Learning resources
CFE Levels Early – 4 and Senior Phase
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Contents of this resource
2 About the Scotland’s Stories of Home campaign
Further information about the theme
Life at home in pictures (Early Years, Level 1)
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Shape poetry (Level 1,2)
What does home mean to you? Gathering ideas for writing (Levels 2,3,4)
An explorer’s diary (Levels 2,3,4)
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Writing a rap/discursive essay (Level 4, Senior phase)
Additional resources for battle rap
Expressive writing
6 Developing personal writing skills
8 First drafts
– focusing on content, not style
About the Scotland’s Stories of Home campaign
Pupils of all ages can get involved in Scottish Book Trust’s national writing campaign for 2014.
Scottish Book Trust is inviting pupils to submit a piece of personal writing, such as a story, rap, song or poem based on their experience, which illustrates what home means to them, post it on the website and read stories by other pupils from across Scotland (we are not looking for made up stories, but stories based on experience).
Pupils can also comment on each others’ stories and discuss what home means to them through the moderated comments section of the website.
These learning resources are here to help and inspire teachers run the project in their classroom. And of course, we are also inviting teachers, librarians and the rest of the school staff to submit their stories of home to the public campaign running alongside the pupils’ strand of the project!
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A selection of pupils’ stories, chosen by a panel of young people, will be published in a free epublication available to download during Book Week Scotland 2014.
A selection of stories from the public participation campaign (stories by adults) will be published in a book and distributed during Book Week Scotland 2014.
Stories and poems should be under 1000 words. Entries in Gaelic and Scots are welcomed.
Pupils and adults can enter their stories on Scottish Book Trust’s website until 30 th June.
For more information visit www.scottishbooktrust.com/storiesofhome or email storiesofhome@scottishbooktrust.com
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Further information about the theme
We are inviting you and your pupils to write about what home means to you: the things that come into your mind when you hear the word ‘home’. These could include people, places, objects, routines, communities and their customs or anything else you associate with home.
There are some examples in the activities to help your pupils along, particularly in the What does home mean to you? task.
CFE outcomes are documented throughout. Please note that when a task is applicable at more than one CFE level, we have only included outcomes for one of those levels, to stop things getting too crowded!
Life at home in pictures (Early Years, level 1) Lit 1-20a, HWB 1-01a, Exa 1-02a, Exa 1-03a,
Exa 1-05a
Ask pupils to draw pictures of places in their house which make them feel happy and at home.
They could draw themselves doing things that make them feel happy, and then write a line underneath their drawing saying where they are and what they are doing. Ask the pupils to write down next to each picture why it makes them feel happy and at home.
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For homework, pupils could ask parents to take a picture of the place and you could make a display with the pictures.
Shape poetry (Levels 1 and 2) Eng 2-27a, Eng 2-31a,
Ask pupils to compose a poem about what home means to them, and get them to write it in the shape of a house! There are some great examples of shape poetry on poet James Carter’s website – check out our learning resources for more details, examples and poetry activities: http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning/teachers-librarians/teaching-resources-cpd/authorresources/james-carter
You might benefit from discussing some of the questions in the next activity before you attempt this one.
What does home mean to you? Gathering ideas for writing (Levels 2, 3 and 4) Eng 3-30a,
Lit 3-25a, Lit 3-20a, HWB 3-01a
These activities can be done in order as a lesson, but of course you’ll want to modify to suit your learners:
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Ask pupils to think about family members, friends or pets. Ask them to write down the things they would miss about them if they were away from home for a period of time.
Encourage them not just to list qualities but also little things these people do, habits they have and things they say.
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Now ask the pupils to suggest some other examples of things that make them feel at home. As a prompt, you could ask them to think about routines or other things that bring the family together (for instance, breakfast, dinner or a favourite programme on TV).
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Next, ask the pupils to think beyond the four walls of their house! What things do they like about their home town? What places do they go? Do they have routines, places they meet people, places they do activities?
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Finally, after your discussion, ask your pupils where they feel at home. Is it just their house? Or do they feel that their home town is important to them as well?
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An explorer’s diary (Levels 2, 3 and 4)
Eng 3-31a, HWB 3-01a
Ask pupils to imagine that they have gone travelling to somewhere very different than home.
Ask them to write a diary entry exploring the following things:
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The people they miss;
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The things they miss doing;
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The home routines they remember (mornings, dinnertime, bedtime).
This activity can be a nice way to look at how the little annoyances and conflicts we develop with our families can seem much less significant once we are distanced from them: often our attention will focus on the good things that we miss rather than any trivialities.
Writing a rap/discursive essay (Level 4, senior phase) Eng 4-27a, Eng 4-31a
Scotland is a country with a rich social and economic history and strong traditions, and is often thought of in terms of symbols like bagpipes, highland dress, castles, and traditional exports like whisky and shortbread!
Ask your pupils to write a discursive essay on the following topic:
“In defining modern Scotland, it’s important to strike a balance between celebrating the past and looking to the prese nt.”
Your pupils can argue the merits of retaining a sound knowledge of our history and traditions, and also consider the merits of knowing about Scotland’s achievements (and challenges) in the modern era, as well as possible implications for the future.
You could also set a discursive task, a battle rap or a debate on the following topic:
“An education in Scottish Studies should be compulsory in Scottish schools.”
