Respect for all: Nelson Mandela

This activity was used with pupils in key stage 3, year 8.

Context

There are 910 pupils in this urban, mixed comprehensive school. Approximately 40 per cent of the pupils are from minority ethnic groups and 38 per cent have English as an additional language (most are Urdu speakers).

Curriculum planning in the school's English department has a strong anti-racist and multicultural thrust. This is seen as supporting the school's firm stand on equal opportunities issues, an important dimension of the ethos of this ethnically diverse school.

Currently, at least one of the units of work in each year group has a multicultural focus, but the long-term intention is to introduce these issues into all units. The school believes that it is essential for its scheme of work to address issues of similarity and difference between cultures, as well as to include materials that empathise with a wide range of viewpoints.

The pupils' sense of pride in their own culture, as well as their acceptance of other cultures, is clearly evident in lessons and around the school.

Aim

• To help pupils explore different representations of the life experiences of a key historical figure.

Activity objectives

• To appreciate the range of vocabulary used in describing emotions.
• To understand the style and register of personal letters.
• To compose a letter, in role, reflecting on the significance of Nelson Mandela's release.

The relevant English Framework objectives are:

• recognise how texts refer to and reflect the culture in which they were produced (year 8, text-reading 16);
• experiment with different language choices to establish the tone of a piece (year 8, text-writing 7);
• listen for a specific purpose, paying sustained attention and selecting that which is relevant to the agreed focus (year 8, speaking and listening 7).

Activity description

The class had been working on a writing skills unit, in which they had looked at using letters for formal purposes. They had also carried out a factual writing task on a chosen individual (in this case, Nelson Mandela), following a study of his earlier life. The pupils used newspaper articles and encyclopedias for reference.

Session 1

After briefly recapping on this earlier work, the teacher explained that the focus now would move to using letters for personal writing. He outlined what he hoped the class would achieve in their work on this project.

The teacher read an extract from Nelson Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, about Mandela's arrival at Robben Island and various events in his life as a prisoner. The teacher asked the pupils to jot down any emotions, both positive and negative, that they thought Mandela would have felt. Their responses were shared in class.

Positive
Sense of strength ('I won't let them get to me').
Pleasure at being able to help other prisoners.
Calm acceptance of what was happening.

Negative
Claustrophobia.
Disgust.
Mistreatment and unfairness.
Like a trapped animal.
Cold and hungry.

The teacher asked the pupils to expand on their feelings in role, which they did convincingly, showing a good comprehension of the text and an ability to empathise with Mandela.

Next, the class read an extract from a biography of Mandela. The extract focused on the day of Mandela's release. After the teacher had shared how he had felt on that day, he asked the pupils to imagine, in groups, that they were in the crowd waiting to welcome Mandela to freedom. The pupils recorded their feelings, in note form initially, on an A3 sheet, grouping them according to how they felt on arrival, after hours of waiting, on seeing him in the distance and on hearing him speak.

The group work enabled the pupils to share and organise their thoughts, and to structure their responses. This was useful preparation for the next task: writing a personal letter about this memorable day.

Session 2

The pupils drafted the first paragraph of the letter after the teacher had told them about the importance of demonstrating awareness of audience and purpose, and of using appropriate style and register. Throughout the lesson the pupils were encouraged to use thesauruses so that they could express their emotions using a range of vocabulary.

Commentary

This was a carefully structured lesson that built on the pupils' prior learning, helping them to extend their vocabulary so that they could become more effective and powerful writers.

For this work, resources on Nelson Mandela were drawn from the book Voices in Time as well as from the CD-ROM Encarta. The focus was on writing skills in the context of non-literary texts about and by Nelson Mandela, emphasising the department's commitment to anti-racist and multicultural teaching. These texts inspired the pupils in the school and built on work in year 7 on human rights issues.

The English department continues to develop its key stage 3 curriculum so that issues of race and cultural diversity feature throughout its work. The department is reviewing its resources in collaboration with the EMAG coordinator; Voices in Time was chosen as a result of this joint working.

When this development work is completed, the department plans to rewrite its English policy to ensure that its statement of intent and scheme of work embrace these issues unambiguously, as well as providing advice for staff on successful teaching strategies in this complex area.

Points to note

Resources for the writing skills unit in the department's scheme of work include examples of work that reflect social and cultural diversity, and provide a positive image of race, gender and disability.

Resources

Mandela, N, Long Walk to Freedom, Abacus, UK, 1995

O'Conner J (Ed.) New Windmills: Voices in Time: A New Windmill Collection of Literacy Non-Fiction, Heinemann Secondary Education Division, UK, 2000

Encarta Reference Library CD-ROM, Microsoft, 2002

The online national curriculum can be found at www.nc.uk.net