The Script

Learning Intention:

I am learning to use prior knowledge and textual information to make inferences so that I can summarise a text in a formal or informal manner.

Success Criteria:

• I can make inferences about a text
• I can summarise the events of a text
• I can use appropriate language for different social situations

Essential knowledge:

For more information about conveying credibility, view The School Magazine’s video on Authorityungroup.

Vocabulary

Provide the following situation to the class: You’re lost in a desert and find an old, dusty oil lamp. By that evening, you’re in a palace, surrounded by gold coins and are now royalty. What do you think happened?

Some students may recognise, using intertextuality, that the oil lamp contained a genie who granted three wishes.

Explain that a reader or viewer filling in the gaps of a story is called inferring and is used when something is not explained explicitly. Tell students that inferences are made when readers or viewers combine what they already know, either from prior experience or from encountering other relevant texts, with the information provided in the text.

If you have a digital subscription, complete the interactive activity Inferring.

Understanding text:

Tell students that today’s text doesn’t explicitly explain what was going on, and that they will have to make inferences based on their prior knowledge – perhaps of texts they’ve come across before – and the information given in the story.

Have students read silently through The Script or listen to the audio recording if you have a digital subscription.

Once finished, students get into pairs and discuss what they think happened in the story.

Creating text:

Explain that students will be presenting a summary of the story in the form of a skit, as either:

1. Gossiping with a friend, or
2. A news report with a news anchor in the station and a reporter at the scene.

Discuss the difference in formality between these two situations and the appropriate language for each. For example, tell students that the first skit would have language such as “Did you hear?”, “I reckon”, “Nah, but”, “Whaddya mean?”, while the second skit would have language such as “In the early afternoon,” “Police believe that”, “Official sources suggest”.

Ask students how they might convey their authority over the topic. While a news source might use police information, how might school friends show authority? For example, “My mum reckons” or “I saw on the news last night”.

Give students time to write a script and rehearse their performance. A sample script of gossiping with a friend:

BEN: Did you hear what happened at Wattle Primary School yesterday?

JESS: Yeah, wasn’t there some big bug that attacked a student?

BEN: It wasn’t just a big bug, it was a monster!

A sample script of a news report:

ANCHOR: Breaking news, there appears to be an attack happening at a local primary school. We have Alex at the scene. Alex, can you tell us what’s happening?

REPORTER: Hi, Courtney. There’s a lot of uncertainty around the current situation, and police are reluctant to give many details, but from what I’ve heard from several students and teachers, there is a massive insect on the premises.

Remind students that they need to summarise and explain the plot of the story in their skit. Provide the following questions for students to consider as they write their script (answers for the teacher are in parentheses):

1. Who do you think Mr King was? (Answers will vary – perhaps a witch or demon.)
2. Why was Ella alarmed when she heard the reason Mrs Snow was late? (She thought her story was coming true.)
3. Why did Ivan tell everyone to leave the classroom? (He realised it was his story coming true, and they were about to be attacked by a giant insect.)
4. What made Ivan’s story come true? (A magic pen, as implied by Mr King’s dialogue: ‘However, beware: words, perhaps more than any other singular human creation, hold great power’ and ‘Let us hope it is not your pen that holds the creative key.’)
5. What happened to Mr King? (He turned into a giant insect.)
6. What do you think happened to Ella? (Answers will vary.)

Once students have written and rehearsed their skits, they can perform it to the class.

Assessment for/as learning:

Pose the following question for students to answer in their workbooks at the end of the lesson:

Stephen King is a popular author known for his horror stories. Why do you think the author Cosgrove chose to name the mysterious teacher Mr King?