Keys to the Curriculum

The Keys to the Curriculum
Key Stages

The collaborative, playful and dialogic nature of renga appears to tap into some fundamental aspect of human nature. The scaleable complexity of style and structure available to the participants means that age is not a dominant consideration. As the poems included in this study tend to indicate, beyond Key Stage One it would appear that all can gain from collaborative poetry composed in the Japanese manner.

Renga is a structured activity whose core concepts are relatively simple. It has been the experience of this author that Key Stage Two and Key Stage Three children are often more assured in their ability to collaborate than are those from Key Stage Four, perhaps an indicator of the increasing pressure on older children to excel in competitive examinations.

It is also significant that neither adulthood nor an extensive publishing history are guarantors of certain success; those most able as individual writers often experience the greatest difficulty in working effectively as a group.

In short renga is a great leveller, an uncoverer of lights under bushels.

Mixed Abilities, Special Needs

As renga prizes variety above all else, and provides for guided and creative interaction, it is highly suitable to mixed-ability environments. The brevity of individual stanzas means they can be composed by persons with very poor literacy. The primacy of experiential veracity over analysis, of observation over exegesis, facilitates self-expression for persons with limited verbal reasoning.

Given the correct environment and support the genre can be both effective and inclusive for highly diverse client groups. Of the educational institutions included in this study St Antony’s is a mainstream junior school with a very high number of statemented children, Crosshill School is principally MLD, St Thomas Centre is a PRU, Cribden House is a Special School, and Rossendale School is a Residential Special School for children with severe EBD. By contrast, most of the Key Stage Four children come from the Gifted and Talented Cohort of a number of East Lancashire high schools.

Curricular Links - to English

Much of the relevance of renga to both English Language and Literature will be apparent to persons with a professional interest in the field, but it is perhaps worth summarising some of the particular features of the genre:

renga extends the literary focus beyond the occidental tradition
renga is part of an extensive corpus of related literary forms including individual verse (haiku), mixed poetry and prose (haibun) and mixed visual imagery and poetry (haiga)
renga in the English language is novel; participants are on the cutting edge of intercultural development
largely experiential, renga serves as a bridge between concepts of fact and fiction, of biography and fantasy
renga favours indirect association rather than exposition, and encourages the conception of audience as participant/interpreter
though tightly structured renga assembles information in a way that is non-linear and non-hierarchical
participants must consider their contributions at the level of image/stanza/whole-poem, a useful analogue to the standard model of word/sentence/text
renga combines oral and textual activity, presenting a continuous opportunity to review
a renga session has a tangible outcome, something for the participants to possess

And Beyond

In so far as the genre allows a free ranging treatment of almost any given subject, it holds the intriguing potential to provide cross-curricular links.

This study contains poems written in the Textile Hall of Blackburn Museum. The way this environment stimulated the authors to relate history directly to their own experience is revealing. Similarly groups of younger children, when presented with the six rooms of Rossendale Museum - an archetypal small town endowment - were able to synthesise an entire universe of real and imagined wonders.

Less obvious perhaps are the poems by the Year Five children of St Antony’s Blackburn, a Roman Catholic school representing an area with a distinctly constrained socio-economic profile. These two pieces formed part of a larger Harvest Festival project taking as its theme relative poverty and as such were directly tied-in to Religious Studies. One can imagine similar cross fertilisation with Geography, Science, and Design & Technology.

Model Citizens

Of all the curricular areas to be examined it is one of the least obvious, Citizenship, that might most repay consideration.

Renga is a team activity as clearly as is rugby or netball, but it also includes large elements of negotiation and compromise, requiring participants to seriously consider alternative types of perception and response.

The following is extracted from a project outline detailing a visit by a Key Stage Three group from a PRU to Imperial War Museum North. The children are equipped with a number of disposable cameras as well as voice recorders and writing implements. After the visit a number of sessions are held in which findings and impressions are discussed, the resultant material forming the basis for one or more pieces of linked verse

Citizenship through Creativity

Aims: to involve pupils in the creation of collaborative linked verse. A cross-curricular activity designed to

relate an academic area to real life experience
place the current actuality in a generational context
explore how unstructured thoughts and feelings might find expression
access the non-linear and non-hierarchical potential of poetic thought
demonstrate the cumulative and creative power of team work

Curricular areas covered:

knowledge and understanding -

1g - the importance of resolving conflict: Link to history, origins of WW2

1h - the importance of the media: Propaganda as a tool of war

1i - the world as a global community: The first truly 'world' war?

developing skills of enquiry -

2a - think about political, spiritual, moral and cultural issues: the rules of war, civilians as targets, dubious allies, genocide, excitement and adventure, travel

2b - opinion, orally and in writing: observe, consider, take notes, voice recordings and image capture, web search - experiment with syntheses

2c - contribute to exploratory discussion: compare notes, share ideas, swap anecdotes, speculate

developing skills of participation -

3a - imagination to consider other people's experience, & express: combatant, civilian, before, during and after - what is it really like?

3b - negotiate, take part: construct the verses with others, share, compare, contrast and compliment

3c - reflect on the process of participating: debrief with staff and artist, take ownership of the final product

A Summary

For an education system that tends evermore to specialisation and individual testing renga presents a unique opportunity to resist the purely competitive pressures, teaching participants to take notice of their own environment and validate their own, shared, experience.

The creation of a renga is an act of synthesis. Conducted properly it is also an act of empowerment.

Addendum

The potential of linked verse as a tool for interdisciplinary development is further discussed elsewhere in this study under the heading 'Notes on Key Skills'.