Lesson video

Welcome to today's English lesson I'm Mrs. Crompton.

Before we begin our learning, let's make sure we have everything we need.

You will need a pen and paper, take a moment to make sure you've cleared any distractions away and have everything you need at hand.

So the American Civil War is the war that our hero Inman has been fighting in and we can see some information here.

The Civil War began in 1861 after decades of tensions between the Southern and Northern States over slavery, westward expansion and state rights.

The election of Abraham Lincoln as President, so this particular president was quite sympathetic towards the idea of the abolition of slavery, caused 11 States to withdraw from the union and form the Confederate States of America.

And on the left hand side of the image there you can see a Confederate soldier, which is the group that Inman belongs to.

And we can also see on the left hand side of the two flags that are positioned, that is the Confederate State flag.

So in terms of plot, our novel is set towards the end of the Civil War 1864.

And our protagonist Inman is a soldier in the Confederate army as I've just said.

The novel starts with him injured in a hospital in Virginia and he's really lucky to be alive.

He's seen too much in war and decides that he needs to pursue what's important in life.

He chooses to return to his home, Cold Mountain in North Carolina and Ada Monroe, the woman he has left behind.

So we can see some of our hero's motivations and why going to actually be looking at beginning of the novel and seeing how Frazier chooses to set this up.

Interestingly enough, our novelists slightly different to any other texts we've looked at so far.

And we've actually got a dual protagonist, Ada Monroe is the dual protagonist.

She has had a privileged upbringing in Charleston, but six years ago, her preacher father move them to Cold Mountain.

So Cold Mountain becomes the setting where these two people meet.

When we begin the novel Ada is suddenly on her own, as her father has passed away.

She cannot cope with life on Black Cove Farm as she has never had to learn how to do anything for herself.

So just in terms of background information and a few notes that you should have by this stage is that we are set against the backdrop of the American Civil War.

So we've got very specific conflict happening there, a man versus man conflict.

And then we've also got the separation of two young people Ada and Inman.

And so we've also got a romance in the plot line too.

Okay, let's see where it goes from here.

Now, what we're going to do as I've said is look at the beginning of our novel.

And what's really important to me is that we keep consolidating those core skills and this whole scale of reading for meaning and making sure that we are versatile in our reading, that we've got some really good practises embedded in what we do on a day to day basis.

When we see something that we're not familiar with for the first time is really, really crucial.

So what we're going to be doing in this session is repeating some of the skills that we've looked at before.

We're going to be looking at what happens first, what happens next, what happens then and what happens finally in the extract I have selected for you.

As usual, I'm going to provide you with some prompt questions to help activate your learning and to remind you of the types of things that you should be looking for.

And you will notice that I keep changing these around and that's because when we are responding to one scene fiction, we've got to draw on lots of different strategies from our strategy bank of reading and think about what we're being presented with on this particular occasion.

As you go through, I'd like you to record your responses on line paper in as full a way as possible.

So full sentences, making sure that you are providing your supporting evidence as you go along.

And then finally we will meet back together at the end of each section.

So we'll look at first meet together and we will have a progress check.

And then I've suggested that you might want a different coloured pen just so that you can track how you've been doing.

Alright, let's repeat that one more time, make sure we're absolutely clear.

You're going to read the passage.

You are going to see some prompt questions around the screen they will help you and you need to pause as necessary in order to answer those questions.

And then once you've completed that to your satisfaction, resume the video and you will find me waiting there for you to go through our progress check.

Off we go.

Welcome back, so we were looking at the beginning of the novel and in particular, I asked you to think about what we learn in the exposition.

So I've used that the key terminology there and I've also given you a clue to consider this idea of equilibrium.

So I'll go through a response that I have put together for us.

And you can have little look at this against what you have written.

As usual different coloured pen at the ready, so that you can jot down any additional ideas and try and enhance what you already have.

At the exposition of the text, we are introduced to the protagonist Inman.

The setting is one of a hospital ward and he has a long wound at his neck.

