Training Trainee Teachers

Last week I had the joy of working with year two and three pupils training to become primary and early years teachers at the University of the West of England in Bristol. The day started fresh and cold with a brief introduction by myself and the diverse projects I've been lucky to run; highlighting that in many ways I am in a very similar position to themselves with respect to learning the craft of working with primary aged pupils.

After initially gathering an understanding of their expectations of the session and what they understood the concept of Storywalks to be, we then journeyed into the wild woods of Bristol in both heart and mind, straddling the line between fact and fiction as Storywalks can do so very well.

I had prepped up two tales, one for the morning and another for the afternoon, each with different strengths and target audiences, but we started with The Forest Tree King and found ourselves comparing our favourite leaves on the woodland floor just five minutes from the UWE campus.

I insisted that we take it in turns to read the narrative and as they were all training to become teachers I knew there would be no shortage of competent readers. Usually the first chapter to this tale is read by myself or the leading teacher then the pupils take it in turns reading to their small group so all get a chance to read.

During the narrative I was also able to reflect on the language used inside the story, how one character could use mathematical words like symmetrical and balanced while and another could use translucent. There was much debate within the story on the winner of each round followed by an analysis of why this task was useful learning.

On return to the classroom on both morning and afternoon sessions we pulled the story apart in much the same way I do with KS1 and KS2 pupils, followed by a work shop developing new characters and story to sew into the storyline. There was also a discussion on how this could and should be integrated into current schemes of work rather than be a modular add on.

There was also a debate about outdoor learning really suiting specific learner profiles with anecdotal evidence of individual pupils who'd hardly uttered in class but once outside they really blossomed as if the physicality of the classroom environment was a learning inhibitor. I wonder if step changes were made to their education after this blossoming or did the classroom suppress them once again when back inside?

As educators I believe we must try to observe and quantify this if it's at all possible and it also questions what research has already  been garnered by Forest Schools or similar in this area.

The day was especially interesting to me and has really engaged a new depth of thought regarding the possible potential of Storywalks in education. I was honoured to be invited to the University and champion both Storywalks and my literacy practice, it was great to see how the pupils were itching to integrate these works somehow into their future practice and I really hope to facilitate this in the future.

Talking Storywalks at Taunton CICCIC

Last night I was asked by the Somerset Art Galleries Trust (SAGT) to do a talk about myself as an artist and current practice. The event was at Taunton's Creative Innovation Centre or CICCIC for short and is a welcome hive of creativity within our county town.

Initially I talked about Storywalks and talked far too quickly about something which is simple but does take time for people to ingest. I then moved on to the Coleridge Way projects covering two of the three elements and completely forgetting the third! So many projects, so much going on in my mind - which to share first?

One element which wasn't forgotten was the QR code poetry of which the final tiles were installed in late September this year. This project involved poetry written by local pupils which I turned into QR Codes then laser etched them onto slate and finally installed on finger posts along the trail. In the image above Martin Joiner is scanning a QR code with his mobile phone and revealing a single poem from one pupil.

More about these from The Coleridge Way blog here.

The final section of my talk was about the Poetry Pin Project, which again revolves around digitally placing text to be electronically revealed using the smart phone browser. It uses the same system as the Storywalk's engine to power it, responding to where you are located as to whether you can read the poetry or not. After a while of talking about this I was interrupted with the words 'So can we have a poem then please?'

Of course I said yes and promptly pulled out my pink file and read two of my Poetry Pin Poems.

This poem sums up the autonomy of the project and even though it's financed by EDF Energy, they have no say over the content.

The Firm

Cut the ribbon
Prime the reactor
Pull the rods with the Chinese contractors
All smiles and shine to the chain reaction
Atomic construction policy distraction
Ramp it up till it's critical
Balancing parameters with the theoretical
Systems run and systems set
Black marks in history are hard to forget

So who'll be the first to charge their phone
Switch on the light Hoover the home
Who'll be the first to suck on this dial
Drink from the elixir of Frankenstein's vial

Who'll be the one who clocks up the bill
Plugs in their heater when the night turns to chill
Who'll despair when the future arrives
Energy poverty - pounds in the eyes

16 billion to prime this machine
But the profits oh the profits are far from lean

And we need this, we need this
For the dying and the poor
For the little old lady with white wellies by the door
For the child born early in the plastic box
For the factories and museums and the charity shops

For the tired
For the cold
For the vulnerable
For the old
For the good
For the many
For the pious
(If there are any)
For the darkness
For the ride
For the slowly rising tide
For the frail
For the infirm
And for the directors of this firm

I feel that when I lead any project it's important to get stuck in with whatever task I am asking people to do, and for the Poetry Pin Project I realised early on that if I am going to ask people to walk the trail and post site specific poetry I should do it myself.

