Tecriture

Groups of more able pupils are using the facilities available in the City Learning Centre to challenge their own expectations of the nature and structure of text. The pupils are taking part in a pilot scheme for a project called Tecriture. As the name suggests it combines technology with literature.

Pupils begin by considering opening and closing lexia (sections of text) and analysing their content. They then create joining lexia to create a coherent whole. However, within the lexia are hyperlinks which create new possibilities: the reader can take a range of choices and make the text into a completely new entity each time it is read. The pupils are creating the hyperlinks which can be to do with structure, time, character, description. The writers may decide to make links with websites available to the reader.

Having worked through the exercises on the Tecriture site and completed the feedback requests the pupils create their own texts complete with hyperlinks. Other pupils (or eventually users of the website from around the world) then read the texts making choices and creating hyperlinks within the hyperlinks. In this way the pupils are seeing text, initially fiction, as organic with an endless range of imaginative possibilities. No longer does fiction have a beginning, a middle and an end: it has a structure dependent on the wishes of the reader or the community of readers.

We are expecting to move the project on from fiction to other genres and other curriculum areas to explore the possibilities of challenging outmoded views of structure and organisation within text.

Throughout the project, pupils are challenging their own pre-conceptions and are thinking analytically, creatively and making evaluations. They are all becoming more aware of themselves not just as writers and readers but also as thinkers.