Instructions
Aim: To understand how to explain, comment on and analyse how writers use language and structure to create effects and influence readers.
Download the 'Blind Bill' extract and the responses sheet and organise the class into small groups. Each group needs to sit at a different table and the comments about the boy should be shared between the groups. The groups need to find the evidence or support for each of the statements on their table from the lines given by the teacher. They then need to move to the next table to collect more supporting comments about the boy. By the end of the task, they should have the full range of comments and support available to use in their responses. For this activity to be completed successfully, each group has to leave a copy of the evidence behind on their table for the next group to see. Alternatively, each group needs to nominate a spokesperson to explain the findings to the other groups and a second spokesperson to explain the new findings to them when the groups re-join. Use this resource to pull the groups' ideas' together.
It was nearly one o'clock when he heard the voices. A girl's voice, a boy's voice. Two pairs of feet coming up the lane slowly, out for a walk. The girl had a soft, timid voice. He felt she would be small and dark with a shy smile. He didn't notice the boy's voice at first. Then he realised. It was a wrong sort of voice, rough, uneven. It didn't fit with the girl's voice. He'd heard many such voices and they always meant trouble. They belonged to lads who caused fights, who bullied, who stole from where they worked. What was that girl doing out with a boy like that?
They paused outside his gate. He was quite sure they hadn't noticed him sitting behind the cover of the hawthorn hedge.
What are we coming up here for Trev?" The girl sounded nervous. The boy chuckled, not very pleasantly.
"Oh, we'll just sit in the cornfield and watch the birds and bees."
"Won't the farmer mind us being in his field?"
"I often used to come here. Think the farmer could see my head in a cornfield? With hair this colour? And I washed it last night, 'specially for you." That should have sounded touching. But there was a note in the voice that made the listening Bill shudder.
"We haven't anything to sit on. I'll get my best dress dirty."
"We can sit on my anorak."
The boy is:
• Different to the girl
• A trouble maker
• Aggressive/ violent
• Threatening
• Frightening
• Unpleasant
• Devious/ calculating
• Disrespectful of the environment
• Bitter/ resentful
• In control
• From a less pleasant area
We know the boy is different to the girl because his voice is “wrong…rough, uneven” and her voice is described as “soft” and “timid”.