Heading projects

I , Watership Down : teaching literature to juniors

ANN BERNARD

In my view, the effective teaching of literature to juniors and, indeed, infants, is as important as the acquisition of skills. Through literature, the child may explore new fields of experience and feeling. Moral and imaginative development can take place, which is an extremely important aspect in the all round development of the growing child. In addition, it is the use of imagination which makes intelligence effective. Literature, then, has both intrinsic and extrinsic value.

The reading project I wish to discuss in this paper involved a new way of teaching for me. Previously, 1 have viewed literature as being in an exclusive water-tight compartment in the curriculum and as something of a ‘ treat ’ for the end of the day, which pre-supposes that the rest of the day is not so!

Enjoyment is a positive and constructive way of encouraging the learning process but it is not only the children who must enjoy themselves but also the teacher, since children catch their mood from him or her. In the teaching of literature I had used enjoyment as an end in itself but I feel now that it should be only a beginning. It should lead through to other experiences and end up with a much fuller sense of the meaning of that word. Enjoyment should not only be equated with pleasure but with cognitive, affective and enactive change, transmuted through a deep encompassing experience.

It is very important to have as wide a knowledge as possible of the range of children’s books, particularly the most recent novels, which so often are unexplored in favour of the ‘ tried and true ’. One of the ways of studying up-to-date children’s fiction is the National Book League’s publication Children’s Books of the Year. This is well documented and indicates subject matter and suitability for different age groups. I came across Watership Down through this publication and, as the result of a chance remark of a tutor of

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mine that it was thought, in some quarters, to be the best children’s book written in the last twenty-five years, I set about reading it.

C. S. Lewis once remarked that a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s book. I think this is an excellent yardstick and on reading Watership Down I was as thrilled and as engrossed as I had been over The Wind in the Willows in my childhood. Such moments of total capture are rare either in children’s or adults’ literature.

Since the book was difficult and long and probably meant for an older age group, 1 realised it must be tackled with great care and planning, as a reading project with a mixed class of nine-to-eleven year olds.

I started the project by talking about the book and 1 asked them to try and buy a copy so that we could at least share one between two. At that time the book cost 4Op and I encouraged the children to buy it out of their pocket money, a training I believe to be of good educational value. A savings fund was started and finally enough money saved to purchase sufficient books.

The reading of the book involved different types of ‘ reads ’. Firstly, there was the ‘ class read ’ in which the children followed the text, whilst I read to them. In order to keep them consciously aware of the story, I set them questions on each chapter before the reading commenced, which helped to focus their attention. At the end of this sort of ‘ read ’ there was a great deal of discussion and exchanging of views.

The second type of ‘ read ’ was the ’ home read ’ and here I involved the children’s parents. For the ‘ home reads ’, a paper was worked out with the following instructions: Ask your mother to read and discuss this part with you. Then followed points on the aim of the work and the organization involved in the reading. In this way, I hoped to enlist the mother’s help and in the main, they were very interested and co-operative in helping their children to organize themselves; one or two mothers were so interested in the book that they bought their own copies and followed the activities and questions with their children.

For the ‘ home reads ’, I kept the activities and questions well within the capabilities of the children. Where questions were asked, page numbers were inserted to avoid frustration. The activities were easy and of a recreational nature. I believe homework must be

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both enjoyable and well within children’s abilities at this age, other- wise they will shy away and lose interest, which will cause problems later on. When willingness and organization has been fully mastered work can be more testing.

This involved the children searching for passages which created ‘ pictures in the mind ’. My aim here was to encourage children to search for creative writing. When these passages were chosen, they were written out and illustrated and this work was displayed each week.

1 next used Watership Down for the formal English lessons. Barratt’s taxonomy was the guide for questioning and for the Comprehensive lesson. The children soon began to set their own questions from the text, working in pairs. The same type of work followed with Cloze text and I showed the children how to look for clues: This was very popular and I found their results were much more successful using a text that meant something to them. The experience of working in pairs is very useful, since children can work out many problems together through talking to each other.

This particular book lent itself to another field of study, Natural History. Here another type of ‘read’ was introduced. The children were taught how to use reference books purposefully, as they brought books from the public library on their chosen topics. These topics-trees, foxes, wild flowers, etc.-were taken from Watership Down. They were also taught to use Bissex analysis in picking out the most important information. Only one child had ever seen a rabbit in the wild, as these children are suburban and know more about exotic animals they have seen on television than those of their own country. As a result of their enthusiastic response to the natural history in the book, I formed a Young Ornithologists Group and outings are regularly taken to the RSPB Reserve at Northward Hill, where we have clubbed together and have bought our own nesting box, which is sited at the Reserve.

There was a very enthusiastic response to the actual story. The children made files and inserted their drawings and much creative writing. There were many rabbit stories, particularly myths, and also some poems centred round the legend of The Blessing of el-Ahrairah, all of which we taped and played to the second year pupils. One boy, showing great maturity, drew a cartoon where

The other type of ‘ read ’ was the ‘ imaginative read ’.

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the human situation and the rabbit situation was reversed, indicating how fully and deeply he understood one of the major themes of the novel. A cassette tape recording was made, entirely unsupervised by me, where three children held a spontaneous discussion between themselves. This was sustained for quarter of an hour and showed clearly their delight and understanding of the book. The story led the children on to quite speculative discussion about such things as the morality of killing wild animals.

I think the success of this reading project was reflected by the children themselves. It was what they demanded and suggested to me that made this method of teaching develop. At the end of the project, the children wanted to know what the next book was going to be and some mothers were eager to assist in the next project. I was asked for book lists and, perhaps most rewarding of all, the second year pupils asked when they would be reading Watership Down. This was not practical, but my Head was enthusiastic that they should have the same sort of experience, so these methods have been carried out with a different and more suitable book and at a simpler level.

I am now experimenting with other books for second, third and fourth year pupils and was reminded of my first experience in these techniques, when the sister of one of the original fourth year pupils, now in the fourth year herself, came up to me the other day and asked ‘‘ When are we going to do Watership Down?”.

Bibliography

ADAM, R. (1973). Watership Down. Harrnondsworth. Penguin Books (Puffin edition).

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