Mozart – Suspense stories

This week in English, the children have worked very hard on completing their final hot writes of this year! In recent lessons, we have been learning all about suspense and the tools that we can use to help us write a suspense story. Some examples include:

• Use empty words to hide the threat, e.g. something, somebody, a silhouette
• Show the character’s feelings through their reactions, e.g. she stopped in her tracks
• Inject pace and drama, e.g. through the use of fronted adverbials such as ‘without warning,’
• Use rhetorical questions to make the reader feel worried. The children were especially good at using this tool – what was it? What was there? Were they being followed?
• Select words which connect to the emotion of the character, e.g. powerful verbs and adverbs.

Throughout this unit, the children have had some very imaginative ideas and have developed their skills in letting the threat get closer and closer. Many of them can also now confidently recognise the various tools that they are using and underline these in their texts!

I also just wanted to wish the children good luck for their move up to Year 5 for two days – I am looking forward to hearing all about it later on in the week! Please remember that, as these are transition days, the children do not need to wear their PE kits on Monday or on Tuesday.

Have a lovely day!

Miss Robson