This is an atypical representation for a hero figure, who is not only stationary, but also injured, unable to fulfil the active hero role he has been ascribed.

A sense of disequilibrium is created through the use of flies as opposed to a rooster awakening the protagonist.

Flies are associated with death and decay.

The action tracks Inman's view through the ward and beyond to the window which provides a passage to the outside world in contrast to Inman's world.

Due to the early hour, this is described as redundant might as well have been painted grey.

So key things, things that we need to be looking for, precision, tracking through the text, making sure that we are using subject terminology with accuracy and making sure that we give a range of supporting evidence.

All of those elements are present in that response.

And we're setting it up with this idea that this is a text that opens with a sense of disequilibrium, which makes sense.

We've got a soldier who's injured in a hospital ward that isn't a heroic stance that we're seeing him adopting at the start of the text.

Let's move on to the next section.

Now this time you will see, I'm just showing you the first page of the next section that I have picked out a few details to help you.

So you can see that I've picked up evidence from within the passage that will help you think about the characterization of Inman.

So next, how does the extract develop? Think about the characterization.

What do we learn about Inman? So we've had the introduction in the exposition, we are now looking a little bit closely at the character as Frazier is wanting us to understand and to help you.

I have picked out a few details that I think could be interesting.

As usual take control of your learning.

Pause, get all of the details down, it might be that you want to create a quotation bank and gather all of these ideas together and then think about them, that's absolutely fine.

But it's over to you, track through the next few screens, pause, formulate your answer and I will meet you to have a look at how you've done and we'll have our usual progress check.

And welcome back again, so were those helpful? Let's have a little look at the type of thing you could have come up with.

Think about the characterization, what do we learn about Inman? Frazier's characterization of Inman focuses on his search for activity in contrast his situation.

His consideration of reading a book to settle his mind and how he had needed to bring sleep the night before shows a man trying to control his environment and situation.

This indirectly tells us that Inman is not a broken hero, he demonstrates great determination and perseverance.

And I just notice initially on this opening part of my response, I've tried to give an overview.

I've tried to suggest a line of arguments that Inman isn't broken.

That actually everything about Inman is the opposite of being passive and not responsive to his situation.

And actually despite his situation, he's working overtime to try and do something and to become active and to take control.

I've used this phrase in direct characterization, so the details of what he's doing, even though he's incapacitated, tell us that he has great determination and perseverance.

This is reinforced by the action of getting dressed to overcome a situation of not having enough lights.

So that's a problem to him, isn't it? He can't read from the light that he's in, so he's going to deal with that.

By leaving the broken occupants behind him, as he moves position to a seat near the window, Frazier creates a distance between his protagonist and the other wounded soldiers.

You can see really subtle detail that I've tried to weave in there, creating a space and that links back little bit to last week's learning.

When we were looking at the idea of space and how that can create power and a dynamic.

And here it's creating a distance between Inman and the rest of the wounded soldiers.

This creates amended status for our hero.

Inman now has control of his view to the outside and waited for the world to begin shaping up.

He is ahead of everyone and ready to tackle events.

So I'm really trying to push this response again, comprehensive using the evidence to build a personal interpretation.

Now there might be quite a lot there that you hadn't considered, please do pause, take your time and go through these two screens and get down all of the additional information that you might want to take before we move on to the next section.

So then, then what do we learn? How is the action developed? And I've given you a full circle area here, focus on the use of time.

You'll also find that I have picked out a couple of lines, couple of phrases and emboldened those for you, just because I want you to have little, think about the significance of the language that's been used and if the idea that's been suggested and see if you can come up with an interpretation, okay? So as usual, working through the slides, pausing when you want to, to capture your information, if thinking about time and you are looking out for the bits that I've put in green and emboldened and I want you to think about the significance, the connotations that we can pull out from there to really start extending our answer.

Welcome back, then what do we learn? How is the action developed? Let's have a look a model response again.

