Adjectives:
positive or negative?

[Though the link above will work only when your computer is online, you can print this off then and use the resources away from a computer!]

Prose passages about 'literary houses' (1).

Each passage comes with a set of questions, closely modelled on the kind of questions set in the reading paper of the SATs.

It might be good practice to use the small white boards for this work, encouraging all pupils to make their own answers, and ensuring that pupils practise writing their reading answers, which is what the exam will demand.

When a question requests a reference or a quotation in the exam, there will be no reward for answers which do not include one.

Varying sentences and punctuation for effect, eg Move that Clause pg43 (Red Hot Starters)

or

Mix and Match pg 54 (Red Hot Starters)

Creating a setting.

Compare and use different ways of opening, developing, linking and completing paragraphs.

Pupils might consider the following:

using sentence structure for effect (think: don't always start sentences with a noun);

using a wide range of punctuation (including, for example, the semi-colon accurately);

shaping and controlling the whole;

linking paragraphs;

employing a range of stylistic devices;

the purpose of their writing (opening a novel) and their audience (intelligent readers wanting to be entertained in a thoughtful way);

the imaginative choice of language.

Reading

Passage (2) can be set as a homework.

Quotations exercises 1 or 2 using mini-whiteboards (PQC).

SR has copies of this.

AF2 (retrieve information; use quotations)

Spirit of the Place

Identifying descriptive phrases and analysing the choice of language to make a comment: point, quotation, comment.

Anglo-Saxon kennings

AF5: What to call a Jackdaw

Work in pairs to explain every one of the names which the poet gives the jackdaw.

Choose an animal of your own: write a similar poem about the names your animal could be given.

You might want to look at Heaney's The Names of the Hare.

AF3 (deduce, infer, interpret)

In the Formal Garden

In pairs, work out the story; tell it as clearly as possible in exactly fifty words.

Using narrative devices to 'hook' the reader, eg Give us a Clue pg 85 (Red Hot Starters)

Planning and writing a story in a lesson: The Dare.

Building on the 'setting' work above, the class collectively plans a story paragraph by paragraph.

Each table contributes a paragraph to a story.

The 'booster' story structure material may help here.

Writing fiction, with another title (not The Dare!)

Write the beginning only?

'Trespassers Will...'

Pupils read the poem and respond to its theme, its structure, its mood and its subject matter.

Write a short, vivid description on mini-whiteboards.

Postcards of the interiors of country houses are available as required.

Faucon.

Save for use in the plenary.

AF5 (word and sentence level):

What to call a Jackdaw
Spirit of the Place

Pupils explain how the images in these poems, and especially in Spirit of the Place, manage to be descriptive without using adjectives; they write paragraphs on the poems making points and supporting them with quotations and comments.

Reading

Reading a poem from another culture which uses as a key image an old house. Questions on SAT lines which also draw attention to the cultural issues in the poem.

An example.

AF6: Writer's purpose and viewpoint.

Reading Oubliette and identifying the writer's purpose and viewpoint.

Explaining the viewpoint with quotation and comment.

A good poem to compare here, and to use as an introduction to poems from different cultures is this by Langston Hughes.

Then moving on, if time, to look at the very different purpose and viewpoint in Trespassers Will ...

Revise:

• audience

• purpose

• language

• style

Using short pieces of non-fiction as necessary.

Pupils read three or four extracts from the 'National Trust Handbook 2003'. They analyse with the teacher the precise nature of the style used in these pieces, the tone of the writing, and the sequence of ideas.

A series of photographs of the properties might help this work.

Pupils use a grid to compare texts (reading passages one and two, the poems from Manifold Manor, the National Trust passages) dealing with the same subject (an old house), in terms of audience, purpose, language and style.

[They then, individually, write a paragraph for the National Trust handbook to introduce the house from 'Trespassers Will...']

Writing

[They then, individually, write a paragraph for the National Trust handbook to introduce the house from 'Trespassers Will...']

Writing a piece of non-fiction, namely, completing the National Trust piece studied in the lesson.

Prose passages about 'literary houses' (3).

Pupils complete the set of questions.

Use of fact and opinion

eg Is that a fact? pg 80 Red Hot Starters.

Writing a review of Manifold Manor. Taking as a model a review from the Amazon website, pupils prepare their own review. Look at their reviews for Gross's book for adults, The Wasting Game or at a retelling of a Xmas story by Carol Ann Duffy.

Best one submitted to Amazon to be put online!