Just before the end of the evening I set a challenge to each of the audience in turn with my Teasing Tags, the challenge goes a little like this.

You are welcome to take a teasing tag, but only on one condition, thatif you do, then you can only read it when you have forgotten you ever had it!

All but one accepted the challenge and above is Jenni Dutton revealing hers, not because she had forgotten, but more because she was being mischievous! But then the whole thing is playful and bending the rules is certainly part of that.

I wrapped up the evening with a simple message from one of my teasing tags.

Halsway Manor and Tales from the Trees

Josh Wedderkopp (Lead Teacher) Clare Viner (Storyteller) and Rebekah West (Quantock Ranger)

Sometimes events roll past so fast that it's tricky to capture all the fabulous things which are going on. Mid October saw the culmination of part one of Stogumber and Crowcombe Primary Schools with Storyteller Clare Viner.

The event was the culmination of several walks on the Quantocks with Quantock ranger Rebekah West and Clare Viner. 

They walked several routes but each focused on a different tree and a different story in the Quantock hills. So a tale about Sir Gwain and the Green Knight was told beneath a Holly tree and The Elder Mother story beneath an Elder tree.

The pupils were only told the stories once but tasked with orally retelling them at Halsway manor for this special event. They had no script nor props beyond a simple token medallion from their mother trees which meant each pupil needed to learn the bones of their story off my heart. 

A big emphasis was put on embellishment of each tale with the pupils adding descriptions in their own voices, a brilliant process which generates personal ownership of their tale.

On the night Clare was also signing copies of her book also called 'The Emerald Dragon' with many of these stories being drawn from the Quantocks and local area. For the pupils not only did they have some great stories to tell, but they also had Josh, Clare (and a little of me) guiding and encouraging them to become storytellers in their own right.

On the evening all the children really rose to the task with plenty of parents and helpers cramming into the oak panelled rooms for the evening.

The event was also recored in audio for 10Radio with the pupils taking direct control of the interviews, it is due to be aired sometime in the new year. 

 

After Christmas I will be stepping up to the plate with Josh Wedderkopp who won the SHINE Trust award to pilot storywalks earlier this year. Our plan is to take these tales and task the pupils with tethering them to the Quantocks hills using the Storywalk Engine and in the process gather some great learning from geography to literacy along the way.

But in the mean time I think we should celebrate the success of all the pupils at the Halsway Storytelling event, they were superb.

The Crowcombe and Stogumber School blog which has more detail of the storywalks with their school can be read here.

http://www.crowcombeandstogumberprimaryschools.co.uk/look-what-we-did1/news/storywalks-quantocks/

Stogumber Storywalk

Last weekend was the brilliant Stogumber Festival with a diverse range of music, dancing and singing already on their agenda they asked if I would be part of the festivities with a Storywalk. Of course I said yes, but even better would be to work with Stogumber C of E School and involve their pupils in the writing.

After a little preparation I worked up the beginning and end to a story which involved the church gargoyles coming to life and exploring the village. The middle of the story was deliberately left free as I knew this was where the pupils would add their streaks of genius.

On the first morning we stepped out on the secret trail and it immediately became an explorational adventure of 'what if's?' and 'what could happen here?' - which is essential to enable the story to evolve. Children can be incredibly creative and fluid under the right circumstances and when they understand they have the freedom and liberty to do so it can be quite a roller coaster ride of possibilities.

       'Long before the sculptors mallet hit chisel, long before the stone itself was lifted from the earth with block and tackle, they slept. Eons of time passed and the rock was compressed and squeezed, heated and formed by mantle pressures, and inside the little ones still slept on. The massive bed rock rose and lifted on unimaginable forces until its peeks became hill tops, and rivers cut valleys through it's heart.'

In the Storywalk world every corner becomes a myriad of possibilities, every crook and dip a place for their 'gargoyle' to explore and investigate. Who made those scratches on that gate? Why is there a dogs bone left here? Who ate it? 

In my mind it's the questions which write the stories and the stories which ask the questions, often it is just the starting point with the very first question which is the hardest.

     'Chip Chip Chip went the beetle on the chisel and the sense of the beast within began to awaken.'

Thankfully though Stogumber church had these stunning carvings which are a story teller's gift. Interestingly they are know locally as hunky punks rather than gargoyles, the difference being that a gargoyle has a water spout which casts roof water off the battlements, where as the hunky punks are purely decorative and designed to guard the church from evil.

