Young Book People: some teaching ideas for the class

Young Book People: some teaching ideas for the class

Young Book People is an exciting new initiative which aims to encourage secondary school pupils to engage with learning and reciting literature.

Our goal is to encourage children to discover the joys of learning and reciting literature, whatever their ‘performance’ level: it’s not about ‘putting on a show’ but about discovering and celebrating the richness of the spoken word, of allowing literature to speak and bringing children’s creative energies to the words of great writers.

The texts

Children can work on any texts for the classroom-based activities but here there’s a list of them that can be used (we’ve selected short fragments from all of them):

AMERICAN DREAM	Edward Albee
BLESS ME, ULTIMA	Rudolfo A. Anaya
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND	Lewis Carroll
CATHEDRAL	Raymond Carver
THE BIG SLEEP	Raymond Chandler
THE AWAKENING	Kate Chopin
AND THEN THERE WERE NONE	Agatha Christie

Catching Fire  Suzanne Collins

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY Roald Dahl

BREATH, EYES, MEMORY Edwidge Danticat

BLEAK HOUSE Charles Dickens

ADAM BEDE George Eliot

AS I LAY DYING William Faulkner

THE BIRTHMARK Nathaniel Hawthorne

ACROSS FIVE APRILS Irene Hunt

BRAVE NEW WORLD Aldous Huxley

THE AMERICAN Henry James

ANIMAL DREAMS Barbara Kingsolver

THE BEAN TREES Barbara Kingsolver

ANGELS IN AMERICA Tony Kushne

BIRD BY BIRD Anne Lamott

ARROWSMITH Sinclair Lewis

THE CALL OF THE WILD Jack London

THE ASSISTANT Bernard Malamud

ANGELA’S ASHES Frank McCourt

BILLY BUDD, SAILOR Herman Melville

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES L. M. Montgomery

BELOVED Toni Morrison

THE BLUEST EYE Toni Morrison

THE BLACK PRINCE Iris Murdoch

1984 George Orwel

BEL CANTO Ann Patchett

BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA Katherine Paterson

THE BELL JAR Sylvia Plath

ANTHEM Ayn Rand

ATLAS SHRUGGED Ayn Rand

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE        J. D. Salinger

BABYLON REVISITED F. Scott Fitzgerald

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA William Shakespeare

ARCADIA Tom Stoppard

BLESS THE BEASTS AND CHILDREN  Glendon Swarthout

THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN  Mark Twain

THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER Mark Twain

A&P John Updike

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF Tennessee Williams

THE CAINE MUTINY Herman Wouk

BLACK BOY Richard Wright

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X Malcolm X & Alex Haley

BREAD GIVERS  Anzia Yezierska

THE BOOK THIEF   Markus Zusak

And also with poems as:

Alligator	Grace Nichols
The Way Through the Woods	Rudyard Kipling
The Pig	Roald Dahl
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud	William Wordsworth
The Owl and the Pussycat	Edward Lear
Leisure	W H Davies
Talking Turkeys	Benjamin Zephaniah
Matilda	Hilaire Belloc
The Tyger	William Blake
A Red, Red Rose	Robert Burns
The Listeners	Walter de la Mare
The Walrus and the Carpenter	Lewis Carroll
The King’s Breakfast	A A Milne
Macavity	the Mystery Cat T S Eliot
The Lake Isle of Innisfree	W B Yeats

Aim of these notes

These notes are designed to help teachers to use literature-learning and recital as part of the curriculum and in school assemblies, as well as to help them to use literature as an useful material in the establishment of Young Book People groups. They present a range of ideas for activities which can stand alone or be part of a larger project which might lead to some children because there are great educational benefits in devising and performing choral interpretations of the texts, so a number of the ideas in these notes are for group-based, workshop-style activities. Again, these can stand alone or be the starting point for further work, enabling a personalised learning approach.

How to use the teacher’s notes

These notes have been devised on the premise that teachers know best, so we do not offer a prescriptive approach but a range of suggestions from which you can choose and which you can adapt to your own situation and teaching style. We suggest that a good starting point would be to take one or two of the simple workshop ideas and use them to generate some fun and creative engagement with the texts. You could then move on to some of the group-based literature performance ideas, perhaps performing some in an assembly at which you introduce the notion of the Young Book People Group and ask for volunteers.

