What has happened to Lulu

 Poems are fantastic material for planning whole lessons around them. This time I will focus on a poem which touches on a serious social issue: teenagers escaping home. It is called What has happened to Lulu.

What has happened to Lulu?

What has happened to Lulu, mother?

What has happened to Lulu?

There’s nothing in her bed but an old rag-doll

And by its side a shoe.

Why is her window wide, mother,

The curtain flapping free,

And only a circle on the dusty shelf

Where her money-box used to be?

Why do you turn your head, mother,

And why do the tear-drops fall?

And why do you crumple that note on the fire

And say it is nothing at all?

I woke to voices late last night,

I heard an engine roar.

Why do you tell me the things I heard

Were a dream and nothing more?

I heard somebody cry, mother,

In anger or in pain,

But now I ask you why, mother,

You say it was a gust of rain?

Why do you wander about as though

You don’t know what to do?

What has happened to Lulu, mother?

What has happened to Lu?

By Charles Causley

A sibling fires questions at his/her mother in an effort to discover what has happened to his/her sister. The poem is a series of questions which go unanswered but which clearly suggest that the sister has run away from home.

There are so many ways one could approach this poem. For instance, one could immerse the students in the drama by asking them to provide the answers the mother would give to the questions asked by the child. One group could be working on straightforward answers while a second could attempt to supply more evasive ones. The dialogues could be acted out.

Alternatively, one could ask the students to write a story based on the facts stated in the poem and speculate on a possible end for the story.

Another idea is for the students to draw a sequence of pictures in the order that the events took place. If the students are reluctant to draw, they could search for images online and piece the story together. There is a slideshow I made at the end of this presentation.

In terms of tenses, the poem switches between the past (last night) and the present. One could ask the students to provide an account of last night’s events in the Simple Past and subsequently use the Simple Present to describe the current state of affairs.

If you have been struggling with the use of the Present Perfect Simple, this is an excellent opportunity to practise an aspect of it which is tricky for many foreign students regardless of mother tongue. I call this aspect “in the meantime aspect”: we know the past action, we are confronted with the present situation and we are invited to guess what has caused this change.

In terms of our poem, we know somebody cried last night and we know there was a car outside. We are faced with an empty bed -- apart from the rag doll -- so we assume that Lulu has gone. But what has happened to her? This would trigger a series of contributions on the part of the students.

Perhaps she has found a job in a big city.

Maybe she has eloped.

And so on and so forth.

The poem could be used with more advanced students, in which case one may want to practise modal verbs of deduction or possibility + Present Perfect Infinitive.

Lulu must have run away with a boyfriend. (clue: the engine roar)

She must have used the money in her moneybox to make a new start. (clue: the circle on the dusty shelf)

She might have stolen money from her parents.

She could have met her soulmate.

She might have been misguided by a much older person.

With more advanced students the poem could serve as a springboard for discussion:

·       Why do some young people leave home?

·       What happens to them after they go away?

·       Do they ever get in touch with their family?

·       How does the state deal with the problem?

·       Is the family to blame for this phenomenon? How widespread is it?

The students could be encouraged to do some research online and summarise the results of their research in a brief report.

They could even write a poem about another teenager who has run away.

The possibilities are endless.

If your students do not feel very creative or paintings 2

 I often wonder whether we are asking of our students too much when we throw images or texts at them on the basis of which they are expected to “create something”.

Even the most resourceful people would occasionally be hard put to produce anything of value. Therefore, we must be prepared to provide some input to help learners along when they are not at their most creative or  assign some other task related to the topic.

Here is an example using a painting. In fact the suggestions which follow are meant for advanced learners.

Peach Blossoms—Villiers-le-Bel by Childe Hassam
 

The feature of the image that is susceptible of different interpretations and open to discussion is the way the trunks and branches interlock. One may want to start by eliciting words that describe the shape (a triangle, almost a heart!) or the way the branches curve to the left as if the wind is weaving intricate patterns with them.

One could ask the students whether they could think of another caption for the painting. The actual one is Peach Blossoms.

If there are no ideas, here are some among which they would be invited to choose from:

·       The embrace of the branches (why do branches embrace each other? A product of luck, they have nothing else to embrace etc.)

