerships, Add a tag
Way back in January, I landed a job with Creative Partnerships – now here I am, a short way into it. If you’re full-time writer with no interest in taking on one of the many para-writing jobs that exist, you may want to give this blog a miss. If, however, you wonder what on earth Creative Partners get up to, then read on!
I’m working in Blackbird Leys, the biggest council estate in Europe (apparently) on the outskirts of Oxford and my brief, together with Vergine, a storyteller and Lisa, a visual/spatial artist, is to see how we can use the outdoors to enable children in Foundation and Year 1 to express and communicate better and to make connections. What a challenge that is! We are all well outside our comfort zones – all experienced as artists in schools but none of us particularly au fait with the very youngest, all of whom are in the earliest stages of literacy or are pre-literate. I found myself reading the optimistic words of the literacy framework for the children I’m working with:
“... children in pairs or individually (possibly then working with a response partner) write their own simple patterned texts (on paper or on screen), developing their writing by adding a few further words or phrases from a given beginning, following a specific pattern or within an appropriate frame. Outcomes are then shared and discussed.”
and wondering which planet the writers are living on Nonetheless, believe it or not – we have actually hit that particular target and are very proud of our two poems about Rats and Rabbits who we all know live outdoors (and we’ve played some excellent outdoor games about them) even if we’ve never seen them in the wild. We might see some on our planned trip to the local nature reserve, though I’ve been warned we’re more likely to see (and carefully avoid!) litter, discarded condoms and worse!
Why, you might be wondering, why does the government think three artists none of whom have qualifications to teach very young children, can have any impact here? Why not just draft in some extra teaching staff? And why, you might be wondering, would any sane writer want to leave her garret to go and engage with this?
Because (hallelujah!) we are creative thinkers! For once there is some cheer! Researchers have worked out that the next generation will have to be flexible, adaptive, innovative thinkers to thrive – and which people have those transferable skills? Artists, of course! It’s true enough, isn’t it? Where do you get your ideas from? What made you think of that? How d’you come up with such interesting plots? And so the skills we have as creative writers are invaluable for pursuing creative enquiry questions because we will keep thinking outside the box, coming up with the quirky, considering any and all ideas before we progress. And believe me, we so need to!
Vergine, Lisa and I are on a steep learning curve working out what’s going to work
By: Meg Harper,
on 1/13/2010
Blog: An Awfully Big Blog Adventure (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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OK, I know Creative Partners doesn’t pay the going Society of Authors’ rate for author visits but I’ve just accepted a job with them. Will you all forgive me? I’m not proud. Times is hard and the work will be fun and you will know by how that I simply can’t resist the temptation to do everything that has to do with writing that isn’t actually writing. (I did write three chapters in the last two days, honest!) Anyway, I thought you might be interested in the ‘enquiry question’ set by the school. A storyteller, a visual artist and I will be helping years 1 and 2 and their teachers to explore the question:
‘How can we use the outdoors to enable children (and adults they learn with) to better express and communicate ideas, thoughts and feelings and make connections?’
My first thoughts are about exploring what they mean by that question – especially ‘make connections’ – but come on, folks – what do you all think? How do you use the outdoors to better express etc etc? Do you? Don’t you? Are they barking up the wrong tree? (Ho, ho, ho!) Personally, I find a brisk walk of a morning an essential part of a writing day – it’s great mulling time. I don’t mean I thrash out ideas that way, though I have a friend who does, but it just allows my mind to go into freefall, wandering all over the place in a relaxed sort of way and I think that’s very helpful and fruitful. It’s also moderately helpful in the battle against writer’s bum! But how useful a brisk walk would be in a big group, I don’t know – and almost inevitably, we’ll be doing group activities. Of course, I’m already thinking along more structured lines – building willow story-sharing arbours, thinking outdoor theatre, planning story trails (there’s a lovely one all laminated and ready to use if you go to Hackfall Landscape Gardens up near Ripon – see my photos) – but how do we as writers use the outdoors? I’ll be fascinated to hear. For me, places are often the inspiration for a story or creep in there somewhere. A long time ago I visited Chastleton House in the Cotswolds and was inspired to write ‘The Ghost in the Gallery’, partly because of the astonishing interior but also because of the spooky, neglected topiary garden. Stockport’s amazing air-raid shelters tunnelled into the sandstone banks of the Mersey sneaked into ‘Piper’, Thurlestone Bay in Devon provided the beach in ‘Fur’ – but this isn’t really about helping me to better express and communicate – it’s more about ‘where do you get your ideas from?’