Why should my school groups take part?

• Literature offers children many creative opportunities in reading and understanding; add to this the performance elements offered by this project and you have a powerful way of delivering a range of curriculum aims related to Reading, Speaking and Listening.

• For many children this project will provide a confidence-boosting experience as they understand, learn and then perform the texts.

• Children who participate at any level in this project will gain a genuine sense of achievement.

• The project also offers an exciting new element to school assemblies where the whole school can be involved in hearing and celebrating performance. These public performances can also be done at local events and even in local primary schools to extend the project to the community.

How can this project help me deliver the curriculum?

This project is a natural fit with the Secondary Andalusian Curriculum in the areas of Reading, Speaking and Listening.

READING

Knowledge, Skills and Understanding

Reading strategies

1. To read with fluency, accuracy and understanding, pupils should be taught to use:

a. phonemic awareness and phonic knowledge

b. word recognition and graphic knowledge

c. knowledge of grammatical structures

d. contextual understanding

Understanding texts

2. Pupils should be taught to:

a. use inference and deduction

b. look for meaning beyond the literal

Literature

3. To develop understanding and appreciation of literary texts, pupils should be taught to:

a. recognise the choice, use and effect of figurative language, vocabulary and patterns of language

b. identify different ways of constructing sentences and their effects

c. evaluate ideas and themes that broaden perspectives and extend thinking

d. consider poetic forms and their effects

e. respond imaginatively, drawing on the whole text and other reading

f. read stories, texts and plays aloud

Breadth of study

Literature

The range should include:

a. a range of good-quality modern literature

b. classic literature

SPEAKING AND LISTENING

Knowledge, Skills and Understanding

Speaking

To speak with confidence in a range of contexts, adapting their speech for a range of purposes and audiences, pupils should be taught to:

a. maintain the interest and response of different audiences (for example, by exaggeration, humour, varying pace and using persuasive language to achieve particular effects)

b. speak audibly and clearly, using spoken standard English in formal contexts

c. evaluate their speech and reflect on how it varies

Listening

To listen, understand and respond appropriately to others. Pupils should be taught to ask relevant questions to clarify, extend and follow up ideas

Breadth of study

Speaking

The range should include:

a. reading aloud

b. presenting to different audiences

Listening

The range should include opportunities for pupils to listen to:

a. live talks

b. readings

c. presentations

Some other objectives to reach with the groups may be:

Speaking

To choose and prepare texts or stories for performance, identifying appropriate expression, tone, volume and use of voices and other sounds e.g. presenting texts from other cultures using intonation to interpret punctuation and emphasise meaning.

Drama

To identify and discuss qualities of others’ performances, including gesture, action, costume e.g. responding to a live or recorded performance by selecting dramatic features for comment

Listening

To analyse the use of persuasive language e.g. how a speaker uses emphasis, rhetoric and gesture effectively

Group discussion and interaction

To understand and use a variety of ways to criticise constructively and respond to criticism e.g. seeking clarification, offering additional information, adjusting ideas about content and style of presentations

Drama

To consider the overall impact of a live or recorded performance, identifying dramatic ways of conveying characters’ ideas and building tension e.g. evaluating different performances of an adaptation of a classic text

Involving parents and the community

This project offers many opportunities for involving parents, including:

• running a literature performance evening or morning corresponding to festivals

• involving parents as helpers

• holding a special parents’ assembly featuring literature performance

Involving the wider community:

• reciting texts in different settings e.g. local places of worship or somewhere outdoors – you could hold an event in a local park

• liaison with local literature groups and/or amateur dramatic companies

Ideas for lesson plans

Breathing and relaxation exercises

Stress the value of deep breathing before any vocal work and point out that this is good not only for the voice but as a way of ‘centring’, calming nerves and focusing on a performance.

