Lesson Plan
3 of 3
To infer and deduce meanings
supported by textual reference
Secure
competent
reader
Cycle A
Duration: 1 hour
Resources needed
Lesson aims
 CD-ROM Cycle A (Secure
competent reader) resource sheet
3.1: pair of quotation cards for
each student
 to know how to identify features of a
writer’s use of language
 Student Book page 96–97: ‘How
can we tell?’
 CD-ROM Cycle A (Secure
competent reader) resource sheet
3.2: handout
Assessment
Focuses
AF2, AF5
 to know how to quote evidence from the
text
Target areas
 Target area 2: Using textual evidence to
support inference
 CD-ROM Cycle A (Secure
competent reader) resource sheet
3.3: handout
 CD-ROM Cycle A (Secure
competent reader) resource sheet
3.4: OHT
Starter (15 minutes)
Organise the students into pairs and give each student a pair of quotation cards, on resource sheet 3.1. Ask
the students if they recognise speech marks: ‘Where have you seen these? When do we use them?’ Clarify
that there are three times when we might use speech marks: when we are writing what someone has said,
when we are writing someone’s direct thoughts and when we are making a quotation. By the end of this
lesson the students will know how to use quotation marks and be able to use a quotation when offering
evidence from a text.
Using pages 96–97 of the Student Book, remind the students of the poem that they read in the previous
lesson. Read the first two stanzas of the poem aloud as a class. Ask a ‘How can we tell …?’ question:
‘How can we tell that war is noisy?’ Explain to the students that you need to find evidence from the first
two stanzas to answer this question, so you are going to scan the text looking for words linked with sound
or noise. Model the process of scanning to the word clash before explaining that you have found some
relevant evidence. Model to the class the process of turning the question on its head in order to answer: ‘I
can tell that war is noisy because the word “clash” has been used.’ Explain to the students that ‘clash’ is
evidence taken straight from the text to answer a question, and therefore needs to be placed inside
quotation marks. Repeat your explanation aloud, this time with the students raising the quotation marks at
the correct time. In pairs, students follow the same process to answer the questions on page 96 of the
Student Book, raising their quotations cards when using evidence. Ask for full, rehearsed responses from a
few pairs, praising their use of the cards.
Introduction (15 minutes)
Ask the class what they remember about how to annotate a text successfully. Record advice on the board,
being explicit about the reasons behind each piece of advice. Organise the students into pairs. Hand out
copies of the remaining two verses of the poem (resource sheet 3.2). Allow five minutes for the students to
read and annotate these in answer to the question: ‘How does this soldier feel about war?’
Once the students have finished annotating the text, explain that as their reading skills improve, they need
to be able to find the most powerful words in a text, the words that the writer has chosen specifically. Turn
their attention to the questions at the bottom of resource sheet 3.2 and model the thought processes of
Lesson Plan
3 of 3
To infer and deduce meanings
supported by textual reference
Secure
competent
reader
Cycle A
Duration: 1 hour
answering the first two questions. Allow students to leave their seats and ‘interview’ one another about the
most powerful words in the text. They should record the words that their classmates select on the sheet for
later use.
Development (20 minutes)
Distribute copies of resource sheet 3.3, one per student. Working individually, students should answer the
interview questions for themselves, explaining what the words help them to understand about the soldier’s
feelings about war.
Plenary (10 minutes)
As a class, collate all the inferences about the soldier’s feelings about war and record them on the board.
On a projector, display ‘Making a response’ on resource sheet 3.4. Model the process of answering the
question about the soldier’s feelings, using the prompts. Allow the students two minutes to plan their own
response – encourage them to ‘draft’ their responses out loud. They should use their quotation cards to
‘frame’ their direct quotation. Allow each student to share their responses with three other students in the
room, using their cards to show the quotations. End the lesson by asking students what they have learnt in
this lesson about finding and using quotations.