What do you think has happened in the pictures?

Why have the buildings been destroyed?

Watch the video below for a simple explanation of what is happening.

Challenge- This half term we are going to be linking our English with our history topic WWII. We are going to look closely at the impact that WW2 had on civilians (a person not in the armed services or the police force); especially children.

Look closely at the date above- June 13th 1917! Yes, this was in the First World War! Following the First World war there was a rapid development of aircraft. Aircraft became bigger, faster and could carry more; which in a civil society was brilliant as people could now travel further and faster around the world. However, from a military perspective planes now became more lethal weapons. Look at the Top Trump cards below to see the difference between 1917 and 1939.

Watch this video from the Imperial War museum to find out more.

So, what are we going to do? We are going to write a 1st person (from the viewpoint of an evacuee) or a 3rd person narrative story- telling the story of a child/children being evacuated. This story presents you will the ideal opportunity to practise charcaterisation through dialogue.

Over the next two weeks, we will be using the planning frame (see the example below) and a number of modelled text to develop our ideas and then plan and write our story.

Modelled text-

REMEMBER: ‘Said is DEAD!’

HOMEWORK- WEEK 1

Can you plan, develop ideas or if you want have a go a drafting the beginning to your evacuee story. Write your story from being at the train station to being on the train. Focus on dialogue and characterisation.

Take a read of the example below:

Watch the short film below to help give you more ideas about the thoughts, feelings and emotions of the evacuees, parents and the families who agreed to take an evacuee.

WEEK 2 – Story Planning, drafting & editing

The above is JK Rowling’s simple planning for her Harry Potter book ‘Order of the Phoenix’

If you look closely at the plan you will see the following:

• Each of the columns is dedicated to a different factor Rowling wanted to keep track of. The first is for the chapter number.
• the second is for the timescale of the novel e.g. when the chapter occurs.
• In the third column she writes the working title for each chapter.
• She then summarizes the plot of each chapter in the fourth column.
• After that, there is a column dedicated to the main plot of the novel and then one for each of the subplots.
• There is one row for each chapter, enabling Rowling to track how each chapter furthers the plot. Every chapter should, in some way, move the main plot forwards and then each of the subplots can weave into this.

What I would like you to take away from this is that JK clearly knows how here story starts and finishes and exactly what events where and when. Planning is the key!

What I would also like you to see is that planning doesn’t need to be neat or take ages!

So, bearing that in mind let’s start to plan our evacuee story.

Watch the video below from Tom Palmer, the author of OFFSIDE, explaining how he develops and plans his ideas for stories

Developing ideas

Take a read of the example below:

An Evacuee Story

My once strong legs began to quiver as we finally approach the station. It had been a long walk from the house and my arms were aching from the weight of mine and Nic’s suitcase. As we approached the station our eyes were filled with the sight of what looked like hundreds of school children like ourselves being herded like cattle into the tiny station. The air was filled with a strange mix of drifting clouds of smoke and the wail of crying children. All around mothers and teachers were gently persuading reluctant children to stay in line and enter the station.

“Come on, we’re nearly there!” said mother guiding us toward the crowd as if we were lost.

As we pushed our way through the organised chaos I caught a glimpse of Mrs Fazackerley and the rest of my class. We were the only ones to have come by ourselves, mother had been most insistent.

Just then, above the level of noise came the instantly recognisable bellowing of Mrs Fazackerly;

“Caroline and Nicholas Willow there you are! What time do you call this? Mrs Willow I would have expected you to have had them here much earlier than this! Our train is nearly ready to leave. We cannot wait any longer, there’s a war on you know!”

I could tell that mum wanted to say something in reply, but I knew she wanted to speak with us before we had to leave. Anyway,it was that stupid Nics fault that we were late. Mother had Milly get us up really early that morning but his silly tantrums on the way had made us late.

What do you think? Does it follow the plan? Does it have a balance between dialogue? action? characterisation? And more importantly does it do the following:

If you have read the example carefully and checked it against the checklist you should have found that the piece of writing was lacking punctuation and although the dialogue does show characterisation it is not set out appropriately and could be enhanced with more detailed action tags.

Challenge- Can you do better?