Phase 2: Analysis, response and writing (5 days)

Teaching content:

• Explore aspects of the author's style by making generalisations about recurring themes or settings, typical characters and their use of language. Refer to stories read together and draw on children's wider reading.
• Focus on characterisation. Refer to extracts from the stories you have read and look at different ways of presenting characters, for example using dialogue, action and description.
• Select a character and ask children to track the events in the story from their point of view. Use improvisation and role-play so that children can explore how the character feels and can make inferences about the reasons for their behaviour. Make tentative suggestions about the author's perspective on a particular character. Look at what is written and what is implied by discussing questions such as: Does the character change during the story? Do characters get a chance to put right their mistakes?
• Look at examples of dialogue in extracts from the class novel and analyse what they show in relation to plot and character. Review the conventions of punctuation and layout of direct speech. Look for examples of formal and informal speech in the story and discuss what it indicates about the relationship between characters. Role-play conversations between different pairs of characters to explore different patterns of speech (see also Grammar for writing, (Ref: 0107-2000), Year 5 unit 36 http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/primary/publications/literacy/63317/).
• Explore the author's use of language by rereading extracts and asking children to recall memorable phrases. Look at examples of the use of language for comic and dramatic effects and consider whether this is typical of a particular author's style.
• Demonstrate how to use what you have learned about the author's style to plan and write a new scene for the class novel. Demonstrate how to use paragraphs effectively to organise events in the scene. Children write their own scenes. Read examples aloud and discuss successful ways that children have taken on the author's style.

Learning outcomes:

• Children can talk about the distinctive features of an author's style by referring to characters, themes, settings or use of language.
• Children can write a new scene for a story in the style of the author. They can organise the scene into a sequence of paragraphs.