Y06W13RC Evidence for Your View

This week, you will read a short classic passage and practise choosing details that support your ideas. You will look closely at what a character says, does and notices. As you read, keep wondering which small details carry the biggest meaning.

Canonical classroom classics — Classic short story

This week, you will read a short classic passage and practise choosing details that support your ideas. You will look closely at what a character says, does and notices. As you read, keep wondering which small details carry the biggest meaning. A classic short story is a short piece of fiction from an earlier time that is still read because its characters, feelings and ideas remain meaningful. Writers use this kind of well-known story to draw readers into an important moment, show change in a character and leave readers with something to think about. You will often find description, dialogue, actions and a clear sequence of events, sometimes with a short context note or glossary to help you enter the older style of writing. As a reader, you are expected to follow what happens, infer what characters are feeling or realising and support your view with exact details from the passage.

Before You Read

  • Read the title, the context box and the glossary cues so you know this is a short passage from an older story.
  • Think about how one small moment in a story can reveal a big change in a character.
  • Expect careful description and a few important details that you can use as evidence for your ideas.

While You Read

  • Read the context first so you understand who is involved and what has already happened.
  • Pause after key lines and notice what the character sees, hears or says, because these details often matter most.
  • Use the glossary as a reading aid when an older word slows you down.
  • Re-read any sentence that seems gentle but important, especially if it hints at a feeling or a new understanding.
  • Keep track of how the passage moves from description to realisation.

Read With Purpose

  • Notice which details best show what the character is beginning to understand.
  • Pay attention to words or phrases you could quote to support a viewpoint.
  • Keep an eye on how a gentle moment can still reveal motive, feeling and change.

Now read

The classic excerpt

~1 min read · ~242 words

From 'The Selfish Giant' (Excerpt)

Context

In Oscar Wilde’s story, children once played in the Giant’s garden. After he drove them away, winter seemed to stay there. In this gentle moment, the Giant notices one small boy standing beneath a tree and begins to understand something important.

Excerpt

One morning the Giant heard some lovely music. It sounded so sweet to his ears that he thought the King’s musicians had passed by. It was really only a little linnet singing outside his window, but after hearing no birds in his garden for so long, it seemed to him the most beautiful music in the world. Then the Hail stopped dancing over his head, and the North Wind ceased roaring, and a delicious perfume came to him through the open casement. ‘I believe the Spring has come at last,’ said the Giant; and he jumped out of bed and looked out.

What did he see? He saw a most wonderful sight. Through a little hole in the wall the children had crept in, and they were sitting in the branches of the trees. In the farthest corner of the garden was a little boy. He was so small that he could not reach up to the branches of the tree, and he was wandering all round it, crying bitterly. The poor tree was still quite covered with frost and snow. ‘How selfish I have been!’ said the Giant. ‘Now I know why the Spring would not come here.’

Check your vocabulary knowledge

linnet n.
a small singing bird
perfume n.
a pleasant smell in the air
casement n.
a window that opens outward
crept v.
moved quietly and carefully
farthest adj.
most distant