UFTON COURT HAUNTED BY YEAR 12 STUDENTS.
On 13th. October, 36 year 12 students descended on Ufton Court for a series of workshops related to their English literature AS. In the calm surroundings of this Elizabethan manor house, Ms Hanley, Mr. Hawkins and Ms Reynolds started the two-day residential visit with three study skills sessions: ‘Organising Your English File’, ‘Essay Writing Skills’ and ‘Annotating Texts (with reference to Larkin)’. The students bravely endured them all and subsequently gave us some very positive feedback on their usefulness.
The afternoon saw the arrival of ‘The Chaucer Man’, aka Trevor Eaton, whose performance and discussion of ‘The Miller’s Tale’ proved to be both entertaining and accessible. His energetic recital of the whole tale was truly impressive and he answered the students’ questions equally vigorously. As well as being absolutely hilarious at times, he exhibited the rhythms of Middle English for the students and provided them with an excellent comparison to the recent BBC adaptation of the tale. However, Ms Hanley had to endure an unwarranted amount of teasing afterwards for owning her own CD of The Chaucer Man’s selected performances!
The next round of workshops focused on the Modern Novel. Miss. Haynes and Mrs. Tennant had arrived by this time and led two different sessions on Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (the set text for all students). Mr. Hawkins and Ms Hanley discussed approaches to prose through the use of extracts from Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Keenan’s An Evil Cradling.
The evening entertainment enabled the teachers to sit back and be entertained by the students’ own modern adaptations of a selection of The Canterbury Tales, throughout which Ms Reynolds acted as official photographer. The results of her hard work are now publicly exhibited on the website! (See below)
The students were woken to be greeted by Mr. Lindsay’s all-morning drama workshop, in which he miraculously managed to successfully blend John Ford and Tennessee Williams. Again, the students excelled themselves in bringing their set texts to life.
All staff were immensely impressed with the conduct of all students for the duration of the visit and the latter are to be commended for their politeness, good humour and willingness to tackle any task set.
Ms Hanley, with thanks to Lizzie Stanley for her contribution.
