New
New
Year 10
AQA

‘Suite Française’: forming opinions on fiction

I can confidently form and justify my own opinions about a fiction text.

New
New
Year 10
AQA

‘Suite Française’: forming opinions on fiction

I can confidently form and justify my own opinions about a fiction text.

warning

These resources will be removed by end of Summer Term 2025.

Switch to our new teaching resources now - designed by teachers and leading subject experts, and tested in classrooms.

Lesson details

Key learning points

  1. You can begin to form a personal response to a text by asking yourself what feelings the text evoked in you.
  2. Opinions are personal, so each person may have a different opinion on a text.
  3. In order to make your opinion more credible, you should justify it.
  4. Appropriate justification comes in the form of evidence from the text.

Keywords

  • Opinion - a thought or belief about something

  • Justify - to give a reason for

  • Credible - able to believed or trusted

Common misconception

'Everyone is entitled to their own opinion', therefore there is no need to justify our opinions.

Although we are all entitled to our opinion, justifying your opinion allows people to trust and listen to your opinion more carefully.

During Learning Cycle 2, you could use a visualiser to model reading a text and tracking ideas to show how one of the Oak pupils formed their opinion.
Teacher tip

Equipment

You will need access to Chapter 1 of 'Suite Française' by Irene Nemirovsky for this lesson. You can find this in the additional materials.

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

Loading...

6 Questions

Q1.
What is an opinion?
Correct answer: a thought or belief about something
a thing that is known or proved to be true
a rational type of abstract thinking
Q2.
Which war took place between 1939 and 1945?
Cold War
World War One
Correct answer: World War Two
Q3.
Which opinion below is justified?
Correct answer: I enjoyed the production because it had an upbeat feel to it.
I thought the production was unique.
The production allowed me to reflect upon a lot in my life.
Q4.
Which of these is not a credible source?
books written by experts
Correct answer: web pages that anyone can edit
researched newspaper articles
Q5.
What is an air raid?
an attack from the ground
Correct answer: an attack in which bombs are dropped from aircraft on to a ground target
an attack with at least three parties involved
Q6.
Which of the settings below is the most mundane?
a battlefield
Correct answer: a city
a tropical paradise

6 Questions

Q1.
What happens during the opening of 'Suite Française'?
the war ends
Correct answer: there is an air raid
someone dies
Q2.
What does it mean to be credible?
to be accurate
to be intelligent
Correct answer: to be trustworthy
Q3.
In order to add credibility, what can you do when stating your opinion?
prove it
only state it if someone else agrees with you
Correct answer: justify it
Q4.
In the opening of 'Suite Française', how do most people react to the air raid?
frantically
aggressively
Correct answer: calmly
Q5.
Which of the below is not an opinion regarding the opening of 'Suite Française'?
Correct answer: The women were more anxious.
Nemirovsky creates a sense of hope.
The writer captures the innocence of the Parisian citizens.
Q6.
Which of these opinions is not sufficiently justified?
Personally, I liked the text because it showed an intimate perspective.
Correct answer: I disliked the text because it was boring.
The text was interesting because it used a lot of imagery.

Additional material

Download additional material
We're sorry, but preview is not currently available. Download to see additional material.