Prejudice and Outsiders

Subject: English Language
Level: Secondary
Age Group: 11 - 14
Order Number: 5247

The resource contains two separate writing units linked by a single theme. It is aimed ideally at 13-14 year olds.

An Arrival and The Playground move from a focus on the sentence level skills of tense and person to a detailed introduction to Imagine, Explore, Entertain writing. The text level work begins with pupils extending a short piece of featured text about a blind woman. They are given clear targets for their writing, which is then analysed in group discussion. Work arising from a second piece of text, about an isolated schoolboy, then opens up an awareness of how choice of narrative voice can affect a writer's chances of succeeding in this triplet.

The second unit, Images of Prejudice, uses powerful iconic pictures of racial bigotry as a platform for writing in the Inform, Explain, Describe triplet. Thematically, it moves from a consideration of pupils' thoughts on the bizarre practicalities of enforcing early anti-Semitic laws in Nazi Germany, through the inevitable and shocking development of those laws in the death camps, and on to the racist culture of nineteen fifties America. Support and models are provided with the tasks, which increasingly draw pupils to an awareness of the need for detailed, explicit and accurate writing based upon independently conceived responses.

Obvious ethical and cultural elements in both these units contribute to meeting National Curriculum English requirements in these areas. Images of Prejudice, in particular, can also be used as a starting point for a consideration of this issue in the context of Citizenship lessons.