Novel Extract 2

Harris, in his alleyway at 11.20am knew none of this.  The delivery van was still blocking the alley, and water was pouring from a ruptured pipe in the wall of the wounded coffee shop; the alley was a mass of puddles and chunks of masonry.  He tried his mum again: again no luck.  Putting his phone onto a battery-saving mode, he weighed up his options.  As far as he knew, a terrorist attack was ongoing and the city was a dangerous place.  He had found temporary shelter, but realised it was pretty restrictive if he was spotted by someone wishing to do him harm.  He would be better, he reasoned, in a more open space, but one with plenty of hard cover.  How would the parks be? Would they be as hectic as the streets?  With no way of knowing, he set off down the other end of the alley, where the passage was narrower, and emerged in Chinatown, staying on the narrow streets.  Things were quieter here.  Helicopters were still hovering overhead, and the roar of crowds could be heard, but it all felt a little more distant, like the back streets of a busy seaside town in August.  Harris felt himself relax, and he considered his next move.  If he headed down past Piccadilly, he could get to St James park.  Or, with a little more effort, he could head to Hyde Park, which was bigger and a little further out, and therefore possibly safer.  He decided to head towards the West End, skirting Piccadilly as much as possible.  He fought against crowds in several places, and Pall Mall turned out to be almost as busy as Charing Cross, but he found himself in Green Park by midday, discovering it to be relatively quiet.  A few people he’d met on the way had given him snippets of information.  It seemed that the terrorists were brutal, exacting physical, manual violence on Londoners rather than shooting or bombing them.  Apparently one person had seen a group of individuals being eaten alive by their assailants.  Harris’ head span.  He still couldn’t get hold of his mother, and was still no closer to discovering what was going on.  He’d realised the Guardian had gone down at about 11.50, when an error screen kept being returned.  Twenty minutes later, his signal had gone altogether, including his 4G.  He was without means of communication, huddled under an oak in the least revered royal park in London.  He quietly sobbed, hiding himself as best he could under his coat as rain began to fall.

              A sudden flash and eruption of flame interrupted his misery.  It came from somewhere around Park Lane, and was joined with a second plume of smoke and fire.  The sound reached him a moment later, a heavy thudding roar.  Pieces of flaming debris were scattering around him, hurled into the air by the explosions.  Harris could see tall flames emerging from the source of the chaos, licking the walls of the high hotels and apartment blocks, a smear of black smoke on the blue sky.  So it was terrorists, he thought.  They were going for the symbols of wealth and inequality, no doubt.  He glanced across the trees to spot the heights of the Shard, peeping over the oaks and rooftops; a moment of clarity came in the realisation that he was sitting only a few hundred yards from Buckingham Palace.  He began to run.

              He was stopped by another immense crowd of people, many of whom were screaming and crying.  They were jostling and elbowing past one another, like an aggressive glacier.  There was no hope of crossing the stream, and Harris had no desire to join it.  There was no choice but to wait, so he ducked into a clothes shop that seemed to have been looted – garments were strewn on the floor and windows were smashed; no one was around.  The place smelled stale, with a tangy odour Harris put down to the vandals.  He squatted in a corner, hidden by some racks of jeans, and took out his phone again, only to discover there was still no signal of any kind.  Turning it off to preserve battery, he looked around at his situation.  The steady stream of people continued outside, and he could see the other side of the road, where people were leaning from windows, frantically looking at the events unfold.  There was a brief flash of blue lights and a moment of a siren which then died to nothing.  The shop was wrecked.  He hadn’t noticed how the ceiling was caving in, wires and light fittings dangling; glimpses of upstairs apartments with potted plants and book cases could be seen through the apertures. There seemed to be no logical reason for such destruction.  Harris pondered this for a moment and then noticed a figure, watching him from the far corner of the shop, a silhouette against the bright inlaid lighting advertising Givenchy and Boss scents.  Harris held up his hand in greeting, but the person didn’t move.  They appeared to be looking intently in his direction, and seemed totally uninterested in the crowds outside; Harris shifted his weight to offset the cramp that was developing in his thighs and tried speaking.  “Hiya, you ok?”

