Session 5 - Book Reviews

GOALS:
- To know: the structural and stylistic features of a book review
- To understand: the purpose of a review is to evaluate and persuade an audience
- To be able to: identify and then use the structural and stylistic features of a book review

Movies, books and video-games can be expensive. How can we figure out what we should
spend our money and time on?

ACTIVITIES:

1. Warm up: Spend some time in your groups discussing a recent book, movie or video-game
that you either really loved or really hated. Then, as a class, discuss what sort of
language you were using in the discussion. Write these in a word cloud in your notebook.

2. Task outline: For your first summative task of this unit, you will demonstrate your
understanding of both traditional stories and children’s literature in a book review. Preview
the TSC to find out about this task.

3. Learning about the book review: So how do we write a book review? Check out the
explanation and example here (make a copy for yourself). Then, using the highlighting tool,
identify examples of language use and write them in the rightmost column.

4. Review and reflection: Look back at your review / evaluation from the previous lesson.
What were you already doing right? How could you improve?

5. Application: Write a practice review on a piece of looseleaf note-paper. You may select
any book from the classroom collection.

NEXT LESSON:
● Writing the book review (in-class writing)
H/L:
● Select a story to write a review about

BONUS CHALLENGES:
● Why not get onto an Internet site (Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, Reddit etc.) and write a
review about anything that you feel strongly about? (This could include books, movies,
video-games, music etc.)

RESOURCES:
● BBC Bitesize - Language used to review and comment