The window transports Inman to thoughts of his childhood.

The window apparently wanted only to take his thoughts back.

The world that Inman remembers in his flashback is an idealised world of pastoral innocence, which contrasts with the stark reality of the present.

His description of the present, as the face of the age, refers to the horror of warfare and mechanisation that is destroying the land both physically and morally.

The cold nature of metal wipes out the old green places he recollected from home and highlights how displaced Inman feels in his new world.

Now there's quite a lot going on in that answer.

And I just want to sort of flip out the screen a moment and just get your attention on the phrase pastoral innocence.

Now this is an interesting idea and again, I've introduced you to various images that we have throughout literature.

And the pastoral, so things to do with the countryside, green fields, trees, open spaces, it's like a little shock again and it represents a world of innocence.

A time when things are pure, a time when things are simpler.

And you often find this image cropping up, particularly when it comes to conflict literature, where we see one world clashing with another and it works really well with the soft mechanisation that war brings with it.

Here, we've got the green colour.

So we've got this imagery of green versus the coldness of the metal.

So you see that grey nature in your minds.

And it also links back to the greyness of the window at the beginning when he couldn't see anything out of it, and there was no purpose.

So the world that war has created for Inman of being in a hospital and being wounded is grey and without life, without purpose, but on the outside is a reminder of the world that is still there and is still within reach.

Even though it's a memory that's been triggered.

So let's just go back to the last line here.

It highlights how displaced Inman feels in his new world.

Inman doesn't belong in the world of war, he doesn't belong in the world of the suffering that comes from it and it's not just because he doesn't want to be injured.

It's because he's having some sort of moral conflict.

He might be on the Confederate side, but I don't think he's heart that.

And we're starting to get the sense that Inman doesn't feel aligned to his purpose.

Now, a soldier can fight for his country if he believes in the war.

Inman doesn't and that's what we're starting to see develop.

Okay, so we're going to go through with the next stage But then first, we've done next.

We've done, then we're on to finally.

And as we come to the finally section, I've got a of images here that have been mentioned and are going to come up again.

And what we have got is an image of the window and we've seen Inman looking through that window, trying to get to the window, getting closer and closer and that window is like a barrier, isn't it? It stops him from getting to a world that perhaps he wants to belong to again.

So keep that in your mind.

The second image is an image of Cold Mountain.

So this is the place of Inman's childhood that he wants to get back to.

And I've picked up a really nice sunny picture, cause I imagine that's how Inman sees it in his head.

And I was also trying to get the idea of the greenery in contrast to the greyness of the worlds that Inman is currently inhabiting.

And then finally, I give you an image of a Crow.

So what we need to think about is how all of this imagery works together in the finally section.

And the other clue that I'm giving you as we work through this last part is that we're going to see past present and future being alluded to as a consequence.

So take your time over this section, pause where necessary, start to really pull ideas together.

Being those really intelligent readers that you now becoming, who are starting to weave ideas together, being brave, being bold in some of your interpretations and starting to think about what we can draw out of the text.

I will be waiting for you at the other side, ready to have a look at a sample response and see how you've done against that.

Welcome back everyone.

So we are on to our finally section, what do we learn? How does the extract conclude? And we are thinking in particular about Frazier's use of imagery and how we use operating through past present and future.

Let's have a look at the response.

The present is depicted as a place of stagnation and decay.

The air felt like breathing through a dishrag and the damp caused fresh sheets to sour.

The use of concrete objects creates a physical and sensory description that suffocating for the reader.

The narrative has an episodic structure with the window acting as a mechanism for Inman's memories to be triggered.

So just looking at that first section, I've picked out some evidence and in particular, I felt that some of these details of the air and the sheets were particularly powerful and they really do create this impression of things, just rotting.

The inside world that Inman finds himself inhabiting is a painful world for him to be in.

And it's also somehow an inhuman place to be that this is the things that seem to be just reiterating really rapidly.

