Life through a lens (part one)

To annotate and make notes about an extract from No Trumpets Needed – Life through a lens (part one) Learning objective: To appreciate how a writer uses a range of techniques, including language and sentence choices, to affect the reader (RAF5, RAF6) Learning outcome: To annotate and make notes about an extract from No Trumpets Needed by Michael Morpurgo Success criteria: AF Level 5 / All students can … Level 6 / Most students can … Level 7 / Some students can … RAF5 Suggest possible effects on the reader of particular words and styles of sentences Draw tentative conclusions about the effects on the reader of particular words and styles of sentences Explore the effects on the reader of particular words and styles of sentences RAF6 Give some explanation of the overall effect on the reader Clearly identify the effect on the reader and explain how this effect is achieved Show some appreciation of how a range of specific techniques and devices affect the reader

– Life through a lens (part one) Banksy, Palestine, 2005

– Life through a lens (part one) Activity: Read the extract below, which is the opening of No Trumpets Needed, a short story set in the Middle East. Highlight and annotate the extract, making notes about: What you learn about the cameraman and his job What you notice about the writer’s choice of language. The writer uses the first person pronoun ‘I’ four times at the start so that we hear the strong voice of the cameraman immediately. I am a cameraman. I work freelance, on my own; it’s how I like it. I was on the West Bank a few weeks ago, my first job in the cauldron of contention that is the Middle East. Of course, I had seen on television, like most of us, the anguish of the grieving, the burnt-out buses, the ritual humiliation of checkpoints, the tanks in the streets, the stone-throwing crowds, the olive groves and the hilltop settlements, children playing in open sewers in the refugee camps – and now the wall. The wall to separate Palestinian from Israeli, Arab from Jew. I knew the place in images; I was there to make more of them, I suppose. And I wanted to find out the effect the wall was having on the people who lived close to it – on both sides. I began my travels on the Palestinian side.

– Life through a lens (part one) Activity: Read the full extract from No Trumpets Needed (Student’s Book, pp. 6–7). Use the table below to make notes about the cameraman, how he is presented and how we feel about him. Impressions we get about the cameraman Techniques the writer uses to present him Effects on the reader (how the reader might react) He seems drawn to people and wants to communicate. ‘… I could not bring myself to pass by with a mere greeting or paltry nod of the head.’ The phrase ‘could not bring myself to pass by’ warms the reader to his character and sparks our interest in what might happen next.