OK I read Boy by Roald Dahl but I wouldn't know how to teach it because all his books are for a much younger age group than his autobiography, and what I would want to do with an autobiography. Instead, I plan to do something with To Kill a Mockingbird which I have taught to a Year 8 class and read to my son and I remember my mother reading it to my younger brother. I think I will do lessons on point of view and also on context and I might do something on the imagery of place and the creation of atmosphere and also the way this imagery reveals another type of language. I want to do les…
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Mary Ann Hughes
Sep 26, 2025
I thought the next genre I use for teachers pay teachers will be biography and autobiography. I suppose Year 12 in NSW get to work on Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov. I really like Elias Canetti's autobiography but I guess it is too long to teach. I am reading Boy by Roald Dahl. I am enjoying it but I am trying to place it in terms of teaching it. I really enjoyed My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell and I certainly know it doesn't work with Year 7 because I've tried it. I suppose there is The Diary of Anne Frank. There is Obama whose work, Dreams From My Father interested a lot of Year 9 students…
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Mary Ann Hughes
Sep 20, 2025
I think that writing is about weaving, or even cooking - a little bit of this, and then a little bit of that. That's why dialogue is so effective.
You know that it is while you are talking that you most closely observe the world around you, the other people around you and particularly the person you are talking to. You also think in response to what they are saying. In a story, dialogue is a good chance to put these things into a story by weaving them in. And if your story was a recipe, you'd cook with all the ingredients, and not just focus on one.
So it is important to teach dialogue. It makes your story mor…
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Mary Ann Hughes
Sep 19, 2025
OK, today I just thought I'd feed some new information about dialogue into the void. I know various writers don't use speech tags because they think it is all there in the context and it makes what they have their characters say move faster. Two proponents of this method are an Australian writer, Tim Winton and an American writer, Cormac McCarthy. It's actually very hard to do and get right and I think it is only the rare high school student who it's worth telling that to.
Did you know that James Joyce because of his amazing capacity with the French language introduced the Em dash into his writing: as GPT Chat tells me - a long single dash roughl…
Creating your Characters.docx
OK I read Boy by Roald Dahl but I wouldn't know how to teach it because all his books are for a much younger age group than his autobiography, and what I would want to do with an autobiography. Instead, I plan to do something with To Kill a Mockingbird which I have taught to a Year 8 class and read to my son and I remember my mother reading it to my younger brother. I think I will do lessons on point of view and also on context and I might do something on the imagery of place and the creation of atmosphere and also the way this imagery reveals another type of language. I want to do les…
I thought the next genre I use for teachers pay teachers will be biography and autobiography. I suppose Year 12 in NSW get to work on Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov. I really like Elias Canetti's autobiography but I guess it is too long to teach. I am reading Boy by Roald Dahl. I am enjoying it but I am trying to place it in terms of teaching it. I really enjoyed My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell and I certainly know it doesn't work with Year 7 because I've tried it. I suppose there is The Diary of Anne Frank. There is Obama whose work, Dreams From My Father interested a lot of Year 9 students…
I think that writing is about weaving, or even cooking - a little bit of this, and then a little bit of that. That's why dialogue is so effective.
You know that it is while you are talking that you most closely observe the world around you, the other people around you and particularly the person you are talking to. You also think in response to what they are saying. In a story, dialogue is a good chance to put these things into a story by weaving them in. And if your story was a recipe, you'd cook with all the ingredients, and not just focus on one.
So it is important to teach dialogue. It makes your story mor…
OK, today I just thought I'd feed some new information about dialogue into the void. I know various writers don't use speech tags because they think it is all there in the context and it makes what they have their characters say move faster. Two proponents of this method are an Australian writer, Tim Winton and an American writer, Cormac McCarthy. It's actually very hard to do and get right and I think it is only the rare high school student who it's worth telling that to.
Did you know that James Joyce because of his amazing capacity with the French language introduced the Em dash into his writing: as GPT Chat tells me - a long single dash roughl…