News from the English Department

Head of English Mr Grant Hudson B.A. and dynamic new English Teacher Mr David Hutt have been very busy this year implementing projects and initiatives designed to arm students with the ability to apply their English skills to the creation of tangible products of which they can be proud, such as impressive film productions and magazine publications.

 

As parents already know, the school announced its intention to switch over to the new IGCSE (International GCSE) syllabus; this transition is now in full swing in the English department, with all lesson plans and activities now fully aligned with the Cambridge-based IGCSE curriculum.

Here are a few examples of what is happening in the Greenfields English department to nurture students’ innate literary talents:
 
The school had several successful entrants into the national ‘Young Writers short story and poem competition’. Their works went on to be published in a nationally recognized text, a copy of which was presented to aspiring authors.
  
Students now regularly produce their own school magazine. They each decide on something to contribute to the publication, and proceed to bring their ideas to life. Many skills are used in its production including writing, cartooning and story writing. In coordination with both the English and the ICT departments, each would-be publisher creates his or her individual page using software like Photoshop and Publisher, thereby honing computer design skills, encouraging students to work as a team and cultivating within participants the viewpoint that a valuable exchangeable product should spring from their creative efforts. Students even manage the proceeds of the finished magazine, electing whether or not to invest funds in more advanced software, superior paper quality, prize money, etc.
  
In liaison with the Greenfields Drama department (and as a warm up for the Greenfields Theatre Company production in July), the English students of years 7 to 9 have been putting together a ‘Horror Com’ movie – all created, written and produced exclusively by the students themselves. Each student has elected a specific role as part of the production crew, be it an actor, a director, a cameraman, an editor or one of the many other key roles needed to put a production of this nature together. The Horror Com is the latest in a series of recent student-created productions in the English department, including an impressive series of films involving such themes as human rights and anti-bullying.

But the biggest news of all this year is the staggering boom in the sheer volume of reading that’s occurring in the Greenfields English department.  As L. Ron Hubbard pointed out in an article entitled ‘Teacher’s Hat:

“...it is quantity of easily read material which produces the result rather than minute perfection at the start. The keynote is familiarity gained by quantity rather than particular beginning accuracy.”

“Spelling and grammar almost can be neglected if a properly intense reading programme is carried forward in sufficient quantity.”

In the spirit of these words the Greenfields reading game, originally masterminded by Mr Hudson as part of a published series of Hudson literary programmes, was re-launched. In this ground-breaking initiative, students advance through a series of ‘statuses’ as their quantity of reading increases. Increasingly desirable privileges are attainable as readers rise from lowly ‘Squires of Reading’ towards the ultimate goal of becoming a ‘King or Queen of Reading’. The figures of this fun and enlightening game speak for themselves, with over 40,000 pages of reading having been achieved in just the last term alone by an inspired army of avid readers in the Greenfields Upper School.

The Greenfields English Department

Comics, comics, comics!

Credit: Ryan Hyde

I have mentioned in an earlier article that I have in my possession a collection of comics dating back to the 1960s, about 5,000 in total. It’s not a fact which has been widely known as some of these are quite valuable. There is an almost complete series of Look & Learn magazine, the children’s encyclopaedic wonder, spanning all kinds of topics over a period of decades; there are whole series of Marvel and DC superhero comics, some of them classic; there are ancient and much sought after issues of such British treasures as TV Century 21, Smash! and Pow! as well as the more common but still highly valued Lion and Valiant and many others.


“Why do you keep them? Surely comics are for children?” I am occasionally asked.

Those are questions which it is hard to answer rationally if you aren’t a comics fan yourself. Comics mean so much more than they are normally given credit for. To really understand their value, you need to look at them differently.

