How to teach: English - Chris Curtis 2019

Knowledge of the text
How to teach novels

It can be surprising how much knowledge students have about storytelling. They regularly consume stories on TV and in film, yet they tend not to draw on that knowledge in the classroom. The job of the teacher here is, again, to show them the relevance of the knowledge they have of storytelling conventions. How the Marvel film Thor starts is relevant. How the makers of a science fiction programme introduce each new baddie is relevant. How EastEnders keeps several plots running at once is relevant. Our students have experienced thousands of openings, endings, developments, deaths and characters, and it is our job to draw on that. I tend to start with questions like:

✵ Why don’t we have three characters called Bob who each have blonde hair and glasses in one story?

✵ Why don’t villains wear T-shirts emblazoned with the phrase ’I am the story’s bad guy so now watch me do bad stuff’?

✵ Two characters have spent years getting together. Now they’re getting married and it is perfect. What happens next?

These are narrative conventions that every student knows. They know that we don’t have three Bobs because it would be confusing for the reader. They know that villains are not identified from the beginning to make the story more surprising and unpredictable. They know that just when things seem perfect, something will go wrong. It is important to use this knowledge.

At my school, we teach a unit on Victorian villains and a key part of that relates to their own knowledge of such characters. We have compared Mr Squeers from Nicholas Nickleby to the Penguin from Batman: both are given physical attributes to imply their evil nature. The more students are aware of and able to discuss techniques for characterisation and plot, the better they will be able to recognise them in texts and use them in their own writing.

Interesting questions to ask of students are:

✵ What is your experience of this genre or type of story?

✵ What is your knowledge of this type of storytelling?

✵ What is your knowledge of characters?

✵ What is your knowledge of settings?

The knowledge of how stories work is hidden somewhere in the student’s brain. We don’t really need to teach it, we just need to bring it to the forefront. This story starts with no description of the setting. Is that common? Why do you think the writer has done that? We need to take students’ knowledge, secure it and improve it.