Breathing

Ensure that the children are standing comfortably. You might ask them to close their eyes so that they can concentrate better. Ask them to begin to become aware of their breathing and slowly take deeper and deeper breaths: “Think about getting the air right down deep into your lungs, a little deeper with each breath.”

You’re encouraging them to breathe from their diaphragms, not to take the shallow ‘top of lung’ breaths that we often do.

Ask them each to put a hand on their diaphragm so that they can feel it move as they breathe.

You can give a count such as: “Breathe in 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and hold 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and out 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8” – repeating this a few times.

To aid concentration, ask them to listen to and identify sounds outside the room: “How many different sounds can you hear? Where are they coming from? What sort of sounds are they?”

If you know the group well enough, you can bring the focus to sounds inside the room but be ready for disruptive bodily noises that could so easily ruin your calming atmosphere!

Appropriate calming music can also be used.

Relaxing

When they are comfortably breathing in a slow, regular and deep fashion, move on to relaxation exercises. Start with the toes and work through the whole body to the head, asking the children to tense and then relax each set of muscles a couple of times, so: “Tense your toes, then relax them”, and repeat this before moving on to the tops of the feet, calves and so on.

When you get to the face, there are lots of muscles to experiment with!

At the end of your breathing and relaxation session, ask the children to open their eyes and shake out their fingers and toes. They should feel relaxed and ready for vocal work.

Vocal warm-ups

Tongue twisters

Children may well know some tongue twisters such as “‘Red lorry, yellow lorry…” or its evil twin – “Red lorry, yellow lorry, red leather, yellow leather…”; “Unique New York”, or, if you’re feeling very brave, “Peggy Babcock”. This last phrase really gives the tongue and lips a workout and it is very hard to keep repeating it, especially if you speed up.

Chewing gum

Something that is usually banned in the classroom, but ask the children to imagine that they are chewing some magic gum that gets bigger as you chew so that eventually your mouth and tongue are working overtime just trying to contain it. Finish with it magically disappearing with a pop or, if you’re so inclined, ask the children to remove it and all throw it to stick on the ceiling!

Mouthabet

Ask the children to put their tongues against the back of their lower front teeth and recite the alphabet. This gives the vocal chords and lips a good workout! It can be messy, though, so tilting the head back slightly helps to keep the floor clean…

Singing

Singing is a good vocal warm-up. Simple songs are best so that children can enjoy singing and open up their lungs. Rounds are an enjoyable way to start a vocal session. 

Rhythm and pace exercise

Take the first verse of William Blake’s text, The Tyger:

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Teach it to the children so that they can all deliver it clearly and on beat. Use a percussion instrument to mark time.

Display the words on a whiteboard or flip chart – an interactive whiteboard is best for this activity.

Once the children know the text off by heart, remove the second line so that they recite the text without it, keeping to time. Do the same with other lines.

Then include only the last word of each line so that the children mark time and just say “bright… night… eye… symmetry”.

Once the children have mastered this, use just a few words from different parts of the text so that children say, for example: “bright… forests… night… What… symmetry”.

You could develop this into a performance of the whole verse (or the whole text if you can) with different groups of children spread around the room, each delivering only some of the words, thus creating a spatial, choral work.

Point out to the children how this approach fits the nature of the text with its sense of magic and mysterious power, and how the sound coming from all around matches the idea of the forest where sounds can startle and surprise.

Understanding what you’re saying

This exercise is based on Matilda by Hilaire Belloc but can work equally well with any narrative text.

Either in groups or individually, ask the children to read the text and then create a storyboard version of it – like a simple comic strip with images showing the action and brief descriptions. This will help children to understand the events of the text and to order them correctly.

You can create a drama version of this using still pictures (also known as frozen pictures or tableaux) in which children ‘freeze’ into different positions to tell the story.

A third approach is to mime the story as it is read, thus linking an understanding of the action to the words of the text.

Learning the words

The best way to learn a text off by heart is by repetition, becoming so familiar with it that you don’t have to think about it: the words and their order become as familiar as the alphabet or counting to 100. However, there are dangers and limitations in this approach:

• Rote learning can kill meaning as children become over-familiar with the words and they are ‘just words’ with as much significance as a shopping list.

