A Day in the Life of Timothy Winters

Students respond to Charles Causley’s poem ‘Timothy Winters’ and explore their own empathy, comparing social issues of the time, bullying and the rights of a child compared to today.

An immersive and thought-provoking scheme of work, there are opportunities to develop students’ understanding of post-war Britain, the Welfare State and the education system of the time. Through research homework, pupils can tap in to family histories, photographic records and contemporary artefacts. How does their life experience compare with that of their parents and grandparents? Why do we bully others and how can we prevent it? (This links to prior exploration from ‘The Tale of Humpty Dumpty’). How should society care for abused children? Who was responsible for Timothy Winters? What would we have done?

It is anticipated that students will spend 5 or 6 weeks on this unit (an entire half term) depending on their interests and the depth of responses.

The scheme of work comes fully resourced (see bottom of the document) and I have always found it to be #engaging, #fun, #challenging, #creativeandthoughtprovoking.

All lesson plans have differentiated outcomes via learning objectives, Q&A tasks, practical and plenaries.

Skills acquired in this unit:

Preparation Techniques: Creating a devised performance using empathetic ideas, script-writing for a scripted performance assessment (end of the unit), research and knowledge of specific era, honing accuracy of performing a story from a different time period
Rehearsal Techniques: Opinion Line, Hot Seating, Off-text improvisation, On-text improvisation, line-learning
Performance Concentions: Thought Tracking, Action/Narration, Mime, Direct Address & Breaking the 4th Walll, marking the moment through tableau