Learning to write from real books in the Stellar Programme (Part 1)

Since STELLAR (Strategies for English Language Learning and Reading) began in our schools, pupils have been exposed to many good quality children’s books. The advantages of good literature are plentiful: enjoyment of good stories, learning about what makes for good stories and good writing, enriching vocabulary etc. However, these benefits remain a list unless teachers know how to use these books purposefully to maximise learning.

Recently, I learnt that a fellow teacher was planning to improve the teaching of narratives to her 7 year olds. I thought then of how I would do that if I were in her shoes.  The result is this sample lesson plan based on Owl Babies, which is a title used in P2. This delightful story is about a trio of owlets who woke up one evening and found Mum missing. I hope this lesson plan will be useful to teachers.

The first thing about writing narratives is to help pupils understand the way narratives are structured.  One useful way to do this is to deconstruct the story as a class. For Owl Babies, here is a simple story structure to use. Teachers should complete this story map together with the pupils and with close reference to the book.  My book has no page numbers but I have indicated roughly what the possible pages could be. Close reference to the story helps students locate the information systematically instead of trying to retrieve the information from their memory.

Story Structure

Characters	Sarah, Percy, Bill and Mother Owl (p.1-2)
Setting (place & time)	hole in a  tree trunk/ one night (p.1-2)
Problem	The baby owls woke up and found mother was gone.  (p.3-4)
What did the characters do?	1.  They thought about where she might have gone. (p. 5-6) 2. They came out of their house and sat on the tree and waited. (p.7-8) 3. They sat on one branch and talked and thought some more. (p.9-10) 4. They closed their eyes and wished their mother would come home (p. 11-12)
How the problem was solved (resolution)	Their mother came home. ( p. 13-14)
How they felt? What they learnt	They felt happy. ( p. 15-16) They learnt that they should trust their mother to come home. (p. 17-18)

Deconstructing the story this way has a number of merits. First, pupils will learn what the essential elements of a good narrative are. Then they also see that details are important to a story-for instance, what the characters did after they discovered the problem. Pupils also learn that a satisfactory conclusion is necessary and that a good closure involves some element of change in the characters (the lesson learnt).

Once pupils have understood the structure of a story, it’s useful to help them jointly reconstruct the structure by writing a parallel story. A parallel story is simply one that follows closely the original story but with some changes in the details of the story. Here are some possible suggestions:

Story titles/ Characters	Storyline
1.       Cat Babies	Baby kittens find their mum missing after coming back from a romp in the garden.
2.       Bird babies	Birdies miss their mum when they awake from their afternoon nap.
3.       Josie Baby	Josie baby wakes up from her afternoon nap and finds no one in her room.
4.       Mum is missing	A primary school pupil wakes up from her nap and finds no one at home.

Selecting the story is important. You can choose any of the four given above but note though that    the two stories about children ( 3&4) are different from stories about animals.  It won’t be appropriate to begin these stories with Once as in the Owl Babies story, as this is more suitable in fables.

Choosing any of the other two plans will allow us to follow the introduction in the book closely. You need to decide what your students can do at this stage to help you make the correct decision.  On the other hand, you can simply change Once to One day and the plan will still work. A plan for the cat story is also given here.

Once pupils have selected a parallel story, then brainstorm a plan. This is a crucial aspect of the writing and should not be neglected. Use the story structure to plan the story.

 Here's plan A for story number 4.

Characters	Nadera, a Primary 1 pupil, and her mum.
Setting	at home in an HDB flat
Problem	Nadera had an afternoon nap with her mum after school. When she woke up, she found her mother was gone.
What did Nadera do?	1.   She got up and looked around the flat, room by room. 2.   She was afraid but tried to be calm. 3.  She sat down and thought about where mother could be. 3.  She decided to call her on the mobile phone.
How the problem was solved (resolution)	Her mother was next door at their neighbours helping Aunty Lucy to make nasi lemak.
How Nadera felt? What they learnt	Nadera was relieved. Mother apologised for scaring her. Nadera learnt to be calm even when she was afraid.

Here's plan B for story number 1.

Characters	Kitty and Percy, two little kittens and Cat Mother.
Setting	A garden shed where the cats lived
Problem	The kittens came back from playing in the garden and found mother was gone.  (p.3-4)
What did the characters do?	1.  They thought about where she might have gone.  2.  They got worried and scared. 3. They decided to remain in the shed and not go out to search for her.
How the problem was solved (resolution)	Their mother came home. ( p. 13-14)
How they felt? What they learnt	They felt happy. ( p. 15-16) They learnt that they should trust their mother to come home. (p. 17-18)

Now that you have a plan, you can begin writing but well before you do that it’s helpful to direct pupils’ attention to some details in the story. A plan is good but good writing and a good story is all about the details. Each book will provide different details for you to focus on.