• Some children become quickly bored and the project loses focus and impetus.

• Children learn at different rates and have varying abilities; your star performer may be a slow learner and your fastest learner may bring little in the way of understanding or vocal interpretation.

Fortunately there are some simple techniques that can aid learning and bring some variety to the process. You can adapt these tips so that they can be used individually, in small groups or for a whole class learning the same text.

Notes

As children become familiar with a text, let them use cue cards with reminders on, perhaps of the first line of each verse or of particular lines or words that they find difficult to remember. In time, they won’t need these cards but, often, just the fact of having them if needed boosts confidence.

Vary your practice times

Slip in unannounced practices when the children least expect it, taking just a few moments to run through the text a couple of times. Make this fun and don’t labour the need to get it right. You can use all sorts of odd times in the day for this – recite as you walk to the swimming pool, or when queuing for lunch, for example. Why not take five minutes out in the middle of doing something else: down pens or calculators and recite the text twice, then go straight back to what you were doing. You will probably find that this quick change of focus is actually beneficial to what you were doing – how often have you got stuck on a crossword or Sudoku-type puzzle only to find that, if you go and do something else, on your return you know the answer?

Give each child a copy of the text and ask them to read it before they go to sleep as this is a good time to learn things.

Picture it

Teach the children to associate particular parts of the text with a striking image so that for “…who can defy the Law…” in Macavity – the Mystery Cat by T S Eliot, for example, they may think of a strong image of a cat telling off a police officer. Encourage them to use this technique for hard-to-remember sections.

Using the voice effectively

Help children to appreciate the power of the voice to convey meaning, not just by what is said but also by the way it is said.

Take the first verse of Macavity – the Mystery Cat by T S Eliot:

“Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw –

For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law.

He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:

For when they reach the scene of crime – Macavity's not there!”

And ask the children, working all together, to recite it with different emotions:

Unhappy (quiet, flat, even intonation)

delighted (lively, bouncy – smile as you speak)

mysterious (questioning, pausing to think – imagine there’s someone out of sight just behind you).

Ask them which is the most appropriate feeling for the words of the text.

Can they identify other parts of the text where they might add to the feeling by the way that they say the words, for example:

‘Mystery Cat’ – mysterious

‘master criminal’ – exaggerated like a film trailer

‘bafflement’ – confused (accompanied by head scratching)

‘Macavity's not there’ – mysterious

The children could mark up their copies of the text, picking out a few key words or phrases to deliver with a particular inflection.

You can encourage them to go over the top initially, putting in as much emphasis as they can, then, as they rehearse, they can refine their performances so that there is a good balance between the meaning, the emotional impact and the rhythm of the text.

Dealing with nerves

Most children and adults become nervous at the thought of performance and this may be exacerbated for those who take part in the competition with its requirement for solo performances of the texts. Here are some tips to tell the children:

• Prepare well with more rehearsal than you think you need, then, when you get nervous, think back over all the work you’ve done and tell yourself that you’re as ready as you possibly can be.

• Remember your breathing and relaxation exercises and make a conscious effort to breathe deeply before the performance so that your body is ready.

• Think back to a previous successful performance, perhaps in front of the class or in an assembly, and remind yourself how well it went – if it worked then, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work now!

• If you can, get to the venue early and stand on the performance space, work out how many steps there are from the ‘offstage’ area to your ‘spot’ – one less thing to worry about when the big moment comes!

• Decide where you will look while you perform the text. A good tip is to find something on the far wall which is just above your eyeline so that you are looking slightly up (such as a clock or exit sign), but this will vary from venue to venue so, again, check it out in advance if you can.

Group performances

When the children have run through a few of the workshop exercises, ask them to work in groups to deliver a group performance of one of the texts (or an extract). They will need to think about:

Rhythm

Clarity

How they will split the words between speakers

Which parts will be solo voice and which choral

Tone of voice

Emotion

They could also think about adding sounds such as the sound of the forest for Tyger, the meows of cats or things being broken for Macavity.

Ask them to rehearse their text (or extract) so that they are ready to perform it to the rest of the class and use this as an opportunity to develop critical skills, asking everyone what worked well and why.