Persuasive writing - Persuading the wealthy to come to the established resort of Torquay

This could be done for the traditional winter season or the new summer season. One option would be to create groups to allow both to be covered and then comparisons could be made.

If a persuasive newspaper article is what is sought, start with What the papers say to model the text type. Follow up with a whole class session on Kelly’s Directory. Favourable points could be highlighted/marked and shared writing could take place on how to turn sections of text into the more fulsome style of the persuasive newspaper article.

Pupils could be asked to annotate the Panorama with key features of Torquay. This could be done as a class with an enlarged print out or a digitally projected image. It could be done in small groups on a paper copy or by pasting the source into a word processor document and annotating it there.

Pupils could then be asked to investigate a series of sources in order to gather further material to include in their article. They could be provided with a simple form such as the one below to help them, with some features supplied from discussions so far and scope to add further ideas as they find them.

Another approach would be to create a guidebook for Torquay in about 1900, using combination of text and images in a word processing package. In this instance, modelling text might involve the use of a modern guidebook, though taking care to point out to pupils that there would clearly be some significant differences in a guidebook of 100 years ago.