The Story of Englishland

This is a story I wrote for my Grade One children, as we started our journey with literacy. English can be quite confounding to decipher reading, and I felt the need for an image to help them navigate the rough and tumble of the language. This story also helped me continue to build images as I taught different letter combinations or phonetic eccentricities of the language. Most of all, the story encouraged the children to read more, which was a precious gift.

A long, long time ago, when all the letters of the alphabet had just been born, they all got together and formed the little town of Englishland.

All these letters had a very important task at hand. They were going to help make sounds — sounds that make words, and words tell stories and sing songs and make poetry. Without words, you can’t talk to anyone or share secrets with your friends or tell your mamma you love her. Words had very important work to do, and it was the letters that had to do that work. They were very proud of their work and did it very well, making each sound carefully and precisely.

Each letter, each sound, made a home for themselves in this quaint little town. M lived in the heart of the Mountain, V in the Valley, he King and Prince and Queen lived in the palace, but each had their own space within it, so they could do their work well. The Cat, the Goose, the Jester each worked hard and practised their work, so they could do it very, very well.

And, of course, there were the angels too. The five angels lived together in a lovely little home, each with their own room. They knew they were very important to the other letters, and wanted to make themselves easy to find. You see, every word has an angel sound, so they were the busiest of all. And, because they were so busy, they also helped each other now and again.

Now, back in the day, when Englishland was first formed, the letters did all their work very precisely, very clearly. Each letter knew the sound they had to make, each angel did their work very well. There was no confusion about how to make a word. When a word needed to be made, the letters always marched up and made the sound that was required of them. They felt happy with how they were doing their work. It felt good to do such important work of making words. Sometimes they had to help with making a story or a song, sometimes Mamma wanted to tell her little one how much she loved her. It was all such precious work. And, every night the letters returned home tired, but happy.

After many, many years of making words (that made stories and songs and so much else), the little town of Englishland started attracting visitors. You see, there was a road that was built and travellers started making their way on that road, wanting to explore the towns around. Many of them would pass Englishland, and every one who passed this wondrous town could not resist making a stop and exploring the place and meeting all the letters there. So, travellers from all over the world started visiting Englishland — first only the towns that were close by would make a visit, but then by and by, there were travellers from every corner of the world who made the long journey to Englishland. Englishland became very popular indeed.

Once these travellers started visiting Englishland, a very curious thing started to happen. Of course, when they visited, they would talk to the letters and angels there. They would visit their homes, have tea with them, share stories from their land, and sometimes even brought gifts. And, as they did this… the letters of Englishland started to learn different things from the travellers. Of course, it was wonderful to learn about other towns and other people who live far away from them; but, now, the letters of Englishland started to get a bit confused now. The work that they had done very well up to then, they were not able to do as clearly, as precisely. With the gifts that the travellers brought, the letters of Englishland sometimes made sounds a little differently; the way they made words was also not as simple and clear as it was before. Some of the letters even got a little lazy, and would ask other letters to do their work.

The angels too became so overloaded with work. They started to help each other, and as they did that, it also became a little confusing.

After so many travellers came by to Englishland — some of them even stayed there and made homes there — it became trickier and trickier to know what the words were saying or what sound each letter was making. It got quite confusing.

So, dear children — the only way to learn all the tricks that the letters of Englishland are up to, is to continue to visit Englishland again and again and again. And how can we do that? Well, only by reading many books, listening to many stories. Every time we read a book, we may see a word and learn another trick that one of the letters is up to. Then they won’t be able to trick us the next time. And, as you keep learning all the tricks, you will learn to read and write very, very well.

Happy Reading, dear children! Happy Adventures in Englishland!