Teach-Primary-18.3

notice more of the details of the illustrations, which will add to their overall understanding of the themes of prejudice and compassion. It will also reinforce the suggested tragedy at the end of the story. An effective way of collaboratively gathering ideas, vocabulary and points for discussion, which can be utilised throughout the remaining lessons, is to make use of a Padlet (e.g. tinyurl. com/tp-IslandPadlet ). When developing a Padlet for this task, a ‘shelf’ design works well, as it allows for ideas and information to be categorised and organised by subject or content. Within the Padlet, the children will see four starter prompts for them to respond to as if they were the person washed up on the island. They will be asked to generate multiple statements in response to ‘I heard/I saw/I touched/I wondered’ prompts. In each case, a modelled example will help to demonstrate the level of precise language that is required and that there are no ‘right or wrong’ answers at this stage. Having discussed their initial Padlet responses, the children will then be asked to change focus and make additions to the Padlet from the point of view of their choice of islander character. Would they respond differently to the stranded man? Assessment By asking the children to ‘name’ all their posts, it is easy for you to assess current levels of descriptive writing, as well as evaluating their understanding of prejudice and compassion within the story. WEEK 3 Learning objective l Role play from a character’s perspective Prior to the session, collate the key ideas from the previous lesson’s Padlet, ensuring that there is a good selection of responses which reflect the prejudiced views of the islanders. Include those who might be motivated by fear and those whose prejudice might stem from a dislike of difference, especially from those islanders in positions of responsibility, such as the teacher. Discuss the responses as a class, ensuring that the prejudices are emerging from the characters’ views, whilst also acknowledging the isolated voice of compassion in the form of the Fisherman, and how his views are ultimately drowned out. Explain that pupils are going to work with a partner to role play two islanders who are responding to the events surrounding the stranded man entering their town. Emphasise that the children need to think about how their character might think and respond, and what they might fear. This can be quite challenging for some pupils and may require modelling. Their capability will also depend on past experiences with role play tasks. As a further scaffold, you could model some sentence stems that can be used to help structure the conversation ( slide 16 ) which should help to avoid the role play ‘drying up’ or veering off into unrelated matters. These activities are often best delivered as a short burst, perhaps 15–20 mins of role play. To end the session, ask as many pairs as possible to re-run their role play with the understanding that you may ask them to freeze. When frozen, lead the rest of the class to ‘thought- tap’ the characters, asking the children to explain why the character may have reacted in such a way. Assessment During the role play portion, there is ample opportunity for you to assess pupils’ oracy skills, whilst the following discussion will provide opportunities to evaluate the extent to which the children are able to empathise with the story characters. WEEK 4 Learning objective l To identify the strength of a word Before proceeding further with the sequence it’s important to establish a shared understanding of the actual meaning of prejudice and compassion. Spend time discussing different options before completing some quick-fire dictionary work to research definitions of both terms. Have the definitions on display for the remainder of the lessons in the sequence. Introduce the class to the word ‘cline’ (essentially a scale). This could tap into further dictionary activities and vocabulary discussions linking into related words, such as ‘incline’ ( slide 22 ). Having defined the term, discuss that the task will focus on comparing language based on the strength or impact of the words on the audience. Model the process of developing a word cline, using a starter word such as ‘love’ at the centre of the cline. Model, write and verbalise the process of identifying synonyms for the target word. Then show how to make the decision about where to place the word on the cline in relation to the comparative strength of the individual words that are related to the root word ( slides 23–28 ). Introduce the selection of starter words based on the comments, emotions and events within the story, F EATURE S P L ANN I NG www.teachwire.net | 23