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Therfield First School: Re-Wilding Nature Words

26/10/2017

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Re-Wilding Nature Words: 16th - 20th October 2017 @ Therfield First School, Hertfordshire.   A guest blog by Alix Marschani
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In the space of five minutes outside my classroom, we raced across the field, past the WILLOW and the HOLLY and found a POPPY in BLOOM. Four DELETED nature words from the Oxford Junior Dictionary re-found by the children of Therfield School. Our purpose was to find as many of these DELETED nature words to kick start our Re-Wilding Nature Words week. Above is a photo taken by a child of the poppy which poignantly is framed by a wire fence, originally marking the perimeter of the school field, interpreted by the children as ‘a jail’ ‘where the deleted words went’. ‘Save our words from jail!’ they shouted spontaneously as we later filled a flip chart of possible slogans to use for our Demo posters.

The idea for this Nature Word Demo originated from my reading of the Lost Words in newspaper reports. As an educator of young children, I was alarmed that a venerable institution such as Oxford University Press should see fit to remove nature words from a much-used school dictionary without informing the public, and more importantly, the new words reflected only technological, celebrity and virtual-world activity, apparently more important than the natural world all around us. Newly included words such as chatroom, creep, MP3 player need a place in a dictionary BUT not at the expense of GOLDFISH, SPANIEL and CONKER! This is no longer a dictionary but a faddish list of words presented to a solitary child, I thought, ignoring the fact that we live on and are dependent upon a living planet, filled with birds, animals and plants we want to look after, and therefore need the spellings! After all, you cannot delete words when the object exists! This indignation was felt by the staff and children at school, especially as we have worked hard to develop a notion of the child as countryside citizen responsible for the local environment.

We put our idea for a demonstration to the children – no hesitation there. We agreed as teachers that to save these words we needed to use them. If children did not know the meanings, then we had to learn these and use them.
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And this is a summary of what we did:
​Years 1 and 2 (Duckpuddle class) took photos of the nature words and collected feathers, leaves and other items for a nature wall collage.
​The 100 words were displayed to use for spellings, phonic decoding, writing poems.
​Years 1 and 2 began writing their own posters with the words.
Years 3 and 4 (Rooksnest) worked on a display of the 100 words on painted feather shapes– it read Free our words – let them Fly.
​Reception class (Honeypot class) painted pictures of Lost word animals.
The Demo: on Friday we marched through the village, led by our head teacher shouting ‘We want our words back!’  Some parents turned up and the grown-ups in the pub cheered us on!
Just one of our posters
​In conclusion: this work to re-kindle and re-find the Lost Words will carry on because the response has been supportive: parents are dismayed, teachers worried over the predominance of virtual worlds as refuge for children when internet safety is a daily concern. Importantly, the virtual and technological must live alongside the natural and we agree as a school there is space for both. GIVE US OUR WORDS BACK!
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The Lost Words exhibition opens

21/10/2017

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From Compton Verney to Countryfile, we're all celebrating #naturewords

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The former mansion house and grounds at Compton Verney, Warwickshire is the place to go for a quick lesson in how to lay on an art exhibition.  Critic Waldemar Januszczak described this summer’s Op Art project as “a dazzling exhibition that sets the standard for how all shows should be done”.  So, apart from the fact that their latest exhibition is all about #naturewords, I had good reason to look forward to my first visit there last night.  I was not disappointed.
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Jackie Morris’s paintings for The Lost Words, her stunning joint venture with writer Robert Macfarlane, are presented alongside Macfarlane’s acrostic word-spells, as he calls them, each celebrating one of twenty names for everyday wild animals and plants.  The story of these lost words has been told on this blog over the last three years.

Accompanying the exhibition are small, telling touches including Morris’s sketchbooks and Macfarlane’s scribbled early drafts, along with collections of books from their own libraries.  Visitors are able to thumb through copies of some of the works of other authors that have inspired them, from Nan Shepherd to Roger Deakin to Sara Maitland.

We arrived at dusk for a private view, but will have to return in daylight, enticed by a sign (pictured, right) advertising two ‘Spell Walks’ set in the 120 acres of Capability Brown parkland surrounding the house and offering a journey of words, wildlife and discovery. ​Created by Christopher Jelley they complement The Lost Words in at least one crucial way – putting technology to use for the enjoyment of the real world, rather than pitting one against the other.
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Jackie Morris’s paintings for The Lost Words will be on display at Compton Verney, Warwickshire from 21 Oct to 17 Dec (except Mondays) 11am – 5pm

Countryfile’s edition from Cornwall will be broadcast on 22 October, BBC1 at 18:15, featuring poet Chrissie Gittins's celebration of nature words, and available on iPlayer afterwards.  Her Adder, Bluebell, Lobster is published by Otter-Barry Books

The Lost Words was published by Hamish Hamilton on 5 October.
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#naturewords fighting back

8/10/2017

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On Friday, in a field near St. Endellion in Cornwall, I found myself mic’d up for a conversation with Margherita Taylor of the BBC’s rural magazine programme Countryfile.  Shortly afterwards the poet Chrissie Gittins and a dozen children arrived for a nature-and-naturewords safari.  Chrissie read from Adder, Bluebell, Lobster, her collection of 40 children’s poems, each celebrating a lost nature word that had been deleted from the Oxford Junior Dictionary.  Then children from St. Kew, St. Minver, Nanstallon, Padstow and Blisland primary schools wrote a poem together, based on their real, direct experiences of nature.

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As I was heading to the North Cornwall Book Festival and Countryfile, in Foyles Bookshop in London Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris were launching their own sumptuous treatment of the same subject – The Lost Words.  In this review by author Katharine Norbury, it is described as “a book of spells rather than poems, exquisitely illustrated by Morris [in which] Macfarlane gently, firmly and meticulously restores the missing words.”  It is almost three years since the writer Mark Cocker and I launched the #naturewords campaign, and it feels like a small October Revolution.

​In a recent article, Macfarlane summarises some striking research in which a Cambridge-based team made a set of 100 picture cards, each showing a common species of British wildlife. They also made a set of 100 cards showing a “common species” of Pokémon character. Children aged eight and over were substantially better, the researchers found, at identifying Pokémon “species” than “organisms such as oak trees or badgers”: around 80% accuracy for Pokémon, but less than 50% for real species.  

Jackie Morris at work: words by Robert Macfarlane, set and performed by Kerry Andrew

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The research showed that young children have tremendous capacity for learning about creatures -real or imaginary - but are presently more inspired by “synthetic subjects” than by living creatures. In a break from the usual dispassion of the scientist, they ponder on the fact that “we love what we know … What is the extinction of the condor to a child who has never seen a wren”?

Blogging here In August I responded – positively – to Guardian columnist George Monbiot’s call for poets to weave their word-magic to find a new vocabulary for conservation and the environment, we conservationists having been part of the problem with our alienating technocratic language.  Gittins, Macfarlane and Morris are deploying their artistry in an even more fundamental way, to restore #naturewords to the mouths, and the mind’s eyes, of children.

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Jackie Morris’s paintings for The Lost Words will be on display at Compton Verney, Warwickshire from 21 Oct to 17 Dec (except Mondays) 11am – 5pm

Countryfile’s edition from Cornwall will be broadcast on 22 October, BBC1 at 18:15

The Lost Words was published by Hamish Hamilton on 5 October.
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Adder, Bluebell, Lobster is published by Otter-Barry Books

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