Review of my book 'The Author' - a study of how and why we write.

"I've never read anybody's Ph.D before but Rosen's is as readable as 'We're Going On A Bear Hunt'.  Alright, chapter 2 setting up the theoretical framework is a bit (stumble, trip) harder going but I gobbled the rest of it up as quick as Goldilocks gobbled up the right sort of porridge.

Written in 1997, Rosen's analysis of his own socio economic background and of its influence on his writing - including in-depth analysis of twelve poems in his book of children's poetry "You Wait Til I'm Older Than You!" (Puffin)  is fascinating. There's also some interesting historical background about children's literature and poetry and plenty of acute insight into inter-class relations (I enjoyed the little paragraph about the tensions between working class artisans and the intellectual middle class, for instance).


Moreover, for writers, this is a book that will make you think more deeply about your own relationship with class and material reality and how it has influenced your decision to be a writer and your writing itself. You also get the very enjoyable poems from 'You Wait Till I'm Older Than You'. Absorbing stuff!"
Justin Coe

Tragic! But is it tragedy?

At some point in my education (possibly reading John Holloway on tragedy)I learned to view classical tragedy as (crudely) hubris or corruption in the entity of the King/hero causing chaos in the 'polis' - the city, the society or amongst the public.

One of the enjoyments of Shakespeare is listening out for laments and complaints by people (often walk-on good guys) saying how the 'polis' is falling apart - you hear it in e.g. 'King Lear' 'Hamlet'  and 'Macbeth'. The good/natural order is giving way to bad disorder.

It's then curious for me to open a school edition of e.g. 'Macbet'h and see no mention of this. Isn't one of the interesting things about Shakspeare that he took the Graeco-Roman view of 'tragedy' and made it work for a modern audience by putting modern (then) anxieties in?

So, in 'Macbeth' - aside from getting the view of the 'good' monarch (anything about or said by Duncan and Malcolm) we hear about the *effect* of the bad/evil ruler on the rest of society. That's the 'tragedy' not just that the evil ruler killed his mates.

So, one of the great advantages for us watching this sort of thing now is that we can (totally anachronistically) map this 'corruption at the top spreading downwards' on to rulers and societies in the world today.

So tragedy isn't just 'sad stuff that happened'. Tragedy in classical drama is social. It's what affects the whole 'polis' caused by errors/evil/hubris/corruption/pride at the top. The cause of this hubris may be e.g. greed, ambition etc but the effects are everywhere.

'Alas, poor country, 

Almost afraid to know itself!

...sighs and groans and shrieks, that rent the air

Are made, not mark'd

....good men's lives

Expire before the flowers in their caps,

Dying or ere they sicken.' 

(from 'Macbeth')


"Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide. In cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond crack'd 'twixt son and father...the King falls from bias of nature; ... there's father against child...Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves."

(from 'King Lear')


In 'Romeo and Juliet', the 'hubris' is mapped on to the two families: it's their feud: 

"In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, 

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, 

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean." 

A warning that the whole 'polis' gets drawn into the feud.

All tragedies end with a new order - which, in my subversive way, I always read as future disaster. I start to imagine how the new order could or will go wrong...! 

Some brief thoughts on the Phonics Screening Check and SPaG Grammar

As it’s summer: some brief thoughts on the Phonics Screening Check and SPaG Grammar:

The phonics screening check is designed to test solely the 'alphabetic principle' - the ability to apply the principle of decoding graphic symbols (letters) in relation to a sound or sounds that we make with our mouths. It does not test for understanding anything.

The test is based on the idea it's best to create stages in learning to read: first, learn the alphabetic principle, then read for understanding, but 'understanding' means in English schools, 'comprehension' and is greatly limited to retrieval, inference, chronology and presentation. This overlooks multiple meanings. The tests forbid multiple meanings. There can only be one meaning.


The stages principle ('first, fast and only' for phonics, then 'read real books' later) involves, in its purest form, preventing children at the phonics stage from looking at the texts of real books.

The theoretical issue here is common to a lot of learning: just because we CAN break things down into stages or simple and more complex elements, it doesn't necessarily follow that these created stages represent the best process by which all of us learn something. We don't learn to speak or walk that way.

We should always remember that these elements or stages are not God-created, they are simply categorisations that we have created. It doesn't necessarily follow (it may or may not) that we can best learn something by following the categorisations we created in the first place.

Another example, is when people claim that it's best if we learn to write by learning sentence grammar. This leaves out the possibility that we might learn to write better, for example, by learning other kinds of grammar, or, say, by imitation-and-adaptation, or by immersion ('reading for pleasure') etc

'Sentence grammar' is not the 'building block' of how we learn to speak. We also know that children who read 'widely and often' for pleasure will write well, quite independently of whether they've been taught sentence grammar or not.