And I really wanted to pick out this idea that it feels very alive, it's very physical as you read it and you can sense everything that's happening in that description.

The other thing that I've commented on here is the episodic nature of the structure.

So you get little bits, little different episodes being woven together.

And the windows like portal it seems to be activating all of these ideas in Inman's minds.

The window along with the image of the road are symbols of his need to escape this situation.

The memory from his childhood classroom shows a young Inman.

He was equally stifled by his environment.

So we've now got this idea of the two bits being connected, in both instances a window was involved.

And it reminds me of the young Inman and that Inman too was frustrated.

This time his eye is drawn to Cold Mountain, a symbol of the ultimate power of nature and the place that Inman realises he needs to return to as he looks out of his hospital window.

His memory of throwing his hat out of the window, reminds him that he can take control of his actions.

As the hat falls to form the shadow of a Crow Inman is guided by the symbol of freedom.

The Crow belongs to nature and combines with the image of Cold Mountain as he realises, this is the view he has been seeking.

Although the young Inman did not understand what ceased him at that moment as he walked out of school, the older Inman looks to the incident with a knowledge of what is important and follows his lead.

So we've got quite a complex structure here.

We're in the present, he thinks about the past and it gives him direction about what he to do in the future.

Inman is going to leave the hospital.

He's going to leave the war.

He now realises that if he is not comfortable, he needs to take action.

And it's the young Inman that teaches him that.

So why a complex structure here with Charles Frazier's opening, but I thought we were ready to tackle that.

And I wanted to show you how versatile and how flexible some of the skills are that we've been building and just how good you're getting on picking unseen texts.

Before we finished today, what we're going to look at is the usual sort of big picture thinking, that's the next step, isn't it? We make sure we understand the text.

We make sure we break it down and we're going to do some final reflections.

And I'm going to break it into two steps this time.

This part is quite challenging, it comes from later on in the same opening section and it starts to really get into Inman's minds.

So I shall read this with you and then I'm going to set you up with an option of tasks that you can take on board for the final big picture thinking exercise, okay? That summer, Inman had viewed the world as if it were a picture framed by the moulding around the window.

Long stretches of time often passed when for all the change in the scene, it might as well have been an old painting of a road, a wall, a tree, a cart, a blind man.

Inman had sometimes counted off slow numbers in his head to see how long it would be before anything of significance altered.

It was a game and he had rules for it.

A bird flying did not count.

Someone walking down the road did.

Major weather changes did.

The sun coming out, fresh rain but shadows of passing clouds did not.

Some days he'd get up in the thousands before there was any allowable alteration and the elements of the picture.

He believed the scene would never leave his mind wall, blind man, tree, cart, road, no matter how far on he lived.

He imagined himself an old man thinking about it.

Those pieces together seemed to offer some meaning.

They didn't know what and he suspected he never would.

So you might want to just go back and have a little look at the passage again, if you wish to take up the challenge on the left hand side.

So in terms of big picture thinking and your personal response now at the end of the text.

You have a choice of activities.

You might like to take the challenge of trying to work out what the significance of these different objects is.

The role of the road, the wall, the tree, the cart and the blind man.

Inman describes it almost like a picture on the wall that he's been staring out for so long and trying to work out the puzzle and thinks that must be something really quite, cosmic and important in these objects.

And that combination have a little think about that.

You might be able to come up with some really interesting interpretations by thinking about the connotations of those items individually and then collectively.

Alternatively and all you might want to combine the two, but alternatively let's have a look at the four types of conflict.

What type of conflict has been presented in this extract? Is it man versus man, man versus nature, man versus himself or man versus society.

So we've got two different activities there.

Some of them may even want to blur the two, that's absolutely fine.

But the main thing is we are looking at your personal response and we are looking to move beyond the literal of the text and to think about some of those bigger picture connotations, the things that we learn about humanity, about mankind from reading the passage.

To finish the learning for today, you have a recap quiz to complete.

All that remains for me to say is thank you for your focus and enjoy the rest of your learning today.