Judging the quality of students’ writing
In their research Myra Barrs and Valerie Cork used the indicators below to judge the quality of children’s writing. Whilst they were working with children in primary school these indicators are equally applicable to older secondary age children. You may find them helpful in judging the historical fiction writing of your students.
Indicators that could be counted
Breaks in the time sequence (or narrative where the writer pauses to describe or reflect).
Mental state verbs (wonder, realise – where the author reports a character’s state of mind).
T-units – length of, get longer with older children but could be getting shorter if that is style of the author they are using as a model. Increasing length (complexity) does not necessarily mean better writing.
Non-right branching sentences (delaying the point of a sentence by delaying of the main verb) e.g. When we got back to the manor, we found Serle and Tom and Sian sitting by the fire. (Taken from The Seeing Stone, Kevin Crossley-Holland ).
Indicators that could be given an Impression score
Narrative voice which takes three parts, a) the voice in which the narrative is told, b) the maintaining of that voice, c) the way in which other voices are included in the narrator’s voice.
Sense of reader in two parts, a) is the writer aware of the reader and catering for their needs (e.g. carefully sequencing events & giving the reader essential information), b) is this sustained.
Literary turn of phrase use of simile, metaphor, alliteration, lists, repetition, …
Echoes of the text the children were using as a model.
Taken from The Reader in the Writer: The links between the study of literature and writing development at Key Stage 2. Myra Barrs and Valerie Cork, Centre for Language in Primary Education (London, 2001), pp 212-213. To view the project this publication emerged from visit: http://www.clpe.co.uk/researchandprojects/research_01.html
Sovay
Sovay, Celia Rees (Bloomsbury 2008)
An exciting adventure that starts in England and leads the heroine, Sovay Middleton, and her friends to Paris at the height of the French Revolution. Will she suceed in saving her father and defending England from a sinister plot? As well as a compelling narrative the author also creates a strong sense of period. Here Sovay meets Virgil Barrett for the first time. Can your students decide if Virgil is going to turn out to be a hero or villain? Can they also work out how the author has achieved this?
The young man was examining her father’s books when she entered the room. He was so absorbed that he failed to register her presence and Sovay stood in the doorway watching him. He was of medium height and solidly built with little affectation to his dress. His curly fair hair was undressed, carelessly tied back with a black ribbon. His boots were muddy and his broad back strained the dark cloth of his coat. When he stretched up to reach down a volume, the material threatened to split and his hand showed square and tanned against the pale spines of the books. He browsed like a scholar and was dressed like a gentleman, but he reminded her of Gabriel Stanhope, the Steward’s son, who was more at home in fields and woods than in a drawing room. She wondered if he had come to see her father on farming business. people often came to consult him about his methods, but in that case why has Steward Stanhope not dealt with him?
He turned, volume still in hand, as if aware of her scrutiny.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Forgive me. I didn’t realise I had company …’
He faltered, but not from confusion. He recognised her immediately, as she did him. He had been on the coach that very morning and had witnessed her excursion as a highwayman. Sovay momentarily found herself speechless. He rallied more quickly than she did.
‘I was just admiring your father’s library. I envy him this.’ He held up the volume that he had taken from the shelves: Rousseau’s Social Contract, a 1762 first edition. ‘He has a marvellous collection.’
http://www.bloomsbury.com/childrens/Books/details.aspx?isbn=9780747592013&title=+Sovay
Plague Sorcerer
Plague Sorcerer, Christopher Russell (Puffin 2006)
The sequel to Brind and the Dogs of War finds its hero back in England having survived the horrors of Crecy two years previously, and back in danger as the opening lines and the date, 1348 suggest.
Brind couldn’t see the enemy, but he knew it was there. Any thicket, any rock, any overgrown hollow in the ground might conceal it. Lurking, waiting to pounce, to kill without teeth or sword. The sun was shining, hazy and lurid, and for almost the first day in a wretched twelve-month of rain and mud and blackened crops, it warmed the dog boy’s back. But he couldn’t relax. He hadn’t felt like this for a long time. Hunted.
What literary devices has the author used to hook our interest, to create tension? Will your students spot the use of repetition or short sentences?
Stop the Train
Stop the Train, Geraldine McCaughrean (OUP 2001)
An excellent story set in the American West in 1893. It was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal in 2002. The story of Cissy Sissney and her family and friends gives a strong flavour of life for the settlers in a small Oklahoma town.