Look out for Part 2 of this blog where I will talk about teaching pupils to write dialogues and descriptions from Owl Babies. 

An exercise in decluttering

Recently, I cleaned out my kitchen cupboards. It’s my holiday ritual and this time I found, within my cutlery drawer, a heap of plastic spoons and forks and disposable chopsticks. Okay, I already knew they were there because every time I open the drawer, I had to sort through the plastic to get at the regular cutlery. This time, I decided to bundle them all up and put them in the recycling bin.

This cleaning spree got me thinking about the many things we hoard in our homes. I do spring cleaning and clearing out of cupboards at least once a quarter and I confess to being quite ruthless about throwing things out. Still, this does not stop me from ending up with absolutely useless stuff. I learnt the truth about this when I purchased two new chests of drawers to replace my 17 year old set. The old set had 3 cupboards with assorted drawers and was twice the length of my two new chests. You can imagine what I had to get rid of in order to fit everything into the new drawers. But it was an excellent exercise in decluttering.  

In the kitchen, I found bottles of expired spices when I cleaned out my pantry. I can go on but you get the drift. I am truly aghast by my behaviour although generally, I would consider myself a non-hoarder. I am especially upset at the food that I had to discard because they can no longer be consumed. But enough is enough. I have resolved to be even more ruthless in throwing stuff out and in purchasing food stuff especially when what is thrown out is stuff that should not have been purchased in the first place.

So, to reinforce my aspiration to be an eco-friendly aunty and to keep my home clutter free, I have come up with these tips.  If they are useful to you, great! 

1. Say no to the hawker uncle/aunty every time they put plastic cutlery/ disposable chopsticks with your takeaway.
2. Bring your own tingkat to the hawker centre to avoid collecting a mountain of plastic containers.
3.  Consider buying and using a set of reusable cutlery or foldable chopsticks if you have to take food away often for consumption at your desk.
4. Also say no to the bags of chillis/ soya sauce, if you don’t need them. Say no to dishes of chillis/soya sauce at the hawker stall too if you don’t need them. 
5. Ordering fast food? Ask for no sauce if you already have enough little bags of sauce at home from the last orders. Perhaps we should even petition fast food providers to include this option when taking orders.
6. Travelling? Resist the temptation to buy too much local food that you think you will eat/cook/give away. Chances are, you won’t and you’ll end up throwing a lot away.
7. Clean out your fridge regularly and get rid of food that has been around for a while.
8.  If you have to save pretty boxes, bottles etc, make sure you have a space for them and save only the best. Junk the rest.
9. Refuse plastic bags and shopping bags if your purchases are small and can be put into your handbag. You can’t do much with the itsy bitsy plastic bags (unless you use them to put cat/dog poo in) so they will end up as thrash.
10. Carry a foldable bag when you go out shopping and you won’t need to collect plastic bags.
11. Say no to freebies. They sound attractive and desirable when offered but they end up as junk. Who needs an extra balloon, file or plastic cup in the house? Also, be extra wary of conference bags and related promotional handouts.

Do these suggestions sound extreme? I don’t think so. The one thing I’m not doing enough of is remembering to take my tingkat to the hawker centre. But when it comes to refusing plastic bags and plastic cutlery, I’m almost number 1, although I still have department store people look at me strangely when I stuff whatever new apparel I’ve bought into my handbag without a plastic bag. If you plan to do this too, always remember to keep your receipt, in case you get stopped by the security guard.

And oh, once you have decluttered and feel a lot more righteous, resist the temptation to go shopping. You don’t need to buy more stuff. Er... well, maybe until the next big sale?

Monica Lim and the copying of good words and phrases in writing

By now, everyone must have read Monica Lim’s letter to Minister of Education.   Many readers have written to express support for her views about the school system. I won’t repeat them but you can read her original post here  and the subsequent feedback she received. She also mentioned in her post that many readers took her words too seriously, dissected everything, and read too much into what she wrote. I hope I am not doing that in quoting and using part of her letter for this discussion. But there is one part of her letter that I want to comment on as it can be potentially misleading. I have taken the liberty of reproducing it here:

For example, I find that the way many subjects are taught in schools are based on the marking template, understandably because if the objective is to maximise scores, then you teach to fulfil this objective. I’m a corporate writer and one of my biggest pet peeves is the way composition writing is taught in primary schools.

