STORYTELLING AND CITIZENSHIP

A REPORT OF THE MASTERCLASS DELIVERED BY ROY HONEYBONE ON MAY 30TH AND 31ST

This report is intended to be read alongside the handouts available from the storytelling and citizenship page.

Session 1: Introduction

Roy Honeybone related his own story to the teachers; his journey from primary school teaching to Independent Citizenship Education Advisor. He outlined the aims and objectives of the day, as written in the handout, and asked the teachers if they had any other expectations. No-one had.

Defining citizenship

Next, he looked at the section of the new NI Primary Curriculum which covers citizenship (see handout). He asked the teachers to look at the entire section and mark every entry which they considered relevant to Citizenship. On both days, every item was marked by someone, emphasising the broad range of topics included in the term ‘Citizenship’.

Nursery Rhymes

Roy showed the class the Humpty Dumpty he uses with young children, and the list of questions designed to draw citizenship issues out of the rhyme. As an exercise, the class was divided into small groups and asked to pick a nursery rhyme and generate citizenship questions from it. Here are some of the results:

Baa Baa Black Sheep

  • Racist overtones?
  • Who is asking? Why should he give them wool?
  • Master/Dame - gender stereotyping? Social class issues?
  • Is the wool being paid for, and by whom? Farm subsidies?
  • Sharing – was it equal?

Jack and Jill

  • Who sent them? Was it a responsible decision?
  • Should the well have been accessible to children?
  • Why did they fall?
  • Suitable emergency procedures?
  • Who pays for it?
  • Who was carrying the buckets?
  • Who can be sued?
  • At what age do children become responsible?
  • Why is the rhyme more concerned with Jack than Jill?
  • Will they climb the hill again? (learn from mistakes) Will they be allowed to?

Little Bo-Peep

  • Would anyone help her?
  • Why was she on her own?
  • Whose responsibility?
  • What if they’d done any damage, or had been hurt?
  • Should she leave them or search for them? Who could she ask for help?

Little Miss Muffet

  • Where were her parents?
  • Why was she on her own?
  • Eating curds and whey – what are the health issues involved?
  • Spiders – fears, phobias, ‘What scares you?’
  • Sitting on a tuffet – what is that? Environmental issues.

Three Blind Mice

  • Disability issues – ‘What does blind mean?’
  • Who looked after them?
  • Should the farmer’s wife have cut off their tails? Why did she do it?
  • Could she have tried talking to them first?

session 2: ‘the don rowe hour’

The Citizenship Foundation

During this hour, Roy talked about the resources available for the teaching of citizenship. He visited the Citizenship Foundation website on the projection screen, and looked at the resources available there – stories with lesson plans and sample questions, etc. Working in groups, the teachers examined some of the books published by the Foundation, and devised questions which could be used to investigate the issues within the stories.

Development of Thinking

Don Rowe’s document on the Development of Social and Political Thinking in Young Citizens (see handout) was examined and commented on. Roy announced that Don is looking for suggestions of responses at Levels 1 and 2: any teacher who would like to share experiences in this area can contact him at .

Roy then showed an example from Don’s book analysing the different responses of children to the question ‘Why is it wrong to steal?’ using the framework as a reference:

  1. Immature/ egocentric

It just is. You might go to prison. Someone might steal from you if you steal from someone else. It is OK if you can get away with it or if everyone does it.

  1. Mature/ other-centric

It is unkind. It damages relationships and undermines trust. It would hurt your parents if you were caught.

  1. Concern to Uphold Moral Principles

The law must be obeyed because everyone has agreed to it. Breaking it causes social chaos and harms the community.

  1. Concern to Uphold Society

Stealing is not honest and I believe it is right to be honest in all dealings. It violates people’s right to property and the law is there to protect those rights.

Recommended Storybooks

Roy read aloud this book, ‘Tusk, Tusk’ (see handout), and then showed a video of a Year 4 (primary 5) class in England having a discussion based on one small part of the story.

