So they tried again, but the next reply said “keep him at least two days more because I won't have time to fix tea tonight or tomorrow”.

Fortunately, little came from this kidnapping apart from a valuable lesson in the use of the English language.

This was an exercise conducted by a teacher at St Albans Primary School in Victoria. I won’t mention any of the teachers’ names because the exercise was many years ago and the chief teacher is probably a grandmother by now.

I can’t find the book either. I think I lent it to someone and it was never returned.

But the book showed some ingenuity by the teachers involved who found some other way of encouraging children to learn not only English but maths also and a whole host of other subjects, such as geography.

The children in one class, after discussing a political hostage drama overseas, constructed their own ransom notes listing demands, conditions and meeting places.

They then passed their list of demands to other teachers at the school, who entered the

spirit of the occasion with their own original replies.

The student “kidnappers” had to use complete sentences, subjects and verbs. Spelling had to be correct, as did all punctuation used.

The details of the exercise were listed in a booklet entitled The Newspaper in Your Classroom, prepared by the teachers of Victoria.

The booklet described various ideas implemented to encourage young people to take a greater interest in reading -- in this case reading newspapers. The ransom notes at St

Albans were cut out of headings in a newspaper.

Okay, I know some people will frown on an exercise encouraging children to write ransom notes, in case it encourages them to go out and repeat the exercise in a real-life environment.

I’m just reporting what happened.

I remember that the book had many other examples of how to encourage young students to take a greater interest in a range of assignments.

The teachers who wrote the book produced many ideas about a range of subjects.

Some slow readers showed a dramatic improvement when assigned to read the sports pages of the local newspaper each day.

Not only did their reading improve, but so did their mathematics as they checked the football and cricket scores.

Some of the teams came from other countries and this exercise encouraged young students to learn about the other countries.

Another teacher encouraged her students to write headlines, to emphasise the difficulty newspaper people have daily in contracting statements without losing the meaning.

The exercise produced a range of headlines from Australian and overseas newspapers.

Possibly one mentioned the commander who vowed to return: “MacArthur flies back to front”.

Open Road apologised for publishing a photograph of a motor cycle travelling on the wrong side of the road.

Have you noticed that many TV advertisements have the cars travelling on the wrong side of the road and some of the speakers tend to have funny accents?

These advertisements couldn’t be from the USA, could they?

lauriebarber.com;

lbword@midcoast.com.au

Laurie Barber has been writing the My Word column since 1995.

It has appeared on a weekly basis in newspapers throughout Australia and New Zealand. 

He has worked on city and regional newspapers. ​