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Year 9

Improving a letter: deliberate verbs and precise adjectives

I can improve a letter which recounts an imagined experience from the British home front during World War One by paying close attention to my choice of verbs and adjectives.

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Year 9

Improving a letter: deliberate verbs and precise adjectives

I can improve a letter which recounts an imagined experience from the British home front during World War One by paying close attention to my choice of verbs and adjectives.

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Lesson details

Key learning points

  1. Writers spend as long choosing deliberate verbs and precise adjectives as they do on other methods.
  2. Verbs tell us how an action is done, and so can give an insight into character, atmosphere and tone.
  3. Adjectives describe nouns and also impact tone.

Keywords

  • Vera Brittain - a British writer (1893-1970) best known for her memoir ‘Testament of Youth’ about her experiences on the home front of World War One

  • Flare - a light used to attract attention

  • Wilfred Owen - a British soldier and poet (1893-1918) best remembered for his poetry about World War One

  • Tone - the attitude and emotion of your voice - written or verbal

  • PTSD - an acronym for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a mental health condition

Common misconception

It is important to focus on the creation of complex methods like metaphor or anaphora. Verbs don't matter.

Every sentence should contain a verb. As such, choosing them requires careful thought, and can dramatically impact the tone and pace of your writing.

Consider if you have excellent pupil work which could serve as the models in this lesson in place of Brittain and Owen.
Teacher tip

Content guidance

  • Depiction or discussion of violence or suffering
  • Depiction or discussion of mental health issues

Supervision

Adult supervision required

Licence

This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2024), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

Lesson video

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Starter quiz

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6 Questions

Q1.
Wilfred Owen's 'Mental Cases' describes soldiers with PTSD. He says in their minds they are "Wading sloughs [swamps] of flesh". Which is the verb in this phrase?
Correct answer: wading
sloughs
of
flesh
Q2.
A pupil wrote a sentence inspired by poetry and short stories about WW1: "The weather is bitterly cold." Match each word of the sentence to its word class.
Correct Answer:weather,noun

noun

Correct Answer:is,verb

verb

Correct Answer:bitterly,adverb

adverb

Correct Answer:cold,adjective

adjective

Q3.
A pupil wrote a sentence inspired by poetry and short stories about WW1: "I survey the empty town and desolate shops." Match each word of the sentence to its word class.
Correct Answer:I,subject

subject

Correct Answer:survey,verb

verb

Correct Answer:empty,adjective

adjective

Correct Answer:town,noun

noun

Correct Answer:desolate,adjective

adjective

Correct Answer:shops,plural noun

plural noun

Q4.
Which option below is accurate about Vera Brittain's 'Testament of Youth'?
it is a selection of her diary entries from WW1
Correct answer: it is a memoir of her experiences on the home front of WW1
it is a memoir of her experiences on the home front of WW2
it is a selection of letters from her and her husband Roland from WW1
it is an imaginative memoir about her experiences on the front line of WW1
Q5.
What is accurate about both Wilfred Owen and Vera Brittain, two writers from the unit 'Literary perspectives from the First World War'?
they both died during WW1
they are best remembered for their poetry about WW1
Correct answer: they were born in the same year
Correct answer: they are best remembered for their writings about WW1
they both used the years after the war to write and publish their work
Q6.
One of Wilfred Owen's most famous poems, 'Dulce et Decorum Est', describes a gas attack. Owen uses the first stanza to describe the soldiers in the trenches, writing "we through sludge."
Correct Answer: cursed

Exit quiz

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6 Questions

Q1.
A pupil wrote a sentence inspired by poetry and short stories about WW1: "I stumble fitfully, cold and alone." Match each word of the sentence to its word class.
Correct Answer:I,subject

subject

Correct Answer:stumble,verb

verb

Correct Answer:fitfully,adverb

adverb

Correct Answer:cold,adjective

adjective

Correct Answer:alone,adjective

adjective

Q2.
A pupil wrote a sentence inspired by poetry and short stories about WW1: "Nightly, I feel desolate." Match each word of the sentence to its word class.
Correct Answer:nightly,adverb

adverb

Correct Answer:I,subject

subject

Correct Answer:feel,verb

verb

Correct Answer:desolate,adjective

adjective

Q3.
One of Wilfred Owen's most famous poems describes the weather in the trenches. Owen begins the poem, "Our brains ".
Correct Answer: ache
Q4.
One of Wilfred Owen's most famous poems describes a gas attack. Owen uses the first stanza to describe the soldiers in the trenches: " , coughing like hags".
Correct Answer: knock-kneed, knock kneed
Q5.
One of Wilfred Owen's most famous poems describes the weather in the trenches. Owen describes "the merciless iced east winds that us."
Correct Answer: knive
Q6.
In one of his most famous poems, Wilfred Owen wrote about the "clawing" flares in the trenches. What did he later change this phrase to?
"ghostly flares"
"bright flares"
"desperate flares"
"distant flares"
Correct answer: "haunting flares"