The workshop day with Stogumber School went like a dream, the storywalk engine delivered all elements in order (and where expected) so when back in the class we swiftly mapped up the adventure then embarked on some creative writing. All the pupils are in years 5 and 6, and even with the tight time constraints of a single day, every child was able to write their piece and upload to the storywalk engine.

     'On the eighth day The Gargoyles wings were long and transparent as glass. It's teeth as sharp as a knife, super scaly body and he was two metres tall.'

Over the following few days I made the walk 'festival ready' and added a couple of flourishes to balance out the blood thirsty adventures the pupils had written!

Sunday was the final day of the festival and (bar a few technical glitches) the story was very well received. For me this was a single step in engaging with Stogumber school's pupils through Storywalks. In the new year I am due back in as the pupils teacher, Josh Wedderkopp, recently won a grant from the SHINE Trust to raise literacy and learning with his pupils. So in January the very first thing we'll be doing is re-reading and re-walking this story and then go back into the 'what if' questions and see where they take us. 

If you would like to integrate a Storywalk with your school, with either myself or Claire Vowell of Norton St Philip school Frome, then please do get in touch. For Storywalk experience days we arrive equipped with 3G iPads and a story ready to roll, together we will read, then geolocate new text by your pupils, and hopefully ignite their imaginations through making literature a little more physical.

For more info please see storywalks.info

Poetry from the edge of the world

Last year in 2013 I placed five story boxes along the Coleridge Way and had over 1000 people touch and interact with them over the three months residency.

This year the story boxes are back, but I was also asked to place some poetry boxes in the Valley of Rocks. The idea of both of these projects is really simple, a book in a box, tied to a bench, you find one, add a little and then leave. 

So I deployed six Coleridge Way story boxes (locations listed here) and also tethered six poetry boxes in the Valley of Rocks, Lynton. We have again been staggered by the volume of written content, within the first 8 days two poetry boxes were full and now two months in we have a shelf full of them! Amazing.

Part of the project was to digitally share, piping images of book pages through Twitter and Facebook so people could virtually follow as well as physically. Often the tags of #Poetry #ValleyofRocks and #Devon get the most attention, but you should follow @storywalks for the full feed.

But the books are more than just the written word for I also ask for sketches, thinking I would like to tap into another of the visitors latent skill bases, and for those who didn't want to write they could just sketch. Incredibly they have become peppered throughout breaking up the pages with great little observational sketches, in hindsight these have become quite helpful as I use them to remind me where the book had been situated. 

So the Poetry boxes and the Story boxes will be out for the whole of this month, to be collected end of August, they are then to be exhibited at Lynmouth Pavilion throughout September, and I am sure the project will continue in their restaurant as everyone who picks up a story book cannot resist adding a piece.

The volume and quality of both sets of boxes has really excelled this year. I've left little notes to say 'only poetry/story inside please' which have reduced the numbers of 'The Jones were here' but even without I feel that people have really understood the project this year, and are even more willing to seek them out, add something and then leave for others to find.

Story boxes on The Coleridge Way have been started by published Author / Illustrators Victoria Eveleigh, Jackie Morris and Katherine Hyde

The Exford Storywalk The Green Thief

In mid May last month I joined the Exmoor Community Youth Club to create a storywalk trail in the stunning Exmoor village of Exford, it was the first of two days and we were blessed with fabulous weather. The first thing to do was walk the trail, (which I had already planned) and I knew a special spot where I thought might be good to stop and tell my tale The Green Thief.

So first off the green and along the lane on the raised footpath, a little gem which is unique to Exford and was a picture of stunning wild flowers.

A little time keeping, to keep us all punctual!

Off the road and over the fields we crossed the river Exe by a very bouncy bridge, (children do love to bounce!) Then into a sun dappled glade for a some traditional storytelling amidst the bluebells, what a location. At this spot a tree had conveniently fallen with enough seating for all, an ideal spot to tell my tale The Green Thief, about the good people of Exford and how they dealt with the cunning Jack Frost.

A theatre of water and bluebells

Part of the storywalk journey is getting to know the canvas, and then taking inspiration from these locations. It is often through the place's props, hollow trees or bridges, and wondering what story interventions you can make in these places. These can often inform and change the story and make it unique to that location alone.

We decided that this old ice house, which many in the party had not noticed before, was where the Green Thief might reside, this fitted with the story really well, but meant that other features of the tale needed to shift around. It's always fun playing with plots, as little interventions can often have huge effects on the direction of a story.

Or perhaps is it where he hid the Badgers Stole which glowed with the wild fire of the sun?

An image for the walk perhaps?

