Using research to support our new secondary programme

‘Language and Emotions: How I am using my PhD in Young Adult Fiction to support The Story Project’s Secondary Programme’

By Alice Penfold

Did you know we are currently trialing a brand new secondary programme? Created by The Story Project’s wider team, we are excited to share with you some more information!

Written by Alice, our wonderful freelancer, here is a post all about how the programme uses Young Adult (YA) fiction to explore the relationships between language, emotions and identity.

At The Story Project, we firmly believe that wellbeing is of lifelong importance. As children progress from primary school to secondary school, they need to continue learning and building their wellbeing skills through stories and making connections between reading and real life. This is why we are, excitingly, developing our provision for Key Stage 3 students.

I am working with Sarah, one of our Directors, on developing the secondary programme for The Story Project, and also currently studying for a PhD focused on YA fiction. My focus on how reading contemporary YA fantasy texts with young people can open up spaces to explore the relationship between language, emotions and identity.

So what has this got to do with The Story Project? The Story Project’s mission is focused on engaging young people with the magic of stories to inspire lifelong wellbeing and a rich research and evidence base underpins all of our work.

In the sessions for Years 7 and 8, students read a range of fiction and non-fiction extracts and explore a range of topics, including transition from primary to secondary school, healthy friendships and relationships, staying healthy, and responding to different and difficult emotions.

When planning and creating The Story Project sessions, I draw on my research, which included projects reading YA texts with young people in schools, as well as wider evidence-based approaches to reading and oracy.

As part of my research, I have focused on the importance of reader-response. This is a theory that recognises reading as a transactional process whereby readers are not uncovering fixed meanings from the text but are playing an active role in the reading experience (Rosenblatt, 1994). As a reader response approach illustrates, the minds and emotions of individual readers also respond individually to the reading stimuli (Rosenblatt, 1994), since readers bring different emotions and experiences to the text.

It is important for young people to have space to approach texts in a way that values their interpretations and perspectives, so that they can appreciate the relevance that stories can have in providing a commentary on life and humanity.

At The Story Project, we encourage students’ literacy AND emotional literacy development, and this includes a celebration of reader response as a core part of the reading process.

For my PhD research sessions, students engaged with YA texts through discussions and then creative projects. The sessions were inclusive and relevant, with fluidity, dialogue, and collaboration at their centre. Participants particularly appreciated that through a focus on discussions and oracy, “everyone can share” (Student A), they were “talking about things that matter” (Student B) and there was a focus on “your own creative thinking and how you feel” (Student C).

At The Story Project, these same principles matter. The sessions are designed with a focus on oracy and valuing students’ voices and viewpoints: students verbalise their ideas, build on the ideas of others, ask and answer questions, and practise deepening their thinking.

By reading a range of diverse and powerful YA and non-fiction extracts, students explore “things that matter” – to quote the participant from my research – through a variety of narratives and characters. Students develop core literacy skills, exploring vocabulary and practising their summarising, inferring and predicting skills, combined with the opportunity to form personal judgements and make connections between the texts and their own lives and emotions.

In Year 7, for example, students start by reading extracts from ‘Everything All At Once’ by Steve Camden, a poetry collection all about the transition to, and life in, secondary school. We ask questions such as, ‘How is this character feeling?’ and ‘What advice would you give to someone in a similar situation to manage a time of transition?’; one of our key approaches in each session is ‘connecting’, and we aim for students to think deeply and make connections between the reading and their own ideas, lives, emotions, and experiences. We know that the very act of reading has proven benefits for our mental health – our carefully chosen extracts can help young people to engage with reading for pleasure, develop literacy and oracy confidence and proficiency, and progress on their own lifelong wellbeing journeys.

If you are interested in learning more about our secondary programme, we would love to hear from you!

Reference:

Rosenblatt, L. M. (1994). The reader, the text, the poem: The transactional theory of the literary work. Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press.