Safest to least safe
Six sentences about the same stranger. Put them in order, from the one you could defend most easily to the one you could not defend at all.
The model · 256 words
Who is this person?
The coat cost nine pounds and came with things still in the pockets.
A bus ticket, Carlisle to Penrith, dated two years ago. A hair grip. A folded receipt for paracetamol and nothing else, timed at 21:40. A spare button, wrapped in tissue paper, matching nothing on this coat.
Two things are as close to certain as this gets. A name tape is sewn into the collar, R. OKONKWO, in the block capitals schools ask for, so the coat must have passed through a household where clothes are labelled. And the left cuff has been mended by hand, in a thread close to the right colour and not the right colour, so somebody must have repaired it with whatever they had rather than replace it.
Beyond that I am guessing, and I would rather say so. The name tape might be theirs, or a parent’s handwriting from twenty years ago, left in because a tape in a collar is not worth unpicking. The wrapped button can’t have come from this coat, so it belonged to another one — somebody here keeps spare buttons.
What I keep returning to is the receipt. Paracetamol, alone, at twenty to ten, in a town the ticket says they were passing through. It might mean nothing. It might have been a bad evening a long way from home.
R. Okonkwo may own three coats and a jar of buttons, and may never have thought about any of this. I have no way of knowing, and I have decided that is fine.
Four questions about the model.
1. Paragraph 2 contains no modals at all. Why?
2. Both must claims are in paragraph 3. What do they have in common?
3. What does Beyond that I am guessing, and I would rather say so do?
4. Why does the last paragraph give the owner three coats and a jar of buttons?
Repair a weaker one
The four moves of the model, in order: the evidence, without claims · what is as close to certain as it gets, with the eliminating detail named · the line, marked out loud · the one detail you cannot let go of, hedged honestly.
Below, a second piece with four sentences removed.
Four sentences have been removed. Put each one back where it belongs.
The car came with a folder in the glovebox: eleven years of service records, in date order, hole-punched. [1]
There is a child seat fitted in the back, and the belt has been let out to its longest setting. [2] Whoever sat in it had outgrown it some time ago and was still being put in it.
[3] A tin of travel sweets in the door, unopened, with a price label from a shop that closed last year.
Beyond the folder I am guessing. [4] It might have been sold because somebody stopped driving, and there are several reasons for that, most of them ordinary.
Before you write
Two to four words per gap. These are the sentences you are about to need.
Somebody the name tape into the collar, because tapes do not sew themselves. The button from this coat — it matches nothing on it. The owner the coat for years after it stopped fitting, or it on the same week they bought it. The receipt nothing at all. Beyond the tape and the thread, I and I would rather say so.
Six sentences from drafts. Four are strength or form; two are about what a written piece may claim about a stranger.
1. The owner mustn’t have had much money.
2. She must been sad when she gave it away.
3. The receipt proves they were ill.
4. Maybe the coat must have belonged to a student.
5. R. Okonkwo is clearly a person who struggles to look after themselves.
6. The button might not have come from this coat. — it matches nothing on the coat
Write it
Task card · Writing · Alone · 17 minutes
Write "Who is this person?" — 250 words about a stranger you can reconstruct only from objects.
Four moves, in order. Seventeen minutes writing, then six checking.
- Choose your evidence: a second-hand object, an inherited room, a desk you use that somebody used before you, a lost-property item. Real is better than invented.
- Paragraph one or two is evidence only — things that could be photographed, no modals.
- You may use two must claims. Each must name the detail that rules the alternative out.
- Mark the line out loud, in your own voice: where does the evidence stop and where do you begin?
- Finish by giving the person back a life your evidence never reached.
Task card · Checking · Pairs · 6 minutes
Swap. You are not marking. You are putting the challenge question to every strong claim.
Six minutes, four answers, written in the margin where the writer can see them.
- Circle every must and can’t. Beside each, write what it claims to rule out — or a question mark if you cannot find it.
- Find any claim about a feeling, a motive or a character. Ask what bought it.
- Is there a line marked in the piece? If not, say where it should go.
- Last: would you be comfortable if the person read this? Answer honestly, in one word.
The last question is not decoration. A speculation piece is about somebody who cannot answer back, and the only check available is whether you would stand behind it if they could. A "no" there is worth more than any correction of a modal.
What the margins said
Two questions.
1. How many of your must claims could name what they ruled out?
2. Did anybody answer "no" to the last question?
Where the evidence stops
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. What goes in the first paragraph of a speculation piece?
2. What does the final move do?
Next. The same piece, spoken, with somebody putting the challenge question to it live — and a look back at the whole unit.