I wrote recently about the balance, in reading, between pages of closely typed text and pictures giving some colour, reality or dynamism to what is being written about. Some children don’t like reading, not because they don’t understand the words but because they find it hard to have any affinity for page after page of text with nothing to really explain or show what the story is about. Give such a child a book with a suitable balance of pictures and words and he or she will normally take it up enthusiastically, and from it will learn in time to bridge over to pages of pure text. This is really what is behind the so-called “addiction” to computers that is moaned about so much today -children like to have words balanced with action or mass, and to many of them, a page of text alone can be dry and uninteresting at first.

But there’s even more to it, really. How do we form our own views of what is going on in the world? What lies at the foundation of our imaginative thinking? A child’s early reading is about more than just teaching a child how to read: it’s about laying in the basics of how they will understand things around them. Developing an affinity for certain books enables them to decide early on what it is they, as individuals, like or don’t like in life; reading books is helping them to determine who they are and how they will deal with the world.

Comics can play a key role in this, especially the comics of the 1960s and 70s. Why? For a number of reasons. Partly because, for complicated social reasons which we don’t have time for right now, comics on both sides of the Atlantic at that time were strongly moral: there were heroes and villains and right always won against might. The world was a bright place: in TV Century 21, the comic based on the Gerry Anderson TV series like Stingray and Thunderbirds, almost every story was set in a glittering, futuristic society which had sensible and working world government and which was full of exciting adventures, space travel and clear-cut conflicts. Designed imaginatively as news headlines, the comic’s covers initially presented to children the image of a future which was essentially wholesome and positive.

This was backed up by American models like Stan Lee’s Marvel Comics, which developed whole new ranges of superhero including Spider Man, Thor, Dr. Strange, Captain America and Daredevil. These were so full of creative energy and a sense of exuberant morality and life that they are still being tapped into today by the movie producers of Hollywood. DC Comics, home of Superman and Batman, also had positive and exciting storylines which were full of colour and action where the hero always won.

Not a bad foundation for a child coming to grips with the large and adult world. In a way, a modern mythology was founded in those years which has been imitated ever since. Comics over the decades became darker and the storylines grittier and more “real” as the generation which grew up with them tried to make them more resonant of the grimmer world around them, but in doing so they lost their strength and comic sales declined as storylines descended the scale.

Partly also, though, it was and is the pure creative energy of comics which gives them value: a teenager bitten by a radioactive spider is suddenly able to climb walls and gains super-strength (Spider Man)? A doctor strikes his walking stick on the ground and in a bolt of lightning is transformed into the Norse God of Thunder (Thor)? A family bombarded by mysterious cosmic rays is imbued with weird powers ranging from superhuman strength to the abilities to stretch, burst into flames or become invisible (the Fantastic Four)? These are crazy, creative, wild ideas which teach a child how the imagination can be used freely and to generate wonder.

On one hand we could read about the adventures of an alien orphan empowered in god-like ways just by being here on Earth (Superman); on the other, we followed the tales of a man haunted so much by the death of his parents that he trained himself to almost superhuman levels to fight crime (Batman). Here in Britain, the less “superheroic” but no less imaginative stories included an escapologist whose bones could bend to fantastic extremes (Janus Stark), a man whose possession of an ancient Aztec treasure (the “Eye of Zoltec”) made him invulnerable to harm (Kelly’s Eye) or a secret agent whose exposure to electricity rendered him completely invisible except for his artificial metal hand (the Steel Claw). These narratives, and thousands like them, captivated the attention, spellbound the imagination and fired up new generations of creative artists and writers, all while balancing words and pictures in such a way that loads of words were being read without even noticing it.

So no, I’m not giving up my collection in a hurry -and if you get a chance, you should seek out such classics yourself and get a better understanding of their power and worth.

Grant Hudson

Grant Hudson

An experienced classroom teacher and tutor and an accomplished editor, Grant Hudson also has a background as a London business consultant and is the founder of the Inner Circle Group, an internet-based club with headquarters in West Sussex but with members all over the world.

Hudson has also produced and directed an amateur whole-school theatre group for almost a decade and has created and managed many individual and group programmes addressing personal and school situations as Head Teacher of the independent Greenfields School, which included organising and managing clubs and group outings and mentoring other teachers through the UK Qualified Teaching Standards requirements, as well as personally tutoring and mentoring university entrants.

