J Williams' Online Journal

assassinate: to murder, to kill a political leader or other public figure

assassination: murder, killing of a political leader or other public figure by a sudden violent attack

assassin: the killer of a political leader or public figure

Research task

You are working in a group of 3, your names are on the envelope you will receive in class. You have been given information about a person who has been assassinated.

You need to share out the information and READ it.

You have to find out:

1) What is this person famous for?

2) Do you know why this person was killed?

3) When and where was this person assassinated?

4) A bit more background information you can tell us about this person that will help us to know more about this person’s life.

• Rules: You must use the information given today and you may find out additional information using a book. You need to complete this task as a homework so you may use other internet sources at home and watch anything on YouTube to help you understand more about this person.

You MUST write any additional sources down (the title of the book, the Dewey number and the internet website’s correct address or URL.)

You must present your facts in an interesting and entertaining manner to the rest of the class on Monday 8/7/13 – this will be your last formal oral assessment of the year.

You must also hand in your notes as proof that you did the research and give information about your sources (where you got the information.) You will have today’s lesson to work on this and any additional information to find as homework.

You need to work as a group and share out how you are going to present the information to the rest of the class. You can simply tell us, you can use PowerPoint (but don’t come and read the slides to us!) The aim is for you to give us information about the person you have researched that is a summary and just the important information – DON’T copy long pieces of work; put it in your OWN words if you can. A Year 7 student should be able to follow your presentation so don’t copy words you don’t understand!! You need to show you can SELECT information and SUMMARISE information in mostly your own words. You may find references to political organisations or other information that is unknown to you – you need to explain what such references are to your audience or leave it out!

Don’t present anything you don’t understand yourself. You may take the information you are given today home; you can share it out between you and you may underline or annotate it in any way to help you find out what you need to know.

If you lose this sheet you can go to edutronic.net and find Ms Lindsay’s classes,  Year 8 and this information will be available there.

Websites you may find useful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures

Happy research! If you want to find other public figures who have been assassinated, try looking up  President Allende, Anwar Sadat, Thomas Sankara or any others you have heard about – feel free to add somebody else to your presentation for Monday 8th July!

Thank you.

Today I was impressed by the research carried out by members of our class. The questions you researched were the result of our discussion last week about what we already knew about the Second World War and the Holocaust and what we still needed to know. Contributions by Umayer, Sean and Sterling were particularly enlightening. Thank you.

Extended reading – Short Story Reading and Research project  – 2 weeks

• How will we be working?

›  You will work in pairs – to choose somebody to work with you need to be sure that you will both contribute and that you will enjoy working collaboratively.

›  Good communication with each other will be important – email addresses, texting or if you live close to each other.

›  You need to be able to trust each other, share the work and feel comfortable working together.

›  You will be allocated a short story, each of you will have your own copy. You may annotate your copy.

›  You will have to read the story and then discuss it as partners and decide how you will present your story to the rest of the class. There is guidance on how to prepare for this.

›  You will also have to research the author of the story and present some information to the class about the author – it may be hard to find the information about some lesser known authors.

• Outcome of the task:

›  You will present your story and your research on the author to the rest of the class.

›  Your teachers will assess your READING of the story and your PRESENTATION skills as well as the evidence of your COLLABORATION.

›  The rest of the class will be asked to peer assess your presentation and to give feedback to you about how well you have succeeded in presenting the story and author information to them.

• How will we go about preparing?

›  You will use the skills you have developed during our short story unit this half term to inform your presentation.

›  Reading the story (2/3 times) and annotating it as you read will be important.

›  Discuss with your partner the story, what you wish to highlight in your presentation and HOW.

›  A short summary of the story may be useful.

›  You should also decide when is the most appropriate point at which to include the author information.

›  Openings – how does it start?

›  Characters and setting.

›  What developments, twists or unexpected events caught your attention?

›  How does it end? OR do you want to encourage the audience to read the story for themselves?

›  Anything particular to the story that stands out?

›  What can the reader infer?

›  What can you read out to the class to show us how language is used in the story?

›  Did any part of the story cause you problems?

›  Did you have any questions you would like to ask the author?

›  How successful is the story? Would you recommend it to other readers?

• Researching the author:

›  Who is the author?

›  Any dates relevant e.g. born/died/first published/won an award?

›  What type of writing is this person known for?

›  Any other work we should know about/read?

›  Anything important about the setting or time the story was written?

›  Do we have a picture or portrait of the author?

• How can we present our work?

›  You can incorporate film, PowerPoint, drama, hand-outs, pictures anything that will help to engage the audience’s attention during your presentation.

›  You can use props to help illustrate the story.

›  You should aim to read some extracts to the audience (this need not be long) or you can act out a part of the story.

›  You presentation can be from 5 to 15 minutes long.

To find a copy of Lamb to the Slaughter go to:

http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/lamb.html

You are now in the process of writing your comparison of the two stories. You want to explore what is similar, different and what features or ingredients of the stories you would like to comment on.

We have agreed, in listening to the contributions during our discussion this morning, that your essays will have to:

• refer to the text
• use quotations (remember just one word, part of a sentence or a whole sentence from the story can be quoted) – remember to use the quotation marks to indicate this to your reader ”   “
• we are also interested in the words you use to make points clear – for example somebody pointed out that Calvin is abusive to his wife
• you should include how you have responded as a reader, somebody felt  that it was more predictable in Hey You Down There! that Calvin would die while in Lamb to the Slaughter it is unexpected that Patrick is killed
• although you have been given a guidance sheet with suggestions of what you may include, planning your essay and deciding in which order to put the points you make is up to you – you can write your own plan if this helps you with your writing
• A tip – when referring to the stories you could refer to the author’s surname rather than mentioning the story’s name each time. e.g. Dahl’s story has an unexpected twist we did not expect. (Roald Dahl wrote Lamb to the Slaughter) and  Hey You Down There! is by Harold Rolseth.
• we are interested in which story you prefer and why

Work on your comparison this evening and you will have the lesson tomorrow to finish the work in class. Happy writing!

You can also do your assignment on computer and email it to me at mlindsay@nautical.lambeth.sch.uk

We have started to read the next short story in our unit on short stories. We will go back to Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl once we have completed this current story, but as we read I would like to encourage you to look at any similarities you can find with Lamb to the Slaughter.
We will start on Tuesday (2nd October) by looking at some questions we discussed orally today about the opening of this new story.

When we move to written answers remember we are interested in full sentences with as much detail as possible and quotations from the text to support your comments.

The questions we discussed today:

Can you speculate about what kind of story you think this may turn out to be?

When and where do you think this story might be set?

What do you already know about Calvin?

How would you describe the relationship between Dora and Calvin?

Can you make guesses about what may happen next?

(Thanks to the English and Media Centre for their KS3 units of work.)