Moving image as a stimulus for planning descriptive writing

The concept

A teacher in a comprehensive school said:

My L4/5 borderline Y7 students always find it difficult to plan their work before starting to write.  Few plan unless told to and those who do (only 6 out of 26 when tested) do not actively use the plan they made. None plans for appropriate stylistic devices or vocabulary. This is particularly true when it comes to descriptive writing as part of a piece of fiction. Borderline 4/5 students often fail to visualise their ideas before beginning to compose and therefore produce fiction that is unconvincing and confusing. The description often seems ‘tacked on’ rather than intrinsic to the development of the plot or the character.

She decided to address the issue by devising a series of lessons using ICT to teach the following:

• Writing is improved by planning.
• Planning must consist of more than a list of ‘ingredients’. Style, tone and authorial viewpoint are important elements of a piece of writing and need to be planned.
• Visualisation is crucial to the success of descriptive writing.
• Descriptive passages must reflect their context.

Why use ICT?

The teacher had employed a number of ways to teach planning previously but felt that these hadn’t worked. Pupils tended to ‘fill in’ planning sheets rather than use them as intended and then ignore them as they wrote.
 
In order to make her point about the importance of planning, the teacher decided to focus on the effectiveness of visualisation in the planning of descriptive writing.  The pupils would be shown how to construct a fictional description through ‘seeing’ an imaginary film. One way to help them do so would be to show them a real film and asking them to translate it into words.

Following on from this, pupils would be helped to take their “description through observation” and shape it to contribute to a narrative context.  They would use the ‘track changes’ facility of a word processing program to help make this crafting and shaping both manageable and visible..

As a consequence of the preliminary research carried out with the help of the LA consultant, the teacher decided to use ICT in two ways:

• A short home-made video of a walk through a wood. The film was used both as a stimulus for engaging pupils in the writing and as a way of modelling how to choose and craft descriptive elements to add power and depth to narrative content and context..  The teacher included the following elements:

– A composition that evoked different moods.
– A variety of camera angles and shot types (close-up, etc).
– Diegetic sound (which was turned off at some points in the teaching sequence)
– A word processing program with ‘track changes’ facility.

Please note: for technical reasons, the video cannot be made available from this site. However, the teacher tells us that the video she used was very much a ‘home movie’ and would be  easy to replicate.

The lessons

Learning objectives and related assessment focuses

7WL14 define and deploy words with precision, including their exact implication in context;
7W14 describe an object, person or setting in a way that includes relevant details and is accurate and evocative;
AF1: write imaginative, interesting and thoughtful texts
AF4 construct paragraphs and use cohesion within and between paragraphs
 
Lesson one

Starter 
Briefly, share with the pupils a short extract which includes a paragraph of description taken from a familiar short story or novel. Ask pupils to consider why the author chose to include the descriptive passage. Draw out the following:

• description enables the reader to visualise the setting or events
• it makes the story more convincing because we can imagine that we are there
• how a character ‘sees’ the world around him/her tells us a lot about their personality
• it alters the pace of the text, often slowing it down so that tension can be built up.

Finally, ask pupils to think about how the writer might have planned the description. Which features did he or she decide to emphasise?

Introduction 
Now explain that you are going to show them a very simple video (2 minutes approx) without sound. They are to use the film as the raw material for a piece of descriptive writing. The purpose is to describe the images so clearly that someone who had never seen the film would be able to imagine it.
 
Show the video two or three times (with and without sound), encouraging the pupils to make notes on A3 paper, rather than to try to write complete paragraphs. Ask them what difference the sound makes.

Now give each pupil a viewpoint card so that no two adjacent pupils have the same card. Cards could include:

• an escaped convict
• a teacher taking a class on a nature ramble
• a detective searching for a body
• a young child out alone for the first time
• someone who has just been told that they have completely recovered from a serious illness

Ask them to look at the card and consider what kind of images and sound a writer would want to incorporate in order to describe the scene in that particular context.

Development 
Pupils then return to their notes and revise them in the light of their context card, selecting appropriate language and creating the right mood. This might be an opportunity to form a guided group of secure L4 pupils working with the same context card. This would allow you to model one or two sentences and widen their vocabulary choice.

Plenary 
Ask a range of pupils to read out their descriptive passages without telling the class their context. Encourage them to leave out any words or phrases which state the context explicitly. Can the rest of the class work out the context from the clues in the text? If so, how did they do it?

End the lesson with the message that vocabulary choice is highly dependent on context. Choose an example from your pupils’ work to illustrate this (e.g. one pupil’s trees are ‘protective’ while another’s are ‘threatening’.).