Many teachers today are told to mark the language of a composition based on how many "good phrases" are used. In my son’s school, a commercial book of good phrases is part of the syllabus and the kids are told to learn these phrases, even for spelling. These phrases are often so bombastic and pretentious that nobody in real life would actually use them. Yet the students are taught them because “ticks” are given for each “good phrase” and added to their vocabulary score.

I remember during a parent-teacher conference, I raised my concerns to my son's English teacher. To my utter surprise, she agreed with me. She said that once the school started imposing the memorising of good phrases for composition, she ended up with 44 scripts of almost identical introductions (mostly about the "fiery sun in the sapphire sky"). Unfortunately, her hands were tied.

I know why this is imposed - it's to make marking simpler. This way, schools don't have to depend on the arbitrary standards of each marker and the marker just has to follow a matrix. It's certainly more orderly but don't mistake it for creativity. I don't know any other education system which designs its curriculum around the grading. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

I think there are some misconceptions here that should be clarified and perhaps someone has written to Monica about this. But the issues concern teachers as well, so I thought I’d address them here. Let me begin with first part:

For example, I find that the way many subjects are taught in schools are based on the marking template, understandably because if the objective is to maximise scores, then you teach to fulfil this objective

First, I don’t know if all schools use the marking template (what does this look like?) as a guide to teaching. Generally, schools give 20 marks for language and 20 marks for content when marking essays. As to what makes for good language and content, that has remained elusive until the recent introduction of holistic assessment. If the school is using some form of holistic assessment, teachers should have analysed the criteria that make for good writing. These criteria then become a part of the assessment criteria (in the form of rubrics) but these are also shared with students so that they know how to work towards achieving the goal of a good essay. If the school has used “good phrases and words” as part of their criteria for language, this is not wrong. What is wrong is their understanding of what “good words and phrases” are. They are certainly not a list from a commercial publication.

I don't know any other education system which designs its curriculum around the grading. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

I don’t think this is true. The curriculum is not designed around the grading. But it’s true that there is a move to make grading more transparent by articulating the criteria for each grade awarded.  This is meant as feedback to students so that they understand what they need to work towards to get good grades. Articulating the criteria also helps teachers be very clear about the skills and strategies they need to teach to help students do well. Doing well in say writing, for instance, is not just about getting good grades in exams. Students who strive to be good writers have a right to know how well they are doing and what they need to work harder on.

Many teachers today are told to mark the language of a composition based on how many "good phrases" are used. In my son’s school, a commercial book of good phrases is part of the syllabus and the kids are told to learn these phrases, even for spelling. These phrases are often so bombastic and pretentious that nobody in real life would actually use them. Yet the students are taught them because “ticks” are given for each “good phrase” and added to their vocabulary score.

We all know about these fanciful phrases our students use. In fact, I wrote an article about this a couple of years ago (found in The Learning Teacher 2), under the title “Azure blue skies and magnolia clouds”, a favourite phrase then. I gather from Monica’s letter that schools have moved on to “fiery sun in the sapphire sky” now J.  I completely agree with Monica about the “bombastic and pretentious nature” of these phrases and I also have to admit that teachers do count these as examples of good vocabulary. They shouldn't.

But then, I have to defend this method of teaching pupils to emulate good writers and to borrow their words. I personally think that there’s nothing wrong with this. In fact, I have a book helping children to do this ( My Collection of Words and Phrases  for Vocabulary Writing and Composition Writing, co-written with Zenda Leu, Teachers’ Productions). Many established teachers and books recommend using mentor texts to teach writing. Try googling “mentor texts” and you’ll find many books on this topic. Typically, teachers will select examples of good writing (these include sentences and words) to show students how certain effects in writing are achieved through such choices. 

As young writers, did you not copy words and phrases from your favourite writers and used these in your essays? I did, not just for English but also for History. I think the first step towards developing your own style is to copy (or emulate, my preferred word) your favourite writer. This is a natural part of writing development. So, the issue for me here is not the copying of words and phrases. It’s first, the kind of words and phrases that pupils were told to copy and second, the way these are taught to them. Who would give forty students 5 phrases to describe the weather? Would you blame them for giving them back to you? No. In fact, they should be given credit because they have shown you that they have learnt the phrases well and reused them as required. But this is exactly what’s wrong.

Teaching is not about spoon feeding kids with a list of words and phrases. It’s about showing them examples and then leading them to discover other examples by themselves. The practice of typing up lists of words for kids to memorise should stop. It doesn’t make the teacher look diligent; teachers should know that if students don’t do the copying and thinking themselves, they won’t learn anything. There are thousands of excellent words and phrases from any contemporary fiction written for children and young adults that can be introduced to students. Teachers can use these as resources instead of resorting to the convenience of “commercial publications”.

