A scene from The Piano

Whilst watching the animated, Aniboom version of The Piano, a scene caught the imagination of one of my students. Grace went to the computer and produced this piece;

I reached the wall with a sigh of relief. A soldier was near me. My heart was pounding; my spine was shivering. This was a serious moment. We had to fight to save our country. Right this moment I am standing with a soldier, the horrible smell of smoke and dampness fills the air. Stones are all over the ground, I nearly tripped. The soldier was just about to leave. I had to give him the signal.

“Ready, go!” I shouted.

I could hardly hear myself talk. Suddenly, BANG!!!

The soldier on my team had just been shot. I ran to help. “Are you OK? Please be with me, I know you can make it,” I murmured.

His head flopped and I knew what this meant; he didn’t make it. It turned pitch black.

What makes this successful?

Reading it, you will note the style of using statements rather than long, complex sentences; this gives the reader the sudden, jolting, advancing of the action and gives Grace a level 6 for atmospheric creation.

The paragraphing and text organisation is, again, creating the mood as well as the darkness of the whole scene, gaining a level 6.

Her punctuation uses a full range, from full stops to semi-colons and therefore moves her piece into the level 5a/6 range once more.

Where does it not quite hold those levels is in the formatting of the adverbs, adjectives and connectives which are still at level 4, but this piece of work shows such promise and gives us all an idea of what can be achieved by a ten year old, especially when they have worked at developing their own style, language knowledge and of course, accuracy in using punctuation.

Well done Grace, I look forward to the next piece of work from you.