He is a published poet, and has established a school Tolkien Society. He has a Certificate of Journalism from the Australian College of Journalism and has held literary workshops and study groups in England, Australia and Canada.

Greenfields School:

 

From the 2011 Independent Schools Inspectorate Report: Greenfields is a non-selective, non-denominational mixed school, welcoming pupils of all faiths, located in Forest Row, near East Grinstead, Sussex. It was founded in 1981 in response to parent demand for a school using the educational philosophy of L Ron Hubbard. The school aims to ensure that all pupils leave feeling enthusiastic about life, being ethical, highly productive and motivated; arm them with basic knowledge and skills for living, with more advanced knowledge and skills in their areas of personal interest; equip them with the study skills to enable them to grasp and apply the data of any subject in the future; enable them to possess a desire to achieve something positive for mankind and civilisation, and to excel and become leaders in their chosen fields. The school is distinctive in that it aims to teach pupils how to study through the use of study technology developed by L Ron Hubbard.

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact us:

• + 44 (0) 1342 822 189
• info@greenfieldsschool.com
• Greenfields School
  Priory Road
  Forest Row
  East Sussex
  RH18 5JD

What to do if your child just doesn't like reading?

Sometimes I’m confronted with a child who doesn’t like to read.

He or she usually knows that reading is supposed to be a good thing, and it’s common too to find children who think that there may be something wrong with them if they can’t “take” to reading for whatever reason. They worry that they are “stupid” in some way, especially if others in their peer group are avid readers and they see that these students race ahead in their work in academic subjects largely because they read so easily.

It is a worry. But it is not usually very difficult to solve if the right materials are on hand.

It’s important to note first that the key to improving reading under normal conditions comes in two parts, in my experience:

1. Making sure that words which are not understood in some way are looked up in an appropriate dictionary and fully cleared so that they can be used easily and retained, and
2. Having a volume of appropriate reading material available.

The combination of volume reading and clearing up misunderstood words as the student goes along works wonders; Reading Age, as measured by many standard tests, tends to skyrocket when these two things work together, with Reading Age often leaping ahead by years in the space of a few weeks or months. Reading a lot and clearing up a lot of words is as close as you can get to a “magic bullet” in the area of reading.

But what about the child who simply doesn’t like reading?

Is this simply a case of “too many misunderstood words” leading to blankness and then disinterest?

My experience teaching English over the last 14 years suggests not; something else can come into play when a child opens a book and is confronted by a whole page of closely-written text. Even before that child has gotten into the detail of actually looking at the words, he or she has “switched off” -to them, reading equals boredom.

And that’s the key to solving reading for them: if they are bored, what are they lacking is sufficient pictures or action or mass to go with the page of written text.

I usually start to unravel this with a child in this position simply by finding a book which has pictures in it. This doesn’t mean dropping back into earlier years of reading material necessarily, as this can reinforce the child’s mistaken notion that they are somehow “behind” other students of their age; there is normally plenty of appropriate material around which makes use of pictures and even videos in this audio-visual age. It’s a case of following the interests of the child and locating something which has a good balance of pictures and significance.

This can lead into the controversial area of comics.

Look at any comic book from the 1940s to present day and you will normally find that the narrative is being conveyed largely through pictures rather than text. That’s what makes it a comic book. Word bubbles or small boxes containing explanatory notes (like “Meanwhile, back at Headquarters...”) are outweighed by large, often dynamically drawn, often colourful and detailed pictures which provide interest for the reader, young or old. Comics thus tend to engage those readers who find whole pages of text, text, text somewhat daunting.

Is it then damaging in any way to expose children to comics as a reading remedy? I can only answer from my own experience and my answer is most emphatically not: my own childhood reading began with picture books and exploded into the world of comic books, of which I still retain a collection of over 5,000 dating back to the early 1960s. Comics made me into a reader; they excited and interested me and led me into other worlds of literature and adventure and did me no harm whatsoever (though perhaps some colleagues might disagree!)