              The response was immediate and horrifying, as the figure leapt at Harris in a single, fleeting movement.  Harris turned and dived under the customer desk, banging his head hard on the wood, hurriedly drawing in his exposed legs as the other person reached for them.  The light was now illuminating the other, and Harris could see grey skin, shrivelled and worn features and empty eye sockets. The smell was incredible, and almost made him pass out.  Screaming in terror, he backed away, under the desk as the creature crawled towards him, clutching for his feet blindly.  The stench was unbelievable, and was choking Harris, bringing tears to his eyes.  The monster was wearing a grey, matted and filthy dress, in blue and gold, and had a necklace dangling around its neck; it swiped at Harris’ eyes with thin and discoloured fingers, the tips worn to bone like dinosaur’s claws.  Harris kicked at it with all his might, landing a few solid blows on the jaw of the thing, which promptly broke off and shot across the floor like a rat.  It rose, standing over Harris, its head shrunken and strangely imbalanced; with electric speed it lunged at him, but he managed to roll out of the way and struggle to his feet. Heart racing, he cast his eyes around for anything that could be useful.  A fire extinguisher was a possibility.  Footsteps behind him as he closed his fingers around the nozzle of the extinguisher alerted him that the creature was close, so he wildly swung the heavy metal cylinder in a wide arc, using its momentum.  Blind luck had it connect with the thing’s head, and its skull shattered into powder and small fragments.  The rest of the body continued to move for a few seconds, clawing ineffectually at him as he danced out of the way, extinguisher discarded on the floor.  After a longer time than felt reasonable, the remains collapsed onto the chequered floor of the fashion shop and were still.  Harris let his back slide down the wall; exhausted, he too slumped onto the floor, breathing heavily.  He now realised tears were shiny and sticky on his cheeks and his back ached terribly.  The crowd was thinning outside, but he could do nothing but rest.  But there would be no way he would shut his eyes.

The Reading Festival?

This started off as a pun on the name of a fairly damp and uninspiring town in the UK, known for its vast music festival every August.  Once I had noticed the potential hilarity behind this pun, nothing could stop me beavering away on this poster for a fairly embriotic Reading Festival in my school in the autumn term.

Now I have my title, and my poster, it's time to start thinking about what a reading festival would actually consist of.  A festival suggest chaotic life and many activities occurring simultaneously.  This can be hard to arrange in the strict environs of a secondary school.  However, I am now responsible for primary transition and recruitment in English, with close working links with several primaries, so I see potential there for something really quite large scale.

What would be the aim of a reading festival?  Well, primarily it has to be a celebration of books and the joys of reading and learning from fiction.  Every teacher knows the pitfalls here, and the sadness that encroaches on us when students fail to share our enthusiasm, so I must tread carefully.  Reading challenges and competitions are a staple of such affairs, and I will endeavour to include many of these crowd-pleasers.  Public readings are vital too - potentially from teachers in role, masquerading as Dickens, Shakespeare and Jane Austen.  This would lend a sense of Horrible-Histories excitement to proceedings.  Tutor time activities and lunchtime diversions are a must, for the whole week (or two days, depending on my energy levels), and some kind of grand finale is required.

I am going to sit and ponder ideas that will be added to this blogpost, but in the meantime, if you have a cool idea please let me know.  Similarly, if you've attempted anything similar and have stories to share, I'll be happy to add them to this blog!

Units of work with overarching narratives

The council had decided it.  The beautiful village needed a bypass, and quickly.  Deaths on the main road had been occurring all too often, and it was time to act.  Three potential routes were established, and the villagers quickly decided on the route best for them, their families and their businesses.  Just as the contest between the routes  was getting fierce, the local vicar was killed in a hit and run incident.  There were rumours of murder…

So goes the storyline of a KS3 transactional writing/speaking unit of work that I have taught for several years.  Units of work that focus on the writing of news articles, letters, speeches and the like can be incredibly boring to teach and to learn from.  Endless lessons of writing different, meaningless letters to imaginary people can really wear down the motivation of even the happiest students, and are anathema to those who find school to be an annoyance.  I just couldn’t bear to put my students through this hell, so a few years back I trawled my imagination and dredged my memory for some way of making a unit of this type fun.  Year 8 English lessons from my own past swam into focus: a village, that every student is a ‘resident’ of, with careers, social anxieties, relationships, friendships and deep seated rivalries.  This was a unit of work I remembered well, delivered by my teacher of the time, Mr Fox.  And it was certainly memorable.  I barely remember any peers (apart from close friends) from my school days, but I certainly remember us all in the drama studio, acting our parts with gusto, arguing and back-biting about the pros and cons of Bypass Route A.  Happy days indeed, so it made eminent sense to steal this unit, give it some more flourishes and develop it for a full transactional writing unit.

The Village - drawn on MS Paint (I'm a masochist).

The reasons this unit work so well are two-fold.  One, it embeds character development into the scheme, giving the students open-ended opportunity to flesh out their villager, giving them traits, back-stories, motives and relationships.  This leads to very rich and detailed Speaking and Listening activities, and gives them an opportunity to add a very strong voice to their writing.  Two, it has an over-arching narrative: a story, that gives all of the written and spoken tasks a distinct purpose and flavour.  Yes, it is a fiction, and I imagine some would argue that transactional writing in a world of fiction is meaningless.  I would take issue with this, as the fictional world is grounded in reality and deals with real issues, but still: there is ample room to create narrative units entirely based in reality.