·       Unwieldy branches (what makes branches unruly? The wind, the rain, the elements )

·       The blossoms that wanted to take over the land

·       The blossoms that could not resist the music of nature

·       Curling up to face the elements

They could now embark on expanding one of those ideas into a story or a poem.

The teacher could encourage them to base their stories or poems on facts, which means doing a bit of research online. I did a bit of reading in Wikipedia to write the following:

Here is the link for what inspired my story:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blossom

The blossoms that wanted to take over the land

Once upon a time blossom trees lived in ignorance of their power. Every spring their branches and twigs sprouted countless blossoms which attracted hundreds of buzzing guests.

 Blossom trees thought that the visitors were enchanted by their beauty until an innocent-looking bee trusted them with the big secret: they (blossom trees) supplied bees with all the protein they needed to survive through their pollen -- and all for nothing!

 Blossom trees refused to grow flowers the next spring if they were to get nothing in return for their offer of food and sustenance to bees. When summer came, horrified they realised that they bore no fruit, they were light and barren – not their solid productive selves. 

And then it occurred to them that giving was not unreciprocated. They started to pray and pray for the bees to come back next year. And the bees did come back, and the blossom trees danced and danced with wild exuberance till the cascades of their riotous petals covered the ground far and wide.

Blossom trees were satisfied that by shedding their blossoms they had conquered the world around them.

If the students do not feel like writing, here is some reading they could do and present the main ideas orally to the class:

A group of students could read this part:

Cherry

In Japan cherry trees are grown not for their fruits, but only for their beautiful blossom. The trees seldom bear fruit: when they occasionally do, it is inedible. The days in which the cherry trees blossom mark a very auspicious event: festivals, parties and other important events are planned to coincide with it, so as to garner favour with their ancestors. Japanese call raw horsemeat sakura, or cherry blossom, after its pinkish colour.

Forecast

Picnicking underneath a cherry tree in bloom, in Japan, is called hanami, literally “flower viewing”. What started as a ritual at the imperial court is now a national obsession, with more and more cherry blossom trees being planted throughout Japan. Each year, the sakura zensen or “cherry blossom forecast” is released by the Japanese metrological office, and is tracked as it moves northward up Japan along with the warm weather. The blossom starts in Okinawa in January, reaches Tokyo around March or April, and then heads north to Hokkaido. The blossoms have come to symbolise the transience of life and so pop up frequently in Japanese art, film and music, as well as on kimonos, tea cups, plates and other everyday objects.

Another group would be given this one:

Sacred

The Queen gets a sprig of blossom from Glastonbury each year around Christmas time. The blossom comes from a tree on Wearyall Hill above the town, which is supposed to have grown from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, mourner of Christ and alleged bearer of the holy grail, more than 2,000 years ago. The tree is a variety of common hawthorn called Crataegus monogyna 'Biflora’ because it flowers twice – once in spring and again in winter, shortly after Christmas.

Many cuttings have been taken from it over the years: the most recent tree was planted in 1951, and badly damaged in 2010. The church of St John also has three sacred thorns, one of which is more than 80 years old, and which has produced grafts and cuttings that have been planted all over the world.

And the following for a third group:

Profane

The may tree or hawthorn is the only British plant to be named after the month in which it blooms. It is the origin of both the Maypole and the phrase “Ne’er cast a clout till may be out” – which refers not to the ending of the month, but to the opening of the flowers. Though the may is traditionally associated with May Day, it blossoms in the middle of the month (or even later, this year) not at the beginning. This is due to the changes made to the Gregorian calendar in 1752. Before this, May Day would have occurred 11 days later, exactly the time when the may tree breaks into flower.

It is considered extremely unlucky to bring hawthorn flowers inside the house, a superstition more widely believed than for any other species of plant in the British Isles. There are many possible reasons for this, but the most convincing is to do with its smell. Hawthorn flowers have a heavy, complicated scent, the distinctive element of which is triethylamine, which is also one of the first chemicals produced by a dead human body when it starts to decay.

On the other hand, triethylamine also smells like semen; hence its positive association with wild springtime romps in the fields.

All of the above have been removed from The Telegraph of 20 April 2017 (Some quite interesting facts about blossom)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/qi/10118460/QI-some-quite-interesting-facts-about-blossom.html

You could even decorate your story to make it more alluring. I did mine:

I hope you have lots of fun with your students.

