Video conference Part 2 — responding to student writing

Australian Curriculum: English sub-strand: Literature – Creating literature

In Session 2 of this video conference Libby Gleeson responds to selected pieces of student writing and discusses and highlights the language features used. Note that the entire recording is of low quality, being the recording of a classroom-based video conference between several schools and is  37 minutes in duration.

Select a particular section of the novel and ask students to find ten important words that are pivotal to that part of the story.

Students will: Provide a personal response to the writing of others. Write a summary of the segment using all ten words (this could also be done with five words from a particular section to write a more succinct summary).

Creating similes

Australian Curriculum: English sub-strand: Literature – Creating literature

Provide assistance when students are creating similes — refer to the text and help students link ideas in the text with unrelated objects, for example:

... the confusion surrounding Mahtab was like an all-consuming summer heat.

Students will: Create similes to describe the family’s time in the detention centre in comparison to their time spent travelling in the truck. Students may have noticed the resemblance between the two places and also how similar they are to a prison.