Suggestions for discussion/ consideration

• Would the use of music in film be a good analogy for mood or atmosphere in prose? Might showing the video with two or three different kinds of music help pupils understand the concept?

Lesson two

Prior to this lesson you will need to write a couple of paragraphs of description of an everyday scene. It could be a supermarket on a Saturday or a deserted town square. Write it without a context and make it as neutral as you can.

Starter 
Remind pupils of the importance of context when writing descriptive passages. Show them an example of a piece of description from a familiar story. Ask pupils to discuss in pairs how the context is reflected in the writer’s language choice. Feedback to the class and annotate the text.

Introduction 
Project the piece of description that you wrote earlier onto the IWB in Word. Enable ‘track changes’.  Now ask pupils to read the description and suggest a context. Choose one of the contexts and model the steps that you go through as you revise your description in the light of the context. Finally, choose one example of a tracked change and explain why you made the change. Explain that you will be asking pupils to do the same.

Development 
Now ask pupils to work in pairs on the same piece of description, also with ‘track changes’ enabled. They are free to choose any context as long as it isn’t the one you modelled. You may need a few suggestions up your sleeve for pupils who are unable to come up with one on their own.

Plenary 
Ask a range of pupils to show  one or two examples of their tracked changes, referring to the context that they devised and explaining their intended impact.

Suggestions for discussion/ consideration

• Would it be worthwhile to collate a small anthology of examples of effective descriptive writing for pupils to read during the unit (you might include the opening of Ian McEwan’s ‘A Child in Time’)?
• You could ask pupils to select a piece of description from a book for homework ready to present it to the class, explaining the context and how that is reflected in the writer’s use of language

Lesson three

For this lesson, you need another adult in the room during the starter. If you can’t do this, you could prime a willing pupil.

Starter 
Make the point that our brains are able to make short films. We call this visualisation (and sometimes referred to as “day-dreaming”…). To do it well demands considerable concentration. Ask the other adult (or pupil) to close his/her eyes and visualise a scene. As they conjure it up, they should describe what they are seeing. Ask pupils to listen and note down any images that they think are striking.

Introduction 
Now ask pupils to visualise a scene of their own or they could choose to develop one from the starter. (Giving them a fixed time limit might help them concentrate.  Sometimes, changing the lighting in the room for this period of time also contributes to their ability to focus “inwards”.)

Development 
Ask pupils to use a word processor to plan a piece of writing describing the scene that they visualised and including words and phrases to indicate tone, mood, atmosphere and author’s/narrator’s viewpoint. Some pupils may find that they wish to write a few full sentences, or even paragraphs to help them to establish the tone.
This might be a good point in the teaching sequence to form a guided group of pupils who are likely to need more support with their planning.
Finally, pupils write their descriptions, ensuring that they adhere to their plans.

Plenary 
Ask pupils to highlight any sections of their writing which they feel to be effective in their tone or descriptive power. Choose some good examples to show to the class. As they listen, the class should be encouraged to suggest the writer’s viewpoint and give examples of the clues that led them to their decision. Discuss with the class how each writer has clearly indicated their (or their narrator’s) viewpoint through their language choices.

Return to the four bullet points from the starter in the first lesson. Ask pupils to select an extract from their own writing which exemplifies each bullet point.

Suggestions for discussion/ consideration

• Might some pupils need a planning sheet with boxes for the various elements or would this undermine their independence?
• If pupils were writing on word processors would you be happy for them to write and revise over and over again instead of planning traditionally?
• By the end of the lesson how would you ensure that pupils understand the need for cohesion and internal logic in their descriptions and can show it in their independent writing? Might you need another lesson or homework?

Evaluation

When interviewed, a significant number of pupils said that they found the process much more useful the second time because they were more familiar with the process and were more aware of its purpose and value. One child said, “I like to see things before I write,” which indicates the need for pupils to have a real or imagined visualisation before (and even while) they write.

The teacher found that pupils close to the L5 boundary made the most progress whereas some who were insecure L4s, still struggled to incorporate the viewpoint coherently within a more plot driven narrative. However, even those pupils were much better able to understand the purposes and nature of descriptive writing by the end of the lesson sequence. This was felt to be any area ripe for development because the relationship between narrative and description represents a real challenge for all writers, at whatever level.

Developments

• The following areas were considered for future development:
• More practice of visualisation prior to writing fiction or descriptive accounts.
• Considering the balance between descriptive and narrative elements in a text that the class is reading – how does a professional writer get the balance right? Do some writers get it wrong? Look at the opening of Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons for an amusing parody of writers who overdo the descriptive element.
• Pupils making their own videos and presenting them to the class as a stimulus for writing.

You can download this case study as a PDF file by clicking on the link below: