Reading To Kill a Mockingbird

A pack for teachers and students written by Roy Stafford

The pack is designed to be used with English students at KS4, but it should also prove useful for film and media students.

The first part of the pack offers a guide to film language and takes students through what is required to ‘read’ a short sequence. The pack includes five suggestions for suitable sequences to study in detail. In each of these, the film language ideas can be applied, but the sequences have been chosen so that there are different examples of how the film narrative has been constructed (i.e. the opening and closing of the film, crucial turning points or developments in the narrative). For the opening of the film, a ‘close reading’ has been supplied to give some indication of how a film studies analysis might work.

The other sections of the pack cover:

• ideas about narrative and ‘theme’
• discussion of representation
• material on the background to segregation and the Civil Rights struggle

The reading offered considers the 'metaphor' in the story in terms of the 'post Civil Rights' approach to the text and draws on sources from African American history and culture.

30pp A4 photocopiable

£7 (includes p&p) go to Publications Orders