New
New
Year 10
AQA
'The Cellist of Sarajevo': expressing a personal and critical response to a text
I can express a personal and critical response to a text.
New
New
Year 10
AQA
'The Cellist of Sarajevo': expressing a personal and critical response to a text
I can express a personal and critical response to a text.
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Lesson details
Key learning points
- In order to evaluate, we should form a personal and critical response to the text.
- To form a personal response, we can reflect on how a text made us feel, what stood out and what we like/dislike.
- Each reader can form a different opinion on the same part of a text.
- We can use superlatives to help us express our judgements on a text.
- We can use tentative language to express that our opinions are ideas, not facts.
Keywords
Evaluative - to be evaluative is to judge something carefully
Critical - being critical means judging the quality of something
Superlative - a word to express the highest or lowest quality of something
Tentative - expressing possibility rather than certainty
Common misconception
Students may think that being critical means to talk about the negative aspects of something.
We can be critical by judging something positively or negatively.
You may want to show pupils a model paragraph using superlatives and tentative language in Learning Cycle 2. Alternatively, you could write one together as a class.
Teacher tip
Equipment
You will need access to Chapter 1 of 'The Cellist of Sarajevo' by Steven Galloway for this lesson.
Content guidance
- Depiction or discussion of violence or suffering
Supervision
Adult supervision recommended
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.
Which of the below is an evaluative comment?
The use of flashback suggests the cellist's grief.
The cellist feels grief.
Q2.
What is a personal response?
a response to a text influenced by your friend
a response to a text found online
Q3.
What does it mean to be critical?
to accept what you are told
to compliment something
Q4.
Which of the below contains tentative language?
Galloway successfully makes his message more universal by referring to WW2.
Galloway refers to WW2 to make his message more universal.
Q5.
Which of the below contains a superlative?
Galloway shows how war leads to destruction and grief.
Galloway successfully conveys the cellist's defiance.
Q6.
What is one defintion for the word 'gravity'?
humour
ease
Exit quiz
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6 Questions
Q1.
In order to successfully evaluate, what type of response do we need to form?
impartial
Q2.
Which of the below is a critical comment?
The writer uses a simile.
The text is about war.
Q3.
What type of word expresses a judgement on something?
noun
conjunction
Q4.
What type of language expresses a possibility rather than certainty?
definitive
emotive
Q5.
Which of these sentences does not use a superlative?
I feel the most sympathy for the cellist when he drops his cello.
The most emotive part of the text is the Opera Hall falling to ruin.
Q6.
Why is it important to use tentative language in evaluative writing?
to show that our opinions are facts
to show that we have researched our analysis