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Additional resources for battle rap
Battle rap has been a hugely successful activity in allowing pupils to play with language, engage in debate and increase their confidence, as well as developing their own unique voice. This case study from South Lanarkshire gives a comprehensive introductory guide, with units of work, blogs by the teacher involved and videos of battle rap in the classroom: http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning/teachers-librarians/authors-live/teacher-ambassadorprogramme-poetry-slam
You can also watch an inspirational video of Scottish Hip Hop artists speaking to pupils here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2cXyU5TuGo
Expressive writing (senior phase)
The following question could work well as an expressive piece, exploring experiences and emotions:
“If you live in one of Scotland’s big cities, do you still feel part of a community? What makes your big city feel like home to you?”
Developing personal writing skills
Often pupils have difficulty grasping the idea that it’s the small, idiosyncratic details of their lives which create a great piece of writing. Personal essays about holidays are plentiful, but it’s the little things in our lives which convey our personality, and so looking at some examples of personal writing might help to illustrate this. Here are a few examples which might help:
Example 1
It’s funny, but when I think back to my childhood and I think of the word ‘home’, I don’t just think of my house. Mainly, for some reason, I think about the Astroturf pitch where my friends and I used to gather on Saturdays.
Nowadays, whenever I play football, it’s a different game entirely to the one I played on that pitch. There were alw ays huge numbers, for instance: we’d get between 20 and 25 each time, and we only had half a pitch, since usually we had to share it with another clan of kids. This meant a crowded pitch, often with uneven team numbers. There was
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still a lot of running about to do, since at least 5 players in each team were shamelessly lazy and just camped up front, ready to pick up the scraps.
Also, when I play football these days, it lasts an hour. Back then, we turned up at around 10 o’clock, and went home any time between 8 and 10. This was in the summer, of course: in winter the pitch looked like a wasteland, with puddles or rain, sludge and snow dotted across. It was a death trap, and no one fancied it much.
So when I play football now, it’s pretty civilised, but I still feel that something’s not quite right when there are only five players on each team. At the time, I’m sure I got really annoyed with the goal poachers, but I think on them fondly now.
Example 2
When I think of home, I think of wee things. Christmases and birthdays don’t really stick out: they were always great and it makes me smile to remember them, but when I think about what made my home what it is, it’s always daft wee memories that come back to me.
When we first moved in, we discovered the house had a small problem with mice. It was a novelty to me (I tended to associate mice with Jerry, the loveable scamp of Tom and
Jerry ) whereas they were a pest to everyone else. At night, you could hear them running through the walls, plaster crumbling as they went; again, a source of great amusement for me. On one particular night I remember seeing one of them scurrying out from underneath my bed and squeezing through the tiny gap between the floor and the bottom of my bedroom door. I had no idea a mouse could do that with its body, and I was fascinated. Eventually we had to get traps in, and I accepted that while the mice were entertaining, they also had to go. When I think of home, I always think of that wee mouse squeezing under the door.
When we had been ther e a year, we got a dog. The day our Westie arrived, she didn’t do much, and so I don’t really remember the day itself. The thing that sticks out for me is how we used to gently wind her up. Every time a cat ventured into our garden Misty bolted out the door with a speed we never saw from her at any other time, barking like an animal possessed. Eventually we figured out that by saying the word ‘cat’ whenever a cat appeared, we could get her to associate the word with a cat appearing, and when we realised thi s, we used to relieve boredom by saying, “Misty! CAT!” and watching her bound into the garden only to see nothing there. To our delight, this worked every single
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time: the trick was to sometimes do it when there actually was a cat there, so Misty wouldn’t get too suspicious.
Misty passed away recently, and up until her final few days you could still get her to trot out to the garden at the mention of a cat. Actually, even a cat on the TV still got her going. My family all think God shouted to her that there was a pesky cat roaming around in Heaven.
Hopefully these examples will give your pupils a good idea of the kind of small details which make our experiences special and unique. For more writing tips for older pupils, you could try
Liz Lochhead’s 7 tips for personal writing: http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/reading/myfavourite-place/liz-lochheads-writing-tips
First drafts
– focusing on content, not style
Lit 4-20a
Sometimes pupils will be overly concerned with getting their first draft exactly right, which can actually be a barrier to getting good ideas down on paper. Here are some thoughts by writers, followed by a short exercise to help pupils write freely on a first draft:
I don’t do much serious editing as I go along, I just like to get the ideas down, then go back and tidy them up later once I’ve seen how the story turns out. (Lari Don)
Write as freely and rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. (John Steinbeck)
Think of your first draft as the clay, not the sculpture. Imagine that what you are doing is digging up clay, just a hunk of stuff from which you’ll create something later. Much of it will be messy and unrefined, but that’s not your problem now. Your job is simply to get from the beginning to the end. Keep digging! When it’s time to write a second draft, you will have your raw material.
(Kathy Leonard Czepiel)
Ask your pupils to write freely for 10 minutes using one of the prompts below. They should simply focus on continuing to write, not worrying about spelling, grammar, punctuation or word choice. After they have finished, they can extract any ideas which they think are good and build on them.
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What would you miss if you left home?
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If someone could be a fly on the wall in your house, what would they see?
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If someone wanted a tour of your home town, where would you take them and what would you say?
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