Teacher Notes


 

The worksheets can be used alongside the programmes to help develop a critical awareness of language, effect and theme. They may be adapted for individual, pair, group or whole-class work. Broadly the activities are of the following types:

  • oral work
  • detailed reading of texts
  • creative and functional writing assignments
  • literary assignments
  • study of pre-twentieth-century literature
  • further reading and research

For some of the activities, students need the texts of the stories:

  • 'The Tell-Tale Heart' by Edgar Allan Poe is available online at: http://www.literature.org/authors/poe-edgar-allan/tell-tale-heart.html.
  • 'Superman and Paula Brown's New Snowsuit' by Sylvia Plath is published in Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (Faber, 1979).
  • 'Your Shoes' by Michèle Roberts is published in During Mother's Absence (Virago / Little, Brown, 1994).

Programme 1

Worksheet 1

The extract is taken from the second paragraph of the story. Play this extract to the class as they attempt the first task.

Worksheet 4

You may wish to create shortcuts to the two web pages students are referred to and place them on the desktop:

A. http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/zone/h/a/haldane2/p7.jpg.html

B. http://las.alfred.edu/~egl/grove/fall98/egl292/poe5.html

Worksheet 6

You may wish to create a shortcut to the web page students are referred to and place it on the desktop:

http://www.fuzzydog.com/films.htm

Worksheet 7

Students will need copies of the text.

Some examples are:

  • every night about midnight
  • It took me an hour
  • seven long nights, every night just at midnight
  • every morning, when the day broke
  • every night, just at twelve
  • Upon the eighth night
  • A watch's minute hand moves more quickly
  • For a whole hour
  • night after night hearkening to the death watches
  • Many a night, just at midnight
  • I had waited a long time
  • a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes
  • dead hour of the night
  • for some minutes longer I refrained
  • The old man's hour had come
  • for many minutes the heart beat on
  • I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes
  • The night waned
  • it was four o'clock - still dark as midnight
  • the bell sounded the hour

Worksheet 8

The audio clips needed for this activity will be available online here soon.

Students will need to listen to the following two audio clips, which you should download in advance:

  • Audio Clip 1 (50 seconds)
  • Audio Clip 2 (50 seconds)

Programme 2

Worksheet 3

You may wish to create a shortcut to the web page students are referred to and place it on the desktop:

http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Cafe/8648/johnnyuk2.html

Worksheet 4

You may wish to create a shortcut to the web page students are referred to and place it on the desktop:

http://www.salvadordalimuseum.org/spring.html

Worksheet 6

This activity should help students to realise that writing about how and why a story is written is more important than simply retelling the sequence of events in it.

Programme 3

Worksheet 3

You may wish to create a shortcut to the web page students are referred to and place it on the desktop:

http://www.earthsystems.org/ways/5.html

Woksheet 4

You may wish to create a shortcut to the web page students are referred to and place it on the desktop:

http://www.covenanthouse.org/kid/kid_run/kid_run_04.htm

Worksheet 5

Students will need copies of the text, as large as possible to allow them to annotate them.

Worksheet 6

You may wish to create a shortcut to the web page students are referred to and place it on the desktop:

http://www.cswnet.com/~erin/fiction.htm

The best responses are:

Plot: b
Character: c
Setting: a
Theme: b
Style: b




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