I remember during a parent-teacher conference, I raised my concerns to my son's English teacher. To my utter surprise, she agreed with me. She said that once the school started imposing the memorising of good phrases for composition, she ended up with 44 scripts of almost identical introductions (mostly about the "fiery sun in the sapphire sky"). Unfortunately, her hands were tied.

Frankly, I am a little peeved with the teacher above. I think she conveniently passed the buck and blamed school policy instead of giving a proper explanation. In doing so, I think she made teachers look foolish.

I am surprised that there are schools that still embrace this approach for teaching kids to write.  I assume that Monica’s child is in a better than average school, and this makes this approach even more incomprehensible.  And I wonder why the teacher was meekly accepting the policy when, in the same breath, she complained that all the children were writing badly as a result. Should she not have brought this observation to her Head? Could she not have taught other phrases and words to her children or taught them how to vary the use of these words and phrases? Was there really nothing that she could have done but follow orders? 

 Well, she could have done some the following. She could have discussed the words and phrases given and how they are typically used. Students could then decide what they could select from the list given. They could also work on creating a list of synonyms or similar phrases so that they have a lot more to choose from. She could have taught them to consider carefully the appropriateness of these words and phrases in the writing that they typically do. While there is nothing wrong with the “fiery sun” or the “sapphire sky”, they would be more appropriate in another type of writing rather than the picture compositions that primary students write.  All teachers should be wary of using any commercial material (including textbooks) unquestioningly.  

Finally, I don’t want to sound as if I am picking on this poor teacher. I am not. But it is unfortunate that her explanation was reported for the whole country to read. And reading it, I felt indignant, even angry, because here again is another misrepresentation of what is happening in our schools. 

To reiterate: my main point is that it’s perfectly fine for young writers to learn by copying but

•  Students should not copy words and phrases that do not fit with the type of text (story) they are writing.
•  Students should not copy from amateur writers and commercial books.
•  Teach pupils to copy judiciously and to develop their own list of words through reading widely.
• Don’t copy words for your students; let them copy these for themselves.
• Always give children a choice of words and phrases that can be used in their writing.

Finally, good writing is not just about fancy words and phrases or so called “big” words. It’s about using appropriate words. Many schools (and tuition centres) insist that children replace all their “small” words with multisyllabic words without considering the appropriateness of these words.    The same principle applies to the use of figurative language. It is very tiring to read a simile or a metaphor in every other sentence, especially when the same old trite images are used.  It’s not enough to teach students to use imagery; it’s better to have no imagery than an inappropriate one. 

It’s instructional to remember what George Eliot once said: The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.  
 

Catching Up

I see from my blog that my last activity was on May 14^th but I haven’t written anything since April 26^th. Life has been very full for me in the last two months. April was packed and in the midst of it all, my husband and I left for a short holiday in the Tuscany region of Italy.  En route to Rome, we stopped at Doha, Qatar, to visit the Doha Museum of Islamic Art, another iconic building by IM Pei. We also visited the Museum of Modern Arabic Art (Mathaf). In all, we spent 20 hours in Doha; we managed some rest and a visit to the the Souk Waqif before continuing to Rome and Florence.

 Museum of Islamic Art (on the right)

Mathaf -Museum of Modern Arabic Art.

In Florence, we took the train out to towns like Lucca and Siena on the first two days and after that went south to Montepulciano where we spend another couple of days driving around the country roads, gawking at the views and eating Italian food. Tuscany is very much like the Provence, full of pretty little towns, rolling countryside and rich food. During this time, we were also glued to the Internet checking on the latest in the election rallies. We managed to come home on cooling day, in time to vote. 

 Pienza

 Siena

Montepulciano

After all the excitement of the elections, there was work as always and although I made a list of all the things I needed to write about, I simply did not find time to write anything longer than a line or two (on Facebook), beyond compiling course notes and vetting manuscripts. Some days, I think it’s a bad commentary of my life but on clearer days, I also realised that I have many other family and life obligations and duties to fulfil that fill up my time but these never reach the pages of this blog or Facebook.

So I am now in the second day of my short break from work and I have a stack of 10 books to devour but there’s always the fridge to clean, the cupboards to tidy and work to prepare for. Is this a female thing to have countless tasks to do? I imagine teachers on holiday during this so called “protected period” but they are never protected from the housework and the familial duties, are they?

But, I’ve resolved to work on my blog again during this break. And I will.

Have a good holiday everyone.