From LK06 competence aims in English:
-The student is supposed to understand and use a general vocabulary related to different topics
The topic my students were working on in English this period was how to write the different aspects of a novel. We had previously focused on how to write beginnings and how to describe characters. Now our focus was on how you can describe a setting in a way that helps the reader imagine the place as vividly as possible.
To write a descriptive setting, the students should focus not only on what they can “see”, but also what the other senses can tell them. How does it smell? What can they hear? How do they feel when they are there? Can they taste anything?
To be able to describe a setting in a good way, the writer needs a well developed vocabulary. In the textbook we use, Searching 9, (2008), there are four short texts that I was going to show the students as models of how this could be done.
We started with focusing on a few of the words from the texts that could be used to describing different settings. The students did not have the text in front of them yet.
1. I wrote the words in random order on the whiteboard.
It looked something like this.
I asked this question: Does any of these words remind you of Norwegian words? If they do, do they have the same meaning? We talked about the words together, and they wrote them down in their notes. Together we then translated the words into Norwegian.
2. The students were handed out this worksheet where they had to categorize the words into verbs, nouns, adjectives and one box for other word classes.
3.Thereinafter I asked if they knew some words that meant the same as the ones we had written on the whiteboard. The students were given a post-it note each, and they wrote words that meant the same as the words on the whiteboard. They could write several words if they wanted. I collected the post-its and together we placed the synonyms next to the original words. The students wrote on this worksheet:
4.The students were told to draw a table with nine cells. Alternatively, the teacher could hand out this.
The students chose nine different words from the whiteboard and placed them in the cells. We were going to play BINGO.
This is the text I read for them.
The students listened while I read, and crossed out the words they could hear. When they had three words in a row, they gave me a sign.
5. After BINGO, I read the text again out loud, and we talked about what the writers did to make the descriptions of the settings good. We looked for examples of feelings, smells, sounds, adjectives and comparisons. The students discussed with each other which description they found most vivid.
6. It was time for them to write for themselves. I gave them three pictures and told them to pretend that they were writing a story where one of the places on the pictures were the setting. They should try to use at least 10 of the words that we wrote on the whiteboard. I gave them an assessment sheet beforehand so that they knew what they needed to be aware of when writing.
These are the pictures they could choose from:
Here is the self assessment form they used while they were writing:
7. When they were done writing, I told them to hand over their text to one of the other students in the class. I gave them a peer assessment form. The form looked the same as the self assessment form they used when they wrote their text in the first place, except it was written in the 2.person.
This is the form they had to fill out:
8. Finally, the students handed in their text to me. I assessed the text using the same form as the peers.
