Abu Dhabi schoolteacher uses paintings and poetry to impart a love of English literature

When she set a writing challenge for young pupils at her school, Gail Walster took a leaf out of a Victorian poetry book – and her own literary history.

With Abu Dhabi Education Council keen to improve literacy in schools and get youngsters more interested in reading, the perfect way to do this was right under her nose.

On her classroom desk is a treasure box that is most intriguing to her pupils.

Inside it is a Victorian poetry book that was given to the teacher when she was nine years old, the same age as her students.

“It was a gift from a very old lady, who used to be a schoolteacher in the English village where I grew up,” she says.

“I remember her reading me a Victorian poem from it, The Lady of Shalott,by Alfred Lord Tennyson, and it became one of my favourite poems. I think it was at that moment that my love of language and literature really began.”

Now a teacher at Cambridge High School in Mohammed Bin Zayed City, Walster decided to use The Lady of Shalott as a starting point for a contest, in which pupils were challenged to write a descriptive paragraph from a Victorian story about the surroundings of a house.

Original article by Jessica Hill

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Abu Dhabi schoolteacher uses paintings and poetry to impart a love of English literature