Teacher Notes

The worksheets can be used alongside the programmes to help develop a critical awareness of language, effect and theme. They may be adapted for individual, pair, group or whole-class work. Broadly the activities are of the following types:

• oral work
• detailed reading of texts
• creative and functional writing assignments
• literary assignments
• study of pre-twentieth-century literature
• further reading and research

For some of the activities, students need the texts of the stories:

• 'The Tell-Tale Heart' by Edgar Allan Poe is available online at: http://www.literature.org/authors/poe-edgar-allan/tell-tale-heart.html.
• 'Superman and Paula Brown's New Snowsuit' by Sylvia Plath is published in Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (Faber, 1979).
• 'Your Shoes' by Michèle Roberts is published in During Mother's Absence (Virago / Little, Brown, 1994).

Programme 1

Worksheet 1

The extract is taken from the second paragraph of the story. Play this extract to the class as they attempt the first task.

Worksheet 4

You may wish to create shortcuts to the two web pages students are referred to and place them on the desktop:

A. http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/zone/h/a/haldane2/p7.jpg.html

B. http://las.alfred.edu/~egl/grove/fall98/egl292/poe5.html

Worksheet 6

You may wish to create a shortcut to the web page students are referred to and place it on the desktop:

http://www.fuzzydog.com/films.htm

Worksheet 7

Students will need copies of the text.

Some examples are:

• every night about midnight
• It took me an hour
• seven long nights, every night just at midnight
• every morning, when the day broke
• every night, just at twelve
• Upon the eighth night
• A watch's minute hand moves more quickly
• For a whole hour
• night after night hearkening to the death watches
• Many a night, just at midnight
• I had waited a long time
• a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes
• dead hour of the night
• for some minutes longer I refrained
• The old man's hour had come
• for many minutes the heart beat on
• I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes
• The night waned
• it was four o'clock - still dark as midnight
• the bell sounded the hour

Worksheet 8

The audio clips needed for this activity will be available online here soon.

Students will need to listen to the following two audio clips, which you should download in advance:

• Audio Clip 1 (50 seconds)
• Audio Clip 2 (50 seconds)

Programme 2

Worksheet 3

You may wish to create a shortcut to the web page students are referred to and place it on the desktop:

http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Cafe/8648/johnnyuk2.html

Worksheet 4

You may wish to create a shortcut to the web page students are referred to and place it on the desktop:

http://www.salvadordalimuseum.org/spring.html

Worksheet 6

This activity should help students to realise that writing about how and why a story is written is more important than simply retelling the sequence of events in it.

Programme 3

Worksheet 3

You may wish to create a shortcut to the web page students are referred to and place it on the desktop:

http://www.earthsystems.org/ways/5.html

Woksheet 4

You may wish to create a shortcut to the web page students are referred to and place it on the desktop:

http://www.covenanthouse.org/kid/kid_run/kid_run_04.htm

Worksheet 5

Students will need copies of the text, as large as possible to allow them to annotate them.

Worksheet 6

You may wish to create a shortcut to the web page students are referred to and place it on the desktop:

http://www.cswnet.com/~erin/fiction.htm

The best responses are:

Plot: b
Character: c
Setting: a
Theme: b
Style: b