NGf L CYMRU GCaD Alpha Road – Miss Marbles: Idiolect and play-scripting Teaching Guidance Starter After looking at initial screen (there it is worth pre-empting ideas about what age/occupation/hobbies she may have), play avatar – sets context of Miss Marbles character and situation. Class can take notes of main points that she reveals about herself. Next screen contains rest of monologue – this is available as word document. Class read through – can they spot anything odd about it. Once screen is revealed it tells them that it is missing topic sentence starters (topic partly covered in Unit 1: Mrs Pratchett). Click on a particular paragraph on the previous screen and then text appears in larger text – here class can look more closely at the words and decide on 4 possible sentence starters. Worth discussing the merits of each one. The Check button will blend in the ‘correct’ starter with the rest of the text. Check button does not throw out incorrect ones as there is scope for arguing for other ideas. Ideally the ‘correct’ example should fit the best – but it’s the quality of discussion about why it is best suited is the important thing. Task 1 Next screen reveals a character card and a grid of objects on the left. Idea here is to read the character cards and decide on 3 objects which he/she is most likely to possess. There are 4 characters which will all appear in the unit. Worth getting pupils to write their own short monologue for a character each (say in groups of 4) where they refer to what these objects mean to them. Next screen reverses logic of last activity. Here objects can shuffle to reveal items. Class have to create a character card which might be associated with such objects. Idea here is to explore our ability to make assumptions on character through objects. Also it is a creative task where pupils can start to create some characters for the play-script they need to create at end of unit. Character cards will be available for the classroom as word doc (part of unit). NGf L CYMRU GCaD Task 2 This begins to look at idioms as part of idiolect. Class can reveal one number at a time – first ‘team’ or player or reveal the saying wins (due to ‘ageing’ of idioms and dialects I would urge teacher to set homework collecting as many idioms as possible prior to this task as it might baffle some pupils). Reveal idiom function available. Next screen is a multiple choice activity where pupils can drag the most apt word to complete the idiom. Idea here might even be to discuss where some of the idioms originate. Hint button only reveals the correct ones so helps steer pupils if struggling. Re-play randomises each time so this can be done as a competition or game between teams or pupils. Task 3 Carousel activity – here Press for Carousel will select 3 characters who might say one of the lines below. If it’s the most suited character then the line is said by the character. If it’s not the most apt then we hear “I wouldn’t say a thing like that”. This activity gets pupils thinking more carefully about idiolect. Room for analysis on why it’s suited/not suited. Task 4 Play-script screen appears. This gives a model of playscript – rollover text appears when cursor is moved over red areas – idea here is to highlight the features of play-scripts. Also this introduces the storyline that pupils are to develop in their own script. There are word documents attached with this for closer analysis. This has similar function as previous screen but this time we see conventions of typical prose/story narrative. Again useful rollover text can guide pupils and word docs are available. Next screen gives task of converting the story section into play-script. There is a timer which gives pupils 5 minutes to do the task. After explosion the text explodes and is replaced by a model script which pupils can compare to their own. NGf L CYMRU GCaD Outcome Final screen gives some prose (continues same storyline) which has to be converted and pupils have to go on to create a larger ‘soap’ or play-script involving the characters they have come across in this unit. Pupils can also include the Pratchett characters here (or any other characters in a later unit). Focus is on play-script technique, convincing idiolect, and developed storyline.