secondary english

By Hannah Appleton Reframing or reimagining how we tackle Shakespeare in schools begins with our perception of it being boring, irrelevant or too difficult, especially if we teach in schools with high numbers of SEND, EAL or FSM. It is, however, precisely those complexities and layers Shakespearean texts provide, which… Read More

Academic writing just means that our students need to write in a formal manner that reflects their level of educational and is distinct from how they would converse orally or via text.  A good approach is to gradually introduce students to a range of ways in which they can ensure their writing is more academic.  I find it helpful to divide these into three aims: being concise, being precise, and being sophisticated. Read More

Reading is in vogue at the moment – and rightly so! Several factors have raised the priority of reading in schools. The number of students reading at home has slowly dwindled as the number of distractions has dramatically increased. Alongside this, the GCSE changes have also increased KS3 reading demand… Read More

Reading is in vogue at the moment – and rightly so! Several factors have raised the priority of reading in schools. The number of students reading at home has slowly dwindled as the number of distractions has dramatically increased. Alongside this, the GCSE changes have also increased KS3 reading demand… Read More

The impact of the disrupted nature of the last few years is perhaps most felt on the continuity which is key to progression. It is surely harder than ever to get a sense of just what level students transition with from the primary phase, given the gaps in learning and… Read More

‘The love that dare not speak its name’ is generally understood to be a euphemistic reference to homosexuality. The phrase is commonly associated with Oscar Wilde; indeed Wilde was cross-examined about it by the prosecuting counsel Charles Gill when he was put on trial in 1895. But the phrase has… Read More

Any teacher introducing King Lear in the classroom, whether for the first, or even the 20th time, can’t but help feel daunted by the sheer philosophical and emotional heft of Shakespeare’s most-studied tragedy. How do we convey the significance and complexity of its over-arching themes, such as power, loyalty and… Read More

‘If we can only preserve ourselves from growing up, we shall never grow old and the young may love us to the last,’ declared Dickens.  This call to protect the magic and wonder of childhood concluded his New Year’s Day essay, published in his magazine Household Words, almost exactly a… Read More

Gothic literary texts can take so many different forms, but they share a preoccupation with the crossing of boundaries: between life and death, the past and the present, ancient and modern, good and evil or more generally, between what is real and unreal. Gothic writers take their readers, then, across… Read More

The allegory of Animal Farm draws students in, like a puzzle to be ‘solved’: who are Mr Jones, Squealer and Moses ‘really’; what is the Windmill? Understanding the historical context for Orwell’s writing provides a satisfying ‘solution’ for students, but it can sometimes overshadow engagement with the text as fiction. The characters aren’t just metaphors, they are ‘real’ within the story; the novel is carefully structured by Orwell, its themes stretching beyond its immediate context and Orwell’s original intentions. Here are three key talking points to help students engage with Animal Farm’s story and themes, and three activities to help them see the text as a construction, open to conflicting interpretations. 3 discussion points with questions: Orwell was a committed socialist. Animal Farm is a criticism of totalitarianism, not socialism, but it’s not always been read this way. Let students engage with controversy over its publication, as well as aspects of the text that leave us questioning. 1. Socialism Orwell presents socialism as an ideal situation, where “everyone worked according to his capacity” (chapter 3), but it doesn’t last in Animal Farm. Ask your students: What causes the animals to rebel? How do they achieve success? What goes wrong? How does Orwell's metaphor make his meaning ambiguous e.g. with the animal 'types'? 'Animal Farm is doomed from the start': Is this a fair reading? Can animals/men maintain equal control in a democracy, or is it inevitable that some will rise and some sink? 2. Power and propaganda Orwell maintained that the key passage in the novel was the creation of ‘special rations’ for the pigs, agreed by all of the pigs. Ask your students: What allows the pigs to take control? Does Orwell suggest power always corrupts? What kind of a leader is Napoleon? Would Snowball have been any different? How is the idea of totalitarianism still relevant today? 3. Freedom of speech Orwell struggled to find a publisher at a time when Stalin was an ally, and saw this as cowardly censorship, saying that “Liberty is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” Ask your students: Squealer’s propaganda is clearly harmful, but is Benjamin’s silence also damaging? How does Orwell emphasise the power of words? Should we be able to say or write what we want? Are spoken words different to published ones? Should artists be political?    3 activities: 1. Understanding structure Once students have read the text, get them to summarise key events in each chapter. They can then come up with a short title for each instead of the existing numbers. As well as being a good revision tool, this helps in understanding narrative arc, or patterns in the structure. An additional aide is to sequence the titles in a storyboard, each illustrated with a key symbol e.g. Chapter 1 might become “Working Together”, “Beasts of England”, or simply “Comrades”, with an accompanying image of two animals singing together. 2. Understanding genre and setting Get students to ‘redesign’ the allegorical framework of the novel by planning a retelling or a film remake of Animal Farm, but changing the setting. The story could take place in: the Amazon jungle or African savannah a typical secondary school (this might prove controversial…) using popular toys (as in the film Toy Story) Afterwards, ask the class how choice of setting introduces other meanings e.g. awareness of existing stereotypes, or conflicting interpretations. How does this relate to the setting of Animal Farm? 3. Reading through different eyes Give students cards with roles or perspectives to adopt: this could be done in small groups (where students discuss their different ‘readings’ of the text) or as a whole-class, for instance, through hot-seating. A good starting point is to use a range of characters from the text to explain their version of events: roles might include Jones, Squealer, Snowball, Benjamin, Clover, Boxer, Moses, etc. This can then be expanded to encourage students to move beyond their own readings. Ideas for groupings might be: Different interests: a primary-school student, an older student, a teacher, a parent, an artist/film-maker Social roles: owner/employer, administrator, office worker, farm or factory worker, soldier, journalist Critical perspectives: Marxist, feminist, New Historicist, psychoanalytical. (These perspectives would need scaffolding e.g. with key questions – a way of simplifying them might be to give students cards with a reading ‘focus’ e.g. political, social, historical, emotional.) By Lucy Toop, a freelance writer and secondary English teacher in South London, and author of the introduction to the Collins Classroom Classics edition of Animal Farm. Read More