So, the story of the village and its problems provides a backdrop to a range of written and spoken tasks.  Travel guides or Wikipedia entries can be written for the village itself (writing to inform/describe for different audiences); character biographies can be drafted (writing to entertain and develop character); newspaper reports and editorials can be written, with a focus on the difference between certain newspaper types/audiences; even obituaries and epitaphs, for the poor dead vicar, can be written – it sounds macabre but the students enjoy trying this formal and prescriptive style for a change.  Spoken tasks can include speeches from characters about their opposition to council plans; drama activities based around protests and village hall meetings; full on debates, even.  There’s plenty of scope for elongating or shortening the unit as you see fit.  I found myself adding a sub-plot about finding old manuscripts in the ancient cottage - this involved the class decoding and creating a cohesive storyline from a differentiated range of renaissance-18th Century text excerpts.  This acted as a pleasant taster for the next term's unit of work - Twelfth Night.

The students love it, of course.  It’s very engaging, but obviously this isn’t the be-all and end-all.  They learn an awful lot, too.  With their defenses down, they absorb the skills and knowledge quickly, as it all makes more sense, with their writing linked to a central narrative.  It all means something, and adds to the overall story.  They can follow their tasks through, recognising that writing a sub-par news report on the Vicar’s death would show a lack of respect, and would not be print-worthy.  They make their editorials truly powerful and persuasive, as they really want a certain by-pass route to be successful.  Thus, their learning and practice of technical aspects, such as punctuation, leap in quality.  It’s astonishing how ‘real’ the whole thing can become, to the point where the students end up leading the narrative, taking it to strange new places.  For example, we ended up doing some creative writing based on animals being displaced from their homes.  A pupil had chanced upon an old episode of Animals of Farthing Wood and wanted to use it.  And it worked brilliantly, with excerpts from Wind in the Willows analysed, and the whole theory and technique of anthropomorphism explored.

Creating story-driven schemes is time-consuming, but very rewarding.  I aim to storify all of my KS3 units in this way - I'm currently sorting out a First World War unit where the progress of the war is tracked by poetry and the biographies of Sassoon and Owen - and I believe that this will create English lessons that will be remembered for a long time.  There are limits, of course.  It would be unfeasible to create a narrative line in some units, I'm sure - but be imaginative.  Media units or transactional writing units can always be given a narrative (I have a Yr 9 writing unit built around the story of a decaying amusement park), and poetry units should be given some kind of central focus or tenet.  Novel and play units have their own narrative, of course, and I feel any persuasive module, either spoken or written, should have a story or major project at its heart.  

Ofsted Report: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Inspection Judgements:

The Achievement of Pupils is Satisfactory.

Pupils at Hogwarts have access to a reasonably wide range of esoteric qualifications, suited to its key demographic.  As an independent school, it does not have to follow the National Curriculum closely; however, it is disappointing to note that basic requirements such as English, Mathematics and Religious Education are all lacking or entirely missing from the school's syllabus.  This has had adverse effects on all students, many of whom have never even been taught basic KS1 or 2 literacy.  A few students have attended state or independent primary schools, and these students typically perform very well in contrast to their peers.

The majority of students appear to be under-performing, with most pupils struggling in all their lessons, most of which appear to be set at too challenging a level.  One particular class, which seemed to be based on A-Level chemistry, proved too difficult for even the most proficient students.  Only one pupil managed to complete the lesson objectives, mainly thanks to his use of an annotated text book.  However, certain subjects appear to be either very short-term, or far too easy for the majority of students.  An outdoors lesson was observed where students made very little progress over several lessons, simply performing the same repetitive tasks again and again, counting and feeding small maggot-like creatures.  Clearly the curriculum requires an overhaul to bring literacy and numeracy levels up to the appropriate level for such a prestigious establishment.

Extra-curricular activities are well-established at the school, with chess clubs, animal care groups and 'duelling clubs' all vying for popularity.  There is a definite sense of social responsibility among some students,  with evidence of a student-led campaign to get the canteen workers more breaks and holiday time.  The school library is underused, and often totally empty.  The librarian has no idea why this is the case.

The sixth form is indistinguishable from the main school, as the students all remain on to study to the age of eighteen.  The subjects offered remain the same, though with more rigorous examinations.  End of KS4 results are generally average, whereas end of KS5 results this year were disrupted by unforeseen and external events.  Students typically go into government posts, journalism or remain unemployed.

The Quality of Teaching is Unsatisfactory

Teaching at Hogwarts is generally very old-fashioned and lets the students down considerably.  Lessons are formulaic and, other than the occasional impressive display of skills from teaching staff, are dull and lifeless.  Lessons all too often revolve around tedious rote-work and use of text books.  The study of History is particularly poor, with very little teacher interaction and no group work of any kind.  Students were frequently found to be asleep during these lessons and, on one occasion, the teacher was also sleeping at their desk.  Clearly this is not good enough, and suggests that Senior Leadership need to have far more rigorous CPD in place for struggling teachers, alive or dead.

