Stories from Around the World. Reading / writing / cultural capital - 120 slide SoW

This 120 slide SoW uses a variety of fiction and non-fiction stories from around the globe as a springboard for reading and writing activities, whilst also developing cultural capital through understanding of context, themes and writers’ messages. Themes touched upon include:

• race
• immigration
• feminism/ equality
• mental health
• abuse/ corruption and power
• religion
• war
• slavery

The scheme was originally written for a year 9 group, but would also be suitable for years 8 and 10, with some slight adaptations. Links are provided to all of the stories used, which are either completely free or are free published extracts. These can be further edited as seen fit, if required.

There are also supplementary non-fiction texts, all of which are included as resources. These texts develop contextual understanding of each theme further.

The stories used are:
My Family’s Slave - Tizon
Heart of Darkness - Conrad
The Yellow Wallpaper - Gilmore
The Sisters - Joyce
The Beekeeper of Aleppo - Lefteri
The Paper Menagerie - Liu

Activities include:

• understanding literary context
• recognition of other cultures and traditions
• understanding of Syria / war
• refugees
• Leaflet writing
• the context of historic slavery
• modern slavery
• perspectives and viewpoints
• comprehension/ reflection questions
• language analysis
• using PEEZL to respond to reading questions (point, evidence, explain, zoom, link)
• features of news articles and writing news articles
• AQA style non-fiction language paper 2 questions
• persuasive language
• religion’s impact
• Ireland, Catholicism and James Joyce
• Abuse of power
• Articles on the church’s abuse of power (in the context of Catholic children’s homes, mid 20th century)
• understanding of AQA paper 2 writing genre, purpose and audience
• Speech writing
• Model speech
• Peer and self assessment/ improvement opportunities
• Developing excellent points and links for PEEZL
• Imperialism and empires / colonisation
• Victorian viewpoints
• Responsibility
• Letter writing
• Gender expectations
• Autobiographical stories
• Diary writing
• Essay writing
• Structuring paragraphs
• Mixed race experiences
• Argumentative writing
• Scaffolding and differentiation