English Faculty News – Bernadette Coppock

Year 8 students have recently engaged in a unit of work on autobiography and memoir in their English classes.  By using mentor texts to understand how sentence structure and vocabulary choice can be used to evoke emotion, students learned how to write memoirs using storytelling, descriptive writing and retrospective commentary.  The girls wrote memoirs for their assessment task, using a small object of their choice to reflect on a memory and what it meant to them at the time and what it means now. 

Here is just one example of the beautiful writing of Year 8:

To be honest, I never really saw myself writing about this. I remember when I turned seven the world still felt soft, bright and safe. I remember my birthday morning clearly. It was a beautiful winter’s day and I woke up to the warm golden sun shining through my window and colourful balloons filling my bedroom. Everything felt exciting, like the whole day had been made just for me. Then we went to visit Nan.

She looked tired and smaller than usual, wrapped in her cardigan, sitting in her reclining chair. But her smile was still the same; gentle and full of love. In her weak, wrinkled hands, she clutched a present wrapped in rainbow paper. When I tore the paper open, I found a soft cuddly rainbow unicorn toy. Its pastel fur looked like a rainbow after a thunderstorm. The pink reminded me of all the happy, heartfelt moments shared with my Nan. The yellow glowed like warm sunshine. The blue looked calm and peaceful, like the sky on a quiet afternoon. The green reminded me of freshly watered grass, and the purple looked magical, like something from a fairytale. I hugged it straight away. It felt warm and soft, just like my Nan’s cuddles.

At the time, I did not understand what the unicorn meant to me. I only knew that the unicorn was beautiful and that my Nan had chosen it for me. I carried it everywhere that day, tucked under my arm like treasure. One month later, Nan passed away.

When I was seven, grief was confusing. It was like waking up and finding the world had changed, but no one could fix it. The sky was gloomy, as if all the colour had drained from my world now that she had left it. There is now something missing in my life, something off, as though a piece of my world has slipped away. I waited to hear her voice and her laugh, but they never came back. But the unicorn stayed.

Now, almost seven years later, the unicorn sits in my cupboard. Its fur is flatter, its horn bends to the side and its colour has faded, but it is still precious to me. The pink has become pale and worn from being hugged too many times. The yellow is no longer bright, but still glows softly in the light. The blue and purple have faded into pastel shades, while the green has turned slightly duller than before. When I feel stressed or sad, I hold it close. It reminds me of my Nan’s warmth and the way her hugs made me feel safe.

When I was little, I thought it was just a toy. Now, I understand it means much more. It is a memory I can hold in my hands. It is a piece of my Nan that stayed behind. To anyone else, it may look like an old cuddly toy. To me, it’s Nan’s last hug.

Chloe McIntosh