In short, it is usually the absence of pictures and “mass” associated with pages and pages of text which put some students off reading. Once pictures are supplied, the balance rights itself and reading commences with enjoyment. Given the availability of enough reading material of this kind, children in this position usually swiftly move on to other books where words predominate over pictures, and develop a love for reading at their own pace.

Grant Hudson
Head Teacher, Greenfields School

About Grant Hudson

Grant Hudson

An experienced classroom teacher and tutor and an accomplished editor, Grant Hudson also has a background as a London business consultant and is the founder of the Inner Circle Group, an internet-based club with headquarters in West Sussex but with members all over the world.

Hudson has also produced and directed an amateur whole-school theatre group for almost a decade and has created and managed many individual and group programmes addressing personal and school situations as Head Teacher of the independent Greenfields School, which included organising and managing clubs and group outings and mentoring other teachers through the UK Qualified Teaching Standards requirements, as well as personally tutoring and mentoring university entrants.

He is a published poet, and has established a school Tolkien Society. He has a Certificate of Journalism from the Australian College of Journalism and has held literary workshops and study groups in England, Australia and Canada.

About Greenfields

From the 2011 Independent Schools Inspectorate Report: Greenfields is a non-selective, non-denominational mixed school, welcoming pupils of all faiths, located in Forest Row, near East Grinstead, Sussex. It was founded in 1981 in response to parent demand for a school using the educational philosophy of L Ron Hubbard. The school aims to ensure that all pupils leave feeling enthusiastic about life, being ethical, highly productive and motivated; arm them with basic knowledge and skills for living, with more advanced knowledge and skills in their areas of personal interest; equip them with the study skills to enable them to grasp and apply the data of any subject in the future; enable them to possess a desire to achieve something positive for mankind and civilisation, and to excel and become leaders in their chosen fields. The school is distinctive in that it aims to teach pupils how to study through the use of study technology developed by L Ron Hubbard.


If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact us:

• + 44 (0) 1342 822 189
• info@greenfieldsschool.com
• Greenfields School
  Priory Road
  Forest Row
  East Sussex
  RH18 5JD

Sussex School: Out Now - Issue 13 of the Greenfields School Magazine

Issue 13 of the Greenfields School Magazine

This issue of the Greenfields School magazine inlcudes:

• Welcome from Head Teacher Grant Hudson
• Greenfields Theatre Company
• 2010 Christmas Show: Doctor When
• 2011 Summer Show: The 39 Steps
  
• Reception and Juniors
• Cultural News
• Red Nose Day
• The Royal Wedding
• Extra Curricular
• Ski trip
• Model flying
• Sports and the Arts
• Meet the gold medalists and our creative superstars
• School Inspection Results 2011
• Read excerpts of the report
• Music
• Find out about Rock School
• Plus much, much more ...

Please contact us if you would like your free copy of the magazine. Alternatively, you can view and download our online PDF version of the magazine here:

http://www.greenfieldsschool.com/GF_MAG_JUNE2011_WEB.pdf

Sussex Private School Gets a Good Inspection Report from the ISI

Greenfields is far more than just a school.

The Independent Schools Inspectorate -the legal authority in the UK responsible for inspecting independent schools and assessing them in relation to national standards- recently found that at Greenfields “pupils’ personal development is good, supported by effective arrangements to ensure their welfare, health and safety. They benefit from very good relationships with staff, and all new pupils are made to feel welcome.”

Their report went on to say, “Behaviour and moral standards are high. Pupils achieve a good level of self-confidence and learn, in varying degrees, to be socially and culturally aware.”

Furthermore, “the overall quality of the pupils’ achievements throughout the school is good, showing that pupils are well educated in accordance with the school’s aim that they should acquire basic knowledge and skills for living... Pupils are very articulate, listen carefully and contribute well when asked. They are motivated, and work independently and with enthusiasm.”