Teachers have very high expectations of their pupils - often far too high for their age and ability.  Again, during chemistry, the teacher was seen to display entirely unfounded expectations of a Year 7 class who could barely keep up with his description of various chemicals, poisons and antidotes.  Students in this class were often punished for their lack of prior knowledge - a worrying trend that the senior leaders of the school need to counter as soon as possible.

Assessment for Learning is not well implemented at Hogwarts school.  In fact, students seemed only rarely to be given assessments of any kinds, and homework tasks are often over-long and irrelevant (usually essay based).  Starters and plenaries are very rare, and usually students enter classrooms with a genuine fear of what they may be expected to achieve.  Tasks within lessons are often over-long and repetitive, lacking anything other than brief modelling from the teacher.  Lessons all appear to be two hours long, but it is hard to say exactly what fills this time, with lessons often dedicated to a single activity with little teacher feedback beyond simple criticism.  As such, the pace of learning is very slow in most subjects - most notably chemistry, biology, PE (which seems to disappear after Year 7) and charms.

The Behaviour and Safety of Pupils is Unsatisfactory

 Frankly, the quality of safety provision for students at Hogwarts is totally unacceptable.  Despite having a highly qualified, capable and over-worked school nurse, many severe and significant injuries have occurred in recent years.  The main sport played by the school, entirely internally, is incredibly dangerous and should be reviewed by the HSE immediately.  Several injuries from wildlife have occurred in recent months, with trees and large flying animals usually to blame - these hazards are not successfully monitored or kept safe by any member of staff other than the groundsman.  This kind of Health and Safety brief is not usually in the remit of a groundskeeper, and it is our recommendation that more staff are drafted in to help with this task.  There have been several deaths in recent years, all on site.  The recent loss of the previous headteacher was a severe blow to the school's reputation, and many parents have removed their children from the premises.  The headmaster's death went entirely unexplained, though rumours that a pupil murdered him are almost certainly hyperbole.  The death of a Year 12 student during an international competition was also kept from the newspapers, and the effects are still being felt across the school.  This summer, the school was disrupted by riots and pitched battles between rival sectors of the community.  Whether the school was an incidental victim of this outburst of aggression, or an active part of it, is unknown to the inspectors.  Significant damage was wreaked on the school buildings, with certain wings now closed for repairs.  In short, at present Hogwarts is a very unsafe environment for all students and staff.

Behaviour of students is very poor indeed.  Staff seem to maintain their grip on the school using threats of violence, and yet student disruption is at high levels.  Most of the worst behaviour seems to be focused around one particular 'house' within the school's pastoral system, but despite this clear correlation, no positive action has been taken.  Bullying is a very common occurrence  and is not dealt with very well by the pastoral team, which consists of some of the strictest staff members in the school.  Often the bullying between students can become physical aggression very quickly, with some students causing each other actual bodily harm.  The bullying of students by staff is at unacceptable levels, with some students singled out from an early age for grudges that seem to date back decades.  Most of these issues stem from the high levels of insular relationships that form in the school, between staff and pupils.  Much of this stems from the unsatisfactory usage of a house system, which seems only to make the students more insular.  Cross-house friendships are very rare and often mocked by other students, and even staff.  One house in particular seems to be very isolated, with students from all other houses declaring them 'evil', 'sly' and other derogatory terms; with a common room located in a cold and damp basement, and a Head of House who spends a great deal of time out of school, it is perhaps no surprise that the students are struggling.  Looking at the records, the House Championship has been corrupt for some time, with clear preferential treatment given to some houses over others.

The Leadership and Management of the school is Satisfactory

Until his death, the previous headteacher had a very strong reputation in the local community and had steered the school through some difficult times.  However, accusations of favoritism dogged his career, and his lack of investment in quality teaching led to some very poor staff choices, including the appointment of unskilled staff for Divination (a spurious subject that has no academic rigour) and the constant poor selection of teachers for the difficult role of Defence Against the Dark Arts (a PSHE subject).  After the headteacher's death, the school was run by the Chemistry teacher, rather than the established deputy.  The reasons for this are unclear, but it is certain that it had a detrimental affect on the school and its students, many of whom were impossible to locate during our time at the school, suggesting serious problems with the school's safeguarding procedures.  Since the death of the last headteacher, there has been no clear line of authority for child-protection matters, with the issue usually left to arcane and vague concepts such as 'love' and making sure students are 'sent to live with relatives until the age of 17' to keep them 'safe'.  Middle management is a tier that seems not to exist, with the headteacher taking sole responsibility over every aspect of the school.  This is not an efficient model, and it is recommended that the school create a new tier of management to help the current headteacher with her workload.

Hogwarts School is awarded a grade of 4 (unsatisfactory)

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