They had come to Florence because Florence had been created as a railroad town – a stop on a journey between cities, a place for ranchers to load their cattle, farmers their grain, poultrymen their eggs. It was supposed to be a living organ connected to the heart of America by arteries of wood and steel and steam. Without the railroad, Florence would wither and die – become a ghost town for children to point at out of carriage windows of a speeding train: ‘What’s that place, Mommy?’
‘Lord knows, precious. Just some place the people moved out and the dust blew in.’
Titles set in the American West
If you teach the American West as a GCSE depth study then you might choose to set your students a task with historical fiction. For a classroom activity see the GCSE text book The American West 1840-1896, by Martin & Shephard (HodderMurray 1998). http://www.amazon.co.uk/American-West-1840-1995-Students-Discovering/dp/0719551811/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256730792&sr=8-2
Below are a number of fiction titles that you might draw upon as additional support for students. Are they already in your school library?
The Ballad of Lucy Whipple, Karen Cushman (Macmillan 1996) Lucy is growing up in the California of the Gold Rush and hating it. She wants to get back to the comforts of her old life in the east, or thinks she does. This story gives a good feel for those times.
The Game of Silence, Louise Erdrich (2006) The story of an Ojibwe family in 1849 in the upper Midwest.
Facing West: A Story of the Oregon Trail, Kathleen V. Kudlinski (1994) Ben wonders if he will have more trouble with hardships on the Oregon Trail or with his asthma. For readers aged 4-8.
Apache, Tanya Landman (Walker 2008) The 14 year old heroine is transformed, by a series of bloody events, into a warrior seeking revenge. Set on the Mexican border in the 1800s.
Goodbye Buffalo Sky, John Loveday (Bloomsbury1996) An account, told in two voices, of a girl and boy growing up on the frontier at a time of peaceful but uneasy relations between settlers and Plains Indians. A thought-provoking tale.
Save Queen of Sheba, Louise Moeri ( Puffin1981) After miraculously surviving a Sioux Indian raid on the trail to Oregon, a boy and his little sister set out with few provisions to find the rest of the travellers.
Mr Tucket, Gary Paulsen (1996) A traditional western. Francis Tucket is travelling on the Oregon Trail when he is captured by the Pawnee, then rescued by a ‘mountain man’. He grows to realise that a life as a farmer is what is best for him and journeys on to the Willamette valley. Other titles in the series include Tucket’s Gold (2000), Tucket’s Home (2002) and Tucket’s Ride (2000).
Clouds of Terror, Catherine A Welch (1994) A fictional account of the 1870s invasion by Rocky Mountain locusts of a Swedish American family’s farm in Minnesota. For readers aged 4-8.
The Silver Blade
The Silver Blade, Sally Gardner (Orion 2009)
The quality of this book is evidenced by the fact that it was short listed for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize in 2009. It is an exciting romantic adventure, with magical elements, set in Revolutionary France in 1794. Whilst the sense of period (the Terror, guillotine, Robespierre, changed calendar) is entirely convincing it is never intrusive. The book is rich in characters, characters like …
Yann Margoza was dressed as a vagabond in an old greatcoat that had seen better days, with a muffler wrapped round his neck and a hat that had lived life to the full. Only if you saw his dark eyes with their unmistakable intensity would you have recognized him. His companion, Didier, was a huge bear-like figure of a man. Both had one thing in common: they possessed the ability to merge unseen with their surroundings.
Do you, or your students, think this pair will turn out to be heroes or villains? Or how about …
The banker Charles Cordell arrived at the theatre around midnight. He was a tall, bespectacled man, with a broken buttress of a nose and grey eyes that looked as if they had stared at too many facts and figures, and found that nothing in life added up. In the early days of the Revolution he’d been one of its most ardent supporters, but long before the execution of Louis XVI, he realized it had become a monstrous excuse for cruelty. The clever talk, the velvet-tongued justification of such acts in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity, mattered little. The truth, as far as he was concerned, was far less palatable and altogether more basely human: vengeance, jealousy and greed.
And the first installment of the adventure is The Red Necklace, Sally Gardner (Orion 2008).
Montmorency
Montmorency, Eleanor Updale (Scholastic 2003).
Montmorency is the anti hero of a series of adventures by Eleanor Updale which mix action with a strong sense of being firmly set in the Victorian period. Further titles are Montmorency on the Rocks (Scholastic), Montmorency and the Assassins (Scholastic) and Montmorency’s Revenge (Scholastic 2007).
Here is an extract from the first book in which the author skilfully describes an important character. Why not use this with the gingerbread technique with your students?
Around the outside of a gingerbread figure they write down all the visible features of Sir Joseph whilst inside the gingerbread figure they write what sort of person he is, his inner thoughts and characteristics. They can also use this technique to build characters of their own.