I am intrigued. Perhaps they have a gut feeling that these small children, living on a fairly grim estate, are creatures of the TV and the play station and need to be outdoors. I would agree – but whether to help their expression and communication, I don’t know. I am excited and challenged and eager to find out. I will be on a journey of discovery and I hope to let you know what I learn. Certainly Forest Schools of which there are now quite a few in the English state system, find that the amount of time and activity spent outdoors has hugely beneficial effects on children’s learning and well-being. I find it fascinating. The stereotypical view of the writer is of one beavering away in his or her study – an indoor person.
This is a fascinating post, Meg - thank you. I thoroughly agree, that children should be allowed to wander towards the discovery of narrative structure. If it is just foisted on them before they are ready they won't have any deep understanding of it and won't enjoy the satisfaction it brings. And they will then reject texts like Joyce's Ulysses because it breaks rules without touching their earlier experiences of creating narratives of their own which follow the unstructured chaos of real life.
I'm hardly an expert on narrative structure, but I did a bit on it when doing my PhD and the type of structures we enjoy are pretty universal through time and geography. There are many examples of incident-rich narratives which don't follow a standard story arc, but they tend to fall into either a pattern of a journey (as your kids have made it) or a collection of tales (like 1001 nights), and often both together.
The journey narrative has its own resolution in the journey's end - unless the journey is deliberately thwarted, of course, and I'm happy to argue with anyone about the Canterbury Tales in that regard. The story collection has little narrative arcs in each story and although it is often built into something with its own narrative structure, that structure may again be thwarted (CT again, Decameron, Odyssey to an extent). Deliberate subversion of narrative structure is something we applaud in modern writers but rarely acknowledge in older texts. Yet the complex narrative structure in which the sequence of episodes is integral to continual plot/thematic development is a construct of the novel and so relatively recent. What your kids are doing has a long and venerable history.
Sorry, end of lecture on narrative structure. You can delete this comment if you like :-)
Interesting post AND comment. I'm minded of the exercise where each person adds the next sentence of a story following a pattern of And, But, So as the first words of each consecutive contribution. The next step after And, And, And, I guess.
(Why are these writing games so much harder to explain than to actually do?!)
This is really interesting, Meg, especially as I've just been asked to do a session with some year twos - who seem very, very small to me! I must admit I've only fairly recently got the idea of story structure myself, which probably explains a lot!
One of my favourite things to do with young children is to tell a simple story and then retell it with their elaborations; then retell it with further embellishments, then tell it again. One example - the Hare and the Tortoise, in which, by version six, the tortoise is a biker, and the hare is having nightmares about windmills. The 'beginning middle end' nonsense is a hangover from the necessity for year six children to write a story in an hour as part of the SATs testing. But the education system exists to create bureaucrats, not story tellers, so what do you expect?
Thankyou, thankyou, Meg! SO good to hear someone making sense about getting children to write/make up stories. OF COURSE their stories are going to be picaresque and segue from one thing to another. Endings are difficult enough for the professionals, let alone little children. Let them have fun, for goodness' sake!
Great post. I find kids are a font of creativity and can build stories from their unique perspective in the world. They pass easily between fantasy and reality. Have fun and let us know how it goes.
一個人的價值，應該看他貢獻了什麼，而不是他取得了什麼..................................................
Great post and interesting comments!
Aha, the ease of CP initiatives! Still wrangling with artspeak documentation on the project here, as the IT systems didn't quite link up . . . Hope your sessions today have been fun, Meg!
I think this is so true. I have felt the same myself, in schools. I think the trouble is teachers think that they have to TEACH story writing just like they teach anything else - whereas we all learned to write not through having story structure taight to us but through reading and playing and being allowed to use our imagination, and being taught reading and writing in such a way we didn't end up terrified of them.
I am so sorry I couldn't join in with this on the day I wrote it!! A couple of manic days out of the house! I'm thrilled this has been so well received and I'm going to read again properly tomorrow. For now, let me just say thank you and that we had huge fun. Lots of story games. I particularly like one called 'No, you didn't' which I'll explain asap - love the idea shared here for others. Thank you!