KS3, "The Adventure of the Speckled Band", ending, writing to express a viewpoint, emotive

Planned for a year 8 class, this lesson takes as its central idea Holmes’s comment at the end of “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” that, ‘I am no doubt indirectly responsible for Dr. Grimesby Roylott’s death, and I cannot say that it is likely to weigh very heavily upon my conscience.’ After a recap of what’s meant by a noun phrase, pupils are directed to choose adjectives to develop nouns from the story into emotive noun phrases, thereby building a word bank. They then use their word bank in developing Holmes’s sentence into a speech to Watson in which he expands and develops his viewpoint.