'Sentence grammar' has no explanations as to why we use language in the social sense - whether that's for face-to-face oral situations, or in writing in the many and overlapping 'genres' of writing out there. In other words, sentence grammar can't explain the very thing we have language for.

This means that when we teach decontextualised sentence grammar as in the SPaG/GPS test, we are not giving pupils the means or the help to know why they might say or write one thing rather than another.

What kinds of playing and games can we play with books?

On Facebook, I asked:
What kinds of playing, jokes, games, challenges can you do with books which have succeeded in getting children and young people reading?
Freeze frames?
‘What would YOU do if you were (the character)’?
Prequels/sequels?
Comic strip retelling?
Make up a dance/take a photo/compose some music/do a picture to go with a book?


Here are the replies:

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  Bonnie Craven I used to read stories to my ks2 classes and ask them to sketch whatever they were inspired to do as a result of the words they were listening to.

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  Debbie O'Brien I love using "conscience alley', which is an idea in CLPE Power of Reading. When a character faces a dilemma, the class form 2 lines facing each other. One side thinks of reasons for and the other reasons against a choice. A child role plays the character and walks through conscience alley slowly. As they do, the children lean in and whisper advice to them. At the end, they share some of the advice and which they might take.

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  Rita Chakraborty Hot-seating as characters - especially the less vocal/visible side characters - has worked really well. Acting out a scene, or re-telling a scene the way you would have liked it to play out, with children assigning roles and lines themselves has been lots of fun when I’ve done it in the past. Also, just a good old-fashioned craft activity based on the book...a collectively built robot or spaceship is what we’re planning for the upcoming SRC...

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  Marcus Moore Getting kids to act out a book never fails, in my experience - whether it's a simple re-telling of the story, or using the actual text as a hand-held script, with one (or more) child(ren) narrating and others in the group (of 3 or 4) doing the actions etc.

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  Jane Bernal My step-daughter, who will not do FB had the whole class making snacks and sending them across the class-room on a pulley for the Lighthouse Keepers Lunch.

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  Suzie Phillips I’ve taken random images/illustrations from picture books/film/animation for younger pupils - or wordless books by Shaun Tan for older students, and asked them to order the images and create a narrative, to get them to begin to analyse and infer, and t…See More

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    Dawn Louise Hulland We love Shaun Tan. His textless illustrations are fabulous for inspiring writing and boys are truly engaged!

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  Rowan Mcmanus I put books in different areas of the classroom based on their content i.e. Maths corner. I ask the children to tell me what topic they're interested in and buy books related. Last topic was Superheroes and I put Supertato, other fun superhero books and some comics in the reading den. I also do hot seating which they love. I have S class of boys who are not reluctant readers any more. 😊😊

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  Nicky Hopkins I did a 100 book challenge with some of the children who raced through the Summer Reading Challenge. I included lots of different things they had to cover - new book, non-fiction, a cover that intrigued you, a cover that put you off, a book to read out loud, a book to be read to you that kind of thing. Plus a book version of consequences is always fun

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  Lizzi Roche I used to play a game with my class and small groups (creatively called The Reading Game). With any genre of text, I'd pick a child to start and then at any point after a few words or longer I'd say a different child's name and they'd have to continue straight on, no long pause, no repeats. It massively encouraged them all to follow along the text and engage. They got passionate about not "getting out" (for pausing or repeating, even though nothing happened if they did haha). It also really encouraged my reluctant readers to read aloud as I would switch it to someone else quickly to gradually build their confidence. They got so good at I introduced them saying the next child's name when they wanted. I expected the most reluctant readers to opt out quickly but was actually pleasantly surprised they remained engaged and read more then I expected! It was awesome! I started having children who "hated reading" asking me all the time if we could play The Reading Game. 

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  Amanda Reed I knew a boy who wouldn't willingly look at a book until he got a personalised book with him, his friends and dog as main characters. 30 years later he still names it as his favourite book ever

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  Clarina Mascarenhas They used to teach us Shakespeare by having us paraphrase scenes (we were only 7 at the time) and kill eachother with rulers and pencils it was pretty dope.

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  Debby Thacker You really need to find out about Reading Teachers = Reading Pupils, Michael! So many ideas in that network....

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  Arnton Fell I don't suppose it counts, but I had a shelf of 'forbidden books' - all of which were quickly read!

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  Pat Parr As a primary school librarian I either see for myself in the library or find out from teachers who the reluctant (for whatever reason) or 'stagnant' (ie. they've hit a reading wall) readers are. Also for those who are voracious readers but don't know …See More

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    Pat Parr I've also done lots of activities over the last few years to promote reading for enjoyment, as opposed to reading for the curriculum. Probably one of the best a few years back was a fun Doctor Who event after school: lots of new books on display to borrow, take a selfie in front of the Tardis (huge cardboard cutout), write a postcard home from space, make alien masks, make Dr Who/space badges, Dalek colouring, etc. Theme overlapped with time travel, science fiction & space so we had a great selection of books.

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