Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence places responsibility for promoting the advance of numeracy skills on all classroom teachers, as opposed to leaving such nefarious wizardry solely to the mathematics department. It really is an admirable aim but at the start glance causes mild panic for us artsy fartsy teachers of English.
I’ve heard some say that numeracy skills could be boosted within the English classroom via directing pupils towards a specific page number in a singular, but i will not say I agree. Certainly, there seem fewer opportunities to construct numeracy skills in English than in, say, science or computing classes. Nevertheless we will surely transcend the fundamental task of finding a page number.
One answer lies within the French literary movement is named Oulipo (its full title is ouvroir de littérature potentielle, which translates roughly as ‘workshop of potential literature’). Founded in France within the 1960s, it seeks to unite poetry with maths to create constrained pieces of writing defined by set structures and patterns. Most famed examples of the shape are the lipogram, an editorial entirely with out a specific letter, normally a vowel and palindrome stories, either one of which present testing challenges for skilled writers.
There are about a exercises which are used successfully in schools, however. Pupils have a tendency to be intrigued and challenged by Oulipo activities after they find out about its history. It creates a way of purpose in lessons. Capable pupils find the challenge stimulating and customarily respond with creativity and imagination, while less able pupils appear to find the restraints and patterns imposed on them beneficial, they not must worry about crafting an entire story with a beginning, middle and end, a personality who overcomes a disadvantage, realistic dialogue, and each of the remainder of it. Instead, they’re able to concentrate solely on achieving the following sequence, and the single after that.
A good exercise to introduce pupils to Oulipo is the prose snowball. Starting with a one word sentence, the tale builds up sequentially with each sentence containing one word greater than the last. Clear explanation and ample modelling is needed when for Oulipo, and that i always give this straightforward example, which I wrote myself:
Cold.
Numb fingers.
My breath freezes.
Can’t feel my toes.
I have sent for help.
Please God, when will it come
I have done nothing to deserve this.
Stuck out here inside the wind and snow.
Once pupils crack the 1st sentence or two, they are going to increase impressive snowballs, and learn how to play with the rhythms created by the ever-lengthening sentences. This task also lends itself well to the more competitive pupils. You’ll be able to set a contest to look who can write the largest snowball within the room and offer a Kit-Kat, or something, as a prize.
Another Oulipo exercise, which has the aptitude to supply particularly exciting pieces of labor, is the sestina. Traditionally a poetic form, sestinas is also written as prose to create striking, patterned pieces of writing. Pupils start by choosing six words for themselves (or for a partner, as this task is easily suited for paired work). The words they choose should preferably have countless different meanings, words like ‘hand’ or ‘trip’ or ‘crack’. These words are then labelled from A – F and must appear in a narrative within the following order:
• ABCDEF
• FAEBDC
• CFDABE
• ECBFAD
• DEACFB
• BDFECA
• ECA or ACE
The goal is for pupils to jot down stories of 7 paragraphs with their chosen words appearing in these given sequences. Again, pupils will profit from seeing an exemplar of this in action, and there’s a particularly striking one available to read by Kirsty Logan on wigleaf.com. Pupils can read this story as a category and take a look at to determine which words Logan started with, to determine in the event that they can spot the pattern in her story. Pupils’ sestinas often appear to end up slightly surreal and highly original, with the repeated words forming one of those beat to the narrative.
The purpose of Oulipo exercises is just not to provide classical, traditional short stories. The mixture of maths and writing forces pupils to consider the craft in several ways, to desert their comfort zones and embrace new and experimental techniques. Even supposing the finished stories are entirely unusual or unorthodox, there’ll often be a bit, or a personality, even a sentence, of quality material that could be extracted from the unique and developed separately by itself.
Embedding numeracy within the English classroom is not really an obviously natural fit, but by combining creative writing with mathematical sequences we will bring somewhat of that French imagination to our pupils’ work.
Download Alan’s Oulipo resource here.
Alan Gillespie is an English teacher. He teaches at a small highschool in Ardnamurchan. You’ll be able to read his blog here or follow him on Twitter @afjgillespie.
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