October 22nd 1951. I’m in the gym and the II are busy on a compo about Arthur. Executioners and Tapestry have been asked for on the board. The fire is on for the first time. It all seems so quiet and cosy with the green overalls and bent heads and pens and pencils going like mad, and the rain dripping on the roof. Jane wants to know if she must put a capital in front of Arthur and Hubert every time and that makes Diana wonder about a capital P for Prince. Anne says she’s finished, so I say she’s been too quick, and what about something about Constance his poor mother? Hands up all over the room. Tongue, Punishment, Princess eventually go on the board. Consternation when I say we must stop.”
Let's try to imagine the lesson that took place in Miss Berry's classroom that day.
Why urgest thou so oft young Arthur’s death?
Thy hand had murder’d him: I had a mighty cause
To wish him dead, but though had’st none to kill him.
Hubert - No had, my lord! Why, did you not provoke me?
King John - It is the curse of kings, to be attended
By slaves, that take their humours for a warrant.”
Shakespeare: King John
The Arthur in question is not that famous Arthur of English legend but the grandson of Henry II. Henry had four sons, and it was the rule that the right to the throne progressed from the first-born son to his offspring; then to the second-born son and his offspring; and so on. By this rule, Arthur, the son of the third-born Geoffrey and his wife, Constance, would have had precedence over fourth-born, John. Yet, John gains the throne after the death of his brother Richard the Lionheart, not Arthur.
When the news of King Richard’s death reached England there were confusion and disorder on every side. There were two claimants to the throne. One was strong and the other was weak. Right was on the side of the weak, but, as too often happens, Might was on the side of the wrong…The story of the death of Arthur is a melancholy one. Those of us who have read Shakespeare’s great play of King John will remember how John, the cruel uncle, threw his nephew into prison, how he sent one of his followers, Hubert by name, to burn out the boy’s eyes, and how Hubert, touched by the boy’s pleadings, refused to obey the cruel order of the king. How John, fearing the anger of the English, took Arthur away and shut him up in a French prison, and there, as it was believed, slew him with his own hand.
I also notice what Miss Berry did when one student claims she is done writing long before the time period had ended; she jiggles the chain of memory by mentioning another character in the tragic account, Arthur’s mother, Constance, and off dash all the pencils to enlarge their retelling.
The children’s enthusiastic response tells me that these acts of Miss Berry’s did not interfere with the act of knowing which each child was responsible for, but were a useful step in the scaffolding of the lesson. Often we see the advice to write these proper nouns on the board preceding the lesson, but how much better is it to be the answer to a question put by the minds of the children themselves? I can see that the children were not expected to juggle difficult spellings alongside the challenging task of getting their thoughts on paper lucidly and fluidly. Rather, that the spelling assistance helped them to be successful and feel satisfied with their own results.
And that is a good thing.