Heroes workpack

I see no update!

not good, you need to include the answers.

Perfect thank you! I really wanted something to use for some context lessons before we started the text and this is brilliant.

I am particularly keen on students researching the context of a text. When I do my "read through a text" to check that it is what I want to do with a particular group - I do it with my "book of lists" to hand and make lists about everything I notice - and that I want my students not just to notice it - but to discover what it was all about - because it will invariably relate to the text. So events, people, books, plays etc all get written down and are selected if they are appropriate for the group as additional research.

Unless a student has a relative on active service in the armed forces, the thought of what war is actually like and that everyone does not survive are concepts that they do not have to deal with. I have used ex-soldiers twice to talk to my groups - and very good they were too. They found it difficult to appreciate that most people went to war after six weeks of basic training in WWII. You may even be lucky enough to find a great-grandparent or two who will come to talk to your groups about just what it was really like.

I like using poetry a great deal with every text I do and will do a fair bit of rooting around to find poems that "fit" withe the events and characters. Never think that students have to be academically able to cope with complex classic poems. The only difference I find in student response is that they will all discover more or less the same things in a poem but the more academic will use a far better vocabulary that is also more "exact" in meaning. The basic truths in a poem are there to be discovered by all.

Every student who has "loved and lost" appreciates the Shelley and everyone sees the arguments Donne puts forward.

I hand out copies of poems (and for a small cost will laminate them too) because of students wanting them for their bedroom walls. I like to think of poets who can reach across the centuries to affect how 21st century students think about the big questions of life.

There is some great stuff on the web about Robert Cormier - including the fact that he put his home phone number into one of his books - and answered and talked at length to the students who phoned him up with their miseries - and their appreciation of his books. A wonderful author who can reach students when dealing with the grim realities of life.