So as a school, Greenfields is doing well. This extends into other areas of life, as the report found: “The school provides a range of opportunities through which its pupils develop a system of spiritual beliefs. The pupils develop a good sense of identity, self-worth and self-confidence, demonstrated by their demeanour around the school, and in many of their activities... Relationships are based on mutual trust and respect, which is palpable throughout the school... Pupils accept responsibility readily and happily share the various tasks that fall to them.”

The full report of the Inspectorate is available through the school’s website, and should be read by anyone interested as it really confirms and validates our credentials as one of the premier Applied Scholastics schools on the planet.

Which is great -but Greenfields is far more than that.

Speak to anyone who has attended the school and they will usually embellish the points made above: its special atmosphere, the unique relationship between teachers and pupils, the advanced approach to learning which means that the aim is a proper and full understanding of what is studied rather than just enough knowledge to pass an exam.

But there’s more.

Grant Hudson,Head Teacher
at Greenfields School

“We encourage students to see that education is more than learning useful material for the future,” says Head Teacher Grant Hudson. “It is a multi-level game to do with themselves and others and at Greenfields they can experience tremendous change in relation to themselves, others and groups. Additionally, with every lesson, they can learn more than just data but attitudes which will help them to better conditions around them -and that their help personally is needed. Some people don’t realize how important education is to the world at large.”

At Greenfields, students are not just lumped together in classes or year groups and allowed to get on with it, they are treated as individuals. Often they have individual study programmes written to pilot each one towards their goals.

“Treated in this way, all of a sudden they find out who they really are and begin to push themselves to get the sub-products needed to make it in life,” explains Mr. Hudson. “Everything seems doable when you break life down this way. Monitoring this on a weekly basis helps the teaching staff to keep control in and use resources wisely.

“At Greenfields we really care about our students and they know that. We get them willing to be a part of the big picture of what is needed in life and they love to play that game.”

Doctor Who Headmaster Invigorated by Gaiman Who Episode

A Head Teacher in Sussex decides to review
episodes of Doctor Who on his school's blog

Mr. Hudson is Head Teacher at Greenfields School which is bigger inside than it is outside...

In the light of an article a couple of years ago which placed David Tennant as the top of a poll on who would be the ideal headmaster (http://www.metro.co.uk/showbiz/738913-david-tennant-is-dream-headmaster), it might be interesting for some to know that one school has its very own "Doctor" -Grant Hudson, Head Teacher at Greenfields School in Forest Row, East Sussex, has been a mad fan of the series since it began and happily writes about the recent Neil Gaiman episode here:

Grant Hudson,Head Teacher
at Greenfields School

Having just watched the Doctor Who episode written by Neil Gaiman "The Doctor's Wife" for the second time, I note that viewer response has been overwhelmingly positive. But as a fan of the show since 1963, that worries me a little. See below.

I was able to extract one negative comment: that the whole "junkyard in space" motif and the non-descript rubbish in it was a bit... well, rubbish.

For a fan boy like me though, there were references throughout this episode to the classic series and a kind of homage to Doctor Who as a whole which swung it over to positive in my estimation. Things like the fact that we first met the Tardis in 1963 in a junkyard, the psychic message boxes (last seen at a very pivotal moment in 1969), the cloister bell ringing in the Tardis, the fact that the "junk" console was actually designed by a child on Blue Peter, the shaving mirror reminiscent of "The Masque of Mandragora" in which we first see an alternative control room (which has a shaving mirror on the console), the reference to the Doctor stealing the Tardis (or the Tardis stealing the Doctor), the "deleting" of rooms to give the Tardis extra power (last used in the early '80s) and so on. It all showed that Gaiman is a real fan, and therefore that we were in safe hands.

I also enjoyed some of the lines and their delivery: like when Matt says "Just admiring your collection of Time Lord psychic distress signals..." in that slightly menacing way; or when he says to Idris "I've got nothing" and she replies "You've got everything you've always had: you've got Me" and touches her finger to the console, sparking the take-off. Goosebump stuff for me.