Taking the stage at the Scientific Society, Sir Joseph was a mixture of confidence and fear. He had a total command of his subject, but Montmorency could tell that he felt socially inferior to many of his audience, which included a couple of the more intelligent members of the House of Lords, as well as distinguished academics and a few visitors from abroad. Bazalgette was a short, neat man, with a thin nose and clever, dark eyes that seems to be able to fix upon everyone in the room. His clothes were smart but fashionable: checked trousers and a plain jacket over a yellow waistcoat. His shirt collar was tied high at the neck with a silky cravat. A few strands of hair hopelessly tried to disguise the glistening baldness at the top of his head. Then suddenly, around his ears, his black locks grew rich and bushy, joining up via dainty sideburns with triangles of shiny, springy beard and a generous moustache. His chin was as bald as his head. Montmorency wondered why, when the rest of his face was so hairy, why he bothered to shave that one egg shape. Did he do it himself, or did he have someone else to judge exactly where the razor should go? And how often did he shave it? There was no sign of shadow, even though it was six o’clock at night.
The Eye of the Moon
The Eye of the Moon, Dianne Hofmeyr (Simon & Schuster 2007)
This novel is firmly set in Ancient Egypt and the author’s scholarship shines through the story. The narrator, Isikara, tells of the adventures and the villains that she and her companions meet, and have to overcome. Here is how the story opens.
Without two fingers, it’s hard to grip a reed stylus. So I write this story with difficulty, sitting on the bank of the Great River far from the city of Thebes. Perhaps in time to come the words will be carved more accurately in stone, and the truth know to all. Poison, slavery and murder – all are part of this story.
And the adventures continue in the sequel, The Eye of the Sun, Dianne Hofmeyr (Simon & Schuster 2009)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Eye-Moon-Dianne-Hofmeyr/dp/1416910689/ref=pd_sim_b_1
Victory
Victory, Susan Cooper (Bodley Head 2006)
This is a story told of two parallel lives, Molly in contemporary New York and Sam in Nelson’s navy, and what connects them is a fragment of the ‘white ensign’ that flew at HMS Victory’s masthead at Trafalgar.
This would make a good companion piece to the books of Paul Dowswell. Here is a setting about coming out on deck to contrast with Prison Ship’s below decks. This extract contains a nice variety of sentence as well as other literary devices for students to spot and then incorporate into their own writing repetoire.
I shall never forget that day. The sky was grey, but dazzling after the darkness below. Blinking, we came staggering out into the world of the Royal Navy: a line of marines drawn up, all red and gleaming white; the mocking, watching faces of many seamen; and a table, an ordinary table, looking very strange there on the deck of a ship, with three officers sitting at it. The one in the middle looked so grand that I thought he must be the captain of HMS Victory. He had a straight nose and a strong mouth, long brown hair tied with a black ribbon, and a cockade in his hat, and his coat was blue with white lapels and gold anchor buttons. He was the finest man I had seen.
The seaman in charge of us pulled off his hat. ‘Twenty-seven pressed men, your honour,’ he said.
The office looked at us, turned his head slowly to survey the whole group. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said clearly, ‘you are aboard His Majesty’s Ship Victory, under the command of Captain Samuel Sutton, and I am First Lieutenant Quilliam.’ He paused, glancing at the officer beside him, and his voice changed. ‘Dear God, what a sorry bunch,’ he said. ‘Sort them if you please Mr Smith.’
Prison Ship
Prison Ship, Paul Dowswell (Bloomsbury 2006).
This is one of a series chronicling the adventures of Sam Witchall in Nelson’s navy which began in Powder Monkey (Bloomsbury 2005) and which concludes in Battle Fleet (Bloomsbury 2007). The author’s style has been described by one reviewer as ‘more vivid than Patrick O’Brian’.
Have a look at this opening and see what you think. And is this just a book for boys?
It was half past three in the morning. I was lying in my hammock, gently swaying with the swell of the sea. Coarse woolen blankets kept me warm, as did the stifling fug of two hundred sleeping men, crammed down here on the lower gun deck of HMS Elephant. It reminded me of the clammy warmth of a stable packed with sheep and cattle.
I had slept deeply since midnight; through the snoring, the sleep-talking, the hacking coughs that most of the crew had, even through the half-hourly chime of the ship’s bell. I was dreading the four o’clock bell. That would be when I would have to tear myself away from my comforting cocoon and face the raw, biting cold of the North Sea in winter.
http://www.bloomsbury.com/childrens/Books/details.aspx?isbn=9780747577225
