Ryan has been tap - tap - tapping his pencil on his table for over five minutes now, but we are still managing to ignore him. We know he’s doing it to gain attention and that after a while (when he doesn’t get a reaction), he will stop. Of course, there is a possibility that he might go on to do something even more annoying, but either way, we are determined he won’t spoil our learning.
This week we are studying onomatopoeia, so in a way his actions are helpful. The irony is certainly not lost on Leanne, who grins knowingly when she suggests tap - tap - tap as an example. I grin knowingly back and ask whether anyone can give me a sentence with tap - tap - tap in it. This turns out to be a mistake.
“Ryan is going tap - tap - tap with his pencil and it’s doing my nut in,” laughs Tyrell. “I’m sick of Ryan tap - tap - tapping his pencil,” giggles Kian. “If Ryan keeps tap - tap - tapping his pencil I am going to knock him out,” cries, Dwaine, at which point, instead of tap - tap - tapping his pencil, Ryan hurls it across the room. It pings off the metal bin but I resist the temptation to use this as another example.
No longer having a pencil to tap - tap - tap with, Ryan improvises by click - click - clicking his tongue. It occurs to me that someone will probably suggest we use click - click - click to demonstrate onomatopoeia next. I decide to prevent further use of Ryan’s sound effects on our learning journey by suggesting that now might be a good time for us to look at some of the children’s “sound posters”.
Comic-book adventures
Mia’s poster is called “Rain” and it is filled with pictures of umbrellas, wellingtons and carefully decorated raindrops. Each of her raindrops contains a different word. These include splash, pitter-patter, gurgle and splosh. Next up is Jermaine’s poster. It is called “Avengers” and his energetically illustrated words are all based on (or possibly copied from) the three Marvel comic books on our “Onomatopoeia” display.
In Jermaine’s world, quantity always trumps quality and because his poster contains the most words, he decides it must be the best. Numerically speaking, Mia’s poster only has 12 words, whereas his contains 23. He begins to read them out loud, making sure that every BOSH!, CCCRAAACK!, THUD!, KERRUNCH! and ZAP! is accompanied by its related kick or punch.
It’s not until he re-enacts a dramatic KA-POW!!! with a two-footed dropkick aimed at an imaginary opponent’s midriff that things get tricky. Ryan suddenly stops clicking. “You don’t do a KA-POW!!! like that,” he sneers. “This is how you do a KA-POW!!!” He gets up off his chair and delivers a violent forearm smash followed by an equally violent head-butt to the face of an imaginary opponent.
Before Jermaine, who is not only a fan of The Avengers but a self-confessed expert on kung-fu, kickboxing and WWF, can contribute further to this discussion, I bring proceedings to a shuddering - juddering halt. I reckon onomatopoeia might have more THWACKs, WHAMMs and BLATTs than I can cope with.
Stephen Petty is head of humanities at Lord Williams’s School in Thame, Oxfordshire
