Yesterday I took my small class of five Year 10 students to the nearby Peterchurch graveyard to read the first chapter of Great Expectations. It was a brilliant idea, if I do admit it. From the first time I stepped foot in this graveyard I could not help but picture a "small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all" in the character of Pip.
The whipping wind,the damp, cold air, the wet ground, the squawking crows, the briers, nettles and mud we trudged through on the way to the graveyard, all helped provide a 3D experience that could not have been realized in the classroom. Surrounded by tombstones covered in moss, brought Pip's story to life. We practiced deciphering who these buried people might be and what we could learn about them from their tombstones, like Pip does with his father - assuming a square and stout man due to the shape of his tombstone.
The eerie atmosphere and the vulnerability of a young child frightened by a man all "dressed in coarse gray" could truly be experienced by sitting in the graveyard and reading this story...another successful experiment!
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