Tag: poetry

Home – Ian Crichton Smith

The latest tasks for National 5 and Higher to explore understanding of the story were to complete a character profile for both the husband and wife we meet in the story. This included evidence of how each of them made their first impression as a character and how they developed.

After this, I selected 21 quotations from the story for annotation – this was to encourage learners to take a closer look at moments of the story in detail.

A challenge was posed after this: How can learners express the way Scots language and the main character go on a journey throughout the story?

Home first tasks

Havisham

We started a lesson off a fortnight ago by recapping all of the knowledge we knew about Havisham from National 5. After annotation of the poem and talking through the trickier bits, I challenged the class to put the poem in its correct order with no support, then to look at a series of questions on the poem in mixed groups.

The class had as long as they needed to answer 4-8 questions on each stanza before they moved on to a different base.

Havisham Questions

20180920_120717

After this, the class looked at exemplar essays before planning an essay as a whole class based around an atmosphere of despair (SQA 2018).

Havisham mock essay 1 despair

Individual essays of this were written over the course of a double period then marked on merit, to great success! 🙂