Short extracts: great resources

Extracts from books, especially modern novels and stories can provide teachers with a wealth of material for using in class in many imaginative ways. I have illustrated this in one of my previous posts by offering an example of how one could exploit Chapter 56 of the famous novel The Life of Pi .

This time I will use an extract from Penelope Lively’s Going Back.

And that night I dream of lions. They have escaped from their cage and they are coming for me, rushing down on me. … And there is no escape, they will have me. But somehow they do not. They pass me and beyond me there is this woman and they will have her instead. I see, but she is not afraid of them. She stands still and they stop and she is stroking them. They are not lions any more: they have got smaller. I wake up crying.

The language in the above is quite simple – suitable for intermediate students. One may start by asking whether the students can describe any of their recurring dreams/nightmares. It is one way of introducing the theme and normally it triggers a lot of discussion.

The extract lends itself to introducing narrative in the present and constitutes a good model for tense use, which the teacher can point out to their students and ask them to write a short text of their own using the extract as an organizing frame.

Sometimes when the students are required to create something, it is advisable for the teacher to do the same so that there is an exchange of ideas in all directions. The creative process should feel like a collective effort rather than dictated by the teacher to the students especially when it is free writing rather than an exam task.

In compliance with this principle I wrote the following to share with my students:

And that night I dream of soft toys. There are hundreds of them lying all over the room: on the bed, on the floor, on the chairs. I am surrounded by them and I feel on top of the world. But just as I am about to cry with joy, they come to life and they begin to smother me. I lie squashed in a corner of the room when suddenly the door is flung open and it is my father …

Aprilsweet

April is here with its sunny spells and rainy spots – as susceptible to change as anyone in love to mood swings.

I wrote the following under the influence of mercurial April.

April

April is the month

Of poets and rain

Of sunny solitude

Stretched

The length and breadth

Of one’s being

He comes

With a load

Of loud memories

Cramming into

The scarlet of a cherry

He is cruel and frolicsome

At a time

Like a white rose

Sunk

In the moonlight

Of a puddle

And he leaves us

As gingerly

As he joins us

In a trail

Of scents

Possessively

Tucked away

Antonio Lopez Garcia

Paintings in teaching 1

Teaching language means really teaching anything that can be put in words, and this comprises the whole range of arts and sciences. I have often mulled over the question of how a student’s general knowledge and sensitivity to their own language determines how much they can learn in a foreign language.

The answer is obvious: the more content there is the more words you will need to clothe it and the more sophisticated the structures.  Students who read books normally perform better in all four skills, notably in writing.

The ability of a language teacher to intervene in the overall scheme of things at schools is almost zero. However, I find that there are ways in which we can provide stimuli for our students to broaden their horizons and excite their curiosity for learning.

Paintings make great springboards for writing or discussion while at the same time they may serve to introduce students to art.

 Depending on what the painting depicts, you could approach it in different ways. You might want to focus on vocabulary development or on a particular grammatical pattern. The possibilities are endless exactly like the paintings.

I will begin with a painting by one of my favourite painters, Frederick Childe Hassam. It is called Moonlight on the Sound, and it has a calming, even mesmerising effect on me.

 After allowing some time for the students to have a close look at the image, you could do the following or any of the following depending on your group and aims:

Ask the students to think of other compound words with “light” (sunlight, twilight, candlelight, daylight, floodlight, spotlight etc)

Teach the phrasal verb “make out” and ask what they would be able to make out if they stood on the shore, if they made part of this seascape.

Could they see the hues of blue? Could they hear the lapping of the waves? Could they smell the salt of the sea?

Refer the students to the colour thesaurus for a first acquaintance with the wealth of words for hues of blue.

Give the students the following words and ask them to write a poem:

sail, float, lull,  effortless,  fade

Introduce a sea poem. There are plenty of them.

Here is one:

The sea is never still. 
It pounds on the shore 
Restless as a young heart, 
Hunting.

The sea speaks 
And only the stormy hearts 
Know what it says: 
It is the face 
of a rough mother speaking. 

The sea is young. 
One storm cleans all the hoar 
And loosens the age of it. 
I hear it laughing, reckless. 

They love the sea, 
Men who ride on it 
And know they will die 
Under the salt of it 

Let only the young come, 
Says the sea. 

Let them kiss my face 
And hear me. 
I am the last word 
And I tell 
Where storms and stars come from. 

By Carl Sandburg