Isolate and explore - How to teach non-fiction

How to teach: English - Chris Curtis 2019

Isolate and explore
How to teach non-fiction

The ability to spot good texts to use with students is developed through trial and error, but when you find a good text, you don’t let it go. One of my favourites, because it is more relevant today than ever, is Jack London’s The People of the Abyss. In the book, he explores (as an outsider) what it is like to live in poverty in the slums of Victorian London. The following extract explores the sad issue of child mortality:

I have talked with these children, here, there, and everywhere, and they struck me as being bright as other children, and in many ways even brighter. They have most active little imaginations. Their capacity for projecting themselves into the realm of romance and fantasy is remarkable. A joyous life is romping in their blood. They delight in music, and motion, and colour, and very often they betray a startling beauty of face and form under their filth and rags.

But there is a Pied Piper of London Town who steals them all away. They disappear. One never sees them again, or anything that suggests them. You may look for them in vain amongst the generation of grown-ups. Here you will find stunted forms, ugly faces, and blunt and stolid minds. Grace, beauty, imagination, all the resiliency of mind and muscle, are gone.2

When presenting a text like this to students, I unpick one thread or idea first. Commonly, teachers will give students a list of questions designed to elicit understanding and engagement. I prefer something as simple as:

Give me three reasons why the writer uses the comparative ’brighter’ to describe the children in the slums.

They give me the following reasons:

1 It highlights how they are the only good thing about this place.

2 There is a sense of optimism and hope that they could survive.

3 To suggest how the children are born innocent and happy, but the setting changes them.

4 To suggest how the children are similar to children in other parts of the country.

5 To create a sense of tragedy.

I remind them I only asked for three. Then I ask students to develop their interpretation further. How do you know that the children are the only good thing about the place?

You get students saying that the writer describes their ’blood’ as joyous and then describes the rest of the people as ’stunted’ and ’ugly’. It is at this point that you can clarify any misreadings or misunderstandings. It also forces students to make links across the text to justify an interpretation: all things that they will need to do at GCSE.

What this approach does is help you and the students to look at the text as a whole rather than as a catalogue of techniques. A comprehension task is OK, but it doesn’t address the ’how’ and the ’why’ in enough detail for me. It ends up being a search and find activity. I like pulling the thread and seeing where it goes. Detailed understanding comes from detailed analysis, which, in turn, comes from obsessing over the nuances. Take the ’Pied Piper of London’. Pull and pull on that thread and see what you find:

✵ Pied Piper — removed rats and children — so connection between children and vermin.

✵ Pied Piper was a popular German legend.

✵ The parents never saw their children again as a result of his actions.

✵ Parents were responsible.

✵ Initially, the Pied Piper was seen as a saviour and do-gooder, but then as evil and villainous.

Comprehension tasks often focus on the techniques rather than the ideas. Put the ideas at the front and you can talk effectively about the choices the writer makes. If you start thinking solely about choices, then you struggle to explain the ideas behind them. We do need to change the dynamic in reading. Lead with ideas and not language choices.