“The Doctor’s Wife” Season 6, Episode 4

But the most stand-alone dramatically effective pieces were the scenes with Rory and Amy inside -the switching of viewpoints, the psychological tension, the use of collapsed spaces and times, the claustrophobia (as well as the wonderful resurrection of the earlier control room). Like that episode on board that ship ("Midnight") with David Tennant.

It's interesting to read Neil Gaiman's feedback on the Guardian website on 16th May 2011.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/may/16/neil-gaiman-doctor-who-doctors-wife

I think the one disapproving comment reveals an important weakness in the show, though: it is highly vulnerable to being too self-referential (and even self-reverential) -it can effectively disappear up its own Rift by depending for its emotional impact on its own past history. Unless it can reach out effectively to non-fans it will begin to die. This was one of Russell T Davies great strengths: he could do the wacky Dr. Who stuff and still drop in a real moment of real human drama. In fact, he inserted quite a few in each episode and this served to make the show more universal and more real. I think of Rose confronting Donna who says "I'm not important -I'm just a temp from Chiswick" -beautifully written, beautifully acted by Tate who almost broke my heart at that point. Moffat runs the big risk of introverting the show too much, making it "too clever" and cutting it off from the wider public. It will disappear into its own bubble universe if it's not careful.

But it's still one of the loves of my life and I still felt re-invigorated about my relationships with things and people when the Doctor sees the lever move by itself at the end and realises that the Tardis has always taken him where he needs to go rather than where he wants to... :)

Grant Hudson, Head Teacher

Education Newsletter: Results! Issue III Out Now

The Applied Scholastics® Newsletter for the United Kingdom

Results! Newsletter - Issue III

The contents for this issue include:

• Greenfields School - Learning & Living by Head Teacher Grant Hudson, BA Hons
• What is Applied Scholastics?
• Study Technology - What are The Barriers to Study?
  
• What Teachers are Saying about Study Technology
  - Success in Teaching using The Barriers to Study - Lady Joan Hort
  - Teacher Success by Veronica Tupholme, Dip. Ed.
  - Maths by Emily Dearden B.Sc. Hons.
• Greenfields Educational Trust in the Community
• John Travolta - What I Think of Study Technology
  
• Student Success with Study Technology
  - Paul Rogers
  - Assaff Rawner
  - Chloe Wicks
• Effective Education Centre
• Teaching by L. Ron Hubbard

Visit Greenfields School or contact us on +44 (0)1342 822189, info@greenfieldsschool.com to get your copy of this issue's Results! Newsletter.

Raising the Standard

Having “settled in” as the Head Teacher at Greenfields, I am now ready to raise the standard of what we deliver to your children -across every subject and throughout the school year.

I know that many of you have been content with what we produce; if you have ever attended Graduation during our end-of-year Gala Weekend, you will know that our graduates are normally outstanding and very thankful for having had the Greenfields Experience to launch their lives, and visiting parents are usually overjoyed with what their children and others have accomplished. I also receive many letters and words of thanks throughout the year for what we do.

But, in today’s world, I feel that it is both our job and our moral duty to do better for our students.

With this in mind, I am lauching a major new initiative in the school to raise our academic and social standards. This will involve several key elements, some drawn from the best practice of other independent schools, and some designed around our own Study Technology. We will aim, through this, to achieve a dramatic improvement in the standard of our products: better educated children.

There will be a concentration on the quantity and quality of what is being taught in every subject.

Our services will be more closely monitored and directed to ensure that students who really need help are getting it.

You will begin to hear more from class tutors, teachers, other staff, and me.

Raising our standards across all subjects and through every week of the school year will present a more challenging environment for students -but they will receive any assistance that they need and we have the wonderful Study Technology to help them too. Then there is really no limit to what they will be able to achieve, for themselves, for each other -and for the world.

That’s the new battle cry here at Greenfields: raise the standard!

You’re welcome to give me whatever feedback you wish!

Grant Hudson

Head Teacher