The War of the Worlds - Description of the Martians!

This engaging and informative enables students to make precise and detailed interpretations of H.G. Wells’ language choices in describing the Martians in ‘The War of the Worlds.’ Students identify and analyse the effect of Wells’ writing, using their understanding of various language devices, before applying these concepts to their own descriptive writing attempts.

The lesson follows a step-by-step learning journey, in which children learn through:

Defining and exemplifying the descriptive writing techniques, through a fun and interactive activity;
Identifying the language techniques that Wells uses in his description of the Martians;’
Analysing the effectiveness of Wells’ descriptive writing;
Creating their own descriptions of imagined aliens, using Wells’ model example and the techniques that they have gathered over the course of the lesson;
Peer assessing each other’s learning attempts, using a clear success criteria;

Included is:
Whole lesson PowerPoint - colourful and comprehensive;
Card sorting cards
Selected extracts printed onto one sheet (from Book 1, Chapter 4 and Book 2, Chapter 2).

There are also opportunities for group learning, speaking and listening, peer assessment, and whole class discussion. I originally used these resources with year 10 and 11 classes, however colleagues have used them for between year 9 and year 13 with some adaptations.

This lesson is suitable for home/ remote learning.

All images are licensed for commercial use.