He also read aloud ‘The Conquerors’ by David McKee, a very good story to initiate discussions on war, invasions and so on.

Session 3: Newspapers

Current Affairs

Roy talked about the importance of using current news to stimulate discussion in citizenship. He suggested that if the school requires lesson planning to be done in advance, the catch-all ‘Current Affairs’ will provide space to comment on issues arising in the news, either local, national or international.

Different Perspectives

One interesting aspect of using newspapers is examining the different perspectives taken by different papers towards the same story.

For younger children you can use stories, such as ‘Voices in the Park’. This is a book containing four accounts of one afternoon in the park told in four very different voices – Roy reads it aloud and attempts all the voices.

He also details a citizenship lesson from the Citizenship Foundation which considers two letters to a newspaper about a derelict plot in the middle of a city; one writer calls it an eyesore, the other praises a patch of nature in the centre of the concrete jungle. One space, but two opposing viewpoints.

Big Paper, Silent Conversation

This is an exercise, outlined in the handout, which can be used in the classroom to explore issues in depth, while reading others’ views on the issue. The teachers do a shortened version in the class, using articles from local papers. The exercise is conducted in silence (theoretically) and the teachers walk around the tables, reading the articles and commenting in writing on both them and the responses of others.

School Newspapers

Roy is a big fan of school newspapers and considers them invaluable in the promotion of citizenship awareness in the classroom.

One caveat: a publication which showcases only the children’s language work, such as stories and poems, is not a newspaper. A newspaper must give news; it must reflect the concerns and issues of the community.

You can produce a school newspaper with children of any age. To illustrate how this would work with younger classes, Roy asked his 3-year-old (at the time) grandson what he would like to tell people about his life and what was happening in it. This was written up and can be seen in the Handout as ‘Luke’s News’; Roy went through both this and an earlier edition, pointing out the citizenship issues contained in each piece.

To do something similar with a young class he suggested that you can use parent volunteers, older pupils, classroom assistants – anyone who can type. It might seem like a huge task to add to an already-overburdened schedule, but even one page per pupil over a term or a school year will produce an impressive document.

You could include reports on lessons and projects, and thus tie it in with other areas of the curriculum. It is worth the effort for the benefits gained.

Session 4: ICT

Coping with Citizenship

Roy Honeybone introduced the ‘Coping with Citizenship’ CD, explaining how it had come about: a teacher in the NE of England persuades the Rotary to produce resources which could be used in schools, and a number of CDs have been produced, each covering a different area. None of the contributors were paid, and the Rotary charge only a nominal fee to Rotary clubs in order that they may pass the resources on to their local schools.

Roy showed some of the resources on the screen, particularly the stories with their interactive questions. We now have a copy in the Verbal Arts Centre and will share it with any teacher who wants it – e-mail - or you could contact your local Rotary Club and ask them to get it for you.

Go-Givers

This is a website set up by the Citizenship Foundation to provide resources for teachers, schools and parents involved in teaching citizenship. There are a myriad of resources here, for all age groups, and they are free (you must register your school, but that is also free). We looked at some of the stories for Key Stages 1 and 2, and the attached lesson plans and materials. This is a resource which is well worth checking out.

Go-Givers is a brand new site, and the organisation is looking for responses and reactions to the material, so do e-mail them if you have a comment or a suggestion.

Pay it Forward

This is a film with which Roy likes to end the class (although there was a technical hitch in Mountcollyer). It stars Haley Joel Osment who is challenged by his new teacher (Spacey) to come up with an idea to make the world a better place and to put it into action. Osment’s idea is to do a good turn for three people and ask them to return the favour by ‘paying it forward’, i.e. helping another three people. The film shows how this plan spreads, and the effect it has on the boy’s immediate world. It is recommended as an example of the changes that one person, even a child, can make to the world around them.

The final reading was ‘All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten’ by Robert Fulghum (see handout).