This coming Saturday is the second and final day with the brilliant Exmoor Community Youth Club, and we shall be pulling this story apart, and using my automatic story creating 'shells-tells-tales' books to add new parts, or at the very least have some darn good story telling creative fun with!

Writing and mapping the story and journey together.

We'll then tag and geolocate the finished tale as best we can along the trail, and I will tidy the final piece up at a later date ready for all to see this summer.

See you on Saturday, and I would like to thank the Exmoor Society for making this project possible.

To the Valley of Rocks (and beyond!)

Last night I was wandering the grass and gorse of the famous 'Valley of Rocks' looking for just the right place for six poetry boxes to be tethered for three months from June. I arrived at about eight in the evening and climbed straight up from the Poets Hut to find a bench perched high on what felt like a birds Erie, a crows nest bathing in the spectacle of a tempestuous May sunset. 

If there is ever a spot to engage your inspiration then this is truly the front row, it's super HD, has tactile experiences embedded (weather) and super surround sound, there is even a cafe (valley bottom left) plus space for more than one bottom, what could be better.

The higher path which leads back into Lynton town.

The path fed me along the high cliff then into Lynton town itself, I then switched back along the lower path, with the sea far below, full of dizziness and mermaids' promises. I counted the benches all the way then circled Castle Rock to the bay beyond, where I spied a crack of moon to lure me down to the sands far below, to take me where I had never ventured before.

So down to Wringcliff Bay in the failing light, bullish waves and black sands, with a child's voice high up on a crag across the darkness, calling - come find me,  come find me!

Low light, on the beach under Castle Rock

This is the dimpsey, where stories take form in the half light and rocks seem to wander on the edges of my vision, or hunker down under observation. This is the time of night when the simple rules of the world break and crumble, the child's voice, thrown about the tight bay from far above, pleading for help, failing on a precipice 600ft above the darkness of the boiling brine.

So back up the zig zag I clamber, journeyed by shadows and misdirection, and the voice calls again, come find me - come find me, to lure me out onto tufts of grass held by nothing but sea air and guillemots curves.

Then by the light of the jagged moon I spy the goats, indifferent to my attendance, taunting me with their old games.

So Poetry Boxes are coming together, just like the Story Boxes along the Coleridge Way, and they will be out during the same period - June to end August.

Thank you to Lynton Town Council for permissions, and also Lynmouth Pavilion for commissioning the project, lets hope we get some gems of words about these special places. I'll be posting and also twittering images throughout so you can digitally follow from your armchair, though I'd rather you crept out and wrote something fabulous in the boxes instead, but just be careful about wandering the paths after the day has passed.

QR Code Poetry Stogumber School

Monday 24th March and it's Stogumber and Crowcombe Schools turn to explore the Coleridge Way in Monksilver. The day started with a rather circuitous bus journey which avoided a single S bend, and took 30 mins rather than 10! Undaunted we quickly got the children on task with great support from Stogumber school.

We walked up an ancient Hollow Way which rises out of Monksilver and sits pretty much in the middle of the current Coleridge Way trail. (The extension to Lynmouth is well underway, and being sign posted as I write.) We collected words from the trail, what we saw, heard, smelt, felt etc, and these were scribed down by teachers and helpers alike. In fact we were so overwhelmed that our writing became frantic scribbles, keen to capture the pupils words.

"The wind was whistling silently in the trees whilst brushing past my face was the light fluffy breeze."

Descending down the Holloway track of the Coleridge Way

"Waterfall flowing in me,
Waterfall flowing in you,
I can see it and you can too. 

Cold, icy water upon your skin
It pricks you like a pointy pin,
I can feel it and you can too,
thats the waterfall flowing in you."

Treasure!

We passed Monksilver 13th C Church which purports to have the oldest depiction of dentists in their Gargoyles, (which I neglected to photograph sorry! You'll just have to take a look yourself when walking the trail.)

"The wiggly roots knotted in a web of wonder."

At the foot of the trail in Monksilver

Back in the classroom we worked on the art of writing our poetry, Mrs Mash along with teachers Mr Wedderkopp and Mrs Phillips drew on their educators acumen to draw some stunning work from the budding authors, many had no idea they could write poetry!

"Slimy, slow and sluggish slugs
Wow! this place is infested with bugs
But there's not just bugs, there's also decay
What hideous things I've seen today."

Back in the class with Mrs Mash leading the poetry workshop

The next job is for me to transcribe the poetry, then render into QR codes for laser etching and installing along the trail (with full permissions of course). I would like to thank Stogumber for being so welcoming, and especially their pupils who rose to the task, it was a great day.

Laser etched QR code poetry should be in place early June, so keep your eyes peeled along the trail.